Just What Is 'Gay Culture' In 2013?

“Still, authors do continue to write “gay novels” and “gay plays” and to pitch ideas for “gay storylines” to TV networks and movie producers. What, then, does this say about gay culture today? What, if anything, does it amount to? When gays, socially speaking, are in the process of being integrated into the mainstream, and when the cultural works created by and/or about gay people are no longer consumed exclusively or even mostly by gay people, what does this say about what gay culture has become? In what ways, moreover, has the mainstreaming of openly gay culture (as opposed to the covertly gay culture of the Noel Cowards and W.H. Audens that was always a part of the mainstream) changed the mainstream?”

Very little, I think.

suicideblonde:

If you haven’t seen Paris is Burning yet, take 75 minutes and make yourself a better, more fierce human by watching it.  Even if you have seen it, time for a refresher course in realness.  Enjoy the time when queer culture was in its pure, non-mainstreamed state. 

Azealia Banks Calls Out GLAAD

“There are such bigger problems… and then you’ve got organisations like GLAAD [Gay And Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation], which are f**king complete bulls**t.

“I mean let’s look at it, it’s gay and lesbian alliance against defamation, or whatever…. that’s what it stands for, right? I mean would you agree that homosexuals, and the homosexual community, have bigger problems than the word faggot, you know what I mean?”

There really are more important things than somebody calling you a faggot.  For example, gay rights in Uganda or Iraq (as in like the freedom to not be murdered for liking people of the same gender), the HIV/AIDS pandemic, gay homeless youths, protecting and promoting the rights of our queer/trans/bi/lesbian brothers and sisters.

Instead, organizations like GLAAD wants you to whine about your right to get married or to throw a fit every time you hear the word faggot, like they’ve got you programmed when to be offended.  Instead of helping keep the gay rights movement going by keeping people aware of the actual issues, they target people in our own community (Azealia Banks is part of the queer community) who don’t follow their rules for the ‘acceptable’ way to be part of the LGBT community (Cynthia Nixon or Bret Easton Ellis for example).    I think the problem with these organizations is that they push bourgeois, heteronormative values on gay people, rather than pushing gay/queer values on the mainstream (which you could say Banks does by bringing a queer mentality to rap music). 

I say faggot whenever I want and in whatever context I want because I decide what has power over me, not some liberal policing organization like GLAAD and not some homophobic asshole either.