The Even Gayer than the Gay thread

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No wonder so many of the nativists on the American Right are finding inspiration in Hungary where LGBT+ folks (and immigrants) have been targeted by Orban.
 
So Dave Chapelle’s special… I just watched it. It’s honesty not as bad as it’s being made out by the masses.

If you’ve ever watched any of his specials, he’s always dancing the line and making some delicately placed normalization of gay and trans folks, albeit at their expense.

The only thing I will say is that he does unnecessarily make jokes about people who are probably tired of being the center of his joke. He’s not tangential to trans people or related in any way so it is a bit exhausting.

The whole situation is a bit disappointing. I wouldn’t want Netflix to pull that special at all. I always saw Dave as an important proto-bridge between trans people and black people. With black trans lives being some of the most marginalized and threatened, normalizing the conversation about trans people, even if through crude or mean humor, is important. He often chooses to do this at the expense of white people, with which I’m perfectly fine with. That was actually one of his quips in the special. Poorly executed overall with this special, but I know where he was trying to go.
 
i gotta say i'm a little bit unclear how him proclaiming "i'm on team TERF" is an important positive step towards normalizing the conversation about trans people.
 
DaveC said:
i gotta say i'm a little bit unclear how him proclaiming "i'm on team TERF" is an important positive step towards normalizing the conversation about trans people.
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Of course not. I still don’t think you can take that one statement out of his skit and determine that was his intended message.
 
okay so pick whatever statement you want. he's been saying a bunch of transphobic bigoted shit for a long time now (beyond this particular netflix special) and i really fail to see how that can be spun into an ultimately positive thing for trans people.

were all those hacky stand-ups in the 90s attempting that dumb "i don't have a problem with gay people, it's the fags that i can't stand" chris rock rip-off doing a good thing and helping to normalize the conversation about gay people? of course not. actual gay people were doing that.

dave chappelle is a washed-up jerk who stopped being funny at least a decade ago and isn't helping anybody now by proudly saying TERFy nonsense and openly declaring support for (other) famous transphobes.
 
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I’ll try and watch this over the weekend.

I tend to like Chappelle, and haven’t personally been offended by him to my knowledge, but it sounds like this special is very trans focused.
 
DaveC said:
okay so pick whatever statement you want. he's been saying a bunch of transphobic bigoted shit for a long time now (beyond this particular netflix special) and i really fail to see how that can be spun into an ultimately positive thing for trans people.

were all those hacky stand-ups in the 90s attempting that dumb "i don't have a problem with gay people, it's the fags that i can't stand" chris rock rip-off doing a good thing and helping to normalize the conversation about gay people? of course not. actual gay people were doing that.

dave chappelle is a washed-up jerk who stopped being funny at least a decade ago and isn't helping anybody now by proudly saying TERFy nonsense and openly declaring support for (other) famous transphobes.
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I already spoke my feelings on this so I’m not going to say a bunch of things twice. He has a bad history of many things that do not age well. If you think he’s enabling hatred or bigotry, that’s a fair criticism. Im sure plenty of people in the early 2000s adopted a hard-r n word into their vocabulary. But if you think that he himself is bigoted, I think you’re (in general) wrong.

Do not accuse me of “spinning” this as though my beliefs are disingenuous.
 
i certainly know that you are a sincere person and did not intend to imply otherwise, i hope you know that i respect your opinions. if i could rewrite that sentence i'd replace "spun into" with "presented as" since that is much closer to what i really meant.

i think we just plainly disagree on this topic and that's okay.
 
LuckyNumber7 said:
So Dave Chapelle’s special… I just watched it. It’s honesty not as bad as it’s being made out by the masses.

If you’ve ever watched any of his specials, he’s always dancing the line and making some delicately placed normalization of gay and trans folks, albeit at their expense.

The only thing I will say is that he does unnecessarily make jokes about people who are probably tired of being the center of his joke. He’s not tangential to trans people or related in any way so it is a bit exhausting.

The whole situation is a bit disappointing. I wouldn’t want Netflix to pull that special at all. I always saw Dave as an important proto-bridge between trans people and black people. With black trans lives being some of the most marginalized and threatened, normalizing the conversation about trans people, even if through crude or mean humor, is important. He often chooses to do this at the expense of white people, with which I’m perfectly fine with. That was actually one of his quips in the special. Poorly executed overall with this special, but I know where he was trying to go.
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I generally agree with this assessment. I don’t have a problem at all with him pointing out gay racism, and while the TERF thing is ugly in general, he was mostly saying that they have a point that he agrees with (and one I find hard to argue with — the experience of being a woman and of being a transwoman are distinct and should be understood as such). And the main point, “I don’t need you to like me, I just need you to understand that I’m having a human experience” is a good one.

Sure, it’s overall anti-woke, but it’s a better show for that. I can also take the point that transfolk just want to live and not have their lives contested … but, like, it simply is a harder road when you are a minortiy. You’re better for it, your difference is your superpower. But it sure is hard. I’ve been through hellish experiences connected to my sexual orientation, and I literally lived the marriage equality movement from literally arguing on conservative websites to marching to getting married myself. I could say, “I shouldn’t have had to do any of that, why did I have to defend my humanity in a way that a straight person never has to?”

But in the end, there was no other choice. And I’m better for it. While I have times when I wish things were simpler, more straightforward, less contested, I wouldn’t trade places.
 
DaveC said:
i think leaving the last word on this topic to a trans comedian is probably appropriate:

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2021/oct/09/dave-chappelle-letter-trans-comedian-netflix
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Don’t you find this response to be overtly dismissive and totally overlooking the very argument within the content in question? I’m genuinely curious if you actually watched it at this point.

Why is an argumentative piece of one trans comedian the end all? Why should this author have the last word? Because they’re trans? C’mon. It’s valid that the trans community is mad. This isn’t just a mic drop though.

Some really important parts of the skit that occurred for me were 1) Dave’s story of his friend Daphne Dorman, and 2) Dave’s anecdotal story of an encounter with someone in a parking lot.

The story about Daphne, a trans comedian that was a friend of his… who literally killed herself after supposedly being eaten alive on Twitter for the same kind of thing Dave is being eaten alive for right now… was that Daphne was “his tribe.” It’s not a tribe of hate, it’s just of a very different expression.

That leads me to the second point. Dave supposedly encountered a woman in a parking lot who gave him shit for anti-woman anti-whomever jokes that she didn’t approve of. It was his segue to talking about feminism. He tells the woman “look, it’s art, and you’re free to interpret it how you want, but as the creator of this art, I can tell you that I do not mean it that way.”

I’m very much so fundamentally in agreement with his perspective. The only thing I will say is that, given how badly he missed the mark here, he doesn’t have some motto or theme where it all came full circle. It didn’t. He fucked it up. It wasn’t funny. But normally he comes away making it full circle. Normally he is going on roasting trans people or gay people or whoever but then blabbing about how strong they are yada yada. It’s dangerous messaging in the hands of dumb people, but it’s pretty easy to see what his point is if you’re listening.

Here’s the thing, I’m a big fan of him, and I acknowledge his flaws. To a lesser flawed extent, I have to acknowledge and deal with the same types of criticisms with Sacha Baron Cohen. Oh brüno is bad for gay people because it exacerbates stereotypes and is absurd and blah blah blah. Except it’s so freaking absurd, Cohen is most certainly not homophobic, and implements a positive story arch. And to top it off, has VIP celebrities sign off on the movie. In 2009. If you don’t think that’s not important, I think you’re wrong. It introduces very very gay overtures and themes and whatever in the form of raunchy and wrong humor into the conversation.

Does it corrupt people? Hell yeah. Those people were gonna be homophobic anyways though. It nonetheless instills progressive change in thinking.

The major issue I have with Dave’s recent special is that he didn’t move forward. He took a step backward. He’s always been moving forward. I feel like he’s just getting old that this point.
 
dude, that wasn't meant to be a mic drop. i just thought the conversation had run its course. i'm not trying to be adversarial here. i just thought that mayyybe in a discussion about a famous comedian making trans jokes it might be best to put forward something from a trans comedian's perspective.

no i honestly have not watched it and i don't intend to, just like i haven't and don't intend to listen to kanye's new album. i'm no longer interested in giving problematic men whose time has passed more watches/clicks/engagements/whatever. if that disqualifies me from having a valid opinion about this then so be it.
 
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LuckyNumber7 said:
My turn at a dp
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title-of-your-sextape-sextape.gif


:sexywink:
 
DaveC said:
dude, that wasn't meant to be a mic drop. i just thought the conversation had run its course. i'm not trying to be adversarial here. i just thought that mayyybe in a discussion about a famous comedian making trans jokes it might be best to put forward an argument from a trans comedian's perspective.

no i honestly have not watched it and i don't intend to, just like i haven't and don't intend to listen to kanye's new album. i'm no longer interested in giving problematic men whose time has passed more watches/clicks/engagements/whatever. if that disqualifies me from having an opinion about this then so be it.
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I had originally planned a response out that was going to be a bit more well written and centered around that Sacha Baron Cohen point. I don’t know if it ran its course more than I just failed to post that as life’s been busy. Bust I let it go.
So the thing is, you only sparked me to say something because of the fact that you’re doing exactly what Dave Chapelle did in his skit. He used a fellow trans comedian to elevate his position. I’m not discounting anything anyone says, least a trans comedian. People are upset. But the powerful statement of the night was “Daphne would’ve loved that [raunchy awful unacceptable] joke. Because Daphne didn’t fit in the LGBTQ tribe. She was my tribe.”
In some sense it frustrates me because you’re saying you didn’t watch it, you’re holding a very strong opinion here, and you’re in my eyes missing the complex conversation that ought to be had, rather than the easy but dismissive one.
He introduces a real trans person in his life. He damn near dedicates the whole portion of the skit to her, and declares her his friend. At other points, he repeatedly makes statements of equality. The only people he has no attempt at coming back full circle with is in fact white people, and why should I care about that part? If you don’t think these things are important, I disagree. Again, I will still say he didn’t come full circle and he didn’t have his message delivered, and the TERF thing sort of gave him no ground to recover on.
For the record I don’t really like stand up at all. It’s usually pretty lame. Skit comedy I love though. But Chapelle is one of the few stand up acts I’ll even watch. But comparing him to Kanye West is a travesty. Kanye West is a bad dude and a narcissist. Dave Chapelle, at worst, is a troll. Maybe even a has been. He’s not Kanye West.
Cancel culture is dumb. We need a better way.
 
LuckyNumber7 said:
For the record I don’t really like stand up at all. It’s usually pretty lame. Skit comedy I love though. But Chapelle is one of the few stand up acts I’ll even watch.
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i agree with this. i find him pretty masterful when it comes to first telling a story, making parts of that story funny, and then complicating that story he just told you. he is so, so much smarter and nuanced than an article in the Guardian is going to be able to present -- so much is in the tone, the delivery, the looks, the pauses, the performance as a whole ...

i get 100% that transfolks are currently getting stomped on by conservative Republicans (and Dave's bit about the Wal-Mart bathroom absolutely eviscerates the bigoted "bathroom bills" so popular Red States) and that BIPOC transwomen are uniquely vulnerable, and in the midst of this crisis, a generational comedian like Chappelle making them the center of one of his comedy shows can easily inspire a "leave us alone; you contribute to an environment where our existence is threatened and often snuffed out." now that the gays are all married and normalized, the right wing desperately needs to find another lifeline of hate to motivate their churchy, bigoted base to the polls. transfolk are very politically useful that way, especially when framed, as they framed the gays, as being about "protecting the children."

so i think people should be mad. but i also think that people should listen carefully to a nuanced storyteller, and realize that there are going to be people on your team who may have points of disagreement with you ... and that's ok! that's literally what it's like being a big tent party. AOC and Joe Manchin are in the same party! that doesn't exist on the right. they can march in lockstep because they aren't diverse.

and this delves into the political problem of "wokeness." usually, i roll my eyes when people complain about it. like, i posted a week or so ago, i can't imagine it being one of the 25 biggest issues we should be worrying about. i feel the same way about cancel culture. like, it's just not that big a problem to me. free speech sometimes faces consequences. it's like in here, having seen, over the past 15+ years, several conservatives taking their ball and bat and going home and saying we're mean or intolerant or something. no. you just suck at making arguments.

but all this is to say is that the problem with "wokeness" -- and as culture identity and political identity meld into the same thing -- is that it can be stifling and off putting if it's too stringent and isn't presented with welcome and warmth. if its, "when Chappelle makes a trans joke, that's violence and women are dead because of him" ... which are threads i've read on Twitter ... we hurt everyone because we block out space for people to locate themselves on our "side."

i feel the same way about abortion. let's say you think abortion is fine through the first trimester, but after that, there should be more restrictions. are we going to say to them, "not good enough!" or "that's one way to be pro-choice! we accept your concerns, and though we don't fully agree, it's clear that you cannot vote for the other party based on them. welcome aboard!"

Trump has radicalize many of us, and in different ways. for me, the barbarians are at the gate. if he wins in 2024, democracy is over. the end. we must do literally everything we possibly can to prevent that. and that means creating a party where AOC and Manchin find things to agree on and vote for, so that everyone can see themselves in the one functioning political party we have.

otherwise we're all doomed.
 
shocked. SHOCKED!

Josh Duggar, a onetime star of the TLC reality show “19 Kids and Counting,” about a large family guided by conservative Christian values, was convicted on Thursday in federal court in Arkansas of downloading child sexual abuse imagery.

A jury returned the verdict in U.S. District Court in Fayetteville, Ark., one day after it began its deliberations in a case that drew widespread attention.

Mr. Duggar, 33, was found guilty on one count of receiving child pornography and one count of possessing child pornography, each of which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and $250,000 in fines.

Clay Fowlkes, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Arkansas, said in an interview on Thursday that the verdict was a significant milestone in the efforts of his office to combat the exploitation and abuse of children.

“Regardless of fame, wealth and popularity, no one person is above the law,” Mr. Fowlkes said.

The verdict came a little over a week after the opening of the trial. Mr. Duggar, who was arrested in April, was accused of using the internet to download explicit material showing the sexual abuse of children, some younger than 12, according to an indictment.

In a statement emailed shortly after the verdict, Mr. Duggar’s lawyers said that they would contest it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/09/us/josh-duggar-guilty.html
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project much?


Executive Director of FRC Action
Company NameFamily Research Council
Dates EmployedJun 2013 – May 2015
Employment Duration2 yrs
LocationWashington, District Of Columbia
As Executive Director of FRC Action, Josh was in charge of coalitions and grassroots outreach for the political affiliate of Family Research Council. In this role, he was responsible for all operations for the conservative political group. He also oversaw the affiliated FRC Action PAC and the 527s Super PAC, Faith Family Freedom Fund. He managed FRC Action's annual Values Voter Summit, which has been dubbed the largest annual conservative gathering in Washington, DC.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshduggar/
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BEAL said:
https://twitter.com/erininthemorn/status/1496511215719399431?s=21

I’m curious cause I’ve been trying to find non Twitter takes, but does this bill really say what the comments allude to ?

It reads more about the surgeries being against the law for minors than hunting down trans kids at school ?

Edit to say it reads like it’s definitely targeting the trans community
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It’s pretty evil.

Its kind of like the Texas abortion law, asking citizens to report on other citizens. So if you know a kid who is trans and their parents are supportive of that kid and give them gender-affirming care — surgery or not — you need to report it to the state. If you do not report the parents giving their kid gender-affirming care, you could be criminally prosecuted.

Like, this actually is about inspecting genitals.
 
fascinating:

Opinion: What gay men’s stunning success might teach us about the academic gender gap

The gender gap in American higher education is now the largest it has ever been, and if current trends continue, two women will soon complete college for every one man. But there’s one group who have, for generations, defied this trend: gay men. Their achievement could hold the key to closing the gap for their straight peers, too.

[...]

I found, for example, that about 52 percent of gay men age 25 or older in America have a bachelor’s degree. For context, about 36 percent of U.S. adults 25 or older have a bachelor’s; this ranks the United States ninth in the world in college completion. If America’s gay men, however, formed their own country, it would be the world’s most highly educated by far.

Gay men’s academic advantages don’t end in undergrad, either. The group is significantly overrepresented among the United States’ most advanced degree holders. Compared with straight men, gay men are about 50 percent more likely to have earned an MD, JD or PhD.

And this pattern isn’t confined to White gay men. In every single racial and ethnic group I could measure, gay men outpace straight men in college completion by double digits.

[...]

These successes are all the more remarkable given the fact that many schools remain dangerous spaces for gay students. Indeed, the same data that documented gay boys’ high achievement also revealed them as twice as likely to feel unsafe at school.

So what’s the secret to gay men’s academic success? And can straight men learn anything from it?

Growing up, gay boys often feel like outsiders to the culture of masculinity enforced by their straight peers. Although that status creates vulnerabilities in the schoolyard, it also seems to lead to tremendous liberation in the classroom.

That’s because boys in America still face a very narrow set of expectations about what it means to “be a man” — and one of these expectations is that “real men” shouldn’t appear overly concerned with the daily hard work of being a conscientious student.

Analyzing about 7,000 student survey items, my research identified the attributes most predictive of being a boy. They were things such as time spent playing video games and expectations of becoming a professional athlete. Classroom striving was not among them. Gay boys, however, answered very differently from straight boys. For these students, stepping outside the strictures of straight masculinity significantly supported academic success.

If masculinity’s expectations were the only barrier to success, however, gay men should perform roughly as well as straight women. Yet gay men outperform them, too, because gay men don’t just live outside traditional masculinity; they often work particularly hard to compensate for not meeting those masculine expectations — work that can lead to a measurable boost.

For those denied the most traditional avenues for “being a man,” pursuing the kinds of prestigious careers made possible through meticulously high academic achievement can offer a way to shore up one’s standing. It’s a phenomenon documented in memoirs, clinical accounts and community samples — what’s called the “Best Little Boy in the World” hypothesis. As one Rhodes Scholar described it in his coming-out essay, “young, closeted men deflect attention from their sexuality by investing in recognized markers of success: good grades, athletic achievement, elite employment and so on.”
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i feel so seen.
 
I really wonder what kind of person I would be today if I’d grown up in a world where gay people and gay families were acknowledged and respected and represented. I didn’t grow up in that world, the world DeSantis wants, and I’m not even that old. Gay was bad in the 80s and 90s. The amount of “no fags allowed” policing boys in particular endure from their peers gets internalized. And I’m sure I participated in some of that policing. I can point to several periods in my life where mildly self-destructive behavior came from self-loathing and self-denial.

Coming out was incredibly hard … and not just for me, but for people around me who had likewise had it drilled into them that homosexuality was to be feared and loathed and unacknowledged. It took a long time for me to come to terms that I was the one thing I was told I could not and should not be … and even longer to accept and embrace it. My one wish would be for any gay/queer/trans kid to have an easier time than I did. It’s disgusting that politicians like DeSantis will make that harder by inventing problems to score points with the illiterates and proudly stupid.
 
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Further, it was never religious. I didn’t give a shit about God or hell or Jesus or Zeus or whatever other religious justification there was to fear and loath gay people. It was purely sociocultural. It was all about kit wanting to be a part of a group that was always and in all ways to be despised and avoided. Even in the “not that there’s anything wrong with that” 90s, you knew that straight folks would go to great lengths to distance themselves from gay people. You could be friends with one, but you would never want to be one.

Anyway, this has all been triggering for me. If I hear anyone using the word “groomer” in this context I will Will Smith them.
 
Well stated, Irvine. I can't begin to imagine what that was like. I did watch one of my best friends growing up have to deal with the sociocultural as well as the uber-religious aspect of "your going to hell for being gay". He finally came out when we were in college and is in a good place now, but it nearly broke him at the time, and its given me a great amount of empathy for those in the same situation. :heart:

As you said, anything to make it easier on the next generation.
 
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