gmonkey42

As seen on Feministing: a survey by Stonewall.org has been erroneously interpreted to show that the average age at which gay people in Britain come out has fallen by more than 20 years. From the linked page:

The poll, which had 1,536 respondents, found that lesbian, gay and bisexual people aged 60 and over came out at 37 on average. People aged 18 and under are coming out at 15 on average.

Which would be fine EXCEPT there's a huge bias in their sampling: people who are closeted or haven't yet figured out that they're gay are not going to respond to the survey! Therefore people who respond to this survey and are under 18 are guaranteed to have come out at an age below 18! If someone who's not out did take the survey, they would just have to say "I'm not out yet." Which is not a number, you can't use that to calculate the average. It doesn't say how they handled that but I wouldn't be surprised if they just threw out those answers, or never got any of them in the first place. Which makes the entire study worthless.

I believe that the average age has decreased, that as a result of greater public acceptance, people don't have to wait as long and can recognize that they're gay at a younger age. But this survey didn't prove that.

Following on from yesterday's ranty post, apparently there's been a lot of negative reaction to that one blog post I was talking about. Here's a good post about it, breaking it down point by point like I did, on the blog boy culture. And, I am sad to say, it's funnier than mine:

4. "Stories of how your mom finally came around, over-write the present realities of youth." This is where the essay jumps the shark entirely, apologizing to the creature for subjugating it by such an action.

That is pretty damn clever. I think I'm going to have to steal that at some point.

I posted it. And now I know how to do captions!


The procedure is to e-mail the URL to Dan and he'll add it to the list eventually, because a lot of people are submitting videos. And most of them have been men so I'm glad I could increase the number of videos by lesbians.

I had to do all the cuts & fades because man, an extemporaneous speech like that is hard to do! And I didn't want to write something and just read it because I can't do that without it sounding fake. So I ended up editing together a 2 minute video from about 45 minutes of footage.

I think this is a wonderful idea: Dan Savage's It Gets Better project. Gay adults share their stories with gay kids who are suffering through high school as we once did. Whenever I hear my younger LJ friends having problems in school, I just want to reach out to them and help them know that it will get better. I think I'm going to contribute to this.

Yet again, homophobic bullshit directed at Zachary Quinto from his so-called fans on ontd_startrek

It doesn't help that the majority of commenters there are children. I'm not exaggerating, they're under 18. So a lot of them genuinely don't know any better, and grew up in the age of Will and Grace where it's OK for gay people to exist as long as we're non-threatening and sexless and the butt of jokes.

I responded to some of the comments - a lot of them are defending it on the grounds of "we didn't mean it that way! It's just a joke!" No. This Shakesville post explains why not (well, the post is about sexism but the same argument applies to homophobia):

There's a very common misperception that sexism is subjective—that any given incident identified by one person as sexist could be identified by another as not sexist, and either both of them are right, because the whole thing is just a matter of opinion anyway, or the latter is right, because if it's not equally obvious to everyone, it can't be sexist. It's this conventional wisdom about the subjectivity of sexism that underlies the ubiquitous "I don't see it" rejoinder, particularly recurrent in discussions of expressed sexism against women, on which this post will be focused.

If a LGBT person says something is homophobic and a straight person says "it's just a harmless joke, get over it" who's right? Hint: not the one who belongs to the privileged group that systematically oppresses the other group!

Finally a post where angry!Sylar icon is appropriate!

So Zach Quinto is tentatively attached to a "romantic dramedy" indie film and a shitload of fans are reacting like "LOL, I hope he seduces the son instead! I couldn't imagine him in a straight role! Because he's so incredibly gay!"
Like here:
http://community.livejournal.com/ontd_startrek/949249.html

If he is in fact gay, it's exactly this kind of shit that prevents him from being 100% out to the public. That is why gay actors have to "not talk about their personal lives," because straight assholes think gay actors can only play gay roles!

He has already been completely believable in two straight roles: Sylar and Spock! They're both straight! How could anyone not see that?

"I wouldn't find him believable in a straight role" isn't cute. It's not just because you're a slash fan. It's homophobic and it sucks. Do we think he's actually a superpowered serial killer IRL? And simultaneously an alien scientist? An actor doesn't have to have any traits in common with their character (OK, except physical appearance), that's the whole point!

It would be great if there were more movies where the main character is gay. But for the sake of his career, he needs to play a straight romantic lead - WHICH HE WOULDN'T HAVE TO DO IF EVERYONE WEREN'T REACTING THE WAY THEY ARE.

Someone cool in the ontd_startrek thread made the excellent point that straight actors are allowed to play gay roles, like Sean Penn and Heath Ledger. What it comes down to is straight people are seen as multifaceted, being straight is just one part of their whole identity. But society sees gay people as being defined by their orientation. They can't be anything else, they're just A Gay. That's why people think gay characters are inappropriate for children's books/movies, because knowing that a gay person exists makes people think about weird freaky sex, because in their minds that's all we're about. We're one-dimensional, we don't get to be seen as whole people.

And that is why I am pissed off today by well-meaning but clueless straight people.

In a nutshell, Amazon.com recently (like this past week?) classified a bunch of gay-themed books as "adult" and therefore stripped them of their sales rankings and prevented them from coming up in some searches. Some of these books are actually adult but a lot of them are not. Hetero romance novels remain NOT classified as adult. Because everyone knows gay people are inherently all sexual and inappropriate and whatnot.

This same idea played a huge part in the Yes on 8 campaign: "if we don't force gay people back into the closet, your kids might find out they exist! And then you'll have to EXPLAIN things! To YOUR CHILDREN! And you hate talking to your children! Accurate information about humans makes baby Jesus cry."

Anyway, I sent an e-mail to Amazon and I don't really have the energy to talk about it any more right now. I'm just going to link to springheel_jack because he has a bunch of good links.

I don't feel like doing anything productive right now so I'm going around reading people's reactions on the internets. I really like florence_craye and innerbrat's posts on it. I was reading comments on The Stranger and someone said they don't see why sexual orientation should be mentioned in children's books. Because BEING GAY IS NOT ALL ABOUT SEX. SEX ACTUALLY HAS VERY LITTLE TO DO WITH IT. It's stupid to say it's appropriate that sexual orientation wasn't brought up in Harry Potter because IT WAS BROUGHT UP. The following characters were all identified as having opposite-sex partners:
Harry
Ginny
Hermione
Ron
Remus (sigh)
Tonks (SIGH)
Hagrid
Maxime
James
Lily
Lucius
Narcissa
Petunia
Vernon
Draco
Cho
Molly
Arthur
Cedric
Fleur
Bill

That's just off the top of my head. Sexual orientation comes up ALL THE TIME in children's books because children's books include straight couples. Straight people often don't get that "sexual orientation" means "straight" too. A lot of people think just being out means you're flaunting yourself but if that's true then straight people flaunt themselves all the time, by not actively hiding the fact that they're straight. It's called heteronormativity and it's why many of us are disappointed that JKR didn't just include in DH even one sentence indicating more explicitly that Dumbledore was gay, given that she had evidently planned that he was gay, and didn't just come up with it on the spur of the moment during her public appearance (I think). It would've been easy to include it without disrupting the story. There could've been a line in Rita's book that said Dumbledore was actually in love with Grindlewald and the conversation could've gone:
Harry: "wait, Dumbledore was gay?"
Ron: "Ew!" [because it's already a well established fact that Ron is a huge asshole]
Hermione: (eyeroll) "Well, it makes sense. We've never heard of him being involved with women. Anyway, he's still the same person we knew all along."
Ron: "Yeah, I guess so."
See? And then they move on with the 500 pages of bickering in a tent, which was apparently had such important narrative flow that JKR couldn't risk interrupting it with the shocking fact that gay people exist.

The other thing that REALLY troubles me and makes me think we shouldn't give JKR too much credit is the audience question that prompted her to say Dumbledore was gay:

She was asked by one young fan whether Dumbledore finds "true love."

"Dumbledore is gay," the author responded to gasps and applause.

THAT DOES NOT ANSWER THE QUESTION! It was a yes-or-no question. Not "what was Dumbledore's love life like?" or similar. How on earth could she have thought that was a suitable answer? There are only two possibilities: she meant that gay people always find true love - which we know isn't what she meant because Dumbledore didn't - or she meant that gay people never find true love. That's sickening. Maybe I'm just pissed off at the moment but JKR can take her pseudo-progressiveism and all but one of her major characters being straight white males and shove them up her ass. I agree with innerbrat that I'd rather she hadn't said it at all.

Pretending that sexual orientation is invisible is no different from pretending we're "colorblind" and it does every bit as much damage. Characters whose race isn't stated are assumed to be white, and are portrayed by white actors in the movies. Having a story where gay people are never mentioned but practically all of the characters wind up in hetero relationships means either gay people don't exist in the HP universe or they all have to be in the closet - as I suspect is the case with Dumbledore. It's either hopelessly naive or deliberately disingenuous to claim that Dumbledore was gay the whole time but nobody ever brought it up simply because being gay was a total non-issue in the HP universe. And what about Dudley's homophobic remarks? If gay people are totally equal in magical society then why didn't Harry think something along those lines? I don't buy it.

( it's getting long; here's more )

Although I will say it's a credit to JKR and the Harry Potter series that it spurs serious discussion on real-life issues.

I might go to the gym today. They have a class at 9:00 that's supposed to be "boot camp style." Which doesn't sound all that appealing but I called up the gym to see exactly what it is and the instructor was the one who answered. She sounded pretty mellow. So I don't think she'll be calling us maggots or anything. But I'm a little sore from yesterday. I was thinking of maybe just doing cardio today. Or maybe just sitting around eating chocolatey cereal. Whichever.

I was thinking of submitting something to andropotterist's Men in Uniform challenge, but another challenge has been put up and I don't know if there's a deadline for them. I have a good idea but to do it well will take a while.

( Genetics conference )

Then after the conference, I walked to the Downtown Plaza mall to buy shoes. I needed some running shoes because all I have are some crappy sneakers I got at Payless for $6. So I got some good shoes, for ten times that much. One the way to the mall, I walked through the park around the capitol building and I could hear a protest going on. I went to check it out, in case it was something I agreed with and I could join in. I didn't join in. It was a protest against gay marriage. It made me feel ill, walking past those fuckers with their "Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve" and "God created male and female not gay and lesbian" signs. And I couldn't even give them the finger because the tricky bastards had brought their children along. And flipping people off in front of their kids might make our side look bad. Just a little. At the mall, I tried to find a rainbow shirt or something (ideally a flag but I didn't think I was likely to find that at the mall) so I could piss them off on the way back. But I couldn't find anything. It's just as well, though, because by the time I came back, they'd gone.

When I got back to Davis, I was going to Jamba Juice and I saw Nicole! With her boyfriend. And she wants to see PoA at midnight! Yay! And I phoned Jackie when I was up in Sacramento, because she lives in Rocklin, and she was busy yesterday but we're going to have lunch today. I'll see if she wants to see Troy or something. I want to see Shrek 2 but I think it's going to be hard to get tickets for that.

Here's a poll about whether people think gay marriage should be legalized. So far, the numbers are pretty depressing so let's tell 'em what we think! (It's really short)