Michael G. Shively

Michael G. Shively
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Born	24 February 1947 Modesto, California
Nationality	American
Citizenship	United States of America
Occupation	Sex researcher Publisher Writer Businessman Academic Activist

Michael G. Shively (born 24 February 1947), also known as Mikal Shively, is a sex researcher, publisher, writer, businessman, academic, and activist for the economic and civil rights of LGBTQ people. A native Californian, he was Associate Director of the Center for Homosexual Education, Evaluation, and Research (CHEER) at San Francisco State University from 1974 to 1984, and an Associate Editor of the Journal of Homosexuality from 1975 to 1984. From 1984 to 1990, he was Associate Publisher of The Advocate, a national LGBTQ news magazine established in 1967, and Chief Operations Officer of Liberation Publications Inc. (later known as LPI Media) from 1985 to 1990. He was Chairman of the Board of the Damron company from 1991 to 2005. He has written and published about social sex roles, sexual identity, civil rights for LGBTQ+ people, sexual relationships, and related topics for more than forty years. His personal and professional papers are archived in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections at the Cornell University Library.

Early life

Shively was born in Robinson Hospital in Modesto, California, on 24 February 1947, the eldest son of June Irene Shively (née Quisenberry, 1927–2016), and Donald Earl Shively (1924–2013). During Shively's preteen years, his father was a plasterer and his mother a housewife. Shively grew up with a younger brother and sister. In 2010, his sister completed gender transitioning to become a trans man. They were all raised in a non-religious family. Shively attended Franklin Elementary School and Mark Twain Junior High School in Modesto. In 1959 his parents separated and then divorced the following year (1960) when he was twelve years old. Shively's mother was given full custody of the children and, when the divorce was final (1961), she married Peter Canning and the family moved to Ceres, California. Shively attended Ceres Union High School and Modesto Junior College (now part of the Yosemite Community College District) while living in Ceres.

College and early activism

After graduating from Modesto Junior College in 1967 with an Associate of Arts degree, Shively moved to San Francisco, California, to attend San Francisco State College (as it was called until 1972, when it became San Francisco State University) as an art major. Shively received his Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology in 1975 and his master's degree in social psychology in 1977, both from San Francisco State University. Immediately after arriving at San Francisco State, he gravitated toward and became involved in the civil-rights and anti-war movements then active in the San Francisco Bay Area and on university campuses. In November 1968, the Third World Liberation Front strikes of 1968 Front on the Francisco State College campus organized a student and faculty strike that lasted until 21 March 1969, making it the longest strike by students at an academic institution in the United States. Shively joined the student strikes and participated in leafletting, protests, and other demonstrations organized by the Third World Liberation Front. From 1974 and for the remainder of his professional life Shively has remained active in LGBTQ academic, economic, and civil rights.

Center for Homosexual Education, Evaluation, and Research at San Francisco State University

In June 1974, Shively responded to a newspaper advertisement in Lavender U, the independent newspaper of the Lavender University, a free university that was founded in San Francisco in 1974. (Lavender University remained in operation until 1978.) seeking volunteers interested in doing "sex research." The announcement had been placed by John Paul De Cecco, Professor of Psychology at San Francisco State University and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Homosexuality. Shively became a volunteer and worked with De Cecco and others for a year writing the first qualitative research grant proposal to found the Center for Homosexual Education, Evaluation, and Research (CHEER). In June 1975, CHEER received its first grant from the National Institute of Mental Health for the creation of the Civil Liberties Project (CLIB), a series of systematic, structured anecdotal interviews with individuals who believed they had been deprived of a right or service based on their departure from a heterosexual norm (i.e., because they had been perceived as bi- or homosexual) or from normative perceptions of social sex-role behavior (i.e., because they had been perceived as failing to conform to the gender roles considered "appropriate" for their presumed biological sex). Once funding was received, Shively was appointed, Associate Director of CHEER. When, in 1976 John De Cecco became Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Homosexuality, Shively was appointed Associate Editor of the Journal of Homosexuality.

Shively received his Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology in 1975 and his master's degree in social psychology in 1977, both from San Francisco State University. Shively's Master's thesis, completed in 1977, had focused on the identification of social-sex-role stereotypes, and he later published two articles based on his research: "The Identification of the Social Sex Role Stereotypes" and "Components of Sexual Identity". Both conceptual contributions were used to construct the interview schedules for, and analyze the data from, all CHEER projects.

Interviews for the Civil Liberties Project were primarily conducted in Northern and Southern California and in the New York City metropolitan area from 1976 to 1980. The data were analyzed and reported in a series of publications, and materials and scales from the CLIB project were used in a variety of research publications in addition to the two articles mentioned above: "Sexual Orientation and Violations of Civil Liberties," "Methodology for Studying Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation and Social Sex Role Stereotypes," "Sexual Orientation and Violations of Civil Liberties," "Age-Status Labeling in Homosexual Men," and "Sexual Orientation and Violations of Civil Liberties.".

Shortly after the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan as the 40th president of the United States (1981–1989), Congress repealed the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980, significantly reducing federal mental-health spending and ending direct federal funding of mental-health services and research in favor of block grants to states, and no further funding for CHEER projects was forthcoming.

Liberation Publications Inc. and The Advocate

Shively began working for Liberation Publications Inc. (later known as LPI Media) in mid-1980 and, for the next four years, worked in the evenings with John De Cecco on the book, The Heterosexual and Homosexual Identities: The Normalization of Sexual Relationships. In late 1984, Shively moved to Southern California to become Associate Publisher of all LPI publications, which included The Advocate and the magazine's "spin-off" erotica publications, Advocate Men, Fresh Men, Unzipped (the sex-related advertisements that had formerly been known as the "Pink Pages"), and Friction. In 1985 Shively became Chief Operations Officer (COO) of LPI and organized the LPI mail order division, Malibu Sales. Shively worked at LPI from 1980 to 1990.

The Damron Company

In 1990 Shively left LPI to join Dan Delbex and Gina Gatta at the Damron Company, publisher of Bob Damron's Address Book, a gay travel guide founded in 1964. The Address Book was subsequently renamed Damron Men's Travel Guide, and three more gay travel guides were added: Damron Women's Traveller, the Damron City Guide, and the Damron Accommodations Guide. Following the death of Dan Delbex in 1991, Gatta became Publisher and CEO, and Shively became Chairman of the Board of Damron. Shively remained active with the Damron Company until his retirement in 2005.

Personal life

Shively has lived in California all his life, including in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Vallejo, and Chico.

As a representative of CHEER, LPI Media, and the Damron Company, respectively, he participated in the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights (1979), the Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights (1987), and the March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation (1993).

Sexuality: Shively became sexually active at the age of eleven-and-a-half, primarily with neighborhood boys but also with girls, and he remained sexually active with both sexes though his mid-thirties. By his early forties he had become a "Kinsey 5" on the Kinsey Scale , and after sixty-five, what had been a significant sex drive/life gradually began to diminish. His intellectual interest in sex began when a neighborhood boy introduced him to his first sexual encounter, and this curiosity never wavered. At the age of sixteen his intellectual curiosity was further piqued when he discovered the two Kinsey Reports, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, which had been published in 1948 and 1953, respectively. This was the first time Shively became aware that academic inquiry into human sexual behavior existed. From 1974 on Shively made a commitment to intellectual and academic research in human sexual behavior.

Relationships: Shively had a number of enduring intimate relationships with men; however, he was never monogamous. From 1975 to 2000 Shively had an intimate relationship with Patrick Califia, known at the time as Pat Califia, which ended when Patgender transitioning to Patrick. At the age of fifty, Shively entered into a non-monogamous intimate relationship with John Wiggins which continues. Wiggins and Shively entered into a domestic partnership in 2002 and were married in 2019.

Drugs: Shively first smoked cannabis at the age of eighteen and had a lifelong experimental relationship with recreational drugs, though cannabis and psilocybin were his recreational drugs of choice. Shively did not drink alcohol primarily because he had an adverse physical reaction even to small amounts.

Psychotherapy: Shively is a strong proponent of personal introspection and psychotherapy and, during his tenure at CHEER, underwent an in-depth Jungian analysis.

Hobbies: Shively practiced bonsai for fifty years (1969–2019), and, at one point, was the caretaker of fifty-two bonsai trees. He also has an extensive collection of photographs, paintings, and sculptures of himself done by a professional and emerging artists. The collection began in 1967-1968 when he worked as a model for art classes at San Francisco State College.

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