For Queer Mice
by BROWWWSER
One in Ten My Ass!
t could happen to you. And it finally
happened to me. My year started off with a jolt when my hard drive crashed, and of course
I never did a backup. My cry of dismay was heard all the way to St. Charles, followed by a
stream of cusswords that would make Courtney Love blush. You never consider how much our
lives are wrapped around a computer terminal until it goes out. Along with the column I
was writing, I lost my Internet connection, e-mail, and all my bookmark files, not to
mention my checkbook balance! So for this issue I was trying to figure out how to write an
Internet column without being able to review web sites. Kind of like writing a book report
without reading the book. But since I did that a lot in school, I knew I could come up
with something!
Since I was already pissed off
about my hard drive, I decided to write about something else that bothers me. There are
several magazines out now that do nothing but review web sites. Have you tried looking for
gay or lesbian web sites in any of them? It's easier to find an openly-gay person in
Branson. And when a queer web site is mentioned, it's lumped under "Culture" or
worse, "Lifestyles" (like the ad says, "For the last time, it's not a
lifestyle, it's a life!"). Here's a quick sample of a few of them:
1. WebNow, formerly I-Way, in their premiere issue
rates 500 web sites and can also be found at http://www.cciweb.com/iway.
Out of those 500, there's only one queer web site reviewed: Queer
World at http://www.qworld.org/. If these
statistics are anything like the real world, it's no wonder I can't find a date.
2. January's issue of Yahoo Internet Life (also
on-line at http://www.yil.com) had a total of zero gay
and lesbian web sites out of 100+, so they may have a better ratio than WebNow. But zero
divided by anything is still zero.
3. WebBound offers 25,000 web addresses for your
browsing pleasures (also at http://www.webbound.com).
They don't review them, so it's hard to tell if they might have queer content. Out of 216
categories I couldn't find even ONE that might even mention gays and lesbians. I found a
few potentials in Music, like Melissa Etheridge, ABBA, Diana Ross, Erasure, and the Pet
Shop Boys. The ONLY web address that actually had the word "gay" in it was in
the Science Fiction category for Gaylaxicon VII at http://www.gaylaxians.org/gcon7.html. And
I think that one was an oversight. If these statistics are true-to-life, then I've slept
with every gay man in the country. And most of the lesbians too.
4. Even the queer magazines aren't much better. As far as I've seen, only Out magazine (http://www.out.com
as if you didn't know) has an entire page devoted to the queer presence on the web. If
there's anything good about the lack of queer web sites in print magazines, it's that I
might actually get a job doing this.
Lucky for us happy hooked-up homos there are some new
resources out just for us to tell us where to point our web browsers to. A new book called
Gay & Lesbian Online by Jeff Dawson has many links
from Activism to Women's Groups, with Gay and Lesbian Net Gurus, Madonna's Army, and
Wigstock thrown in as well. This book is a good general guide to queer web sites, but it
also lists sites that aren't specifically queer but can be used by gays and lesbians. As
with any book about the Internet, it's already out-of-date as soon as it's published since
the web changes constantly as old pages disappear and new ones spring up. But if you're
really interested in getting started on the web, it's a good launching pad. For more
information check out the Peachpit Press website at http://www.peachpit.com.
Another brand new book is for
ladies only. It's appropriately titled Surfer Girls by
Laurel Gilbert and Crystal Kile. Sadly I decided to buy the latest Enigma CD instead of
it, so I can't review it for you yet. You can find both books at Our World Too and other
gay and lesbian bookstores and decide for yourself. The money you spend on these two books
will save you tons compared to the number of queer links you'll find in any magazine.
Thanks for joining me for another Queer Mice column. And if my computer's fixed by next
issue, I'm planning a truly fabulous column! You won't want to miss it! In the meantime if
you would like to contribute to the Buy-Browwwser-A-Better-Hard-Drive Fund and Pity Party,
please send a donation to http://www.gaystlouis.com
or e-mail [email protected]. As always, if you
find some great queer links, please send them my way or via Slam
at [email protected] (that is if AOL has fixed
their network overload problems, but that's another column!). Cheers!
