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QUILTBAG Thread of Flagrant Homoeroticism

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This is pretty tangential, but that's a response I hear a lot to criticisms of women who became famous through a sex tape or being a topless model or whatever, and I disagree. It really doesn't take a lot of media savvy to get representation after your sex tape has been released and say yes to everything.

I can't imagine the strength and presence of mind required to make being mocked on that large a scale over such a personal betrayal into a good thing. Even if you don't think the media savvy is of any note, just being able to turn such an all around terrible experience into a net positive for yourself basically requires you to be a remarkable person.

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This is pretty tangential, but that's a response I hear a lot to criticisms of women who became famous through a sex tape or being a topless model or whatever, and I disagree. It really doesn't take a lot of media savvy to get representation after your sex tape has been released and say yes to everything.

 

American society stigmatizes sex work in a way that does not allow most people to openly admit to participating. In this case Kim was an unwilling participant when the tape was released without her consent, and was forced to confront that this decision to release it was made without her input. I think it takes a great deal of courage to live your life as you did before when that sort of breach of trust occurs.

 

I think to have a mobile app that children play, a television show that's going on like its 8th season with like 3 spinoffs, and clothing lines at 'wholesome' companies like Sears takes a lot of control.

I don't think releasing a sex tape should damage your career, but I'm in an extreme minority in the US.

 

This is entirely off-topic for this particular thread. I encourage everyone to return to discussion of homoerotic bliss.

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Hey, it was you lot who moved the conversation over to the Kardashians in general! But yeah, I agree with pretty much all those responses to my post.

 

Anyway, back to Caitlyn: yeah, there's allusions in that (pre-)article to people accusing her of doing it purely to up the reality tv stakes or whatever. But I thought it was cool that my girlfriend be more up on Caitlyn news than I am because she reads trash rags and watches docu-soaps whereas it hadn't shown up on here, for example; shows that it's reaching the mainstream with trans* issues.

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This is more generally about the 3 Kardashian sisters, not specifically about Kris or Caitlyn Jenner. Most of the disdain I see for them (a la Wil Wheaton saying they're 'worse than Hitler') are incredibly gendered and/or slut shaming. They're women who used the money that their father (one of OJ Simpson's attorneys) made to develop things like clothing lines, cosmetic lines, retail stores, & a media presence that is specifically authored to conform with what they want out of their celebrity status.

(Complaints I see most often are "they're only famous because of Kim's sex tape," "They don't even work, why should we care about them?," "They care too much about the appearance and are vain/vapid")

Kim managed to turn a betrayal of trust (the release of her sex tape) into a profitable venture for herself. It takes someone with a great deal of media savvy & PR control to do that kind of turnaround. I think Kim is the least interesting sister as she is often incredibly condescending to her sisters, is often over dramatic, and mostly humorless. She is the most famous though.

 

I 100% believe there are genuine criticisms of them & their fame/fortune, but the ones I see are rarely that. (The arguments that are actually compelling to me are things like appropriating Black culture, refusing to criticize Tyga for his predatory behavior in dating their 17 year old sister, etc.)

 

Does part of this get into that thing where certain behaviors by women are viewed as negative, while the same behaviors by men are viewed neutrally or positive?  Self-promotion being one of those (because women are supposed to be more humble).  And tying into the Caitlyn subject, a Bruce Jenner who goes on a media blitz of self-promotion is not something anyone even comments on.  But a Caitlyn Jenner doing the same thing suddenly becomes evilly self-serving and manipulative?

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Does part of this get into that thing where certain behaviors by women are viewed as negative, while the same behaviors by men are viewed neutrally or positive?  Self-promotion being one of those (because women are supposed to be more humble).  And tying into the Caitlyn subject, a Bruce Jenner who goes on a media blitz of self-promotion is not something anyone even comments on.  But a Caitlyn Jenner doing the same thing suddenly becomes evilly self-serving and manipulative?

 

one million points to Gryffindor. 

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Personally, I can't stand the Kardashian family and I think they are all terrible. My wife watched their show for way too many years and they are some of the most garbage, self absorbed people I have ever seen (and to be fair, I feel this way about pretty much every reality show family I've seen). I could care less about how they got famous or anything about sex tapes or anything like that. Good for them for turning that around and owning it. But it doesn't change the fact I find them to be vile people and that they should absolutely not be looked up to by anyone.

 

That being said, I don't know how to feel about this whole Caitlyn thing. On the one hand, I think it's great and everybody should be super supportive of her. On the other hand, this is a person I have not been fond of at all and it does seem kind of weird to heap praise on that person.

 

 

Trans communities are largely invisible even within LGBT circles, which leads to their needs being ignored. A highly visible person coming out as trans, especially one whose history is full of traditionally masculine accomplishments, is a great thing. Discouraging people from paying attention to or talking about a trans person just because you don't like the people they're associated with is a super myopic and selfish perspective. Sadly, I expect the hate and rhetoric, but the dismissal is just unexpected to me, and it's super thoughtless.

 

I guess I agree with you here but it just makes me a little sad that visibility of trans communities is so low that we need to latch onto and heap praise onto any highly visible person that goes through gender re-assignment, no matter how much of a shithead they may be. I mean, would we be obligated to be as supportive even if someone as terrible as Mike Huckabee went through gender re-assignment?

 

The thing that frustrates me most about this is that there are a ton of great people who are struggling with similar issues but because we live in celebrity world, only famous people (regardless of how terrible they are) are really eligible to receive this kind of support and get to grace magazine covers and get awards for being the year's most courageous person. It just makes me sad.

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I guess I agree with you here but it just makes me a little sad that visibility of trans communities is so low that we need to latch onto and heap praise onto any highly visible person that goes through gender re-assignment, no matter how much of a shithead they may be. I mean, would we be obligated to be as supportive even if someone as terrible as Mike Huckabee went through gender re-assignment?

I would absolutely be supportive of Huckabee if he came out as trans. No matter how much I dislike someone's actions, I think it's important that everyone feel comfortable being who they are. Doesn't mean he would get a free pass for being shitlord supreme, ruler of his own fecal fiefdom, but disliking a politician's policy is different from disliking their identity.

And that goes for Caitlyn Jenner too. I don't know enough about her recent past to know in depth what kind of person she is, but I know she has a hyper masculine history and legacy so coming out and that coming out as a woman has been a gauntlet of horrors. She deserves unequivocal support of her right to be who she is, but that doesn't mean you have to support what she's done.

And yeah, celebrity culture is a whole other terrible thing. It's sad, but it's the society we live in.

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Yeah, I don't know why people try to do a weird "gotcha" about politicians who are shitlords: If Mike Huckabee came out as trans, I'd support his decision to live his identity as he chooses but still hate his policies and bigotry towards others. I mean, how many women politicians have we had that actively oppose things like abortion? I don't hate them because they are women, I dislike the things they want to put into legal practice. Why is this a hard concept for people to wrap their heads around?

 

That being said, I'm more into helping out more marginalized trans folk who don't have access to the resources that Caitlyn Jenner does. But I don't think she shouldn't get to live her life as she wants to.

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That being said, I'm more into helping out more marginalized trans folk who don't have access to the resources that Caitlyn Jenner does. But I don't think she shouldn't get to live her life as she wants to.

The good thing about high visibility people like Caitlyn Jenner is the effect they can have on resources for more marginalized people. I've seen things around on social media about people donating to homeless shelters for trans youth lately, and that's probably because of Caitlyn.

I feel pretty similarly to you in general, though.

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Yeah, I definitely think there's a visibility effect that's great - but I still like to put my resources in at the local, donating to my local shelters, supporting my trans friends and stuff. :) 

 

Hey, it's Pride month! Is anyone doing anything fun? My city's Pride is this weekend which means I debate about going alone (since my partner is a guy and I'm a lady) and maybe the bisexual group won't get hassled this year. :(

 

Unfortunately Pride is a very L/G centric event every year and heavy on the G, and I really dislike being around drunk dudes en masse. We shall see. But it is at the big festival grounds in town, on the lake, so that's always a nice change of pace. 

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My feelings on the Kardashians are complicated (that is, they hold no appeal for me but I'm unwilling to write them off as being terrible people without significant evidence, in keeping with my general policy of assuming that celebrities are playing dumb until proven otherwise) but I gotta say, it seems like a pretty helpful thing for the transgender community that the relatively shallow audience that Keeps Up With The Kardashians are getting exposure to what it's really like to be transgender. It seems like at least one of the Kardashians is handling it well? It seems like Caitlyn is using the spotlight wisely, and as someone who's been in a position to have a media circus, I appreciate that it's not easy, when dealing with something difficult, to try and harness that very silly attention for something worthwhile. So I'm pleased she's ready to do so.

 

Mardi Gras in Sydney, which is our rough equivalent of Pride, was a couple of months ago.

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Mardi Gras in Sydney, which is our rough equivalent of Pride, was a couple of months ago.

 

I'm really interested to know what that's like, I used to know some people that went to it every year and these days I see my friends getting excited for it.

Travel, ugh.

 

I'm disappointed that Wellington lost its Cuba Street Carnival. I went to the last one ever in my mid teens and it seemed really fun; only this time I'd be going with my partner which would be wicked. :3

So far the nearest Big Gay Out is geographically closer but financially further than mardi gras.

 

Oh one thing I'd really like to know is how Oxford Street is these days? I heard that due to liquor licensing laws in Kings Cross a lot of the traffic was being moved over to Oxford's area drawing regular punters into a traditionally queer space while also bringing in more bad eggs. :(

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Hey, it's Pride month! Is anyone doing anything fun? My city's Pride is this weekend which means I debate about going alone (since my partner is a guy and I'm a lady) and maybe the bisexual group won't get hassled this year. :(

Unfortunately Pride is a very L/G centric event every year and heavy on the G, and I really dislike being around drunk dudes en masse. We shall see. But it is at the big festival grounds in town, on the lake, so that's always a nice change of pace.

Motor City Pride is this weekend! I'll be going, but it'll be in a new capacity for me. I've been working with a nonprofit that's trying to document an oral history of the city's queer communities from the AIDS crisis on, so tomorrow I'll be helping with some technical stuff with recording the interviews, then transcribing them! I expect I will cry more than once.

Gay white dudes have kind of taken over the queer movement and a lot of us are super shitty about everyone who isn't a gay man. It's pretty bad and I have screamed at people for being awful at pride before (you don't boo a bi group in the parade, shitty white guys!!!). It's really disheartening to see an event that's supposed to be about celebrating your freedom to be yourself and publicly express who you are turn into a weird show of power so everyone knows the gay white dudes are at the top of the pecking order. Shame is the poison and pride is the antidote and all that. No need to shame people when you should be celebrating them.

That stuff has been getting in recent years, but it still happens. :(

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I would absolutely be supportive of Huckabee if he came out as trans. No matter how much I dislike someone's actions, I think it's important that everyone feel comfortable being who they are. Doesn't mean he would get a free pass for being shitlord supreme, ruler of his own fecal fiefdom, but disliking a politician's policy is different from disliking their identity.

And that goes for Caitlyn Jenner too. I don't know enough about her recent past to know in depth what kind of person she is, but I know she has a hyper masculine history and legacy so coming out and that coming out as a woman has been a gauntlet of horrors. She deserves unequivocal support of her right to be who she is, but that doesn't mean you have to support what she's done.

And yeah, celebrity culture is a whole other terrible thing. It's sad, but it's the society we live in.

 

Thanks for your perspective. I can't really argue with what you're saying and you're definitely right that she deserves unequivocal support. Unfortunately, I have a lot of disdain for celebrity and reality show culture and I just have a hard time getting over that. I'll shut up now.

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Fun fact: The "mother of pride" (Brenda Howard) who was a huge help in organizing the Christopher Street Liberation Day March, which eventually became Pride, was not only bisexual but a sex worker and poly. Stonewall was also partially due to Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, trans women of color. 

 

I laughed when I found out that one of the founders/organizers of pride was a bisexual woman who had a male partner. 

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It's kind of sad that bisexual history has been largely erased because of the political nature of identifying a bisexual in the early days. It was seen as affirming heterosexuality, so there were a lot of bisexual men who publicly identified as gay men but who slept with women. It's starting to be reconstructed -- if you go through the ACT UP oral history, you can see a lot of personal stories that include this, and most gay histories I've read from the last few years have included something about bisexual history, like the importance of bisexuals in early development of safe queer spaces in non-urban settings -- but it's still spotty at best.

Lesbian and bisexual nurses were hugely helpful in the early days of Kaposi's sarcoma too, but no names are coming to mind immediately.

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Pride here isn't until the end of August, but it's a really big deal. Manchester has always had a big gay population, relative to many cities, and a whole section of the city centre is unironically (and these days fairly unjudgementally) known as the Gay Village.

 

That said, I don't expect to see much of anything to do with bisexuality or transexuality in it. Bi erasure and transphobia are definitely alive and well in the gay community here, sadly. Some of my friends in LGBT organisations have been wanting to drop the "T" for a while, and let transsexual people go their own way with their own agendas. Some of this is practical and sensible - many issues don't cross over and conflating sexual orientation with gender identity isn't always to the benefit of either group - but a not insignificant part of the time it's also just ignorance and squeamishness over transexuality.

 

Bizarrely, though, drag queens will definitely feature heavily.

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I'm going to be in Sweden for this year's Dublin pride parade. Which sucks cause I expect it'll be a good one.

Also fun fact, I recently heard on the Allusionist (Helen Zaltzman's podcast about etymology and word culture) that the original Gay Pride parade was going to be called a Gay Power parade, which would be much more uncomfortable! They changed the name because Pride is something anyone can have, even when oppressed.

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For anyone who missed it, Nintendo stated today that the upcoming Fire Emblem: Fates will be their first game to finally include gay relationships.* I'm super happy that they're finally taking their first baby steps into the 21st century, even if there's some caveats:

 

1) so far, only the player character can get gay-married, and only to one character, and only in one version. I'll be playing the "Birthright" version, where a female player character can marry a woman, but you need to play "Conquest" if you want to marry a man as a male player character. The DLC "third version" will include both characters.

2) there's a weird sort of "seperate but equal" quality to the fact that you apparently can't S rank your gay relationship, only "A+ rank" it... which... is actually not equal, come to think of it. A+ is below S in, like, everything.

 

 

*To be fair, the Gen V Pokémon actually did it first, but they were super-tame "dates" with little to no romantic undertones.

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So the game is out in Japan today and... the gay characters basically sound like terrible people.

 

Originally a thief, Zero became a soldier serving Prince Leo. He is incredibly sadistic and loves watching people suffer.

 

Syalla is the daughter of Tsukuyomi. She is extremely prejudiced and stalks those she deems "compatible" with her.

 

aCQchAd.png

 

Syalla is also heavily implied to be a reincarnation of Tharja, the predatory stalker character that they made that creepy figurine of.

 

One step forward, eight steps back, I guess.

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SCOTUS just voted 5-4 for marriage equality in all 50 states as well as recognizing marriage licenses from other states. Still no housing or employment protections, however. 

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SCOTUS just voted 5-4 for marriage equality in all 50 states as well as recognizing marriage licenses from other states. Still no housing or employment protections, however. 

 

Kotaku's headline for the SCOTUS decision is my favorite: U.S. Copies Fire Emblem

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