Category Archives: LGBTQ
Why I’m Not Watching Brittana
Photo: cartermatt
I’ve seen all the pictures and gifs, read a lot of the recaps and many of the editorial posts. Brittana are married. This is amazing, especially when Glee often seemed more determined to walk all over queer women instead of celebrate them. But I haven’t watched an episode, not even the Brittana cuts, and I won’t, at least not for awhile.
Brittana were the couple that completely changed my life, professional and personally, in ways I could not have anticipated as an adult. They were the first time I had seen two women kiss in public (granted, it was on TV and they are fictional characters), and the first story that reached into my soul and into my past and healed wounds I had forgotten about.
But beyond maybe season 3, Glee’s behavior towards queer women–their meta commentary, dismissal of fans by the creators, often offensive storytelling, encouragement of fans more interested in competition than actual people, and a laundry list of other unpleasant ripple effects–has been a complete turn off.
I am so happy for Brittana. I’m also a little sad this could have been their story over so many seasons instead of saved for the end. But most of all, I’m unwilling to open back up (for now) to a show that has been too careless with people’s feelings and lives.
Reads of the Week: Rose McGowan for the Win
Take a look at this week’s Reads of the Week: Great articles about the LGBTQ community, feminism, women and anything else worth reading. This one’s a little old, but still worth the mention!
“Where does it say that because of a man’s sexual orientation, I don’t get to point out a character defect that some of them may have? When equal pay for women was voted down by every male Republican, there was no LGBT outcry. I wondered why that was. After all, lesbians are women — this affects them too, right?” – Rose McGowan, Advocate
Reads of the Week: Bi-Invisibility
Take a look at this week’s Reads of the Week: Great articles about the LGBTQ community, feminism, women and anything else worth reading.
“In usual form, nearly all the responses, from the media and public alike, ignore the possibility that anyone could be bisexual (or queer). And nearly all the responses attempt to either confidently or subtly assert an identity upon an actress who has never provided any public defining label about her sexuality.” – Raechel Tiffe, “Buzz About Kristen Stewart’s Sexuality Tells Us a Lot About Society’s Discomfort with Bisexuality”
Reads of the Week: Fetishisation
Take a look at this week’s Reads of the Week: Great articles about the LGBTQ community, feminism, women and anything else worth reading.
Photo: gentside.com
“I don’t believe that any single fantasy is innately wrong, but my little departure into those boys’ private lives was indicative of a dangerous pattern of thought. To many people, it often seems that women in the slash community have decided that “gay sex” is always sexy, that queer is always cute, and that we can take ownership of the gay male experience by writing about it and reading each other’s writing.”
“Specifically, these men indicated that straight or bisexual women had repeatedly asked overly personal questions about their sex lives, treated them like adorable puppies instead of humans, and attempted to co-opt the gay male experience or even elevate allies over actual gay men.”
– Jezebel, “On The Fetishisation Of Gay Men By Women In The Slash Community”
‘Glee’s’ LGBTQ Thunder Dome
Glee has this habit of pitting LGBTQ characters against each other, as well as their shippers and fans. While the resulting social media commotion may be an effective way of creating some sort of social capital for a show that should have sunk years ago, it’s at the expense of the very same LGBTQ community Glee likes to congratulate itself for celebrating.
In the latest episode, which contains the much appreciated Brittana proposal and the most sensitive treatment of Brittana since season 2, it also features Santana viciously going after Kurt about why Blaine broke up with him. The result is pretty brutal and unnecessary, even for a character whose razor sharp edge is sometimes a complex, nuanced part of her personality. Really, it was uncalled for, even if Kurt interrupted Santana’s moment.
Beyond the fact that Blaine is the toxic character in the Klaine pairing and constantly escapes any sort of real criticism or challenge, it’s disheartening that Glee doesn’t seem to have room for two hugely important LGBTQ characters to exist in the same space and support each other at the same time.
Reads of the Week: LGBT YA, Outrage, Cosby
Take a look at this week’s Reads of the Week: Great articles about the LGBTQ community, feminism, women and anything else worth reading.
“In 2014, mainstream publishers published 47 LGBT YA books. This is a 59% increase from 2013, when only 29 LGBT YA books were published by mainstream publishers.” – Malinda Lo, “2014 LGBT YA By the Numbers“
- “[…W]e resolved to keep track of what people got outraged about every day of 2014. Since January, a phalanx of editors, writers, and interns has been scanning the horizons for funnels of fury[…]The rage-a-day calendar above contains the fruits of their labor: a comprehensive listing of what was outrageous and whom it outraged, for every single day of the year.” – Slate, “The Year of Outrage”
- “Rape culture, particularly as it manifests in black America, demands that justice for sexual assault victims be positioned secondary to the reputations of “good” black men. And in a white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy that cares little for black men, and even less for black women, “good” black men are too often the only victims we collectively exert the energy to save.” – Kirsten West Savali, “Bye, Phylicia Rashad. Your Romanticizing of Cosby—and Cosby—Is Wrong”
Reads of the Week: Billings, Trauma, Gender and Straightsplaining
Take a look at this week’s Reads of the Week: Great articles about the LGBTQ community, feminism, women and anything else worth reading.
“We have got to realize that we are all students of the human experience. And if we do not start learning from each other and really listening and receiving the gift from the person across from us, we are lost.” –Alexndra Billings, Jezebel
- “The paradox of the current system is that the reliability of the victim is crucial to the prosecution of a crime that features unreliability as an almost guaranteed byproduct. This point seems lost on many of the people currently swept up in a reactionary obsession with the account of one alleged survivor.” – ThinkProgress, “I Was Sexually Assaulted as a Child. Here’s Why I Didn’t Remember for Years”
- “Gender is not sex, and sex is not gender, although explanations of both will vary. And gender identity is not gender expression, although they might play into each other. And a sandwich is not a wrap, although you can convert it into one.” – Autostraddle, “Rebel Girls: Waiter, There’s Some Theory in My Gender”
- “If you want to know about gay people—their lives, their desires, their ideas, their cultures—listen to gay people. If you want to know about straight people, listen to straight people talking about gay people.” – Gawker, “A Fieldguide to Straightsplaining”
Debunking the Debunking of Klaine’s Popularity
Photo: glee.wikia.com – The Crack Society
Welcome back to the Klainer merry-go-round!
A friendly, helpful Klainer hoping to debunk the previous Debunking of Klaine’s popularity (going in circles, it’s a thing) provided a lot of helpful information via comments demonstrating Klainers have a lot of time on their hands to spend on the internet. Oops, I meant that Klaine are the most popular Glee couple. Spoiler alert: Still not really true. Also, there’s room for everybody, especially ALL the LGBTQ ships and characters. Hashtag, representation. Am I right, Klainers?
