What is the New Gay?
TNG has grown considerably since its inception. What started almost a year ago as three guys talking outside of Sparky's Coffee on 14th street has morphed into a site that is visited by many people every day. Since our most rapid growth has happened in the last couple of months, many of our new readers don't really know what to make of us. To be honest, even our long-time readers struggle to define what goes on here. Thus, we wish to clarify what it is we're trying to do with this site.
TNG is currently a small handful of people who write about their lives and interests, but we don’t speak with one voice. We are different people with varied interests, tastes and opinions. TNG is also you, being that we encourage you to post here as well.
While we have our differences, our common bond is that we choose to define ourselves instead of letting a narrowly defined mainstream gay culture do it for us. That is what's new about what we're doing here.
We all agree that the mainstream definition of "gay" isn't just a sexual orientation, it's a white male culture defined by consumerism, superficiality and anti-intellectualism. We don't fit into this narrow matrix. We don't want to. We choose to unplug. We choose the red pill.
This website is a forum where "new" gay men and women of all backgrounds can share stories, ideas and events. We hope this site will help us learn about each other’s lives and have meaningful interactions. If you don’t see yourself or your opinions represented here, you solve that problem by sending us something to post. The burden is on you to make this site truly representative of a broad new gay community based on diversity, compassion and self-reflection.
Here are our particular areas of focus:
-Ideas: We encourage members of the DC gay community to join our conversation by submitting their own new gay commentaries/stories/opinions/events for posting. We don't necessarily need to agree with what you write because we don't all agree with each other. All we ask is that you contribute to the conversation between people who are thinking. We are discussing our gay lives, trying to figure things out and establish our authenticity as best we can. It can be ugly, inspiring, critical, funny, frustrating or sad, but it's usually interesting. We don't always agree or understand one other, but we think the conversation is important. It's an opportunity for all of us to grow.
-Events: TNG is a place to learn about and post events that fall outside of the gay mainstream. We define as mainstream those events that receive a great deal of gay press or take place at a few prominent gay bars. This doesn't mean we won't give any love to mainstream events or venues, but we have our preferences; these tend to be concerts, interesting parties, intellectual gatherings, unique performances, group activities or clubs, art shows and whatever else you can think of. We also throw monthly parties where we try to inspire male/female integration and create a friendly environment where gay people (and their straight friends) can drop pretension or social awkwardness and treat one another as people instead of objects. That's the theory, anyway. We're working on it.
-Culture: TNG a place for people who are interested in a broad range of music, literature, fimls and art. We encourage you to submit reviews or essays of any of these topics. Most of the TNG staff doesn't listen to popular radio and many people think that makes us a hipster blog. You can call us a hipster blog if you want to but we do try to cover a wide base of musical tastes. If you have opinions on music that we don't cover, please submit an album review or a concert preview.
TNG is meant to be a descriptive exploration of alternatives to the gay mainstream, not a prescriptive "new gay" culture. Please contribute to this effort by reading, commenting, contributing and attending. And last but not least, thinking.
Best,
The New Gay team.
