So W. F. Price of The Spearhead has made a momentous discovery: there is a television show called Glee. In a recent post, he shared some of his findings with the regular crowd:
I’ve only recently heard of the teen drama Glee, which is evidently a big hit with the teenybopper crowd. The other day, I came across it while flicking through channels and forced myself to watch some of the show.
Apparently, it is really, really gay.
First, I have to say that I now do believe the conservative Christians are correct in saying that the media is pushing a gay agenda. Of course, I don’t really care (one can always change the channel), but it was so blatant on Glee that I couldn’t help but laugh. The show revolved around a “glee club” (an insipid American high school institution for you Brits), cheerleaders, football players, gay football players, football players in drag, football players with cheerleaders, with gay cheerleaders, etc. There was even Broadway-style singing and dancing.
The horror!
Glee is about the gayest show I’ve ever seen on TV. Even the name is gay.
So, you’re saying it’s gay.
Still, Price did have one little complaint about the show:
The gay issue aside, there was one thing about the show that, although unsurprising, was still obnoxious: it features the same old negative stereotypes about normal males. The teen sluts (both gay and straight) are the heros, while the villains are generally straight or straight-acting males … .
It’s true. No one in American society is more oppressed than “normal” dudes. How dare Glee add to this bigotry!
Shockingly, it turns out that there aren’t any Glee fans amongst the Spearhead set – at least none willing to speak up.
In the comments, Meistergedanken explained that Glee was just a part – a loud, singing part — of a devious queer conspiracy:
It’s all part of the plan. Just like “Desperate Housewives”, “American Horror Story” or “Dawson’s Creek”, or any of those other shows created by the queers, straight couples – particularly married ones – are inevitably shown to be the most hypocrital, intolerant, ignorant, mentally unbalanced and emotionally dysfunctional characters. In this way normality is portrayed as a sorry sham. …
It’s so strange to see the progressives insist on marriage for gays, while at the same time showing married couples (and the husbands/fathers especially) as the worst people out there. They want to tear down marriage so they can scrounge the tattered remains for themselves, I guess.
Towgunner, for his part, delivered up a long, rambling manifesto of sorts on the subject of the gays. Some highlights:
Is it a tragedy that gay people suffer? I honestly used to think so, but I don’t really think they suffer all that much. They seem pretty happy at their parades. Matter of fact, I’d say that a balding women (regardless of her sexuality) or a poor black family or an orphan in Africa suffer thousands of times more than some sappy fruit.
In that light homosexuals have proven to be one of the most selfish groups in all of history, right up there with women – after all they want to be women anyway. …
Furthermore, it says something about our culture that gives only homosexuals and other sluts special treatment. … All this to facilitate a small group’s ego so they feel only slightly less guilty at themselves when they orgasm. That’s where your taxpayer money goes to…to make a pervert feel good about itself.
So, apparently, the government is giving out gay orgasm grants, or something?
Andybob, meanwhile, spoke up for the gays. Or, at least, the gays who hate Glee. And women.
The first time I saw “Glee” I wanted to punch my flatscreen through the wall. Here again, gay men/teens are being shown as shallow, trite, superficial, dismissable, malleable, silly, flippant cretins with nothing to offer the world except fashion advice and sloping shoulders for whiny bitches to cry on. …
Those of us [gay men] who live far from Hollywood and have no connection whatsoever to Broadway musicals are very likely to be very aware of issues confronting men. Some of us are even vocal MRA’s. … [We’re] not handicapped by the need for sex from women. We can recognise their manipulative BS from miles away. The female psyche laid bare is an ugly thing.
Gay men like men, identify with men, actually are men. We watch men we care about like our brothers (I have a straight twin brother), fathers, and mates get ground down by a system created and maintained by feminists and their pussy-begging lackeys – and yes, some poodle-carrying flamers along for the ride. Women are always shocked to learn that most gays side with men. That’s not what they see on the telly. …
The bitchy gays who discriminate against straight men … are the manginas of the gay world. …
Women don’t like gays and straights to collaborate because they don’t want us to compare notes. I have seen women try to shame my straight friends out of hanging out with me. They are threatened by our mutual support. Together, we are able to construct a composite picture of women that would peel paint for sheer gruesomeness.
Gay men and straight men – together, united in hatred of whiny bitches!
” the issue of bi’s and passing as hetero is interesting to me, as a bi person who in the vast majority of situations has usually been pegged as queer. When people are surprised that I am bi, it is usually because they presumed I was a lesbian.”
Whereas I’ve been read as straight while walking around with my arms around a woman who I was sleeping with. It’s definitely about gender presentation, at least in part. Though usually when queer people either figure out that I’m queer, or I tell them so, they just sort of shrug and move on – straight people often go “no you’re not!” and then we get to have a conversation about “phases”, even though I’m nearly 40.
It is very interesting to me how people are read and why for lots of reasons, not least that it affects gaybashing, which almost never happens to me. That’s definitely some sort of passing privilege at work. I have friends who don’t have that privilege, and in some cases I’m not even sure why hostile straight people are able to immediately ID them as queer.
Argh, yeah, this is what I was talking about. “Actually, I’m sexually attracted to women too.” “What? No you’re not. You’re like those girls who make out in bars to get guys to go home with them.” I am? Well I mean, I guess you would know, person who isn’t me. Oh wait, no you fucking wouldn’t, why are you telling me my life? >:-| It’s also pretty ridiculously heterosexist to assume that all feminine-presenting women kissing in bars are not into each other, and are doing it for the sexual gratification of men. But I’ll say again that — at least in my case — that irritation is tiny compared to the benefits of passing, and doing it without having to put on any sort of show where I’m denying my real personality.
I guess anyone who would flat-out tell you you’re wrong when you out yourself to them is probably not the most queer and LGBT friendly person, so in a way it maintains the passing privilege since they’re going to extend it to you regardless of what you say; and if they didn’t, there would probably be consequences of some kind.
I mean “you” generally, not you you, Cassandra. (:
I feel like I get a tremendous amount of “passing privilege” from being biologically female and dating mostly men, even though it’s nowhere near as simple as it looks. It looks simple, it looks like “a guy and his girlfriend,” and I gotta admit that a lot of the time I’m happy enough to skate by on that.
(I also tend to not present myself as a part of an LGBTQ community because of that. I don’t want to co-opt the activism of people who can’t get away with “looks simple” and therefore face very different challenges than I do.)
I don’t stop people and say “no no, you don’t understand, I’m genderqueer and we’re both bisexual, so if you’re going to discriminate against non-normative sexualities here we are,” and because I don’t do that I retain a truckload of passing privilege.
*imagine my comments ringing hollowly through the blogosphere in very spooky fashion but hell I think it’s worth saying though it won’t mean a damn to LJ4*
@LJ: See the real root of the problem you’re having as a CLUELESSS cis hetero man is that while you claim to politically oppose a lot of the oppression that (in this case) gender/sexual minority groups face in the larger society, and I’m willing to believe you do, you seem to think that simply saying “I am against that oppression” is enough to earn you cookies as an ally.
But you have not shown much awareness of how much you are still operating from the privileged position you occupy, and how (relatively) stating your political opposition to those oppressions actually means to the people here. There are two reasons you don’t get a lot of cookies for that brave statement (do you ever make statements like that on blogs that are more homophobic or even heternormative?):
One, that statement is accompanied by a lot of other really shitty baggage that is (despite your privileged idea that you are a speshul shining individual) totally cliche stereotypical behavior by clueless privileged people in what might be called social justice spaces. And while this blog is dedicating to mocking misogyny, a lot of the regulars here are involved in such work, and some have been for decades. And we’ve heard it all before many many times: thus, the BINGO and the incredible deconstructing of how your posts are classic derailing for dummies, by the number.
Two, you haven’t shown us any reasonable sense that you are in fact actively doing anything to bring to an end those “second-class citizen” ideas you are are against–I’m willing to believe I’m wrong since I’m not going to read your blog, but do you active write about your opposition to them? Do you post on major days like Transgender Rememberance Day (do you know when it is), to affirm your support? Do you do work OFFLINE in any way that we might not know about?
What I see, and I think others do as well, is somebody showing up and demanding education (yes, yes, you say you ask, blah blah blah, but a question from a member of the privileged class has more social power, and then you get all whiny about how people are mean to you just because you ASK though that’s not all you do), but not listening (the whole debate on outing public figures, etc. was brilliantly done, and gave a lovely snapshot of complexities from people who are knowledgeable about these issues–your contributions were shite, and I’m not even sure you learned anything given that your main takeaway was “what do you mean you’re calling me an oppressor.”)
So, you’re not going to get cookies. You don’t have any real authority to speak on anything around here (maybe the mocking misogyny–have you actually DONE that?) You don’t have anything to contribute based on your previous record, and while you don’t have to go away because any of us say so, you also don’t get to claim sympathy or pats or admiration or any other positive response for behaving exactly like a gazillion other clueless cis hetero men who blunder around with their ignorance flapping in the wind.
You’re a lot like MRAL in that way. You’ve gotten good advice from nicer people than me in this thread, although I bet you ignore it like you did the last time, and keep on flapping away.
But realize it’s not “cis hetero men” that are oppressed here (the “you’re oppressing me because I’m a member of a group, I thought that was bad, we’re all equal” wasn’t quite played, but you came damn close). You are getting responses because of your individual behavior which reveals a shitload of privilege and heterosexism and general cluelessness.
My situation viz a viz passing is extremely odd. From what I’ve gathered, most strangers tend to see me as an alternative-ish, possibly gay, man. When I speak, my voice is clearly feminine, so I tend to be read as a butch lesbian. Then I express attraction to a dude and people tend to read me as a straight girl, until I express attraction to a chick and they read me as a queer girl. I’m only out as trans to my partners and support group.
I am lucky (or, have been privileged by bi-invisibility, from two directions) to have passed extremely well – when I have been in heterosexual relationships I have been assumed to be straight, and straight-acting sufficiently well when in a homosexual relationship – a very useful assumption when you’re also employed somewhere with a high proportion of sexist, homophobic co-workers. I also seem not to be pegged as non-conformist enough, gender-wise, to routinely be identified as queer; obviously by comparison with Ozy’s situation, I need to go more androgynous to avoid the binary pigeonholing.
One more thing on the lj4 situation. It’s true that during one previous controversy I did tell lj4 that, like him, some of the forum mods may have overreacted (though I also told him that Snowy was right to lock down the thread that was at the heart of the controversy).
Looking back on the situation, I don’t think the mods overreacted. I think I underreacted to lj4’s disruptive behavior; I should have asked lj4 to move along at that point. The mods were doing their job, properly. And I appreciate what they do to keep the conversations going in a productive (and non-annoying, and entertaining) way on the forum. I’m the one who screwed up here, not them.
Wrapping up the Thread Meltdown
For late-comers, the previous installment of this post covering items 1–31, is back on page 4 of the comments. (Identifying which comments were derailing is left as an exercise for the reader.)
32. I don’t treat Jumbo specially, and I’m still entitled to call Jumbo oversensitive.
33. People don’t treat me fairly because this place acts like a big LGBT safe haven.
34. But again, here is a case where others insist on debating the comment I made… so I’m entitled to respond.
35. I’m not one of the oppressors, really I’m not!
Page 5 of the comments
36. I’ll go when the blog owner tells me to go. People lied about me.
37. Continuing to assert that people would lie about me.
38. Trying to vaguely redefine what the word “oppression” might be assumed to mean.
39. I will play bat and ball when I get to my computer. Nyah.
40. I am futilely trying to rationalise my previous inept behaviour and why some people who remember things that happened a month ago can evidently recall it better than I can, by twisting the facts of what actually happened and asserting my attacker is a liar, again.
41. I was ’splaining what second-class means quite well! And I was going to ’splain it especially so that Jumbo would be able to see that, if he wasn’t intent on misunderstanding me!
42. I will post messages to conclusively prove that me posting messages cannot possibly be harassment!
43. Why am I being told to shut up when others aren’t? Double standard!
44. Seriously?
45. *Flounce.*
46. How can I stick the flounce, when there are all these misrepresentations on this thread! About meeeeeee.
47. I am stubborn but it’s totally not my fault!
48. I only made one real mistake… and it was the way I phrased it, not anything else.
FINIS. (At this point David kindly asked the poster to find somewhere else to post)
<sermon>
Now I’d like to say, just so that the intent is clear, that this breakdown was generally intended to poke fun at the traits of the poster in question, by way of the normal, comic strategy of exaggerating what is already there in the posts, reading between the lines. That some people (other than the author) might find this funny is due to recognition of how much difference there is between what was actually said, and how it was exaggerated – or in some cases, how little was changed. (That the original author might be upset at having fun so poked at him is probably due to him being a humourless git without either the ability to laugh at himself or the “cluefulness” to recognise that asserting “I am very funny” is hardly a convincing proof.)
Again, like ithiliana, I would hope that by the magic of posting this on the blogosphere this would give a rather large clue to the originator of those posts that readers can – and do – read implications from writings that the author may not have intended. If so, it’s really the writer’s problem for not being clear or careful about what he’s saying. It is simply unacceptable to blame readers for not magically resolving all the problems inherent in the original text. Don’t do that.
Above all, it is not acceptable to defensively post either encyclopedia-length articles, or to respond forty or one hundred times in a thread to demonstrate other people’s lack of reading comprehension, or inherent assumption of bad faith, or lack of charitableness, or whatever other misconception was provoked when it was the all-too-numerous examples of your bad writing in the first place that was the problem. Strategies as unsubtle as this, when implemented with the sensitivity of an ox, generally do not endear you to other people. That’s a clue, by the way.
Yes, I am happy to admit that this post and the previous are not “charitable” readings of the four dozen comments previously entered: I suggest a valid response, especially to ithiliana’s comment above, is to let your personal crusade go.
</end of sermon>
Homosexuality cannot be accepted at all. Homosexuals are not innocent too. They want to complicate the natural sexuality. Today they are misusing the law and human rights as well.
I am curious, Explore Nature:
what would we gain from complicating the “natural sexuality”? What is “natural sexuality” anyway? Homosexual and/or bisexual tendencies have been observed in many different animals time and time again. Are they also “misusing the law and {animal] rights”?
I don’t think my sexuality complicates anything (:
I happen to be romantically and sexually interested in women and men. I think it seems fairly simple. In fact, I don’t think any of my friends ever mentioned that my existence made their sexuality more complicated somehow 😮
If the fact that some people are attracted to their own gender, or both genders, is so threatening to you, it actually makes me worried about you a bit. I mean, the world must seem awfully scary to you, with all the complicated things in it ): ! Think about it! Some people love vanilla ice cream, while some actually like strawberry ice cream better! Holy shit, right? There are all sorts of crazy things out there!
Some of us are ok with the world being complex, EN.
Essentialists (like you, EN) want to complicate the “natural sexuality” by forcing people into specific desires.
Why are you so unnatural?
:-O Guys,
Every time a non-cis-hetero person does something sexual or romantic, a cis-hetero person’s life…
…isn’t altered in any way.
Egads!
-Can we get an Amen for Xanthe?
Amen! Also, thank you David!
I thought an angel got it’s wings. A net gain for all
Okay, I explored nature!
I found gay hyenas, whales, monkeys, penguins, lizards, lions, giraffes, antelope…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mammals_displaying_homosexual_behavior
Nature is pretty cool.
I love it when people on the webbernets invoke the Naturalistic Fallacy!
Please, type more on your keyboard to tell me more about your ideas about how we should take more cues from the natural world.
@Rutee: I always tell such people that I take my cue from (da da da DUM) THE BLACK WIDOW SPIDER, ahahahahahahahahahahahahah (the female natchurally).
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH.
Then they leave for some reason.
The more unnatural something is, the more I like it. I’ve eaten spray cheese out of a can which didn’t contain any dairy products. That shit’s awesome.
Also, Cool Whip! A lovely topping for the lactose intolerant.