#i just assumed it had to do with gay people

[tillinghastcorporatemedia]

A lot of this as true but as a cis guy who's been assumed to be queer since before i knew i was queer and has long hair, which normally wouldnt even be something i'd bring up, but this is something ive experienced due to being really short and having long hair but i wanna refer to number 3

3. That isn't just because we respect women so hard. We are in many cases talking about men who are also deeply queerphobic, heirarchical, violent and abusive to other men.

Idk if you've had to be around these fucks but let me tell you, men like this act like im not a man. every day i wear a mask i get called maam even when ive got a beard spilling out of the edges of my mask. (got called mamacita at a taco truck the other day while having to pick up a dashing order. thats new) But growing up, i was the punching bag. Didnt matter if i was agreeing with everything they said, did, or even hyped them up. I was the punching bag. Ive had my hair lit on fire while driving, beat up multiple times, bullied until i started fighting back. you could say it was just shitty high school guys but then we get into adulthood. When you become older but still dont even clear the national average men dont look at you the same. im still a target to these people just because of my look, and not even the hair. I got assaulted, by a straight man, while i was checking the oil in my car. My hair wasnt down, wasnt wearing feminine clothing, doing autowork checks. And guess what when i freaked out because some random guy came up behind me and started grabbing at my chest he backed up and then freaked out i was a guy and was threatening to beat me up because i was "tricking him" call me a coward i just ran off. You can call out your friends sure, and sometimes it might work in a social group setting. but i guarantee you youll just stop getting invited instead of behavior being corrected. this is said already but the men these men listen to arent gonna do this, and you might be able to change some minds with words. But as someone who pays attention to shit, words dont do shit. actions do though. if you wanna fix this problem its not gonna be the tiny little gay guy these men wanna beat the shit out of that they are gonna listen to.

at some point something else but words is gonna have to be done and as a man i wish i could figure something out but because of both my sexuality and my unchangeable features of my body im basically excluded by most any "masculine" guys.

I dont have an answer, i wish i did but i dont

But i will say its gonna take actions, not just words, for these sacks of patriarchal dung to take themselves to the trash can or clean themselves up.

If your vision for the deradicalization of right-wing men begins and ends with "other men telling them that that's gross and to stop it" then I'm sorry, you do not understand how masculinity works.

"Men who hold patriarchal status" and "men who are feminists" are two groups who overlap less than you want them to. I'm sorry. That's not solely because men are so happy with patriarchal status that they don't want to risk it by policing misogyny/queerphobia/racism, It's because being misogynistic, queerphobic, and racist, end expressing other forms of toxic masculinity(and often abusively so) are part of how people establish and maintain patriarchal status. The men who have the ability to stop this via nothing but peer pressure are the very people who are doing it. That's by design. And engaging in feminist intervention is, in and of itself, usually the abrupt end of that status and its associated power to persuade misogynistic men.

Like, I have worked in blue collar jobs as a notably queer person. It was pretty much a constant deluge of verbal abuse. In my experience, most blue collar work environments are exploitative, abusive, and bigoted, and very gleefully so. On the occasions I have spoken up about someone saying something that was super fucking out of line (asking me which of the girls walking by was hottest. We were installing a portable classroom at a middle school), believe it or not, they completely failed to be shamed! Because nobody else on the crew gave a fuck. *I* was the weird one. They ghosted me. A full blown company ghosted me. I suddenly didn't have a job anymore because they just straightforwardly stopped telling me where the next job site was.

Like, this doesn't mean that it's your job to do it, but this vision you have of these big groups of men where everyone is on the fence and there is precisely one shit stirrer who can be shut down by a brave feminist man who can single handedly set the example for all these other guys...you are high. You are describing an "everybody clapped" level absurd scenario. Most of these truly virulent misogynistic guys either have zero friends, because, you know, our society is atomized to fuck, or they are in a group where the feminist guy is actually the weirdo who can be shut down and ostracized much, much easier than the misogynists, because there is no such thing as a man misogynists respect who stands up for women.

You might be saying "well, we're talking about longstanding personal relationships, actually. Like, they need to have to want to spend time with you and then, as a side effect, you can mind control them out of being a threat to us."

Problem with that being:

1: Many feminist men also have no friends, see the atomized society above.

2: Feminist men already stopped hanging out with men who make rape jokes because why the fuck would we want to spend time with them.

3: That isn't just because we respect women so hard. We are in many cases talking about men who are also deeply queerphobic, heirarchical, violent and abusive to other men. What initially drew me to feminism and women was a lack of heirarchical squabbling and constant bullying, and the ability to be openly queer. A lot of men who came to feminism did so because they knew that the patriarchy was not a place they would find success or acceptance. These are not the men who are gonna be able to change right wing minds.

4. Men do not view themselves as a monolith. There is no universal brotherhood of men. The actual meaning of the term "Fragile masculinity" is that men are constantly expected to prove that they are deserving of the status of being a member of their own gender. There are large swathes of men--including most of the men who you'd look to as examples of good, feminist men who you want to undertake this project--who are considered failed men, sissies, f****ts, soyboys, ect. They are. Not. Going. To. Convince. These. Men. Of. Jack. Shit. Much less successfully *shame* them. Jesus.

I know all of this sucks. I know it would be cool to be able to just point at a group and have them be responsible for the work. But nah. It's gonna have to be a societal project, one that will probably outlast all of us. Sorry. The thing you want these men to do is, absolutely, the morally correct thing to do. But presuming that it would be effective is, and once again I am so sorry about this, just ignorance of how these social groups function.

[jbaileyfansite]

Vanity Fair Interview for the Hollywood Issue (2024)

In the last 13 months or so, Jonathan Bailey has carried on a secret gay love affair in McCarthy-era Washington, performed cunnilingus in a Regency England manor, rendered teenage boys speechless with a pop-philosophy lecture, and danced through life in a prince’s bedazzled breeches. This coming summer, he’s fleeing dinosaurs.

That would be in, respectively: Fellow Travelers, Bridgerton, Heartstopper, Wicked, and Jurassic World Rebirth. But even if he’s just pretended to do all those things, it’s understandable why Bailey is, right now, pinking his nose at a villa in Puglia.

“It is just so dreamy to be able to chill out,” he says via Zoom. “The cortisol levels have depleted.”

Playing Fiyero in Wicked was a dream come true for Bailey, who at one point in our conversation fantasizes about going to a Broadway rave with his castmates—he refers to Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo as simply “the girls”—and dancing to techno remixes of Wicked tracks, like “Defying Gravity,” under pulsating green lasers.

After filming the two-part movie with the girls, he’s nabbed an Emmy nod for Fellow Travelers and started a charity, the Shameless Fund, to uplift the LGBTQ+ community he’s proud to be a part of.

We’re thrilled to have Bailey as part of our 2025 Hollywood Issue. Here, he shares his thoughts on being a change agent in Hollywood, how he chooses roles, and the secret talent that he wishes he’d kept a secret.

Vanity Fair: What a run! How are you feeling?

Jonathan Bailey: I’m very much enjoying my holiday. But the girls started rehearsing Wicked, what, two and a half years ago? I think people assume that I haven’t had any breaks, but I have. Also, we had the strike right in the middle. What was crazy is going from Fellow Travelers to Wicked, just insane.

The Wicked movie is so close to the stage show that if you’re a big fan, you’re not going to be like, “Well, I can’t believe they…” It hews so closely, how could you complain there? But that flip. Are you a secret tumbler?

I remember I’d flown back from Canada and then I was filming Bridgerton. I met the girls then, and they were well and truly underway. I remember going to the dressing rooms, and theirs were pink and green and were just spilling into the hallway. And mine was just an interrogation room with nothing.

But I did spend the whole day with [choreographer] Chris Scott and went from Chris Scott to see [musical writer] Stephen Schwartz, and it was just, for me, boot camp days. You just lean on the amazing choreographers and obviously [director] Jon M. Chu’s vision. So when it came to the beginning of “Dancing Through Life,” I felt like it had to be sort of a flair and sort of performative, but hopefully in a way that was just with abandon and not arrogance. I did gymnastics growing up and I did dancing. I was the only boy within a whatever-mile radius. And because I was a boy and I was dancing, whenever the Royal Shakespeare Company wanted to cast someone, they called. It was dancing that got me into acting. And in dance school—not school, but a hobby club—they had acrobatics, which I was obsessed with. So I had, and still do have, a very bendy back, as shown in Wicked.

I’m a big fan of Heartstopper, the books and then the show; I loved the comic. Was that something that you sought out, or they were like, “Hey, we need someone who’s so handsome that he sends multiple people into a crisis”?

I sort of wedged myself into that part. I was so moved by the series and also the graphic novel.

And, of course, doing Bridgerton—it’s funny what comes with doing a lot of press, and suddenly there’s a lot that people want to know about you, and there’s a lot that’s asked of you that, obviously, in any other industry, you wouldn’t have to talk about. So I was hyperaware of the complexities and nuances of how I felt about myself being a gay man, let alone a gay actor, and suddenly finding success in playing a straight part and talking about that. Heartstopper seems to allow people to feel catharsis and to feel a sort of melancholic sort of nostalgia for what could have been. I was feeling all of those things anyway. And [executive producer] Patrick Walters is really good friends with Josh Cole, who produced Crashing, so it is all a bit of a small world.

I love the cast. I think they’re brilliant. I remember seeing all of them speak to their own experiences and being like, My God, they’re so erudite and grounded and thoughtful and kind and compassionate in their answers. I would be really proud of myself if I could be a part of that as my younger self. Everyone above the age of 40 should be forced to watch it.

Do you think that Hollywood is more open to risk than it used to be? So many of these projects wouldn’t have existed 10 years ago.

Yeah. And with huge budgets and [the] trusting of Universal and Donna Langley and Peter Cramer, obviously they just got the right people, with Marc Platt, and they took their time. That’s the common denominator between these things: Fellow Travelers took 10 years to percolate and run its way in his genius, genial brain, and then four years to commission. Wicked, I think they’ve been trying to make a film of it for over 10 years. With Jurassic as well, this time they’re going back to David Koepp, the original writer of the original film, and Gareth [Edwards] is shooting on film.

I’m going to crack on with the work and I’m just incredibly excited for opportunities. I do think that as long as the work is good, anyone should be able to do the job. And I think that’s what’s changed. I obviously did not imagine myself in this sort of career, so that must be a sign of progress.

Do you get recognized out and about a lot? You’re in all these properties now that have such intense fan bases.

It’s funny—obviously, you do get recognized, but the Bridgerton of it all is really interesting, because it’s one thing to be on a show that is national, but I feel like I was more recognized outside of the UK than in the UK. It takes time to adjust to, it really does. It’s not an easy thing, but it also is amazing.

Do you have any secret talents? You already said that flipping is your party trick.

Yeah, I think that, and I was going to say dexterous toes…

What do you do with them?

…. but I would regret that, so I didn’t say it.

But then you did. What can you do with them that makes you so sure they’re dexterous?

Nothing about this goes well...I just remember entertaining my sisters by being able to pick things up with my toes, but like a monkey. But we probably don’t need to put that in writing.

Physical therapists, I’m sure, hail you.

I did ballet for ages, and I’ve only as an adult found out I’ve got very flat feet. Doing Fiyero, I learned that. And the physio one day walked in because my knees were twanging, and across the room he went, “You got flat feet.”

Your big secret: flat feet.

Yeah, that’s my party trick as well.

Revealed. Do you consider yourself to be a rule follower or a rule breaker? Are you afraid of getting in trouble?

I’m not a rule breaker, I just don’t really adhere. Do you know what I mean? If someone says, don’t do that, I won’t not do it. Probably people would always have said I was probably quite naughty.

You have a philanthropy, the Shameless Fund. Can you tell me about what inspired you to start that?

I’ve always found it is impossible to talk about this without sounding like an asshole, but it’s something that I do think about: opportunities for other people. And I also see where there’s an abundance of energy, whether that be money or creative, that could be siphoned off into other areas.

With the Shameless Fund particularly, there were certain commercial opportunities that were coming my way that I just wasn’t interested in because they just didn’t feel right, or I didn’t want to be stepping into [them]. I’m hoping next year we’re going to start giving out grants, in 2025.

Whom will the grants be going to?

Well, we’ve got three that we are certain on, nonprofits and charities that work internationally and locally in the UK for areas of the LGBT+ community, to educate and elevate. Hopefully, we’ll get to a point where we can offer smaller nonprofits a platform.

The three weeks after Bridgerton came out, there were so many requests from charities that I found it so upsetting and distressing because I wanted to do all of them. “Can you come to this thing, or can you speak, or can you send a shoe, or could you send a bag? Could you sign a script?” So this is also a way where you can work with multiple groups, become a bit of a patron.

Is there anyone who you feel reached back and helped you along in your career too?

Theater directors massively. Ian McKellen was wildly amazing, and I did King Lear with him. He was one of the first people to come to see me when I did Cock on the West End, and we went for a drink afterwards. He was so clear about how it might play out, and should it play out that way, what to be excited about and what to be aware of. I couldn’t wish for a better role model.

Source

[falsettos-tight-knit-family]

Mini-headcanon: Cordelia was a theater kid when she was younger. She told Whizzer this once, and he couldn't help but comment that she'd been a thespian lesbian. The two of them were the only ones who found it funny-

[stony-bologna]

For what it’s worth, coming from the future where it seems that we have counted all the votes, Harris ended up with 71.8 million votes, and Trump ended up with 75.1 million. A difference of 81 in 2020 vs almost 72 in 2024 is still a concerning difference, though Trump only had a 1 million votes lead relative to his 2020 outing (taking the 2020 numbers above at face value, and using the AP results for the 2024 count).

That is still a concerning loss in voters relative to what happened in 2020, and I’d even go as far as to say that the metaphorical blood will partially be on their hands assuming Trump does some of the awful stuff he’s been saying he wants to do.

But also they aren’t the only people who will have that blood on their hands. Another, definably larger group who is also to blame would be the party and voters for the “transgenderism must be eradicated” party. The party that’s been doing the gay panic again, only this time for trans people.

However, there’s one more group that will have blood on their hands. This is the group that I also think is most worthy of being questioned, most worthy of being accountable for their actions, most worthy of us using all peaceful means we have to let them know that we’re tired of their shit: The Democratic Party leadership that got us here. I feel they dropped the ball, in the sense that:

* they tried to run Biden, a man who’s presidency was getting more and more unpopular

* When he dropped out (probably too late) instead of letting dem voters vote for a different candidate, they just chose one for us and let us have her

* the candidate they chose for us didn’t really do enough to distance itself from the unpopular current Biden presidency

* they failed to address the problems like inflation that much of the average, not very locked in voter is getting hit hard by (personally I feel Trump was able to spread confident bullshit on the topic, despite having worse policy, which evidently tricked enough people)

It strikes me a little wrong to place all the blame on the individual voters who didn’t vote dem in 2024 who might have in 2020. Seems more productive to question the actions of the democratic leadership, and where their campaign fell flat and why. Or to go for the weirder systemic thing, why the Republican Party can just keep getting away with scapegoating minorities instead of actual policy.

Or in other words, there’s so many more productive routes to go with your anger at a Trump 2024 win then at the 9 million former dem voters.

Just so people know, in 2020 Trump got 74 million votes. He currently has 72 million. Biden got 81 million in 2020, Kamala has 67 million. There were not more people who voted for Trump, he didn’t have a crazy turn out this year. 15 million people who voted in 2020 didn’t vote this year. 15 million people abstained from voting. This, everything that happens next, is their fault.

[statementlou]

hello :) could you maybe explain a little bit how dan wootton blackmailed louis?

ugh sorry for taking a while to get to this. The problem is I feel like the only two ways to answer this are by spending a week and a half of full time labor sifting through old posts and evidence to get every detail right and lay out an airtight case, or to halfass something very serious, and so I felt a little stuck. So since I can't seem to find a good halfway point, apologies but here is the half assed version, if you want to get into it more I invite you to do your own deep dive or talk to other people, but here's how I remember things. Louis has almost never on video explicitly said things about Larry not being real and/or anything negative about fans and their theories (mostly the opposite), up until the last couple years when he obviously decided to make a major change he didn't talk about Freddie much at all let alone saying he was his kid, honestly not that much about Eleanor even; except for in two major interviews with Dan Wootton, each of which lined up with a serious traumatic Tomlinson family event that they managed to keep out of the tabloids until the very end (Jay's illness and Fizzy's struggles with substance abuse). After the fact of those events a lot of small things that didn't make sense at the time came together to look very much like Louis traded those interviews (and those answers) for having his family's private matters kept private. Story trading of this kind is a publicly known real thing that happens, and there were various clues that suggested he was being leaned on about those stories to lend legitimacy to the idea that it was something that happened in these cases. Given what we know about Dan Wootton and how he operates even before the recent flood of information and even more now, I think it's more than likely that he has been holding the threat of outing Louis (as he has done to many other public figures) over his head for over a decade, and has used his family's tragic struggles to get Louis to dance like a fucking puppet for him and I will REJOICE at his downfall when it comes whether it is now or 20 years from now... because someday it will, he has made too many enemies to stay above it forever

[deep-space-lines]

so im taking that oil painting class rn right. i mentioned wanting to paint something original instead of just copying a reference bc that's all the teacher has had me doing so far and he agreed I'm probably ready and went off on this whole tangent about how i shouldn't be nervous to try to do something more original and creative and how he'll show me some original stuff his friends have painted and had shown in galleries etc etc, and... I think somehow he's been assuming that the reason I've been painting realistic stuff directly from photo refs is because that's the kind of art I like to do and that I'm nervous about trying something else??? instead of what he's been telling me to do?

which is really funny to me because apart from this class I haven't 1:1 copied a reference for years, I just haven't gone out of my way to show him any art I make in my own time because this is like a professional full-time oil painter who has paintings in galleries and shit, real high-brow art stuff, and idk how to tell him that left to my own devices I draw video game fanart and dragons and furry commissions and gay sex and cringe and i dont want to draw other things

[here-there-were-dragons]

i have to wonder what super hardcore militant vegans think should be done about obligate carnivore animals, because in all my painfully-rapidly-approaching-30-years i've literally never actually seen anyone give a clear consistent much less halfway feasible answer on that

[domoriu]

ive had such an…. interesting day today 😇 anyway how are you all <3

[void-tiger]

…sometimes I just. Think about. How literal siblings get stuck with rumors they’re dating, and m-f friendships often don’t get a chance to truly start or develop because of the strain those assumptions and pressure causes…

…while literal same-gender and aspec-affirming couples get slapped with “like siblings” this and “just really good friends” that.

And then how this gets even more reductive with infighting like “m-f friendships can only occur when one of them is homosexual,” or aspecs picking at eachother over rep until it’s a very specific type of aroace on the aroace spectrum of the aspec spectrums (and nobody’s actually happy), and of course fanon ships pitted against gen-no-ships…

…and how everyone just ends up feeling stressed out and invalidated. Because anything—and I do mean anything—that doesn’t fit neatly inside of the heteronormative narrative of “men and women can’t be friends, men and women must be romantically involved, people of the same gender and/or aspec/any other queer identity(ies) must never date.”

And how it makes the queers and cichets alike absolutely miserable.

[wakeupthemembersofbylernation]

It’s wild how so many people are fundamentally incapable of recognizing queer characters unless they explicitly say the words, “I’m gay” on screen

[seddair]

,

[skateisawesome]

i really dont want this to come across as homophobic but i have lifelong issues with tone so if it does can someone tell me and ill fix it!

so i have spent the last 4 years of my life coming out as a straight person. sounds stupid.

but basically i have had so many dating rumours surrounding me and my friends that i used to get asked at least once a week if i was gay. i dont know what im doing thats making everyone think im dating my friends but apparently i do it to everyone. i have been the queer awakening for several of my close friends who fell in love with me and through that discovered that they liked girls.

all of that is fine and i can deal with it. im happy to keep correcting people and i've been working on being less flirty with my friends and putting effort into it. what's been pissing me off for the last year or so is the ongoing assumption that i am gay and i just dont know it yet.

i have been outright told by people "one day im going to kiss you and youll discover you like girls"

it made me feel uncomfortable and weird and im gonna be so honest here. i just dont think i like girls that way. i really thought about it and i dont. but i would (and still am) getting told by my close friends that one day when i 'eventually come out' they are all gonna sit around and say i told you so.

but i also wanna say that if i ever was to discover that i was not straight, it would be pretty hard to come out to any of those people, to any of my friends. theyd be so aggressive and constantly tell me that they knew or that it was old news. and so it kinda feels like even if im questioning things, ive been forced to reiterate that im straight so many times that being queer doesnt feel like an option anymore. its like i was forced to decided gay or straight when i was twelve and then people have harassed me ever since and now im not allowed to change what i chose even if i was to be seriously considering not being straight.

to me that feels really fucking toxic and its just upset me for the longest time.

and at this point i dont know what to do. like i cant really retaliate or say anything without people thinking im homophobic (which i swear to you i am not and my intention is not ever to harm that wonderful community in which so many people i love exist). i never want to hurt anyone but like what the fuck do i do!

im so sick of this. its also so weird and i kinda doubt that anyone else has really had this problem lmao.

i would love some opinions. look idk why im posting this. i dont care. i want people to tell me im justified but i also want people to tell me why they think im not. i want someone else to tell me what to do because i dont know.

[femslashspuffy]

All those articles and posts about "the best show that no one is watching" kinda miss the big picture. Iwtv is the most popular show on amc, as they say every single time I open the app. The problem is that amc is a late game streaming service with almost nothing enticing on it. The only reason my dad is considering getting it after I stop my very brief subscription is to watch Mad Men.

I pirated season 1 and now I have the dvd so they don't have my statistics when I rewatch. I plan to get the dvd for this season too but if the show is unpopular it is mostly because it is on one of those streaming services where things go to die. They made a good decision by allowing season 1 to be available on HBO and you can watch ep1 for free on prime but HBO is also one of the most expensive streaming services out there and that one episode teaser doesn't properly display what the show is

If it was on prime like good omens or Hulu like Buffy and wwdits it would probably be a lot more popular. It relies entirely on word of mouth and most people I know pirate it (or use my login)

[waywardsalt]

anyways. holding linebeck gently

[liebelesbe]

I miss my Berufsschul-Klasse 😭 I was finally like. a tiny bit out. about to come out. comfortable with the possibility of being out. and then the universe said "haha I have given you a taste of something you've always wanted! now watch as I take it away!" *makes me get sicker*

[boygirlctommy]

SOBS i hate chainsaw man i hate it i hate it