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!
“Like it never occurred to me that anyone would take the “lipstick on a pig” comment pertaining to Palin as being sexist (considering the fact that our senior Senator who is a woman often uses that same line frequently). But the people complaining about that comment I believed to be stretching it. “
Because no women ever say misogynists things?
To me, calling them a hypocrite is the worst thing you can call them. It would never occur to me that anyone would even think that the outing of the hypocrites was attacking those people because they were gay.
That’s because you don’t think 1: Being homosexual is bad. 2: That appearance is more important than substance.
One of the evils of the closet is that so long as someone looks to be “normal” they will be accepted, even when it’s known they aren’t. David Dreier’s homosexuality is an open secret. It only became something the national press paid any attention to when he was trying to become Speaker of the House (when Tom DeLay was removed).
The reason he was passed over; and told not to seriously campaign, was because he was gay, and it would come out. Not that he would have been bad (from the point of view of knowing the various arcana of The House, he was probably the most cognizant).
So they chose Hastert… who was torpedoed when his, “youthful peccadilloes” (he was my age, mid-40s, when they took place) came to light. For a lot of people, esp. conservatives form matters more than truth. So being a closeted gay is acceptable, being an open gay isn’t.
Because being openly gay says you don’t think being gay is icky.
“The people who would be disgusted by the hypocrisy wouldn’t have been supporters in the first place.”
As has been stated multiple times, but I guess it’s more fun to be idealistic and pretend that outing is a controllable force that will work only in the way those whose intentions are pure would like it to, especially if you already know that you’re one of those who the shrapnel isn’t going to hit.
There’s also the fact that what a lot of average folks may take away from the outing of gay politicians is “gay people lie”, rather than “Politician X is a liar”. That’s the tricky thing about prejudice – if it already exists, things are going to be filtered through it, and in this case the only people upset to find out that Politician X is gay will be the people who already had lots and lots of the prejudice.
It may well kill that particular politician’s career, but it does absolutely nothing to undermine homophobia.
@ VIscaria: Who gets to decide what is sensitive enough, if not the person who is actually experiencing the reaction?
The person with all the privilege of course–because we all know that being accused of being X is much much much worse than suffering X. /sarcasm
White people accuse people of color of being oversensitive. Men accuse women. Straight people accuse not-straight people (and some types of not-straight people accuse other not-straight people). Higher class people accuse lower class people.
It’s a mechanism to deny those being oppressed the chance to voice it and to doubt themselves; see, gaslighting.
Anecdote: I used to note issues concerning gender discrimination at the university.
Male administrators (they were ALL male in the day) would say “aren’t you just saying that because you’re a feminist.”
Same sort of fucking thing. And since I wasn’t tenured yet, I did not say “aren’t you just asking me that because you’re a sexist,” but I so wanted to.
Now that I’m tenured, I can say that sort of thing….
@ ithiliana
Are you getting really bored with the various manifestations of that from this particular individual? I know he’s convinced that we’re all picking on him just to be mean, etc, but in fact he keeps getting called out because for some reason he just can’t or won’t stop doing it. Since we’ve already had “no sense of humor” and “oversensitive” I’m rather curious about what’s up next. “Hysterical”, maybe?
@LJ #4: Straight people often have trouble understanding the manifestations of homophobia. That’s why it’s a good idea to, you know, listen to the people who have experienced it and give THEM the authority of lived experience plus, in many cases, a lot of thought about the issues.
@CassandraSays: I’m more irked and frustrated with him (though impressed by the excellent job you all are doing) — because, yeah, been down this road, seen this before, and he should really stfu and stop straight-splaining homophobia and what is or is not to the various gender/sexual minorities here (just learned that term! It’s cool, and not so cutesey as “QUILTBAG”–the question is did I learn it here or on another community I follow fairly regularly).
Don’t forget, LJD is the Grand High Arbiter of Sensitivity and Humor.
I’m going to change my mind now! Holly has some good points and I think, at this point, I’m not in support of outing anyone– she’s quite right that the supporters are going to stop supporting the homophobe over “ewww queer” and that’s not what we want people to do.
I’m still in support of outing ex-gay movement supporters, though, in order to show that that movement does not work.
@ithiliana: Yup. Every time I’ve ever seen or heard “you’re being oversensitive” it has been a more privileged person saying it to a less privileged person, and the meaning has seemed to be “I get to say or do whatever I want, and I also get to dictate how you should feel about that.”
Kyrie: “Because no women ever say misogynists things?”
No. Though women may be considered less likely to say misogynist things, there are plenty who do support things that are misogynist. (Any woman who supports the anti-choice agenda is supporting state sponsored misogyny). However, the statement about lipsticks and pigs generally is not sexist but was presented as such for political purposes.
Kavette – The problem is that you might be outing them as an attack on their hypocrisy, but people who see it will use it to mount an attack on their sexuality. You can’t out someone as “ha ha, hypocrite” without exposing them to “ha ha, queer.”
I know this is anecdotal, but if I could just expand on this for a moment; One thing I’ve observed on occasions when homophobic politicians have been outed is that the majority of comments I tend to encounter on the subject are not condemnations of hypocrisy, but cheap homophobic jokes. Many of which I heard coming from people who support LGBT rights.
So yeah, I haven’t personally seen much evidence that outing bigoted public figures does anything to lessen homophobia. In fact, some people who otherwise seem reasonable on the subject have used it as a free pass to say some pretty hurtful shit.
ithiliana: “@LJ #4: Straight people often have trouble understanding the manifestations of homophobia. That’s why it’s a good idea to, you know, listen to the people who have experienced it and give THEM the authority of lived experience plus, in many cases, a lot of thought about the issues.”
Of course straight people have trouble understanding it. That is why I stated in my comment that I do not have the life experience that would enable me to understand it. And sometimes, when one wants to listen to someone who has had to experience it to get an answer…. one first has to ask a question.
“However, the statement about lipsticks and pigs generally is not sexist but was presented as such for political purposes.”
That’s not much of an argument. Since when is misogyny not a useful tool? Saying a woman is aggressive and unfeminine can, IMO, be qualified as misogynist. These are “arguments” that wouldn’t be (or much less effectively) use against a male politician.
Kyrie: Misogyny has been a useful tool. The claim that something is misogynist when it is not can also be a useful tool. (The lipstick on a pig comment being an example of the latter). (Just stating this because I am not sure if my comment you responded to was clear)
(And when I say things are useful, that doesn’t mean I think they should be used. Both are things that, imo, should not be used)
If you believe women can be misogynist then what is it that you were trying to say here?
It looks to me like you were arguing that “lipstick on a pig” is not sexist because a woman has said it too. But perhaps I’m wrong, or maybe I’m being oversensitive.
Snowy: The 1st thing you quoted was said prior to the 2nd thing you quoted and was a clarification of my poorly worded explanation that made up the 2nd thing you quoted.
So no, you were not being oversensitive in this case. I just didn’t put my words together well initially and clarified them in the response to Kyrie.
Just fuck off, seriously.
Are you talking about me or a political figure here? Because no, you answers are far from clear.
And I agree with Snowy analysis of what you said. Why would you mention the fact a woman said it if not to defend this sentence just because a woman use it?
I holding my judgment until clarification but I do feel I’m being insulted here.
Misogyny has been a useful tool.
Well, it makes you a tool…
And to clarify my one question, just in case:
Why on earth who you precise she’s a woman while saying it’s not a sexist statement if you don’t think that a woman saying it means it’s not sexist?
Rutee: Do you read? Notice the comment at the END of the post.
“(And when I say things are useful, that doesn’t mean I think they should be used. Both are things that, imo, should not be used)”
Damn. And for someone who wanted an example of oversensitivity… that is it. Right there.
Kyrie: No, I was not talking about you. I was talking about the Conservatives who claimed that Obama’s use of the “lipstick on a pig” comment was misogynistic. (Perhaps I was just assuming that people remember that part of the 2008 election, perhaps you do not)