“Aversion, perversion, diversion—the topics of my talk—present us at the outset with their intensely overlapping euphony, their entwined etymologies—sharing much with the Latin “proversus,” source of “prose,” “verse,” “verb,” and “proverb.” Certainly they start with the suggestion of three very inter-confused topics. Nor is that confusion allayed by my further explaining that my talk tonight will be about neither “inversion” nor “reversion”—that is, it will not be about “homosexuality,” female o...r male, considered as some notion either of the masculine or of the feminine inverted, negated, turned inside out or upside down to produce the “lesbian” or the “gay male,” a production presumably re- coupable by the simplest uncritical reversion to its former state—no matter how violent the effort needed, a violence too often justified by the very simplicity of the move. But whatever confusions I bring you this evening, I shall assume that basically you have asked me here as a storyteller.MoreLessRead More Read Less
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