#Visibility Matters

[thevisibilityarchives]

Golden Boy (2013), Abigail Tarttelin

LGBTQIA+

Summary: 

Within the pristine confines of a white-picket-fence life, the perfection of Max’s world is shattered one fateful night. Handsome, charismatic, and intelligent, the Golden Boy of the Walker family finds himself facing the rippling consequences of that night and the revelation of a family secret that could undo not only him but the entire Walker family.

Full review: 

*Trigger Warning: This discussion contains mentions of sexual assault*

“Everyone has secrets. It’s just a matter of finding out what they are.” - Steig Larsson

The concept of the so-called “perfect family” harboring a scintillating secret that threatens to topple them from their gilded thrones is an alluring narrative. Everyone has their secrets, yet we demand to see what lurks behind the facade of those who pretend otherwise–even in a world that has evolved to demand the pretense of perfection at all times. 

Within the pages of Abigail Tarttelin’s Golden Boy, the Walkers begin as such a family. They are stereotypical WASP perfection, a white-picket vision that would make conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic jump with joy. 

Steve and Karen Walker are upper-class Brits, with Steve making an emerging run into politics and Karen serving as a successful barrister. Max, their firstborn, is a handsome, charismatic, intelligent, and athletic young man on the cusp of manhood–a Golden Boy in every sense of the word. He looks after and connects with his younger brother Daniel, who seems to have autism or ADHD and doesn’t receive the attention he needs from his parents.  

In all their dazzling perfection, it's natural the Walkers harbor a secret or two. Right off the bat, it’s revealed that Max, a walking Abercrombie & Fitch model is intersex. In the U.K., statistics show up to 1.1 million are estimated to belong to the community according to The University of Manchester.

That estimation must consider the way intersexuality is reported. Intersex people are defined as having anatomical sexual characteristics that may not necessarily align with the definition (or that fit multiple definitions) of male or female bodies. Because sex is assigned at birth, “it is very rare that the sex of a child is recorded as indeterminate or intersex at birth registration” (Office for National Statistics). Just like statistics on non-binary identities or sexual orientations, however, people can contribute to polling at other ages, thus giving estimates to the numbers in existence. 

There is a single person outside the sphere of Max’s family and medical team who is aware of his status as intersex: Hunter, a childhood friend. What began as the innocence of childhood baths together grows into an impending threat that Karen reminds him must be mitigated by staying in Hunter’s good graces. For the burden of Hunter’s secret is a source of shame, and the revelation of that shame could bring down the entire family. 

A drunken visit by Hunter one evening reveals that over the years, he has harbored a confusing mixture of feelings towards Max, and himself: confusion, attraction, shame, and anger all wrapped up in a bow of toxic masculinity. 

The result? A horrific scene in which Hunter lashes out, brutally sexually assaulting Max while he attempts to reconcile his sexual orientation and feelings by convincing himself what gender Max is–and isn’t. 

A UN study found that in instances of sexual assault experienced by LGBTQIA+ individuals, “sexual and gender minorities are mainly attacked because they defy gender stereotypes…high proportions of sexual and gender minorities experienced physical and sexual violence, motivated by perception of sexual orientation and gender identity.” (Blondeel et al, 2023).

Hunter demands to know why Max doesn’t exist along some sort of binary, and this question fuels his anger as it challenges his own twisted perceptions of masculinity, heterosexuality, and of course, the gender binary. 

Whether they are intersex, nonbinary, or bisexual, people who exist outside of society’s notions of either/or at some point have encountered difficult, or even hostile comments concerning the nature of their existence. To simply be in a world that operates along black-and-white lines despite the sheer complexity of our realities presents a challenge that evokes strong emotions in some. 

Like many heterosexual men who are survivors of sexual trauma, Max attempts to bury the incident, even as that night sets off a chain of events that can’t be ignored. He meets a girl that for the first time, he believes he wants to share himself with. He also can’t avoid the physical or mental toll that was taken on him that night, which seeps its way into just about every other facet of his life including his family. 

In a post #MeToo society, we’re remiss if we don’t acknowledge the realities of sexual violence on men. Part of the irony is that misogyny’s impacts have consequences on everyone including its perpetrators. While gay and trans men are sometimes referenced regarding survivor narratives, few straight men report sexual assault due to reasons ranging from demasculinization to psychological grooming when older women are involved. Reports have found over 10,000 men are assaulted in the military yearly, (more than women due to the repercussions, and lack of reporting). 

While the book can be brutal, horrific, and emotional, it's also a book that gives the opportunity to help heal. It’s a tale that presents space for learning, through the lens of empathy, love, and compassion. It’s not without its flaws of course, but Tarttelin takes us through the life of an individual whose narrative would otherwise be erased in this era of authoritarian conservative censorship bans. 

Taking journeys through a bitter journey of trauma, identity, and teenage love, Golden Boy also teaches us perhaps the most important lesson when it comes to our bodies: Max is the only one who has any meaningful autonomy over his anatomy or identity. It doesn’t matter who else’s hopes or desires matter–only his do, and when we consider non-cisgender bodies that should be one of our priorities. 

Golden Boy can be found here via its publisher, you can attempt to find it at your local bookstore or find it at your local library.

Citations: 

[frakineh]

Hockey Should Be For Everyone!

[wineygoddesss]

Visibility is important

actually while I think about it, I want to give a shout out to every congenitally disabled person whose disability was not discovered until they were a teenager or adult, and spent their entire lives up to that point being told they were lazy, stupid, uncoordinated, or not trying hard enough

shout out to all of us who should have been helped from the day we were born, and instead were just made to feel like we were worthless for not being able to perform like our abled peers

[short-stories-by-ezra]

Through My Eyes: The Emotional Toll of HIV/AIDS Policy and the Fight for Visibility

Part 1 – The Lifeline They’re Cutting Away For more than 20 years, PEPFAR (The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) has been a lifeline for millions.  It has saved over 25 million lives, provided access to life-saving HIV treatment, and brought us closer than ever to controlling the HIV epidemic.  Worldwide. But now, that lifeline is being severed. In recent weeks, U.S. foreign aid for…

[dinosaur-ears]

Sending so much love to the people who are visibly queer in questionably supportive spaces. Not everybody is equally safe to be out, and lately I notice every little bit of Pride among traditional Americana. Thank you ❤️

[snowwiieyy]

Shout out to everyone that loves transwomen🥰🏳️‍⚧️

Proud to be a trans girl😌

Text me on telegram @Snoww67

[netherstray]

The thing I particularly like about this is that it helps to sort of “officiate” language for people. It’s one thing for people to say “I’d really prefer to be called this” but I think we’ve all experienced the kind of dismissive “ok sweetie” treatment that gets in some form or another.

Meanwhile a multi-million dollar production demonstrates these pronouns in use and it gives them more legitimacy that people can recognize as not only something real but something that does in fact sound natural.

It’s one of those things that shouldn’t need help getting across to people but apparently it does, and I’m glad it’s getting it.

Hello! Not a question, but I've seen a lot of people commenting/sending asks about GO season 2, so even though theres a very high chance this won't get seen, I wanted to let you know how happy it made me seeing 'the spouse' in the show. I'm non-binary, and while I do consume a lot of content with gay characters in it, it's very rare for me to see anyone under the trans umbrella. Then when I do, they're almost always a straightforward she/her or he/him kind of character, which is fine, considering they're getting represented at all, but it can be a bit frustrating. I never see anyone who's closer to my wavelength in terms of the whole gender thing

I know there's a lot of 'they's' in the show, but if I'm right, up until this person, most, if not all, of them have been either an angel, a demon, or a horseman of the apocalypse, and why would they have a solid binary view of gender? These characters did make me incredibly happy to see, but seeing a human character shown in the same light, so casually, like it was something completely normal that happens all the time, genuinely made my night (even if the rest of the season's ending did wreck me /lh)

Genuinely, it's about 8 hours later and I'm still thinking about this character. This is the first time I've seen someone like me represented in media, and to see it from a show I've been watching and adoring since it came out is incredible to me

This may not mean as much to other people, and it may not have felt like that big a thing to include, but I wanted you to know how much this truly touched my heart . I admire you and your work so much, and, i hope that your day/night is as lovely as you are

I'm really glad. I loved being able to ask Andrew to come in and play Mutt's spouse. (Also I loved the way it happened: I had no idea when I was writing Mutt whether the character would be male or female and so cheerfully wrote the spouse line to keep all our options open in casting Mutt. Once Mutt was cast, and was male, I realized that I'd grown rather fond of the "spouse", and liked the idea of casting someone who used "they" and could just be themself. This is Soho, after all.)

[nikkiunicorn900]

Heyy😍 are you submissive Dm me 🍆!!!

[justdavina]

Such a crazy HOT transgender girl!

[oblivion45]

Natalie Mars & Aubrey Kate

[thevisibilityarchives]

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (2017), Taylor Jenkins Reid

LGBTQIA+

Summary: One of Hollywood’s greatest legends summons a struggling writer for a final tell-all to set the record straight about who amongst her many lovers was her one true love. 

Review Link: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4981011136

Full review: Roughly 2,408 years ago, Plato wrote of a Symposium (a drinking party for artists and philosophers in Ancient Greece). This particular Symposium produced a series of texts that are studied across different courses in schools and universities worldwide today. 

A poignant text from that evening is the Myth of Aristophanes, a farcical creation myth detailing the origins of man. According to the playwright Aristophanes, humans began as an intersex species with multiple sets of limbs. They aggrieved the gods in a display of great pride by attempting to climb Mt. Olympus. As punishment, Zeus cast them down and cleaved them in two, birthing our current anatomical state (fewer arms, legs, and eyes) and the two sexes. In addition to this, humanity became cursed, doomed eternally to forever search for their other half, their “soulmate”. This union the soul could only be found through Eros, in love or lust.  

Aristophanes meant this tale as a drunken joke, yet today we cling fervently to the notion of the soulmate. In cultures where we have the freedom to choose relationships, the majority of people believe in the existence of romantic soulmates. 

There are the other forms soulmates can take, especially for those who de-prioritize romantic love as a driving force in their lives, or who may practice non-hierarchical forms of nonmonogamy, like relationship anarchy. As the Washington Post states: “Biologically speaking, close friendships are a type of soul mate too…This ability we have to make someone special — our brains can do it again and again. That’s why we can have more than one soul mate in our lives. (Lervine, 2022).

In offices above us all, companies from dating apps to food companies capitalize heavily on this same notion to sell products. “What you call love was invented by guys like me, to sell nylons,” says Donald Draper in the very first episode of Mad Men.

No matter our personal stances on the soulmate, it is the latter that has the biggest influence, all stemming from that drunken farcical speech Aristophanes made. The billion dollar industry of love powers media, social mores, and consumer markets. Its mark on literature is poignant, and for authors like Taylor Jenkins Reid is how they have found success. 

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo epitomizes this obsession with love, in an Americana-laced tale about an Old Hollywood star who reveals the secret she’s been hiding most of her life: her true love hasn’t been any of her seven spouses, but a woman. 

The titular character is an amalgamation of our world’s legendary screen sirens - Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Ava Gardner, and Rita Hayworth. She’s beautiful, unscrupulous, and has a rags to riches story that takes her to Hollywood where she skyrockets to success.

At the beginning of book we’re introduced to Evelyn post-career, as an elderly woman who reaches out to a little known reporter named Monique and offers her an interview. Her words suggest a tone of finality that indicate terminal illness, and a desire to get some things off her chest. From there, she begins to recount her life, experiences, her seven husbands, and the woman she hid beneath it all: Celia St. James. 

Two connections are made clear in Evelyn’s contacting Monique, who is a talented but unknown quantity. The first, is that the two share similarities as women of color, with Evelyn being Cuban and white passing and having hidden her identity during her career to attain stardom. Monique on the other hand is Caucasian and Black, and proud of her biracial heritage. This pride in the seeming duality of her race is something Evelyn assumes wille make Monique an inherently open-minded person when she reveals the truth about her relationship with Celia.

Monique does not inherently understand. She instinctively assumes Evelyn is a lesbian, much to Evelyn’s chagrin despite her own numerous passages stating that she is “biracial, not black”. 

As Evelyn recounts the history of her career and husbands, readers are interestingly treated to descriptions of men she loved, and men she abhorred alike. She meets men who use her, abuse her, love her, and idolize her all alike. Out of the seven, the general point of the book is that Celia is her one true love. 

Celia is a fellow actress and co-star of Evelyn’s and a lesbian. While far from unscrupulus as Evelyn, she does not possess a careless attitude about social norms of the time. That said, Celia possesses a seemingly naive attitude about what will happen if they are exposed and their lives subject to ruin. 

The result is a tumultuous relationship that is depicted as romantic. Both maintain beard relationships at various points, and Celia explodes into emotionally abusive tirades. Neither defines solid boundaries about what they’re willing to do or not do for their relationship, nor do they simply walk away when they feel disrespected. As with many Classic Hollywood movies, Celia is portrayed as the passionate lover who just cannot stand to see her femme fatale behaving badly. Her cruelty is justified as romantic, while Evelyn’s actions can be justified as simply doing what she has to for their relationship, or reviled for doing Celia wrong.

While poorly studied, data shows intimate partner violence among LGBTQ partnerships is staggering. “Life-time prevalence of IPV in LGB couples appeared to be similar to or higher than in heterosexual ones: 61.1% of bisexual women, 43.8% of lesbian women, 37.3% of bisexual men, and 26.0% of homosexual men experienced IPV during their life, while 35.0% of heterosexual women and 29.0% of heterosexual men experienced IPV. (Rollè, Giardina, Caldarera et al.) 

For the majority of readers of the book this relationship is viewed as simply passionate. Celia’s insults, degradation, name-calling, and devaluement is something that can be forgiven in the name of love, or simply doesn’t count because Celia and Evelyn are both women. 

On the Multiamory podcast, guest speaker and OkCupid Dating Coach Damona Hoffman joined the shows hosts to promote her upcoming book F the Fairy Tale: Rewrite the Dating Myths and Live Your Own Love Story. Among those myths she detailed the soulmate narrative, which she believes prevents people from pursuing relationships as they do not expect meeting people to mirror the feelings Don Draper and advertising executives have described in movies, advertising campaigns, and books. Show host Jase Lindgren also echoed the concerns growing numbers of relationships therapists and psychologists have stated with this idea today, which is that many people adhering to this idea are inclined to stay in relationships that are emotionally or physically abusive because they believe they have found their soulmate and won’t find another. As Jenkins Reid writes shows us, that’s all that matters. 

For the rest of the tale the two continue to part and come back to the each other, with Evelyn flying between men. She does find love in a way that is troublesome. Evelyn marries one of her best friends, gives birth to a child, and has perhaps one of the most stable relationships in the book–but its completely discounted as meaningless because he’s not Celia. He is a bisexual man who has been with her from the beginning, has been the only one who did not judge her, and has been the only character to treat her with respect throughout the entire book. Their love is one that is real, whole, and for those of us that believe in multiple soulmates, fulfills the criteria. 

While the book has been well received, it doesn’t always sit well in its representation of queer or BIPOC individuals. Evelyn’s character is the walking embodiment of harmful stereotypes about bisexual women. She is portrayed as hypersexual, narcissistic, manipulative, persistently unhappy, and unable to maintain a monogamous relationship. She is consistently questioned about whether she is really bisexual, attached to mostly men, and seemingly only finds the resolution to some of these things through Celia. Add to this her description of being Cuban contains frequent reference to her body type, which is at odds with beauty standards of Latino culture (or even white beauty standards of the 50s) and the characterization becomes a fetishization of these aspects of her character. 

These instances are seen again whenever characters who are not white or straight are present. Monique has cringeworthy passages alluding to her status as biracial. These reflections are indicative of an author who does not spend significant time engaging with the culture or communities they are writing about, and is producing work that is not intended to be consumed by them. 

You can find The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo here via its publisher Simon & Schuster, likely at your local library, or perhaps your local bookstore. 

Citations: 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/09/16/soul-mates-real-science-research/

[bridanunes88]

My new toy is here!🍆😍

[sweetberrys-world]

Life’s too short for boring, show me your wild side 😉🤭🥰

[squeakadeeks]

when the lights are on in my skysona mask im completely blind so i used the sound from my speakers to tell me where my phone was

[herdestinyshark]

If you really love 💕 me and need something naughty or meetup message me on:

Telegram @jadeamelia0

[soriastrider]

this has almost certainly been done before, but i think it's funny so i did it anyway

original: