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Tag Archives: GLBT

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A Virtual Secession

17 Sunday Apr 2016

Posted by dougom in News, Opinion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

business, GLBT, hypocrisy, politics, religious freedom, transgender

image
They will defend your right to discriminate to their dying breath!

Recently there have been a raft of “religious freedom” bills throughout the South (and elsewhere, unfortunately). Most of these seem directly targeted against the Surpreme Court’s recent recognition of marriage equality, although now (e.g. in North Carolina) they seem to be targeting trans citizens.  In my opinion, these bills have fuck-all to do with religious freedom and are simply a method in which bigotry can be re-enshrined in places where the courts have outlawed it.  (To try to tell whether they’re really about “religious freedom”, look at a law and ask, “If this applied to blacks/Jews/Catholics/Asians/whatever, would it be discrimination?” and that should do it.)

I find this cynical and reprehensible, wildly hypocritical (“It’s all about religious freedom!”; no it ain’t, it’s all about being able to be prejudiced without being called on it), and quite frankly unChristian.  How is it in line with the Golden Rule to want to discriminate against your neighbors?  Obviously, it isn’t.  But that’s not what I want to talk about.

Unsurprisingly, most of these bigoted laws have come out of the South, primarily states that were part of the former Confederacy.  There have been laws in Mississippi, Tennessee, and North Carolina to force trans citizens to use the bathroom of their birth sex rather than their gender.  And usually people shake their heads at this stuff, say, “Yeah, that’s the South,” and move on.  But something surprising is happening this time:

A bunch of businesses, organizations, and artists are saying they’re done.

In case you haven’t seen, the draconian North Carolina law has caused businesses like PayPal and Deutsche Bank and performers such as Bruce Springsteen and Cirque d’ Soliel to pull out of performing there.  The NBA is also threatening to pull next year’s All Star game from there as well.  As you may imagine, hard-right folks are calling the companies and performers everything from “bullies” to “child molester supporters”, and trying to pretend their happy Springsteen et. alia aren’t coming to their state.  (Which wee all know is BS, but never mind.)

And it made me wonder.

It seems like we’ve been relighting the Civil war over various areas of bigotry and discrimination multiple times over the last 150 years.  (I’m hardly the first to point this out.)  There was the Civil Rights/anti-Jim Crow fights of the 60s; the battle over women’s rights and the Equal Rights Amendment in the 70s; the “Southern Strategy” of Richard Nixon; and the recent battle over marriage equality.  A (depressingly) huge number of folks in the South seem to want to keep their region firmly in the 19th Century, and get angry and resentful any time they’re forced to confront their bigotry and prejudice.  And now they’re actually being punished for it.

So I wondered if this isn’t sort of like a slow-moving, virtual secession.  I mean, I don’t anticipate the South actually breaking off from the rest of the country legally, but what if the region were slowly but steadily to suffer the same fate staring North Carolina in the face?  (A fate that caused the right-wingers to back down in Arizona and Indiana, by the way.)  What if these states stood by their “principles”, and were cut off by banks, job-rich high tech firms, entertainers, sports leagues, and the like?  What if the Titans were removed from the NFL, and the Predators from Nashville, the Hornets from Charlotte?  No more visits from Taylor Swift or big rock acts or what RedState insists are “has beens”?  What if the Federal government started denying Title IX funds because these states were breaking anti-discrimination laws?  What if the amount of tax dollars that flow into these states?  (“Red” states receive far more tax money than they contribute to the Federal government, while “blue” states pay in far more than they get back.)

Maybe “the South” wouldn’t be legally cut off from the rest of the U.S., but they kinda would be, wouldn’t they?

No, I don’t think it would actually happen.  And if it did, I doubt the right-wingers would be particularly happy to finally get what they want (and they would blame the Left for their poverty, lack of jobs, increased infant mortality and teen pregnancy rates, etc.).  But it seemed an interesting thing to think about.  And I have to think it was fear of something like this—or at least a portion of it—that caused Jan Brewer of Arizona and Mike Pence of Indiana to step back from the brink.

I used to wonder how far to the right the right would have to go before the left finally got off their lazy butts and pushed back hard.  Now we know.  And it’s kind of satisfying, don’t you think?

Some Thoughts on Clothes

06 Monday Apr 2015

Posted by dougom in Opinion

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

clothes, feminism, GLBT, kilts, style

gnvnk8ks-1390951257
Seriously, I think the guy on the left looks pretty good
(Photo courtesy of The Conversation)

My Twitter feed is–how shall I say this?–eclectic. Some nerds talking coding, of course. Some writers. A (very) few celebrities–Stephen King, Alan Tudyk–some writers like David Brin and James Fallows, some marketing people, sex workers, GLBT folks, goofy ones like PourMoreCoffee, and of course a bunch of friends. The cool thing is that I get a lot of different topics coming in at me. And today one that rolled my way was about clothing, where a sex worker gave the business to a guy who asked, “Why do lesbians wear men’s clothes?”

Well, I’ve been wondering something similar for a long time, but from a completely different angle. I was lucky enough to spend a huge percent of my life in California, where the climate is very mild. Even more, I was in Santa Cruz for 12 years, where the fog off the Monterey Bay keeps the hot air from the Central Valley from killing us every summer.

But even in Santa Cruz–and without any question now I’m in Texas–it can get hot, and make you wish you had a wider variety of clothing options.  So for example, when I was working in the cafeteria on a hot day, I would watch the women in their light cotton skirts and think, “Man, why can’t I wear something like that?  A kilt, say?  What’s the problem?”  And the problem is, it was against the “dress code”.  Men were required to wear long pants “on duty”.

This was similar when I went to work as a security guard; there were very strict requirements for what one could wear on duty, said requirements being tightly defined to established gender roles.  So that, for example, when my supervisor saw my earring, he immediately ordered me to take it off.  (After combing through the regulations, I found nothing that said men couldn’t wear earrings; there was only a note–obviously directed at female employees but not worded specifically to indicate this–that you couldn’t wear dangly earrings while on duty.  As I was wearing a stud I was prepared to argue, but not prepared enough to get fired.  But that’s another story.)

This not only offends my sense of equality, as an ally of transgender rights it irks me.  My trans friends want to wear what they want to wear, and get endless flack for it.  What could help more than the normalizing of “cross-dressing” by the rest of the population, much as “lesbians wear man clothes”?  My first girlfriend, who was very slender, liked to wear overalls.  Another very curvy one liked jeans (which looked great on her).  And who cared?  No one!  And from the purely selfish, comfort standpoint of a guy who is sick of being overheated in the summer, if a woman can wear pants, why can’t a guy wear a cotton skirt? (Or silk? Or hell, organdy for all of me?)

Besides, from the aesthetic standpoint, there are plenty of guys who would probably look much better in a skirt.  I mean, there are loads of guys out there with nice legs; why not give the folks who want to gawp at male gams the chance, huh?  And I have to think that all those flat-butted middle-aged guys would look a lot better in a nicely-tailored skirt than in those relaxed-fit Gap-for-man khakis, don’t you think?  Add some pockets to a skirt, some belt loops, and why not?

thom-browne-skirt
Okay, ditch the white shoes, but at least it’s an attempt
(Photo courtesy of Goddamit I’m Mad)

So without making too fine a point of it the question is:  Why shouldn’t anyone wear jeans and T-shirts who wants to but, even more, why can’t men wear skirts on hot days?  Not kilts; I have a kilt, and while I quite like it the damn things are amazingly heavy and make you sweat like a demon around the waist on a hot day.  No, I’m talking light cotton skirts here.  If Harry Potter can wear Dress Robes, and Cornelius fudge pin-striped robes to work, why can’t we design a lighter kilt-like garment, or a skirt that “looks masculine” so that it’s okay for guys to wear it?  The skirt equivalent of a pin-striped, double-breasted jacket?  Why not?  The Romans and Greeks wore dresses, for pete’s sake!

So I say to you, fashion gods:  Make it so!

* Special thanks to Dominique for providing me with the idea for the post. Thanks, Dominique! (God I love my Twitter feed.)

Lost Girl: A Guilty Pleasure You Shouldn’t Feel Guilty About

02 Thursday Oct 2014

Posted by dougom in Fiction, News, Opinion

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

GLBT, television

imagehandler
Images courtesy of Showcase Lost Girl site

We all have guilty pleasures. Maybe you’re a hardcore leftist intellectual whose partner publishes dense books on comparative religion and you read People Magazine on the sly; maybe you’re a professor of Music specializing in Medieval religious music and you follow Miley Cyrus on Twitter and have every one of her albums; maybe your an avowed fan and proponent of the detective novel as major literature, a member of the Baker Street Irregulars, and a regular speaker on the influence of Doyle on modern detective fiction, but you have every episode of Scooby Doo on your Tivo. I dunno what yours is; I just know that people have them.

For me it’s usually some TV show or other. I can rationalize it; for example, I can make a good case that my love of Kim Possible shows my feminist leanings, my support of girl empowerment, and come up with plenty of other pseudo-intellectual nonsense, but the truth is I watch it because it’s funny and Kim kicks ass.

But I want to mention one guilty pleasure that is in some ways truly remarkable: Lost Girl.

At first blush, this is your classic guilty pleasure. Vampires! Werewolves! Succubi! Conspiracy theories and lost civilizations and lots of fight scenes! Lots of hot women in tight leather outfits! Gratuitous ow-neckline cleavage shots!  Girl-on-girl make-out sessions!

bo and lauren
See?  Told ya.

And let’s just stop there and back up a minute. Because here’s the thing:

From a perspective of how women are treated and how GLB (no trans characters that I can remember) relationships are treated, it’s one of the most level-headed shows I’ve ever seen.

The most obvious thing is who this show is about:  A woman.  And her female live-in, non-sexual best friend.  And the main character’s girlfriend.  And her main protagonists:  The leader of the “dark” folks (that’s what they call themselves)–also a woman–and her long-lost mother (yes, a woman).   (And oh, yeah; her sort-of boyfriend the werewolf.)

Seeing a pattern here?

women-lauren-bo-ksenia-solo-lost-girl-anna-silk-zoie-palmer-kenzi-HD-Wallpaper
The three main characters; what’s unusual for TV lead characters about this picture?

I haven’t even mentioned the many, many characters who are on for longer or shorter periods, like Linda Hamilton in a multi-show guest-starring role, or Rachel Skarsten as real-life valkyrie, or . . . well, you get the point.  LOTS of women, and front and center.  This show passes the Bechdel test with ease (although I’m sure there must be an episode somewhere in its five-year run that doesn’t).

And as a middle-aged guy who has always been aggravated by the way women’s roles in film and TV seem divided into two classes (ingenue, and mom), I’m absolutely thrilled that the powerful, strong, independent, sexy (it has to be said; she playing a succubus, for Pete’s sake!), tough, absolutely kick-ass woman who plays the lead is over 40 and (in real life) a mom.  A middle-aged woman who plays an independent person not mooning after some guy or is a mom?  Wow; who’d’a thunk?  And despite the “common wisdom” among Hollywood movie and TV types, it’s run for five seasons.  So put that in your sexist pipes and smoke it, you jerks!

Anna-Silk-as-Bo-in-Lost-Girl-TV-Series-2
Lead character, Bo, preparing to kick ass

And finally, I’m incredibly pleased at how unremarked the treatment of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals this show presents.  The lead character is a bisexual woman who has had men, women, and sometimes both as partners and lovers.  Various other characters are straight, gay, or lesbian, and no one makes a big point of it; it’s just part of their character.  We don’t have situations like “Will and Grace” or “Ellen” or many other shows and movies where a big deal is made of the fact that this or that character is gay or lesbian or bi and oh my god shouldn’t we get a lot of credit for being so brave?  Nope; it’s just a natural part of how the characters are portrayed.  And in my opinion, that’s what we’re driving towards, right?  Where being GLBT is so normalized and unremarkable that we don’t, well, remark on it.  (And a lesbian actress plays a lesbian character; heaven forfend!)

Now yes, this show definitely falls into the “guilty pleasure” category in many ways.  Being Canadian, it can show more nudity than US programs, and it takes this as far as it can–lots of beautiful women and men in very revealing clothing.  (Oh yes; men too.  You should see the scene where Bo, the main character, visits her mother’s house and is served–and offered “services” by–her mother’s shirtless, tight-leather-pants-wearing, hunky Chippendale’s male “thralls”.)  Lots of cleavage and tight leather pants and sex scenes.  Not to mention plenty of fighting with swords and knives and fists, claws and cross-bows, you name it.  Our Heroine has a trunk filled with weapons.

thralls
Beefcake on the hoof

So yes, “Lost Girl” is a guilty pleasure on one level, but on another, it’s quite a remarkable show.  If you at all like science fiction, fantasy, or strong, powerful, interesting lead characters, gender equality, and positively-presented (without a lot of self-congratulation) GLB characters and relationships, you might enjoy it, too.

Enough with the “Bromance” Giggling; Guys Can Have Friends Too

25 Friday Oct 2013

Posted by dougom in Opinion

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

baker street babes, film, GLBT, literature, sherlock holmes, starsky & hutch, television

Sherlock season 3 gallery photo -- exclusive EW.com image
No, these two guys don’t have to be suffering from suppressed gay longing; sorry!
(Image courtesy of Entertainment Weekly)

I’m a Sherlock Holmes fan.  I say this not because this is a post about Sherlock Holmes, or the various new takes on Holmes (Robert Downey, Jr.; Johnny Miller; Benedict Cummerbatch), or a celebration of A.C. Doyle’s birthday, or anything like that.  It’s because there’s a common narrative thread that seems to run through people’s interpretations of men when they are either close–like in “buddy movies”–or actually live together, and in many ways the Holmes/Watson pairing is the Ur-example of this.  (The true Ur-example is the legend of Gilgamesh and Enkido, but how many people know that?  Other than people who remember the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Darmok”?)

But Homes&Watson are hardly the only example of this in fiction, of course.  We also have Kirk&Spock, and Harry&Ron, and Starsky&Hutch, and those two guys in “Miami Vice”, and on and on.  It’s a very common trope.

But there’s something that quite bugs me about how these partnerships are treated.  Let me give you an example:  I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, The Baker Street Babes, a group of women who talk about All Things Sherlock.  I like this podcast quite a bit, even if it turns into a girly giggle-fest too often for my tastes.  But hey, I’m not the target audience, so I’m good with that.  What I have difficulty with is the damn-near constant, incessant, laugh-behind-our-hands attitude that these women often display towards the relationship between Holmes and Watson.  The subtext of this is clear:  Holmes and Watson really have unresolved homosexual feelings for each other and jeez, why don’t they just act on it?

And here’s the thing, and I’m sorry to break it to the Babes:  Men have male friends.  Sometimes close male friends.  Sometimes very close male friends for whom they would lay in front of traffic, but for whom they don’t have any romantic feelings.  So get over yourselves.

In my case, I have a (very) few male friends for whom I would do almost anything.  I have lived with some of these men, in some cases for years.  We have dated women (or men), lived our individual lives, and built up a bond of close friendship that is non-sexual.  Point being, men can have close male friends that they don’t want to jump in bed with.

(I will state that folks like Robert Downey, Jr. don’t make this any better by deliberately feeding into this “suppressed homosexual longing” thing.)

Yes, gang:  Men can be friends, close, close friends, with other men, without sex being involved.  Shocker!

Now turn this the other way:  If you have a TV show, or a literary series, or a movies series, where there is a pair of women who are close friends, who even live with each other, would it be appropriate to point and giggle and make snarky comments about “suppressed lesbian longings”?  Would we pooh-pooh people who said, “No, actually; Julie and Julia are just good friends–it’s nothing to do with sex”, and then giggle and make fun and suggest that believing–gasp!–women can have female friends without wanting to screw them makes you naive?  How would that go over?  (Hint:  Not well.)

So look:  I know it’s fun and cute and clever to point out that Paul Michael Glaser sure had tight pants and oooh giggle giggle I bet David Soul just wanted to jump his bones, or to write Ron/Harry shipping fanfic, or whatever, but the fact remains:  Men can be close friends with other men without suppressed homosexuality being a part of it.  Deal with it.

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