«I JUST READ EVERYTHING»

Q- Oliver Stone once said that every gay man thinks they're a film critic, and Quentin Crisp said that he went to the movies "incessantly and reverently." Yet, as far as I know there's no particularly deep relationship between cinema and lesbian culture. How would you account for this?

A-I noticed this odd phenomenon while I was still in college. I had a community of response to film with gay men but virtually zero with lesbians. It's partly why my dating life was such a frustrating blank. My theory is that gay men, unlike lesbians, have an innate, hyper-acute visual sense. It's related to what I have speculated to be the genesis of much (but not all) male homosexuality: an artistic gene that ends up isolating sensitive young boys and interfering at a crucial moment with the harsh dynamics of schoolyard male bonding.

-Camille Paglia