Tom of Finland House

Last weekend, I went to an art gallery opening at the Tom of Finland House in LA. The house has been around for a long time and has been a home for many artists to live at while they work on their art. The artist that get this privilege focus their artistic abilities on art that empowers the gay community. All of the events are free, I hope you check out the website and consider going to an upcoming art show. Also please comment if you have been to this house before and tell me about your experience.

Family Guy announce that they will not make "gay jokes" anymore

Basically, a show that I have been watching for many years, Family guy, is known for constantly making fun of every minority group in the country. This includes jokes about the LGBTQ community. The show recently announced that these jokes will no longer be made due to the amount of people it offends. Although it seems ridiculous that this only occurred in 2019. The BBC article offers points of view on whether it is necessary to eliminate such jokes. Read through the short BBC article and let me know your thoughts on the subject.

A TV Show Tackling the Transgender Experience in High School

This TV show is currently airing in Germany and this season introduced a transgender character played by a transgender actor. I think it does an excellent job of candidly showing the experiences of a transgender high student in 2019 having to navigate a school that is not necessarily accepting of his gender identity. TV shows like this increase the visibility of transgender students and this episode specifically touches on several issues that many young people probably have questions about. This is just one episode, but worth a watch if you're interested!

https://www.drucktranslations.de/s03e08-full-outing/

California sex-ed curriculum

Feels related to our discussion about California's inclusion of queer history in the classroom: the state just passed a new sex ed framework that requires discussion of LGBTQ people in that context as well. https://apnews.com/e6b4018eaebb49bf8ddc63aee0074182

Lena Waithe honors black drag queens with Met Gala outfit

This year, the Met Gala-- an annual fundraising gala for the benefit of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute in New York City-- was more than "fashion's biggest night out". The gala signified the highly anticipated grand opening of the Costume Institute's annual fashion exhibition: "Camp: Notes of Fashion" that is currently set to open May 9, 2019. For what exactly "camp" is, one cultural historian made the remark, "trying to define camp is like attempting to sit in the corner of a circular room". What can be said about the theme is it has little to do with pitching tents or the outdoors and is more a play on Susan Sontag's seminal essay, "Notes on Camp". Sontag does define camp as the "love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration".  With this in mind, actress and producer Lena Waithe stood out in her statement-making attire. From first glance at the front, her pin-striped pantsuit looked rather simple. However, upon a closer look the buttons on her suit were faces of black camp pioneers, and the stripes were lyrics from Diana Ross' "I'm Coming Out", Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive", and other anthems from "iconic black divas". A more obvious statement, written on the back of her jacket in bold were the words, "Black Drag Queens Invented Camp". Waithe gave a statement to E! News saying she wanted to give emphasis to the black drag queens who did so much to advance the camp movement. "Pepper LaBeija, Benny Ninja, RuPaul, all these pioneers . . . I really wanted to pay tribute to them and all that they did for the culture," she explained. "They started this whole 'camp' thing by being over the top." Waithe's statement piece is extremely important because, as observed by freelance writer Evan Katz, “no black drag queens sans RuPaul appear to be invited to the camp-themed affair.” Being that the Met Gala is an invite-only event, the fact that no black queens were given the opportunity to walk the red carpet despite history showing that the theme was widely propagated and invented by them was disappointing, but not surprising. No comments about this have been made by Met Gala curators.

FAQ: Anti-LGBT Curriculum Laws

https://www.lambdalegal.org/dont-erase-us/faq#Q1

Here is a quick FAQ page from Lamda Legal on anti-LGBT curriculum (so-called "No Promo Homo" laws across the United States. As the page notes, there are currently 7 U.S. states with such laws on the books: Alabama, Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas. The page also provides information about this history, constitutionality, and impact of these laws - and provides a form for teachers to fill out if they are living under such laws!

Caster Semenya, "Breathtakingly Butch"

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/11/30/eitheror

While reading through coverage of the Caster Semenya case, I was reminded of an old New Yorker article from Ariel Levy (same fantastic writer who wrote the piece we read in class on Edie Windsor) on Caster Semenya. This beautiful piece from Levy shines additional light onto the infuriating controversy surrounding Semenya's right to compete - controversy which has lasted for all of Semenya's career.

As Levy writes, Semenya is "breathtakingly butch". Her identity as a Black butch lesbian is often ignored in the media, and yet clearly influences the way she is viewed and treated - provoking important questions about our culture's obsessions with de-coding and controlling the bodies of people we have defined as different.