Yep, it's Wednesday, which can only mean one thing- new West Wing. Just kidding. What Wednesday means is, of course, it's time for the Bay Guardian Wank of the Week. Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Today we're going to explore the exciting world of identity politics. I know- there's nothing more exciting than identity politics. Whether it's the exciting world of barbershops or the musings of a gay, err excuse me, queer activist/writer/"literary provocateur" this week's Bay Guardian explores it all.

This week's wank is the introduction to said musings of queer activist/writer/"literary provocateur," Matt Bernstein Sycamore, who, as the article points out, is leader of the "queer resistance" movement. This particular wank has nothing to do with identity politics or gay politics or politics anything. As your humble blogger is not a member of that team, I have no right to say what the what is involving internecine pissing contests in the gay community. As a wanna-be writer, however, I can say something about this:

"KENNETH REXROTH, one of the most interesting of the poets who've lived in San Francisco, said in his autobiography, "I have spent my life striving to write the way I talk." Mattilda, a.k.a. Matt Bernstein Sycamore, the prolific San Francisco editor, performer, and writer, has developed the skill of writing the way he thinks. His prose is a device implanted in the reader's brain, compelling accompaniment as he relates, in a voice that ranges from manic chatter to profound speechlessness, upward zips to euphoric pinnacles and vertiginous crashes to unplumbable depths. It's a door into the spirit of a young person committed to beauty in a world whose intimacies are instantly corroded. The work is calculated to cause indigestion in those raised on the junk-food confessionals of Oprah culture. However sensational the topics appear – prostitution, incest, insurrection – Mattilda matches immediacy with intelligence and rawness with poignancy"

And, in case you were wondering what the writer thinks, try this one for size:

What I am interested in is a radical outsider perspective, a queer identity that's about transforming sexuality and revolutionizing gender and taking apart capitalist tyranny, one that's about building community and family outside of traditional models; something that's challenging and seeking to dismantle the larger systems that are oppressing us in the first place."

Reverand!