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QUILTBAG Thread of Flagrant Homoeroticism

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A really formative moment for me was when I was 19 and saw All That Jazz.

 

 

Seeing someone like Roy Scheider play Bob Fosse kind of felt like a Rosetta Stone for a lot of the gay/straight masculine/feminine binaries I found myself butting against. I sort of unlocked that I didn't have to feel guilty for not easily fitting into one category or another.

 

I used to use bisexual, but queer is a better term. Technically I suppose "pansexual" is more specific but I never liked that term. It made my sex life sound way more decadent than it is.

 

 

As for bisexuality/pansexuality/non-binary sexualities being diminished, I have talked to some people who have had bad experiences being a lot of straight but questioning people's test tube. Like "Oh, don't know if I'm straight or not, I should see if I have a relationship with the person in my sphere who is out, oops I don't like this farewell." Pure anecdotal evidence, but I've heard it from a fair number of people who have had that kind of bad experience, whether it was being lead on romantically for long periods of time or just a night of really awkward sex. I remember one guy I hooked up with in college telling me I was "one of the good ones", which I guess just meant I put out? Gay guys can be entitled pigs too.

 

I think maybe also the focus recently has about integrating gay people into traditionally straight capitalist-driven institutions, like getting married and having children, while queer and trans (and non-monogamous) people often feel more like challenges to said institutions? Which is why the b and t in LGBT sometimes feel like they aren't pronounced? Trans-visibility seems to have increased in the past year or so but I've also only been dating my partner, who is gender non-conforming, for a year or so, so maybe that change is just in me?

It can be hard to say, I guess. I'm kind of just rambling because I saw a clip from All That Jazz again recently and it made me think about that time in my life.

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I'm not sure if that making post was a big deal for you or not, but I think it was a courageous post to make.

....

It always seems like, for all of those people, that it feels risky to stick their head above the parapet and say something non-heteronormative though.

Yeah, it's weird. I never had any problems ranting about all kinds of controversial topics, but this topic was weird because I had no allies whatsoever and the risk of becoming some kind of social pariah was palpable if I said the wrong thing to wrong people. Monosexuals can be absolutist jerks. If they even really exist. I am kinda eager to say no, fuck all y'all. How does that feel, huh?? :shifty: :shifty: :shifty: :shifty:

Yeah, I also think it's really cool and couragous that you took the time to write this and post it "out loud".

It's too bad that a question from Thunderpeel has haunted you for two years like this, I doubt he meant it like that. On the other hand, by the end of the post it sounds like you have stepped closer to finding your OWN identity? Not as in "identifying as X", but you seem like you know more who you are instead of questioning yourself, fluid sexuality included.

You mention that "Bisexuality has no cultural visibility whatsoever", and I agree with that. It led me to an honest question: Is there such a thing as "bi culture"? You mentioned the stereotypes, but there's also gay clubs, media such as TV shows, music and literature aimed specifically at gay men, lesbian women or other groups such as drag artists. But does places, art or other things under the definition "culture" exist specifically for bi-sexual people? (Stating again, I'm genuinely curious.)

I haven't exactly been "haunted" by Thunderpeel, it was just a momentous moment, because I never ousted myself publicly before, s'all. I've had a bit of time to unpack my baggage, try stuff out and come to terms with things... The "courageous" long post from a few days ago was not as big a deal to me as that brief conversation two years ago. I figured it was time to put things into writing and ask others in a thoughtful forum about their experiences—so why not this thoughtful online web-forum on the internets!

There really isn't anything like bi culture. The closest thing I can think of is this pretty rad comic anthology that came out recently, Anything That Loves. I didn't expect it to have as big an effect on me as it did. It is a really, really good collection, with a bunch of autobio comics, but also a lot of really good stories that deal with the themes and conflicts inherent in non-binary, beyond-straight-and-gay relationships, including trans, asexual, etc. It was the first time I saw some of the same feels and impressions I've had all my life verbalized and by a bunch of different people. If anything, it just illustrates double-plus-well how there isn't a bi culture... outside of indie comics, I guess. Erica Moen has a little abridged journal comic in there, part of which she posted online.

And when you think about gay culture, there are so many aspects of it that have absolutely nothing to do with sex. To be gay is to be a member of a tribe that almost incidentally also involves sexual preference. Gay dudes and fussy old ladies would get along so well, if only so many of the latter weren't so dang puritanical. Drag comes out of a tradition of needing to hide, or blend in. Theater, Broadway and showtunes are uhh somehow related to fabulousness which is also gay for some reason? Because real proper straight dudes don't care about their appearance? Which is really a wider feminist issue... And lesbian culture is completely different still from the gay culture in equally arbitrary-seeming ways...

I have managed to hone my bidar tho—I put all of the bi people I know in a pile and compared them amongst themselves and against all the straight and gay people I know to draw some kind of common thread—to where I can sorta definitely say that there is a "bi type"... Can't quite put my finger on verbalizing what the telltale signs are, but the general feeling is that bi people tend to be less neurotic (or something!!??) about their relationships, intimate or otherwise... maybe it's just that being straight and being gay are so taxing, constantly have to be affirmed, different sexes are inherently treated differently? I kinda feel that that bi personality manifests itself even in more quiet, closeted people so it doesn't really have anything to do with being out, but uhhh I dunno something something scientific method... :dopefish:

As for bisexuality/pansexuality/non-binary sexualities being diminished, I have talked to some people who have had bad experiences being a lot of straight but questioning people's test tube. Like "Oh, don't know if I'm straight or not, I should see if I have a relationship with the person in my sphere who is out, oops I don't like this farewell." Pure anecdotal evidence, but I've heard it from a fair number of people who have had that kind of bad experience, whether it was being lead on romantically for long periods of time or just a night of really awkward sex. I remember one guy I hooked up with in college telling me I was "one of the good ones", which I guess just meant I put out? Gay guys can be entitled pigs too.

I think maybe also the focus recently has about integrating gay people into traditionally straight capitalist-driven institutions, like getting married and having children, while queer and trans (and non-monogamous) people often feel more like challenges to said institutions? Which is why the b and t in LGBT sometimes feel like they aren't pronounced? Trans-visibility seems to have increased in the past year or so but I've also only been dating my partner, who is gender non-conforming, for a year or so, so maybe that change is just in me?

It can be hard to say, I guess. I'm kind of just rambling because I saw a clip from All That Jazz again recently and it made me think about that time in my life.

I feel like it's impossible not to ramble on these kinds of uncharted touchy personal topics... Speaking of Fosse, I watched Cabaret recently for the first time since I was a kid and was startled by how much I remembered OUTSIDE of the love triangle... I remembered all the songs and the general vector of the nazi conflict, but I had completely forgotten (suppressed???) the central plot...

Relationships are weird and difficult enough without throwing that cross-camp experimentation into the mix. People are emotionally manipulative, selfish and younger people so much moreso. There was a time in my confused early 20s when I dated a string of (in retrospect wrong) girls, had piss-poor chemistry, and freaked out that maybe I should be dating dudes... I wasn't absolutely certain I wanted to make that shift, since, like I mentioned, it seemed a permanent decision and not one to be made lightly... but still, inability to connect with a few girls = gay gay gay... and then with every subsequent girl I'd go out with, I'd be preemptively freaked out that I would fail to connect, creating a string of horrible self-fulfilling prophecies... Properly Gay™ people have it easier than bi peeps, in a way, since there is no alternative-sex attraction to muddle the waters and cast doubts...

My recent impressions on the emotional side of bi-dating are further confused by the fact that most of my gay dalliances happened in a poly context... and that is a whole other can of worms. On top of that, I feel like Americans just date differently than normal ( :crazy:???) people... I've never been able to connect with Americans as emotionally unguardedly as I've been able to connect with foreigners... I've heard similarly vague experiences from other foreigners dating in the States. I'm a very competent, attentive lover—if they let me—so I am pretty sure it's not just me...

I retumblred a cut down version of Kenji Yoshino's The Epistemic Contract of Bisexual Erasure a while back, and I'm gonna plop it here again because it is pertinent:

The first investment monosexuals have in bisexual erasure is an interest in stabilizing sexual orientation. The component of that interest shared by both straights and gays is an interest in knowing one’s place in the social order: both straights and gays value this knowledge because it relieves them of the anxiety of identity interrogation. Straights have a more specific interest in ensuring the stability of heterosexuality because that identity is privileged. Less intuitively, gays also have a specific interest in guarding the stability of homosexuality, insofar as they view that stability as the predicate for the “immutability defense” or for effective political mobilization. Bisexuality threatens all of these interests because it precludes both straights and gays from “proving” that they are either straight or gay. This is because straights (for example) can only prove that they are straight by adducing evidence of cross-sex desire. (They cannot adduce evidence of the absence of same-sex desire, as it is impossible to prove a negative.) But this means that straights can never definitively prove that they are straight in a world in which bisexuals exist, as the individual who adduces cross-sex desire could be either straight or bisexual, and there is no definitive way to arbitrate between those two possibilities. Bisexuality is thus threatening to all monosexuals because it makes it impossible to prove a monosexual identity.

The second interest monosexuals have in bisexual erasure is an interest in retaining the importance of sex as a distinguishing trait in society. Straights and gays have a shared investment in this because to be straight or to be gay is to discriminate erotically on the basis of sex. Straights have a specific interest in preserving the importance of sex because sex norms are currently read through a heterosexual matrix: to be a man or a woman in contemporary American society is in part defined by one’s sexual attractiveness to the opposite sex. Gays also have a particular interest in sex distinctions, as homosexuality is often viewed as a way to engage in complete sex separatism—that is, as a means of creating single-sex communities that are bonded together erotically as well as socially and politically. Bisexuality endangers all of these interests because it posits a world in which sex need not (or should not) matter as much as monosexuals want it to matter. Indeed, bisexuals and asexuals are the only sexual orientation groups that have at least the capacity not to discriminate on the basis of sex in any

aspect of their lives.

The final interest that monosexuals have in bisexual erasure is an interest in defending norms of monogamy. Both straights and gays share this interest, as the dominant ethic of contemporary American society favors dyadic relationships. Straights may have a particular interest in this insofar as the form of nonmonogamy associated with bisexuals has been connected to HIV infection, with bisexual “promiscuity” acting as a bridge (phantasmatically if not actually) between the “infected” gay population and the “uninfected” straight population. Gays may have a particular interest in monogamy insofar as they seek to assimilate into “mainstream” society. Bisexuality threatens all of these interests because bisexuals are often perceived to be “intrinsically” nonmonogamous.

Thus, along at least three different axes, both gays and straights have distinct but overlapping interests that are threatened by the concept of bisexuality. It is thus unsurprising that both of these sexual orientation groups collude in bisexual erasure.

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I'm making it happen. My twitter leaked out to a friend of my sister and well 2 weeks of a gossipy family later I'm publicly out as Transgender. Its a huge sigh of relief for me really and I wish I'd done it sooner, as all of my family and friends have been great so far. Trying to book a hormone assessment soon which my mother is going to help pay for, and my step-sister knows someone who does Laser really cheap so I'm all over that.

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I'm making it happen. My twitter leaked out to a friend of my sister and well 2 weeks of a gossipy family later I'm publicly out as Transgender. Its a huge sigh of relief for me really and I wish I'd done it sooner, as all of my family and friends have been great so far. Trying to book a hormone assessment soon which my mother is going to help pay for, and my step-sister knows someone who does Laser really cheap so I'm all over that.

 

That's awesome for you! Was there a worry that your family would be negative?

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That's awesome for you! Was there a worry that your family would be negative?

There were certain parts of my dad's family I had concerns about, they're a lot more conservative than mom's side. Dad  himself I was unsure about even, but they all really seemed accepting so that was a good surprise.

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I think after careful consideration I would say I am pansexual. It's hard to distill everything about your sexuality into a term but I guess finding one that works is a good start.

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Personally, I find that too much fiddly identity nomenclature gets in the way of human interaction.

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Personally, I find that too much fiddly identity nomenclature gets in the way of human interaction.

I agree, but its very rarely simple.

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I am not saying it is. I am saying that taxonomy tries and fails to make it simple—whether we go with the straight vs gay official binary breakdown or the wacky tumblr overkill table.

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As a straight white dude I've long felt that way about the tumblr overkill table as an automatic reaction, because it's kind of insane??(?), but also if that kind of thing helps someone be comfortable with themselves, who am I to judge. I know I'm not comfortable with myself, and my labels are easy.

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The Trans-everything CEO, a great profile interview of a:

 

Futurist, pharma tycoon, satellite entrepreneur, philosopher. Martine Rothblatt, the highest-paid female executive in America, was born male. But that is far from the thing that defines her. Just ask her wife. Then ask the robot version of her wife.

 

 

Martine is enthusiastic about an immortal future, but she—a white, Jewish lawyer and also a transgendered woman who is a father of four married to an African-American woman and therefore also, sort of, a lesbian—is just as interested in deploying AI to liberate secret or suppressed selves. “Humans are free spirits,” she told me, “and we’re happier when we can express whatever happenstance is in our souls.”

 

 

To promote this vision, Martine and Bina in 2004 founded what they call a “trans” religion, called Terasem, devoted to “respecting diversity without sacrificing unity,”

She's also a space lawyer who later started a pharmacy company to develop a better medicine for a sickness her daughter had, and who has made a creepy life-like robot of her wife. I should almost crosspost this to the Big Dog thread.

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This is also highly, highly likely to mean that gay marriage recognition is coming to a bunch of other states directly as well (including Kansas), since their bans are covered by existing circuit court rulings.

Which is amazing and makes me happy for all my friends who will now be able to get married here at home instead of going somewhere else and waiting for Kansas to recognize it.

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Johnson County becomes the first county in Kansas to begin issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples.  Fuck yeah.

 

Kevin Moriarty, the chief judge of the 10th Judicial District in Johnson County, has just issued an order giving the go-ahead for same-sex marriage.

The order reads: "In the interest of justice and to avoid the uncertainty that has arisen in light of recent federal court rulings about the constitutionality of state constitutional and/or statutory prohibitions against marriage by same-sex individuals, the clerk of the district court is hereby directed to issue marriage licenses to all individuals, including same-sex individuals, provided they are otherwise qualified to marry."

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Oh yeah, also, the CEO of Apple came out as gay.

 

Have there been a bunch of Facebook jerkwads boycotting Apple, or is that even still a thing people do?

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I kinda think the recent episode of Doctor Who fits into this thread. What do you think about it? Big spoiler ahead:

 

Missy is the Master regenerated into a female body. People complain that she calls the Doctor her boyfriend and that she kisses him. For me it makes sense. Maybe the Master was into women and Missy is into men now. And there was always a love-hate thing going on between the Doctor and the Master from the very beginning. And there was homoeroticism between the Simm-Master and Tennant-Doctor anyways.

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It's definitely interesting. I'm not a huge DW buff, so my speculations may be inaccurate...

 

What seems to have happened is that the Master has swapped biological sex (sorry if I'm using the wrong real-life terms here, please correct me) on regeneration. But she could be lying and not be the Master, or it could be some other method of gender-swapping. If it is possible to do on regeneration (and I'm not sure whether that's already canon or not), hopefully there will be at least allusions to how that relates to a time lord's gender identity. I think it's too soon to know what the show is doing yet.

I also think that the show's lore is so vague and mercurial that it may not be possible to get a definitive statement on how gender and sexuality identification work with time lords. The thing is, the Doctor's identity changes greatly with each regeneration - the current one has a lot of intimacy issues for example, and I can't imagine him having a relationship with River Song - plus it's generally suggested that they have little to no influence on their new appearance. This is something that should be getting tackled soon due to the re-casting of Peter Capaldi after he has already played two sizable roles in DW/Torchwood, so perhaps the issue of identity (personality, gender, sexuality) will get addressed at the same time.

 

Where have people been complaining about those things? Are they complaining because of QUILTBAG issues or Doctor Who continuity issues?

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Yes, I would love for Doctor Who to explore the identity aspects more, which, considering the pronounced emphasis on character development this season, doesn't seem too unlikely.

 

There are many intriguing aspects about the sex change if we take the process of regeneration into account. Basically, Time Lords/Ladies have varying control over the process of regeneration. Romana could regenerate based on a whim and exactly into the body she wished for. On the other hand, the Doctor seems utterly incapable of controlling the regenerative process. So, did the Master wish to become a woman or was it just a happy accident? There is also a third option: He might have been forced into a female body by the Time Lords, like they forced a regeneration upon the Doctor back then. Sex change per regeneration IS a different process than a "normal" sex change after all, not the least because the whole body changes. I would wonder what that means for reproduction, but we don't know anything about how that works for Time Lords. And as with regenerations where the sex stays the same, the character changes significantly, too. Just compare the Smith to the Capaldi Doctor.

It was established in The Doctor's Wife (2011) that the regenerative process can also change the sex of a Time Lord.

I read the comment section here. Some people think that it is silly that the Mistress was once the Master, one person finds the language that has to be used now (which pronoun?) to be too confusing (yeah, because sci-fi should restrict itself to concepts that are easily expressed in words already defined...). Some say they can't see the Master in Missy. A few state that the sex change ruins the character for them. Here's even someone for whom the whole show was ruined because of the reveal. Some were disappointed that Missy didn't turn out to be the Rani. A few said something like "the Rani was already female, so it would have made more sense for Missy to be her". Here's the densest collection of disappointed comments. The reveal was also deemed to be too predictable by some. The majority seems appreciative of it, though.

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So, Doctor Who didn't really address anything.

 

The Doctor did immediately start referring to the Mistress as "she", though, and considered the suggestions of becoming a planet's king or queen with equal interest

 

so no calamities either (outside the usual plot/writing/acting/directing/score ones, obv).

 

 

Anyone watched Transparent? It's an Amazon drama series starring Jeffrey Tambor as a transgender woman coming out to her son and daughters, created by Jill Soloway. I'm a couple of eps in. Tambor's storyline is interesting so far (especially in the support group scenes) but the rest of it it is all pretty Frances Ha. Sounds like the production is treating the trans issues with care, anyway:

 

Around 2011 Soloway's father came out as transgender. The pilot for Transparent was picked up by Amazon Studios. On what transparent means to her: "Transparent stands for gender freedom for all, and within that freedom we can find grays and muddled purples and pinks, chakras that bridge the heart and mind, sexiness that depends on a masochistic love or a sweeping soul dominance. In particular, Transparent wants to invent worlds that bridge the binary: Genderqueer, Boygirl, Girlboy, Macho Princess, and Officer Sweet Slutty Bear Captain are just a few incredibly confusing, gender-fucking concepts that come to mind." The show is "about sex and intimacy, about a family inheritance of a woman being born. They get this new mother from their father’s female self."
 
As part of the making of the show, Soloway enacted a “transfirmative action program,” "favoring the hiring of transgender candidates over nontransgender ones." This meant that "20 trans people had been hired in the cast and crew, and more than 60 had been employed as extras." She also hired "two full-time transgender consultants to steer her away from any pitfalls." All the bathrooms on set are gender-neutral. In research for the show: "Our work has been influenced by our consultants, well-known transgender cultural producers Jennifer Finney Boylan, Rhys Ernst, and Zackary Drucker. On our coffee table at work we have the Trans zine Original Plumbing, as well as every book ever written about being trans. My favorite is Whipping Girl by Julia Serano."

 

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