ScarJo doesn't get it
If The Federalist is defending you, you're probably wrong.
During Saturday’s LGBTQ Caucus at Netroots Nation, we worked with a room full of organizers and activists to brainstorm how they could best support each other. My co-facilitator Daniel Villarreal posted a rough outline of the notes we took about what media, non-profits, lobbyists, and individual activists can do to lift up each other’s work. We also asked each group to share resilience mantras, because there’s a lot of burnout in the movement right now!
If you’re masochistically curious enough to read a nasty rant by a gay Republican who thinks social justice warriors like me and Vox’s Carlos Maza aren’t “AIDSy” enough for his liking, you can read it here, but you’ve seriously been warned.
Sidenote: Trump’s an unequivocal racist — and the racists know it.
Okay, onto today’s LGBTQ news!
Another great series!
June may be over, but celebrating LGBTQ heroes is not. The Advocate is running a series called Champions of Pride, in which the magazine is profiling a diverse array of activists making a difference at the local level. Learn about a pansexual student who challenged her Wyoming school, a trans pioneer from New Hampshire, a black feminist supporting women living with HIV in Seattle, and more.
Our first gay, male senator?
Dan Baer is hoping to become the first gay man elected to the U.S. Senate, representing the state of Colorado. Check out Nico Lang’s profile of the candidate, who joins a race with 11 other Democratic contenders hoping to claim Sen. Cory Gardner’s (R) seat.
Bridal shop evangelism
It’s not just cakes and flowers; all kinds of business owners will discriminate against LGBTQ people! In this case, a bridal shop in New York called D Auxilly refused to sell a jumpsuit to a same-sex couple based in St. Louis. Not only did she refuse to serve them because of their orientation, she even tried to de-gay them with Jesus:
I know you both love each other and that this feels right, but I encourage you to both reconsider and see what the Lord has to say and the wonderful things he has in store for you both if you trust and obey him.
The couple plans on a filing a complaint, because even though they aren’t legally protected in Missouri, the designer violated New York law by refusing them service.
Dude, you’re getting discrimination!
Dell Technologies has a 100 score from the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index, but that doesn’t mean everything is great the company for LGBTQ employees. NPR profiles two queer employees who claim they faced discrimination working for the computer company.
Anti-trans professor fights for right to be a bigot
The National Review has a new interview with Allan Josephson, a psychiatrist who lost his job at the University of Louisville after attacking trans rights at a Heritage Foundation panel in 2017. (He’s of course represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom in his lawsuit.) In the interview, he claims he’s been wronged because of the backlash to the views.
I was actually at that 2017 panel and called out Josephson (1:00:58 in the video) for testifying in defense of North Carolina’s discriminatory HB2 that transgender people experience “delusions.” He responded by comparing the stress of gender dysphoria with the stress of having to take calculus — yes, really — and insisted he wasn’t prejudiced just because he refused to affirm trans people’s gender identities. As long as he keeps espousing the rejection of trans kids, I’m not feeling too sympathetic to his proclaimed victimhood.
Israeli minister supports conversion therapy (and apartheid)
Minister Rabbi Rafi Peretz, Israel’s new education minister, believes that it’s possible to counsel people out of being gay. In fact, he believes that he has successfully performed such conversion therapy himself! Many are outraged and calling for his resignation. And as another reminder that intolerance usually begets intolerance:
Homophobia in Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló is under fire after a new cache of documents revealed him referring to several different individuals as “cocksuckers.” PR’s CFO Christian Sobrino also called Ricky Martin “such a male chauvinist that he fucks men because women don’t measure up.” Rosselló has asked others in the exchange to step down, but has said he will not.
Sodomy laws make things more complicated than you think
While it’s easy to understand why laws criminalizing homosexuality result in direct persecution of LGB people, what’s not always apparent is the other forms persecution that accompany just laws, like blackmail. In Malaysia, police have been tracking down a group that shared a gay sex tape purporting to show Malaysia’s Economic Affairs Minister Mohamed Azmin Ali. So they’re going after both the people in the video and the people sharing the video, all because of the nation’s sodomy law.
ScarJo has got to go
Scarlett Johansson appears to believe that Hollywood exists in a bubble. Dismissing concerns about racist and transphobic casting, she said in a recent interview, “As an actor I should be allowed to play any person, or any tree, or any animal because that is my job and the requirements of my job.
She later clarified that “any actor should be able to play anybody.”
Her repeated use of the term “political correctness” and her improper use of “cis gendered” are big red flags to me that she still just doesn’t get it. The fact that The Federalist is defending her certainly isn’t a good sign either.
Johansson’s sentiment is nice, but it ignores the reality that there are actors of color, LGBTQ actors, and actors with disabilities who simply don’t have an equal opportunity to play roles and build up their acting careers. So when there are character parts available with those identities, it’s a specific opportunity for those actors to access a part might reflect their own unique experiences and how they present themselves. But if cis, white, nondisabled actors like ScarJo just take up all the parts, other actors might never find an entry point, let alone all the other kinds of people, trees, and animals that she envisions for them. She’s ensuring these inequities in the field persist.
It’s hard to attribute much value to “Art” that isn’t politically correct if all you’re defending is art that isn’t accessible to others.
Conservatives hate pronoun conflicts
In an op-ed for the New York Times, the brilliant Farhad Manjoo makes the case that we should leave “he” and “she” behind and just call everybody the gender-free singular “they”:
So: If you write about me, interview me, tweet about me, or if you are a Fox News producer working on a rant about my extreme politics, I would prefer if you left my gender out of it. Call me “they” or “them,” as in: “Did you read Farhad’s latest column — they’ve really gone off the deep end this time!” And — unless you feel strongly about your specific pronouns, which I respect — I would hope to call you “they” too, because the world will be slightly better off if we abandoned unnecessary gender signifiers as a matter of routine communication. Be a “him” or “her” or anything else in the sheets, but consider also being a “they” and “them” in the streets.
Of course, this prompted Nathanael Blake at The Federalist to freak out because Manjoo’s approach “elides the fundamental sexual dimorphism of the human species.” What will we do if we aren’t communicating about each other’s genitals to each other at all times???
Conservatives always accuse LGBTQ people of being obsessed with sex, but they’re the ones who can’t seem to think about anything else!
Trust queer people’s judgment
To end the day on a fun note, stop over to Autostraddle for these definitive rankings on boxed wines, as determined by queer people day drinking at gay summer camp. Categories include wines that would be suitable for “Watching Netflix alone in your underwear,” “A gender reveal and/or baby shower for straight people,” and “After a long day on the internet.”
And once more for the people in the back: Trump is a racist. He always has been.
Until next time, stay platinum!