#i need you to understand if you are young how new ANY openly queer content is

[farmersfieldwolf]

other people's identities and experiences do not need to be palatable to you in any way- including and especially in the art they create about themselves

just gonna leave this here

[letterboxd]

Wigging Out.

Choreographer and director Jonathan Butterell tells Gemma Gracewood about stepping behind the camera for Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, his love for Sheffield, and making sure queer history is kept alive. Richard E. Grant weighs in on tolerance and Thatcher.

Of 2021’s many conundrums, one for musical lovers is why the narratively problematic Dear Evan Hansen gets a TIFF premiere and theatrical release this month, while the joyously awaited Everybody’s Talking About Jamie went straight to Amazon Prime.

And yet, as the show’s lyrics go, life keeps you guessing, along came a blessing. There’s something about the film streaming onto young people’s home screens, with its moments of fourth-wall breaking where Jamie speaks straight to the viewer, that feels so important, given the content: a gay teen whose drag-queen destiny sits at odds with the less ambitious expectations of his working-class town.

Director and choreographer Jonathan Butterell, who also helmed the stage production (itself inspired by Jenny Popplewell’s 2011 BBC documentary, Jamie: Drag Queen at 16) agrees that the worldwide Amazon release is a very good silver lining. “I made the film for the cinema but, in 250 territories across the world, this is going to have a reach that—don’t get me wrong, cinema, cinema, cinema, collective experience, collective experience, collective experience—but it will get to people that it might not have got to before.

Jonathan Butterell on set with star Max Harwood, as Jamie.

“It feels as niche a story as you could possibly be. But also for me, I wanted it to feel like a universal story, that it didn’t matter where on any spectrum you found yourself, you could understand a young person wanting to take their place in the world freely, openly and safely.”

Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, with screenplay and lyrics by Tom MacRae and songs by Dan Gillespie Sells, sits neatly among a series of very specific feel-good British films about the working class experience, such as Billy Elliot, Kinky Boots and Pride. The film adds some historical weight to the story with a new song, ‘This Was Me’, which allows Jamie’s mentor, Hugo (played by Richard E. Grant), to take us into England’s recent past—the dark days of the discriminatory Section 28 laws, at a time when the HIV/AIDS epidemic was still ravaging the community.

Hugo’s drag persona Loco Chanelle (played in the flashback by the stage musical’s original Jamie—John McCrea from Cruella and God’s Own Country), sports a wig that looks suspiciously like the Iron Lady’s unmistakable head of hair. Grant confirms that was Hugo’s intention. “His heyday was in the 1980s, so as a ‘fuck you’ to Mrs Thatcher, what better than to be dressed up like that, at six-foot-eight, with a wig that could bring down the Taj Mahal!”

Richard E. Grant as Hugo, getting to work on Jamie’s contours.

In light of the current pandemic, and the fact that the 1967 legalization of homosexuality in Britain is only “an historical blink away”, Grant’s hope is for more tolerance in the world. “Maybe Covid gives people some sense of what that was like, but with Covid there’s not the prejudice against you, whereas AIDS, for the most part in my understanding, was [seen as] a ‘gay disease’, and there were many people across the globe who thought that this was, you know, whatever god they believe in, was their way of punishing something that they thought was unacceptable.

“The message of this movie is of inclusivity, diversity, and more than ever, tolerance. My god, we could do with a dose of that right now.”

Read on for our Q&A with Jonathan Butterell about the filmic influences behind Everybody’s Talking About Jamie.

Hugo in a reverie, surrounded by his drag menagerie.

Can we talk about the new song, ‘This Was Me’, and the way you directed it in the film? It’s a show-stopper, with Richard E. Grant singing in that beautiful high register, and then moving into Holly Johnson’s singing, as you go back in time to show that deeply devastating and important history. Jonathan Butterell: It felt inevitable, the shift, and necessary. Myself, Dan Gillespie Sells, the composer, and Tom MacRae, the screenwriter, we created this piece together, the three of us, and it’s a film by the three of us. We lived through that time, we went on those marches. Actually, in one of those marches [shown in flashback], Dan’s mum—actual mum—is in a wheelchair, by a young boy who was holding a plaque saying “my mum’s a lesbian and I love her”.

That is Dan with his mum back in the day, and it all speaks to our stories and it moves me, I can see it’s moving you. It moves me because I lived through that time, and it was a complex time for a young person. It was a time that you felt you had to be empowered in order to fight, and you felt very vulnerable because of the need to fight. And because of that disease, because HIV was prevalent and we lost people—we lost close people—it was a difficult time. I wanted to make sure that that story kept being told and was passed on to the next generation.

It’s so important isn’t it, to walk into the future facing backwards? It still exists, that need to fight still exists. The conversation, yes, has moved on, has changed, but not for all people and not in all communities.

What would be your go-to movie musical song at a karaoke night? My goodness. There’d be so many.

I mean, is it going to be a Cabaret, a Chicago showstopper, or something more Mary Poppins, something from Rent? I think what I would go to, which is what I remember as a little boy, is Curly singing ‘Oh, What A Beautiful Mornin’. It’s such a kind of perfect, beautiful, simple song. That, and ‘The Lonely Goatherd’, because I just want to yodel. It would be epic. Trust me.

What is the best film featuring posing and why is it Paris Is Burning? It’s always Paris Is Burning. Back in the day, I was obsessed with Paris Is Burning, I was obsessed with that world. In fact, at one moment I even met [director] Jennie Livingston in trying to make a theater piece inspired by that. I lived in New York for eleven years and I met Willi Ninja. I just adored everything about him, and he would tell me stories. And again, it was so removed from the boy from Sheffield, I mean so far. That New York ballroom scene was so removed from my world, but I got it. Those two boys at the top of the film, I just wanted to be one of those boys who just hung out outside the club.

Harwood and Butterell on set, with Lauren Patel (right) as Jamie’s bestie Pritti Pasha.

What films did you and Tom and Dan look at to get a feeling for how to present the musical numbers? Actually, a lot of pop videos, from present day to past. There’s an homage, in the black-and-white sequences, to a little ‘Vogue’ Madonna moment. Pop is very central to me in this story because pop is what a working-class kid from a working-class community will be listening to. That’s in his phone, that’s in his ears. Not that many young people listen to much radio at this moment in time, but that’s what will be on Margaret’s radio, that’s what’s coming into the kitchen. And that was central to the storytelling for me.

Bob Fosse also really influenced me, and particularly All That Jazz and where his flights of imagination take him. I felt that was so appropriate for Jamie, and again in a very, very different way, but I could see how Jamie’s imagination could spark something so fantastical that would lead him to dance, lead him to walk on the most amazing catwalk, lead into being in the most fabulous, fabulous nightclub with the most amazing creatures you’ve ever met in your life.

For me personally, the film that most inspired me was Ken Loach’s Kes, because that is my community. Both the world in which Jamie exists—Parsons Cross council estate, is my world, is my community—and the world of that young boy, finding his place in the world with his kestrel friend, I remember identifying with that boy so clearly. He was very different from me, very different. But I got him, and I felt like Ken Loach got me through him.

Ken Loach made a few films set in Sheffield, didn’t he? But also, Sheffield is a setting and an influence on The Full Monty, The History Boys, Funny Cow and that brilliant Pulp documentary. So Jamie feels like a natural successor. It absolutely does. Sheffield’s where I grew up, it’s my hometown. Although I moved away from it, I always return. To have a chance to celebrate my community, and particularly that community in Parsons Cross council estate. If you’re in Sheffield and you’re in a taxi and you said, “Take me to Parsons Cross,” they’d say, “Well, I’ll drop you there, but I’m not staying.” Because again there’s a blinkered view of that community. And I know that community to be proud, glorious and beautiful.

And yes, that community, particularly through the ’80s, really suffered because some of that community would serve the steelworks and had three generations of unemployment, so they became disenfranchised because of that. But the community I grew up in, my Auntie Joan, who lived on that road, literally on that road, was a proud, working class, glorious woman who served chips at school.

Aside from Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, what would be the most important queer British cinematic story to you? (And how do you choose between My Beautiful Laundrette and God’s Own Country?!) You can’t. My Beautiful Laundrette influenced me so much because, one, Daniel Day Lewis was extraordinary in that film, and two, because of the cross-cultural aspect of it. I went, “I know this world”, because again I grew up in that world. And it affirmed something in me, which is the power and the radicalness of who I could be and what I could be.

With God’s Own Country, when I saw that film—and that was Francis’ first film, which I thought was extraordinary for a first-time filmmaker—I knew he knew that world from the inside, from the absolute inside. And I know what that rural community was like. I read that script, because we share agents, and I was blown away by it—again, because of the two cultures coming together.

Jamie Campbell, the film’s real-life inspiration, with screen-Jamie Max Harwood.

Richard E. Grant’s character, Hugo, is such a pivotal mentor for Jamie. What did you need to hear from a mentor when you were sixteen? Don’t let yourself hold yourself back, because I think it was me who put some limitations on myself. And of course I came from a working-class community. I was a queer kid in a tough British comprehensive school. And did I experience tough times? Yes I did. And did I deal with those tough times? Yes I did. But the song that speaks to me mostly in this is ‘Wall in my Head’, in which Jamie takes some responsibility for the continuation of those thoughts, continuations of the sorts of shame, and that’s a sophisticated thing for a sixteen-year-old boy to tackle.

I also was lucky enough to have a mother like Margaret—and a dad like Margaret as well, just to be clear! And I remember my mum, at seventeen when I left home, just leaving a little note on my bed. It was quite a long letter. She said, Jonathan, you’ve probably chosen to walk a rocky path, but don’t stray from it, don’t steer away from it. That’s the path you've chosen, there may be rock-throwers along the way, but you’ll find your way through it. That stayed with me and I think that’s what resonates with me. And when I saw that documentary, Jamie: Drag Queen at 16, I felt that that sparked the need for me to tell that story.

Sarah Lancashire as Jamie’s mum, Margaret New.

We need more mums and dads like Margaret, don’t we? We do, we do. And the wonderful thing is, Margaret Campbell will say it and I think Margaret New in the film will say it: she’s not a Saint, she’s an ordinary mum. And she has to play catch up and she doesn’t understand in many ways, and she gets things wrong and she overprotects. But she comes from one place and that is a mum’s love of her child and wanting them to take their place safely in the world and to be fully and totally themselves.

Related content

Eternal Alien’s list of films Made in Sheffield

Letterboxd’s Camp Showdown

Persephon’s list of films recommended by drag queens

Passion’s list of films mentioned by Jaymes Mansfield in her Drag Herstory YouTube series

Follow Gemma on Letterboxd

‘Everybody’s Talking About Jamie’ is streaming now on Amazon Prime Video.

[dgcatanisiri]

Tried to make a brief summary of the issues of Mass Effect Andromeda’s handling of queer men and how it relates to why we’re (broad use here) upset with the Legendary Edition failing to provide better representation than the originals, and it kinda turned in to what amounts to an open letter for BioWare.

So, what the heck, here it is.

A little personal background. I spent my high school life completely in the closet. After graduating, I had a new computer and the opportunity to play a new game. The game chosen was BioWare’s Jade Empire. Still a fairly recent release, and I was a big fan of Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, also by BioWare. So, being a young gay man, still uncomfortable and uncertain of who I was, I was very excited when I got to play this game that would allow me to play a gay romance, a romance that featured two men. I burned through two playthroughs of the game within less than a week, enjoying that rush of acknowledgement that yes, gay guys could be the hero. It was a massive affirmation for me at the time, something that said that my sexuality was not going to prevent me from being the hero, which legitimately was a message that I felt like most media was giving me to that point, because gay men barely appeared in anything other than guest roles for an episode or two on a TV show, but certainly not in video games. That game, that experience... I’ve said for years that it had cemented me as a BioWare fan for life.

If I say that now, it is a statement with a few caveats.

The history of the failure of Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2 to provide any male/male romances is well documented. I was excited, very eager to romance Kaidan Alenko in Mass Effect 3. But even then, I noticed that there were things that were lacking in the romance. It was noticeable, for instance, that the basic dialogue between male Shepard and female Shepard was unchanged, if either was starting a new romance with Kaidan. The thing that always felt... WRONG about that was that if I’d had the option to begin a romance with him in the first game, I would have. Yet there’s not even a bit of dialogue that even references that inability, no comment of “I didn’t think you were available,” or anything of the sort, nothing to say that, say, Shepard was interested in Kaidan at the time, but didn’t believe he’d be receptive, didn’t want to damage their friendship, something of the sort. There was even a cut in the romance scene, where female Shepard will sit in Kaidan’s lap before being lifted up and carried to the bed, but with male Shepard and Kaidan, just fades to black. And then in the Citadel DLC, while all the other pairings walked in to the casino arm in arm, male Shepard and Kaidan are leaving plenty of room between them. There’s also the absence of any cuddling as they return to the Normandy.

To say nothing of the lack of Steve Cortez during the story segments of Citadel – he is not part of the big team entrance to the apartment, just spontaneously appears in the lounge room. He doesn’t participate in the briefings, and he is not a casino date, despite being part of the assembled team. Cortez also suffers from the fact that his romance spends so much time on how he needs to move on from the death of his husband, Shepard can come across as predatory towards him, trying to push him out of his grief and his pants. Due to the lateness of his arrival in the story, in game three, as opposed to game one or two, there is significantly less time to establish him as a person – beyond his past as a pilot and the death of his husband, we gain almost no concept of his personality or personal history.

I bring all of this up to help set the stage of what was expected when Mass Effect Andromeda was nearing release. Mass Effect had been full of problems of representation of queer men specifically (not that they were perfect on the count of female/female relationships either, because there’s plenty to talk about there, but as I’m not a lesbian or bisexual woman, I don’t feel comfortable talking about their experiences for them). While there were flaws, Dragon Age, what is often considered Mass Effect’s sister franchise, HAD managed to provide male/male romances in every iteration of that franchise.

In fact, considering that Dragon Age’s most recent installment, Dragon Age Inquisition, had been put out with a lot of fanfare about the first gay male companion, who was considered rather popular in the fandom, and the game itself receiving the Game of the Year award that year, indicating that, if there was any risk in the business sense of providing representation of queer men, it was negligible at most in the bottom line of that game, the attitude of a lot of gay men in the lead up to Andromeda’s release was some variation of “okay, Mass Effect has been flawed, but BioWare’s learned from their past mistakes, and they’re coming off the heels of a hugely successful game that had a gay character whose gayness was front and center in his storyline... We can expect that things will be fine, and we don’t have to worry.” That was the dominant attitude I found in a lot of my queer-oriented spaces.

But we started getting uncomfortable as the developers remained cagey about romance options in Andromeda – there were Twitter responses to “we’re concerned about Mass Effect’s history of gay representation, we would like to know about the options” that came out as “we checked and yep! They’re there!” These responses came across as flippant and even tone-deaf – the reason that the question was being asked was because of prior failures to be included, and not simply a desire to get all the details before launch.

As the trailers started coming out, the questions continued from the fans, and the response from the developers... continued to be uncomfortable. When asked directly for a listing of romances prior to release, the response was that the developers wanted players to learn as they played, that “the fun is in experiencing it!” This was a specific response when it was learned that the romance options could be flirted with regardless of orientation, but they would shut it down. Despite the fact that the trailers DID include content from certain romances – specifically, the male Ryder/Cora and male Ryder/Peebee romances.

This was uncomfortable for a lot of queer players like myself because it spoke to a lack of consideration of what it is like to be queer. In many places, it is a serious question of safety to even put yourself out there to find a partner, to flirt with someone openly unless you are already certain that there is a chance for a positive response. There are places where a queer person flirting with the wrong person can get them harassed, assaulted, even killed for doing so. Even in the safety of a virtual construct of video games, these are honed instincts that queer people have developed. And no matter how many times we would say this to the developers, no one seemed to understand. Likewise, the fact that the trailers felt free to show off heterosexual romances, but not queer ones felt... questionable.

Then, finally, firm details started coming out, and... There were problems. Early data-mining said that there was an even split of romances between orientations. But there was a bit of discomfort around the reveal that the gay characters, Suvi and Gil, were limited to the ship, rather than being companions who would accompany Ryder on missions. There is a history of companions being given more involved storylines and involvement than secondary characters. It also didn’t help the disappointment from queer people who’d been eager for Cora or Liam as romances, who were firmly established as straight (Cora herself had a popular lesbian following).

That discomfort increased when it came out further that, ACTUALLY, Jaal would not be available for Male Ryder. This caused a lot of upset. Now it was a case where there was NO M/M squadmate romance option. This on top of the group of fans who were uncomfortable with the idea that, in a sci-fi series, gay men couldn’t romance an alien, while this had become a staple of the series, considering Liara, the character from a species described as equivalent to Star Trek green-skinned Orion girls, had been available for straight men and lesbian/bi women from ME1, and straight women got in on the act with Garrus and Thane in ME2, on top of straight men also getting Tali.

This got worse when the achievement listing for the game was released and there was an achievement for “romancing three different characters.” Meaning that it was absolutely impossible for a gay man to play the game and get this achievement without playing a sexuality other than his own.

This is why I led with my experience with Jade Empire, why it was so affirming to me. Because to hear all this, ten years later, to see what had been so affirming to me a decade prior be functionally dismissed, be shown to take a secondary position at best... It hurt.

And the game proper did not help that feeling at all.

So first we meet Gil Brodie. Engineer of the Tempest. One of the first things we learn about him is that he has a close friendship with a woman named Jill. And then he immediately tells us that one) she is a fertility specialist, and two) she “says [he’s] part of the problem” because he won’t have kids the natural way. This is immediately setting off red flags to me – I can think of plenty of my friendships where we give one another grief for various things, but I would never think of introducing any of them to someone else with that fact. So my reflexive thought in this situation is “what kind of a friend is this really?”

And then, as the game goes on... This is the only thing that Gil’s conversations involve, the prospect of having kids. We do not learn much more about him, just have him talking about considering the idea. The lock-in for his romance requires Ryder to meet Jill, who Gil again says that she will talk his ear off about his “civic duty” to reproduce, a fact that makes those earlier red flags wave higher and more furiously, because who DOES that to a total stranger? And this is passed off as being “charming.” This leads to the culmination of the romance, where Gil says that Jill has decided she wants to get pregnant and she wants Gil to be the dad.

There’s... A LOT going on here, so let me work through this. First, one of the few things Gil says as a bit of establishing his character is that he is impulsive, that he joined the Andromeda Initiative, the journey from the Milky Way galaxy to the Andromeda galaxy without really thinking through what it would mean, that it was a one-way journey with no way to back out once he’d gotten there. So this is already saying to me that this is not a person who really SHOULD be a parent, at least at this point in his life.

We also get a couple of emails from him in-game that paint him as putting in thirty-six hour workdays into the engines on the Tempest, that he cares about and puts a lot of time into those engines. So when I think about him as a father, I see him having to give up something he’s deeply passionate about to do it, because the Tempest is certainly no place to raise a child – they can’t exactly put a playpen in the cargo hold, for example.

This would be one of the first things that I would think of as a discussion element, but... it’s not there. All that we get is a couple of casual comments about how Gil should know that bringing a child into the world is a big thing, something that shouldn’t be done lightly. But this is framed as Ryder questioning Gil’s fitness to be a parent at all, rather than questioning if he’s thinking this through and having considered this enough to be ready to take on this responsibility, or if it’s even something that he even wants.

Because that’s the other big thing here – this is not Gil’s idea. This is not something that he makes clear is his desire. No, it’s Jill who has decided that she wants to get pregnant and use Gil’s sperm. For all that he matters in this whole thing, he might as well be a turkey baster. He’s basically an accessory in his own story, because he goes in to this with all the passion of a math equation: “The Andromeda Initiative is a colonization effort. Therefore, the idea is to have babies. Therefore, I should find some way to reproduce.” This isn’t him having a passion or desire to have kids, just it being “something you do.”

This is, genuinely, a failure to understand the character who was being written. Gil’s writing reeks of having been written by someone who does not know what they are talking about. There is an element to the gay experience that is not innate but learned. When we realize that having children is not a thing that will just happen, that if we want this to happen, it will require a lot of additional steps, there are many who will simply say “this isn’t for me, this is more work than I’m willing to put in to for this.”

Now, Gil could have been someone who had decided it was worth it, but that butts up against the idea of him being impulsive, that he doesn’t think things through. There is no time given to focusing on the reason he decides this is the right choice for him, to the point that many players felt that this was not Gil’s decision but something that Jill was pushing, that she expected him to jump on her command. Because we have so little of Gil, as a character and an individual, but plenty of him talking up her, this “friendship” feels toxic to many.

Just about everyone I have ever spoken with about Gil is deeply uncomfortable that literally, the only way that he will not have a child at this point is if a romanced Ryder stops him – if I am playing a game where I don’t romance him, I actively just stop interacting with him at a certain point so that this never comes up, because this does not come across as happy. It comes across as forcing a gay man into a heteronormative experience to satisfy some traditional idea of “man and woman, raising kids.”

And, as the cherry on top, if you do tell Gil that you’re not comfortable having kids – a very real thing, whether gay or straight – then, unlike other romances, Gil and Ryder do not share a kiss at the finale of the game. And, during the last conversations on Meridian, the only thing Gil even brings up is Jill being pregnant, whether or not it’s his child.

This is what “representation of gay men” amounted to in Mass Effect Andromeda. A homophobic story that was about a gay experience written by someone who is not a part of this community and does not know or understand the experience personally, going through the motions of development when really, all that is cared about is the end result. To say that most of the gay men I know who have played this game find this homophobic is to undersell the point.

It doesn’t help that, of all the Tempest romances, Gil also clocks in with the least amount of romance exclusive material – a few flirts, the romance lock in and scene, and being able to stop Gil from having kids. Other than that, his friendship and his romance are virtually identical.

Speaking of, the romance scene consists of a make out session that fades to black, before coming back in with Ryder and Gil, shot from about shoulders up, briefly wrapping up their conversation that preceded the fade to black. This is noteworthy when the heterosexual romances between Ryder and their human love interests, as well as Peebee and Jaal, the former having a similar body model to naked human women, just blue, and Jaal, who is naked at other points in the game, have much more involved romance scenes – Cora’s in specific received special attention.

All of this, individually, may have just been reflective of time crunch and other external pressures – we all understand the realities of game development, that for all the ambitions that go in, when the deadlines are nearing, something has to give. But taken collectively... The kindest question is to ask why all of the “give” happened in regards to the gay man?

The end result with Gil honestly feels like he was written in response to the bad faith arguments that had come up in the period after the name for the game was revealed and it was made clear that the game would follow a colonization effort. There were a contingent of people who said that “there shouldn’t be gay people coming along, a colonization effort needs to reproduce.” This is a bad faith argument from homophobes, trying to justify why they don’t want gay people in “their” games. In answering their question, the question they only “ask” in order to explain why they don’t want to have gay people in the game without saying that, it comes across as catering the gay content for a heterosexual audience. It should go without saying that this is a bad position to take.

So, that’s Gil. What about Reyes? Well, Reyes himself is bound to a single planet, which, again, points to a minimizing of how much content he will even get, since his content can only be accessed on this single planet. Likewise, Reyes, as a character, is someone who falls in to several old, tired tropes with regards to bisexual men – he is a shady, untrustworthy character, in this instance literally a criminal, meant to be evocative of the “dashing rogue” archetype. This is a characterization that has often been BioWare’s go-to with regards to bisexual men, because we see this archetype drawn on in Jade Empire’s Sky, Dragon Age Origins’ Zevran, Dragon Age 2’s Anders, and even elements exist in Dragon Age Inquisition’s Dorian (even if he is a gay man). It’s a well that BioWare has frequently tapped when it comes to a romance option for queer men, to the point that it starts to feel like BioWare in general believes that this IS what queer men are.

There’s also the questionable portrayal of Reyes that leads to a description of the trope “the depraved bisexual,” an explicitly bisexual character who uses sex and sexuality as a manipulative tool, that they treat others as simply there to be their toys. Over in Dragon Age Inquisition, one of the romance options was specifically NOT made bisexual in order to avoid this trope, but Reyes himself seems to be a candidate for that trope all the same.

All this, and, again, the romance options for gay men were unequal to those for everyone else. This prompted the campaign #MakeJaalBi – Jaal was, notably, the character initially assumed to be the bisexual male companion, and on release, his romance was heterosexual exclusive. But datamining revealed that there was code for him to be romanced by male Ryder. Indeed, on release, it was noteworthy that Jaal could not even be flirted with by male Ryder. Liam had a distinct turndown for male Ryder, a couple of them, depending on when Ryder flirts with him. Jaal had no such turndown.

And this worked. BioWare released the patch for Andromeda that gave Jaal a bisexual romance. However, this was the only change that Mass Effect Andromeda received in regards to the issues of the romances before support for the game ended. While it was seen as an improvement, it was also questioned why this was the only change, when... Well, I spent the better part of two pages outlining the problems of Gil’s portrayal.

(I feel I would be remiss to not mention there was also a character, Hainley Abrams, who would, upon interacting with her, proceed to deadname herself to Ryder, as if that is the only way to establish that a transgender person is trans. This was also changed in a patch after the trans community complained, and, in conjunction with the above, led more than a few people to wonder if the Andromeda script had been looked over by any queer sensitivity readers, given the earlier issues with Gil. This does go out of the scope of everything else in this discussion, but it is worth mentioning.)

When Mac Walters says players will talk about how Shepard is each of theirs, that every individual player approaches Shepard as being “their” Shepard, he isn’t wrong. He says the characters, and the relationships we have with the characters is the heart and soul of the series, he isn’t wrong. And yet... When I play the trilogy, my heart and soul are being torn apart, because I do not get to see myself in the trilogy. I am not there in this story, at least for two thirds of the way. And in that third that I am there, I feel like I am cared about less than my counterparts who are heterosexual.

The idea that “making” characters available for same sex romance changes them is like saying that there is some inherent difference in a person because of their sexualities. While it’s true that the experiences of queer people does offer different perspectives on matters, it does not fundamentally alter the person, the individual that we are. It does not change our heart and soul. Restoring the bisexuality of characters like Jack, Jacob, Ashley, Thane, or Tali is not changing who they are. Making Kaidan bisexual in ME3 did not change who he was, and restoring a romance between him and male Shepard in ME1 would not change him either.

Every game has some cut content surrounding queer content specifically, and a great deal of that content is specifically for gay players like myself. I said at the beginning that I once thought of myself as a BioWare fan for life, but that now comes with caveats. The caveats are pretty simple – while the games produced by BioWare once felt affirming, now they feel like they’re only grudgingly allowing me to be there. That if I must be there, I should just take the scraps I’m given and be content with that, rather than being treated as an equal.

I like to think that this is not the message that the people at BioWare wish to impart to their players. I like to believe BioWare’s statements of wanting to be an inclusive and welcoming environment for their players, regardless of gender, race, sexuality, orientation, whatever identity and label one chooses. But based on the experience of the last four games, of the Legendary Edition perpetuating the homophobia of over a decade ago... I have a hard time believing that.

BioWare games once made me feel like I was equal to the straight heroes across my media. Unfortunately, I don’t feel that way about their games anymore. Not when, after having the opportunity to restore the bisexuality of Kaidan – of multiple characters, really – in the Legendary Edition, I am still being told that offering representation for people like me is something that only comes grudgingly.

And if that’s what I see now... What does it say about what the future of the franchise will offer? If every game in this series involves fighting for content that, in particular, heterosexual players will see offered as the rule, what motivates me to want to continue to be invested and involved in this franchise?

[quellgame]

Prolegomena 1 - Nietzsche's Legacy

a. Cringe Culture as Philistinism

In his book Anti-Nietzsche, Malcolm Bull provides a thorough critique of Nietzschean aesthetic thought. “Philistine,” Bull claims, is the insult of contemporary times. A philistine is somebody who refuses to appreciate high culture, or fine art; one who denies aesthetic value. Yet, for all the vitriol, nobody seems to have taken on the mantle of philistinism. If there are no philistines, what explains the endless accusations?

If philistines were to have a theory, argues Bull, it must take shape as the transience of all values. We know from Nietzsche that nihilism approaches the devaluation of all value - but that this very devaluation requires a re-evaluation. For Nietzsche, evaluation ultimately takes the form of aesthetic valuation. It is easy to deny specific values, but it is not so easy to be rid of value altogether. Nietzsche argues that it is impossible to completely remove valuation. Once all other values have been removed, nothing is left but pure preference. This is the role of the superman: as taste-maker - the creator of value. But if there is no base on which value rests, why not re-evaluate these newly created values?

Thus, although value may be ineradicable, it may also be fragile, and its existence in any one area a contingent historical fact dependent on local conditions. [...] With this in mind, it is worth asking whether the fact that philistinism is a form of negation that is universally condemned but nowhere visible may be [...] a historically significant indication of the nature and location of positive value in contemporary society. (Bull, 6)

Nowhere can a challenge to aesthetic norms be seen more clearly in contemporary culture than in the based/cringe debate. “Based” refers to content that is aesthetically appealing in some undefined but culturally understood sense, while “cringe” refers to content that makes one “cringe” - is unappealing both aesthetically and morally. If Bull’s method is correct, it would do us well to take a look at based culture in an attempt to understand where its values lie. We’ll argue that based culture is oppressive. As based culture’s aesthetic opposite, we have a moral imperative to examine cringe culture so as to discover and replicate its value framework.

Bull’s genius lies in his method of deconstructing Nietzche: instead of reading Nietzsche as intended - on the side of the oppressor, or against the oppressor - Bull decides to read Nietzsche like a loser - as the one to whom all the fiery rhetoric is spoken. In this way, Bull discovers Nietzsche as a groomer, and positions himself as a rejected candidate. He examines Nietzsche’s rhetoric and theoretical framework to understand how and why Nietzsche is so capable of pulling in an audience and making them believe him. I’ll argue that Nietzsche’s abusive rhetoric is directly mirrored in both fascism and in based culture.

b. Nietzsche as Groomer

Nietzsche intends his books to be read for victory. He calls to an audience like himself, those who “belong to a time that has not yet come to pass;” in other words, people who might transcend the “idiotic,” “subhuman,” “slave-like” nature of contemporary society. Clearly, this is cruelty, but it is

[n]o wonder Nitezsche can so confidently identify his readers with the Supermen. It is not just flattery. If Nietzsche’s readers have mastered his text, they have demonstrated just those qualities of ruthlessness and ambition that qualify them to be ‘masters of the earth’. (Bull, 35)

One might recognize this as the first step in any grooming process: flatter your target, make them feel safe and loved. Fulfil for them a need: in this case, the need for power. Once the indoctrination has begun, those in power can begin to ostracize and criminalize the group they have othered. In Nietzsche’s case, few are left unscathed: only those powerful enough to say “yes” to the void will find within themselves the power to create value - and only they can survive the onslaught of nihilism. The rest will perish - and to Nietzsche, that is a good thing.

This is clearly mirrored in grooming tactics used by white supremacists and pedophiles. I will use my own experience as an example.

// CW: pedophilia, white supremacy //

As a child I spent a lot of time on a forum dedicated to the Super Mario Bros. franchise. The forum was not age-appropriate - several members talked openly about their time on 4chan; about pornography and subculture. Naturally I was curious. I wanted to consider myself grown, so I could talk about my interests. So I emulated the adults’ behavior. Eventually I started consuming pornography and visiting 4chan’s /b/ board. That’s where I was first exposed to Nazism and to child pornography. I recall having conversations about loli and shota when I was fairly young. I thought this was all quite normal - or at the very least, that I was strong enough to overcome whatever may happen to me as long as I could satisfy the need to see bodies like mine in a sexual context. In many cases, child pornography would be packaged alongside pornography featuring trans actors, as both were considered equally “alternative.” This is how I first discovered trans women - and this is not an uncommon narrative.

I was made comfortable: welcomed into a community where I could talk about my interests to a sympathetic audience. I was told I was special. I found myself trusting this community more than my local culture - they gave me an outlet to explore my queer identity from a young age. Then they showed me content that was actively harmful to my psyche - and I was threatened with jail time and social ostracization should I be caught. This is the grooming pattern.

Nietzsche makes his audience comfortable: he fulfils the need to obtain power through his writing style. He tells his audience they are special - literally superhuman. Then he launches abuse at every opportunity. He creates his sense of power through relating to the master race, the blonde beast; by actively deriding others and openly calling for the extermination of all “slave-like races.” And he says: we are unlike the others, you and I; and should you tell them this, you will be ostracized. So stay with me. Let’s conquer the world together.

This is directly echoed in the fascist grooming pipeline. Gamergate is an exceptional example: gamers were made to feel oppressed; they were made to be othered, then used the rage at their so-called oppression to be swayed into fascist beliefs. And should they leave, they too would be exterminated. You must be based. Kill the cringe. We see now the slogan “6MWE.” We see open genocide and warmongering in the American government (which, frankly, is nothing new). America has become a proudly fascist state - and much of this is with Nietzsche’s influence.

// CW //

If Nietzsche’s core project is abusive, how do we overcome it? Bull’s method is to reject the core hermeneutic: instead of reading for victory, we’ll read like losers. Whenever Nietzsche fires abuse at some subhuman thing, we will take the position of the abused. “Rather than reading for victory with Nietzsche, or even reading for victory against Nietzsche by identifying with the slave morality, we read for victory against ourselves, making ourselves the victims of the text. [...] Reading like losers will make us feel powerless and vulnerable” (Bull, 37). We can see this displayed quite clearly in cringe culture - it is an entire aesthetic created from the feeling of being worthless and small; of being less-than, plentiful, disposable - and embracing it. What does it mean to be one of these herd-creatures, so deprived of power? What could our values be?

c. Levelling

To understand what the losers of the nihilistic future believe in, we need to take a quick look at the history of Nietzsche’s interpreters, and how our understanding of the history of nihilism has developed over the years. This is the same history as the history of Being, the history of Nothingness. Bull spends much of the text discussing this, and it is well worth the read, but we’ll have to suffice for a brief synopsis here.

Bull brings us from the superman down to the lowest form, travelling from subhuman to animal to inanimate. He does so by continuing to read like a loser: examining Nietzsche himself, then Heidegger, then contemporary scholars Vatimo, Nancy, and Agamben. In each of these scholars Bull finds a target: for Nietzsche, the subhuman; for Heidegger, the animal; and for our contemporary scholars, the inanimate. In each case we must consider ourselves the loser of the exchange - we must consider ourselves as one with the subhuman, the animal, and the inanimate. We must become a mirror, reflecting on mu - absolute nothingness.

In essence: We must bring ourselves down to the lowest level of the un-valued if we are to escape the extremities of prejudice which Nietzsche’s lessons, so embedded in our culture, have taught us. This is levelling. Its essence is radical empathy. Nietzsche’s earlier works were focused on overcoming nihilism; he later gave up and decided that he must himself be a nihilist, one who destroys. Yet, in declaring himself a nihilist I think he was grasping at a concept that Hegel explains best: non-nihilating contradiction. To overcome nihilism is the same as to become a nihilist: to become dynamite - self-nihilating. If we are to reevaluate all values, we must obliterate ourselves. We must re-evaluate the concept of self, the concept of reality.

[phanfictioncatalogue]

Different First Meeting Masterlist

Links Last Checked: March 22nd, 2022

A Different First Meeting WITH DOGS! - secretlywritingstories

Summary: I feel like they have fallen in love… They have…

a good sharp edge is a man's best hedge (ao3) - chickenfree

Summary: "He looks – slightly unhinged, Dan decides. Obviously unhinged, since he’s making eye contact with strangers on the tube. That’s the only explanation for why the seat next to him is still empty."

all the world's a stage (ao3) - croissantbleu

Summary: As an openly queer actor and a vocal activist for the community, Dan Howell wasn't exactly surprised when a news outlet contacted him to offer him an interview and his picture on the cover of their Pride edition, but he wasn't quite expecting what this interview, and this reporter, would lead to.

captive audience (ao3) - CallofTheCurlew

Summary: It feels silly to actually be glad about airline delays. It’s definitely silly for him to be thankful there was a blizzard, but Dan doesn’t have that many friends to begin with. There’s never been much opportunity for friendship in his line of work, so if latching onto the first person who has shown common interests with him is desperate, well maybe he doesn’t mind being desperate.

'Fuck You' - 'I Don't Understand' (ao3) - rainbowchristy

Summary: Prompt: (Dan is A and Phil is B) Soulmate AU where the first words your soulmate says to you are on your wrist- person A is worried that person B won’t have any words because A is mute/worried they won’t hear the words because they’re deaf but then the words turn out to just be said to each other in sign language (B is translator maybe?) or B doesn’t realise what the sign language means and A is sad because B said their words and shows B the wrist and B shows their wrist like “but you haven’t said anything to me” and A is excited because what they signed is written on B’s wrist.

hurry up and wait (ao3) - jestbee

Summary: This is a bad date. Dan usually would have bailed out ages ago. Phil is just some bloke he picked up in a bar, so it isn't like he's invested. The problem, and it's one Dan has been wrestling with all night, is that Phil is incredibly hot.

Je m'appelle Claude (ao3) - sierraadeux

Summary: The time when Phil told us they went to the Frieze art fair and played a game where they made up fake names, but make it a meet-cute.

Luckily Cursed (ao3) - TsingaDark

Summary: Sometimes Dan thinks he might be a little bit cursed. He knows that’s bullshit, of course, but still, his bad luck regarding first dates is kind of conspicuous.

Midnight Delivery (ao3) - mendelssohnslieder

Summary: Dan works at a pizza place. Phil places an order on a dare.

Monochrome - intoapuddle

Summary: When you build your life out of fear that your mental illness could worsen, it leaves little room for excitement. Luckily, Dan has found a space online where he feels comfortable.

No, we're not calling this fate (ao3) - everythingisalot

Summary: Dan's mother had always wanted him to settle down with a nice girl, pity she'd gone and caused the complete opposite.

Questionable - allthephils

Summary: Dan’s date went very badly and Phil’s didn’t go at all. Good thing they found eachother.

sleep away (ao3) - natigail

Summary: A stranger falls asleep on Phil's shoulder while riding on the Underground. Phil is content to let him rest however long he needs. He doesn't expect the guy - Dan - to wake up and be mad about it.

a.k.a. the three times Dan accidentally falls asleep on Phil and the one time he does it on purpose.

Some Other Light (ao3) - jestbee

Summary: Dan works the night shift because it's easier to exist in the dark.

Stars Are Gonna Shine Tonight (ao3) - starrywrite

Summary: “Heaven knows how I loved you.”- Five For Fighting, Heaven Knows.

AU! When young Dan first heard the story of Sadako Sasaki and A Thousand Paper Cranes, he decided that he didn't need to fold a thousand paper cranes in return for a wish, because his greatest wish he never made has already come true: he has a friend like Phil Lester. Dan and Phil have been best friends for as long as Dan can remember (and maybe Dan’s been a little in love with Phil for as long as he can remember as well), and everything is nothing short of perfect for Dan Howell. But then all it takes is three words to shatter Dan’s entire world, and he decides that maybe wishes aren't as overrated as he thought - if a wish could save Phil's life, that is.

The Innkeeper's Son (ao3) - whataqueerfish

Summary: In which teenage Dan is dragged along on a family vacation and ends up meeting some scary trees, an angry moth, and the boy of his dreams.

Unveiled (ao3) - intoapuddle

Summary: Dan has been invited as a plus one for a friend to a strangers' wedding.

He's sure he'll feel out of place all night until he meets a handsome stranger at the bar.

“It’s a wedding. It’s the weirdest situation to meet anyone and it never ends with two people getting together. Let’s just be honest and say that we’re both feeling lonely."

Spanning the events of one eventful evening.

up for the new buzz (ao3) - jestbee

Summary: Dan remembers getting his ears pierced and how he'd felt so adult at the time, like he'd done something revolutionary and rebellious. But it hadn't been in a place like this, it had been tame in comparison to the type of world he's just walked into with no idea if he's out of his depth.

[potagepotiron]

Hate crime

Season 3 of WTFock has ended, Robbe & Sander have found love and everyone is eagerly awaiting Christmas. It is a time to be happy. Well I’m not. I’m not happy because of how WTFock handled an important event that could have been a gamechanger for LGBTQ fiction. I’m talking about the hate crime that ended episode 28. The way in which this plot line was conceived, handled and received, tells you a lot of how our society views minorities.

Fist and foremost, I am a SKAM fan. I watched every clip and every remake. My favourite is Season 3. Because I’m a gay man. I also know this series can change people’s minds. How different crews made it into their own and are very proud about the result. So I had high hopes when a Flemish version of Season 3 was announced.

So I was watching season 3, had a few remarks here and there, and then came that slur. I’ve written about it earlier. To a gay man like me, familiar with internalized homophobia, the concept of using a terrible slur and throwing accusations at Sander like Robbe just seemed baffling. Do not do unto others what you wouldn’t want them to do to you. You wouldn’t subject another human being to such hate, because you know how it feels. Pure and simple. And then, the hate crime happened.

Let’s be honest, WTFock failed in handling the hate crime, from the absence of trigger warnings before the clip, to the immediate aftermath, right until the very end of the series. There was no middle ground, it either had to commit to its choice and be brilliant or fail. It failed miserably. It chose to portray Robbe & Sander as victims and refused to show any form of queer resilience. And even when it became clear, near the end, that they decided to have the attack trigger other major events in the story, the writers opted to not address the hate crime. And to the optimists stating that the attack could be dealt with in Season 4, I say this: too late.

Personally, I wouldn’t have included graphic violence in the first place. To me there is no value in showing violence. I seriously doubt its inclusion in a series aimed at a teenage audience, because the negatives (trauma and copycat behaviour) far outweigh the learning opportunities, even when handled perfectly. I couldn’t finish the clip. That night, I, a grown man of 35 years of age, was wide awake in my bed until 4 in the morning. I couldn’t sleep, knowing that a number of LGBTQ youth saw that clip and became afraid. Decided to hide in the closet for a bit longer, maybe. The scene simply is not worth it.

And despite my sentiments, the reactions online seemed to disagree: “we needed to show this. We needed to be shown this. People need to know.” I couldn’t understand. Trust me, I know about gay bashing. And so should you. I read all the articles in newspapers about the atrocious hatecrimes in Belgium and elsewhere. I know who Ihsane Jarfi is. Friends of mine who are in a relationship have been scared to go out late at night. I’ve been called names in the street myself. I know. The quesion is, why do I need to see two boys being beaten and left in the street?

I don’t think the depiction of a gay bashing had its place in WTFock. However, I do think that a discussion of homophobia should be included, albeit in another way. Gay violence and intolerance could have been a part of the talk that Robbe & Milan had. I’m not demanding to turn a blind eye to homophobia or to sugarcoat a story. Also, I myself am not blind to homophobia. On the contrary, I have encountered more of it this year than ever before. Belgian football, for example, is still rife with homophobic chants. And recently far right politicians have stressed the need to clearly define norms and abnormality with regard to sexual orientation and the rights to adopt or to get married.

The real question is what kind of homophobia the show chooses, wants to or needs to battle. Gay bashing is a radical example of hate, but hate has many forms. And all hate is the result of a much more complex undercurrent in Flemish society. Hate stems from fear of the unknown, indifference or lack of knowledge. And that is why Flemish LGBT interest group çavaria remains committed to eradicating homophobia in schools. This behaviour can be unlearned. Education is key. And that is why it was a good decision for WTFock to zoom in on the reactions of friends after a coming out. They could have gone the extra mile, though. Homophobia is far more varied and widespread than WTFock shows you.

Back to the hate crime. I wonder why the WTFock writing team missed the mark. Norwegian SKAM director Julie Andem demanded that research into the local youth culture should precede any adaptation of the original content. I’m finding it hard to believe that the gay community was on board with the decision to show a gay bashing. I consulted among my gay friends and all thought it was a bad idea. I also wonder whether or not anti-gay violence is a problem that is typical of Flanders. It’s hard to find reliable data on hate crimes and to interpret it because there could be a reluctance to report incidents, but there seems to be no significant difference between Belgium and its neighbouring countries, nor is there a statistically significant rise in homophobic attacks during the last years. There has been a rise, but that could be due to a higher percentage of people reporting incidents.

I’ve argued that the choices the writers made are bad, and that there is little or no claim to say that hate crimes are typical of Flanders, no more than anywhere else in Western Europe or Scandinavia, where the series originated and where gay bashing wasn’t included. But do I believe that the writers knowingly sabotaged their own writing efforts? Surely not. Yet, it’s hard to pinpoint why the series was developed the way it was without hearing from the makers. Chances are we’ll never know. Unlike their French or Norwegian counterparts, the screenwriters have, up to now, chosen not to communicate on the series. It is my perception that indifference to its LGBTQ audience, an appetite for drama and shock value and a degree of ignorance manifested itself throughout the series. That may or may not have been the intention of the makers, we can’t know, but it certainly had that effect on me as a viewer.

As always, a part of me that says I’m being too harsh. I can imagine it’s a lot less difficult and a lot more relaxed to write series on superheroes then it is navigating your way through the pitfalls of minority representation or gay televised fiction, a genre that exists less than 30 years and of which the rules are being rewritten constantly. It’s also not easy to have a number of militant gays like myself looking over your shoulders constantly, scrutinizing every line and every motive and picking on the one detail that got overlooked.

And should we dismiss the entire series because of this one incident? Let’s move on, Sander and Robbe are happy. Isn’t that a heartwarming prospect to gay kids? But this relativity is the problem. Silencing a hate crime not a detail. Showing violence on tv has repercussions, and they can’t be undone by having a cute gay couple smooch underneath a Christmas tree. A SKAM remake has a responsibility towards its audience. And it’s not that a chance like this comes around often. Budget cuts in locally produced fiction will mean it will take years before there’s another chance to see local gay fiction on screen. So every chance we get needs to be perfect. Because it will affect a new generation of young people.

Ultimately, the question is why it is so hard to have good quality gay stories, made by queer creators for a queer audience? Why was this series made by three white middle-aged men with a background in marketing, with only one of them with proven credentials in screenwriting? Why is it so hard to hire gay actors or to find authentic gay voices? Is it really necessary that a series like SKAM S3 contains “learning moments for the straight community”? Can’t we, for once, make a tv series without taking into account the heterosexual majority? It might be a bit tentative of me to say this, but I’m sure Niels Rahou, the writer of Season 3 of SkamFrance, wouldn’t have included a gay bashing scene. He has commented frequently on his scenarios, he is openly gay and he stated he would have benefited from a similar series during his adolescence. I don’t think the Belgian writing team wrote with the same sense of urgency or treated SKAM as a passion project.

To end, let’s go back to the original version of Skam Norway. The reason why the format was so revolutionary is precisely because being gay or coming out wasn’t a big deal. Jonas didn’t bat an eyelid when Isak told him he’d been with a boy. His friends were fine with it, and so were his parents. Isak faced an internal struggle, gradually coming to terms with and being the result of living in a heteronormative society. But ultimately the mopey kid with a love of sleeping waged a bigger war with his eternally overflowing locker. He just accepted his sexuality. In the end, though, Isak had grown as a person and showed serious committment to his boyfriend Even. But the eye-opener of the series was the way in which same-sex attraction was treated as something not to worry about.

As a reaction to the way in which homosexuality was depicted as part of mundane everyday life, people rightfully complained that this story was a bit too rosy. And it’s true, there is white middle class privilege in this story. Among certain communities, coming out still isn’t evident and living a gay life is considered unsafe for some people. Yet, Julie Andem would rather show her viewers with a vision of an ideal world, in order to help and comfort a LGBT audience, than care about what the public would think of the season. I think WTFock could have been more attentive to that message.

Luckily, for most of us, being gay doesn’t lead us to being the victim of a hate crime. That doesn’t mean we can turn away from the reality of such violence. But almost all of my gay friends have, one way or another, been confronted with various examples of homophobic behavior. More often than not, these instances are based on ignorance and are more small-scale in nature. Being called names in the street. A supposedly witty remark made by a drunk uncle at a Christmas party. Or take the well-known Flemish tv personality who, in all his innocence, made a plea for abolishing the Antwerp gay pride parade during a televised comedy show in june. He was applauded by the audience and genuinely seemed impressed by his clever, seemingly inclusive reasoning. More often than not, the threats the homosexual community face consist not of the raw violence of the physical attack, but of vulgarity, stupidity or ignorance. It is a potentially dangerous to narrow down homophobia to physical attacks and take the risk to have your audience believe that they’re in the clear as long as they don’t punch someone to death.

The only way things will change for the better is when the heterosexual majority steps up its game. This means they have to change, they have to start questioning their accepted beliefs, or how they educate their kids. Ultimately, they themselves won’t benefit from these changes, on the contrary, society as a whole will be a bit less tailored to them when heteronormativity is eradicated.  Inclusivity is about the majority caring about the minority. So this is my advice to the WTFock team. Don’t care about clicks, controversy or drama. Don’t perpetuate the representation of LGBT individuals as victims of a harsh outside world. Dare to shake up old, established narratives. Show that homophobia is far more pervasive and far more subtle than the large-scale evil of a hate crime. And if you’re going down that route anyway, commit to it. Don’t brush it off. Status quo is no longer an option.

[comicteaparty]

May 11th-May 17th, 2020 CTP Archive

The archive for the Comic Tea Party week long chat that occurred from May 11th, 2020 to May 17th, 2020.  The chat focused on Gender Slices by Jey Pawlik.

Featured Comment:

Chat:

Comic Tea Party

BOOK CLUB START!

Hello and welcome everyone to Comic Tea Party’s Book Club~! This week we’ll be focusing on Gender Slices by Jey Pawlik~! (https://topazcomics.com/genderslices/vol1/)

You are free to read and comment about the comic all week at your own pace until May 17th, so stop on by whenever it suits your schedule! Discussions are freeform, but we do offer discussion prompts in the pins for those who’d like to have them. Additionally, remember that while constructive criticism is allowed, our focus is to have fun and appreciate the comic! Whether you finish the comic or can only read a few pages, everyone is welcome to join and chat with us!

DISCUSSION PROMPTS – PART 1

1. What did you like about the beginning of the comic?

2. What has been your favorite moment in the comic (so far)?

3. Who is your favorite character?

4. Which characters do like seeing interact the most?

5. What is something you like about the art? If you have a favorite illustration, please share it!

6. What is a theme you like that the comic explores?

7. What do you like about the comic’s story or overall related content?

8. Overall, what do you think the comic’s strengths are?

Don’t feel inspired by the prompts? Feel free to discuss anything else that interested you!

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I have read the comic before. The whole thing and the author's comment at the end. It is such a shame to hear that Jey has gotten hate for their work. It takes a lot of bravery to be so openly queer on the internet, and I admire it a lot.

I like the art!

It is simple and clean and expressive.

This might be a bit of a weird comment, but from how Jey draws themselves, I feel like I have an understanding of how they actually look?

Like, their face and body are just a few lines here, but they're a distinctive few lines.

About the writing: it's hard to make a short form comic like this! Brevity is the soul of wit and all that, and it's hard to be concise!

But I think they manage it well

I feel like every panel has a purpose

I think it's fascinating, and sometimes saddening, how how you are and how you look affects how others treat you

This comic gave me greater insight into what it's like to be seen as non binary. Or, to not be seen as non binary when you are

I don't know if Jey will be reading this, but thank you for making the comic <3

I hope that many other people learned something from reading it as well

eliushi [a winged tale]

I really enjoy comics that give me more insight into other people’s lives. Bookmarked and will go through the comic this week!

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

Wow, I love the way the webcomic showed how being nonbinary was like. It's very simple and gets the point across very well. I'm also going to keep reading it.

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

On Gender Slices; - I enjoy how personal and insightful about Jey's journey as non binary. - I like how clean and straight forward the story is. It's more like an auto bio comic strip - Even though the designs are simplistic, I see the author's personal struggle within. - As a reader, I really like self discovery stories. Gender Slices is helping me think about gender spectrum, respecting pronouns. - Overall, it expresses how different stages of your life, your identity can change as a non binary person. Wow this comic accurately shows the common issues my enby friends complain about. But it's much clearer in this comic format(edited)

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

I loved Gender Slices! It's hard for me to comment on character and stuff when it's, like, autobiographical? Like, that's a real human person lol. But I really think the comic does a great job of conveying Jey's journey through their identity with all these short scenarios. It feels like a diary of sorts, and that's really cool to me.

eliushi [a winged tale]

I really enjoyed this and will be recommending it to folks I think will benefit from understanding this community better. I found the most powerful messages and portrayal of experiences come from the small everyday things that we often take for granted. I felt the clean art style and clear panels helped the autobiographical narrative be very approachable. Most importantly, the tips offering better phrasing and approaches to talking about gender in the comic were very enlightening and useful. I hope more people read this, young to old to in-between! There will always be things to learn on how to respect and love each other more.

RebelVampire

What I like about the beginning of the comic and the art style all in one is just how clean the art is. I'm a huge fan of good, easy to read linework, since it's much easier for me as a reader to understand what's going on. This is something that occurred through out the comic, so each strip's message was conveyed really clearly. <3 I am overall glad this comic exists, as it's good to hear people's unique stories as they deal with life, whether it's something unique related to being nb or something that's somewhat universal regardless of those sorts of issues; I know at the beginning, disappointing parents was a pretty big theme and I think that's something we all experience. This was also clearly an extremely personal story at work, and it takes a truly brave soul to make something like this. Which honestly, I think those are the parts that make the comic the strongest. It's a personal story, and you know these events really happened and get to connect with the creator on a personal level without even knowing them. As such, the material really sticks with you because of that personal, emotional connection that's developed as you read it. As for a "favorite" moment, there is one strip that stood out to me (which I sadly didn't bookmark). But in it, Jey talks about how they appreciate having words and "labels" to describe themself, but also acknowledges that some people don't like to label themselves. And as a person who doesn't like to label themself, I really appreciated that. This is something I feel rarely gets mentioned in webcomics, so I liked that there was a mutual respect established in the strip that it's ok to have a preference in that regard and that whether you want to find labels for yourself or don't want to, you're a cool person.

Comic Tea Party

DISCUSSION PROMPTS – PART 2

9. Of the moments in the comic, which did you find the most personally relatable and why? In what ways do you think that moment might help others who read it?

10. What do you think the personal stories in this comic teach us about finding personal happiness, self-acceptance, and acceptance from others?

11. Why do you think telling stories about the sorts of gender issues presented here are important, and what moments in the comic show why that’s the case?

12. How does the comic being autobiographical versus fiction affect your views on the comic’s messages? In what ways does it being autobiographical make it stand out from other comics?

Don’t feel inspired by the prompts? Feel free to discuss anything else that interested you!

RebelVampire

I've already talked about the most relatable moment in regards to favorite for me. I think it's a helpful moment because it just helps show everyone is different, and that it's good to have mutual respect all around. I think that the personal stories teach us about the themes of happiness, acceptance, etc. is that it's hard work. You aren't gonna nail it in one day, and you also can't be expected to. Society certainly may want you to have a grasp on these things, but ultimately these things are achieved at your own pace and you shouldn't beat yourself up over it. These stories are important for a lot of reasons, but for me personally I always think the most important thing is that it just makes people feel not alone. And I think the part of the comic that shows this is the strips about Jey finding people in their community. Humans do not like to feel lonely, and these stories help show people that no, even if you're in a community where this isn't a thing, there's billions of people in the world and theres always a community out there to share your experiences with and bond with. Autobiographical comics, in my opinion, tend to have a much stronger emotional connections. Sometimes with fiction stories, it can be hard to really get into the emotions, since at the end of the day, characters are representations of people and not exactly people. They can be damn good and feel super real, but there will always be that gap of "but it's fiction." Autobiographical stories don't have this. They are basically raw emotions put onto a page, and there's just this inherent sense of reality to them that fiction struggles to capture sometimes. As such, the messages they deliver are more powerful in most cases.

Comic Tea Party

DISCUSSION PROMPTS – PART 3

13. What are you most looking forward to seeing in regards to the comic?

14. Any final words of encouragement for the comic?

Don’t feel inspired by the prompts? Feel free to discuss anything else that interested you!

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

Going back to the previous question; 9. Most personally was expressing how Jey tried to self talk to adjust to a new name. But end up falling back to their birth name. 10. It helps to see how one might struggle internally, what gender disphoria feels from the character's pov. 12. It gives a deeper insight since this is a real person's experience and not a fantasy character going through the stages. I will continue reading Jey's journey and learn from their experiences. I think it's a good guide to what a non binary person goes through.(edited)

RebelVampire

Well since the comic is done, I am looking forward to seeing more people discover it. I know lots of people really need stories like this, so its nice to see when people are positively affected by them. Once again, it is a great thing this comic exists. Maybe it's not a comic for you, but it's one of those comics where you can tell it means a lot to someone out there, and I think everyone needs those special collection of stories to help them navigate through life

Comic Tea Party

BOOK CLUB END!

Thank you everyone so much for reading and chatting about Gender Slices this week! Please also give a special thank you to Jey Pawlik for volunteering the comic and creating it! If you liked Gender Slices, make sure to continue to support it via some of the links below!

Read and Comment: https://topazcomics.com/genderslices/vol1/

Jey’s Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/jpawlik

Topaz Comic’s Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/topazcomics

Topaz Comic’s Shop: https://topazcomics.com/shop/

Topaz Comic’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/topazcomics

[williamsockner]

LGBT+ Identity in the Time of Mindless Self Indulgence

Mindless Self Indulgence isn’t an act that could have flourished at any other time. The emo/pop punk wave was gathering steam; hip hop was still a novelty one could distinguish themselves from the flock by cribbing. “Random” Invader Zim-style humor was in the decline, while “edgy” no-limits humor was skyrocketing. Nerds hadn’t become the dominant force they are today, but due to the internet and the rise in manga and anime sales in the United States, they were able to access nerdy content much more easily. Youtube was taking off, music piracy was booming, and reliance on both radio and local record-store gatekeepers was at a low for young music fans.

Perhaps most critically, our national understanding of politics and identity at the time, particularly LGBT+ identities, was in a different stage of development than it is today. “Punching up” vs. “punching down” was not a concept that most people considered in their comedy. “It’s just a joke” was more widely accepted as an excuse for transgressive entertainment than it is today. “I’m an equal opportunity hater” was a common refrain.

Early in their career, the band released multiple tracks where Jimmy Urine, a man who was certainly not black, used the n-word. The “Pantyshot” cassingle was a treasured possession among MSI fans, featuring an early song that supposedly lost them a record deal due to being about lusting over a 5 year-old. Little Jimmy Urine sold kisses for a dollar to fans after shows, including to the teenagers. As a whole, the band made punchlines of racial and sexual slurs, rape and child abuse, school shootings, prostitution, drug use, incest, and just about every other taboo under the sun.

The understanding was that none of it was real and that none of it had any real consequences. Calling someone a faggot didn’t matter if we were all in on the joke, that homophobia was stupid. Words were just words. The identity of the speaker didn’t matter so long as their ideology was clear. It was something of an inversion of the way we publicly navigate comedy now, in that their identity determines where on the ladder they are to punch up or down, and the contents of their ideology is of minimal consequence compared to the text of their words. The context of a joke is not a matter of what the audience believes, but of the many complexities of hierarchy that society as a whole believes.

“Who cares?” asks 2008. “It’s just words.”

“How could it not matter?” answers 2018. “Words create culture.”

So LGBT+ identity in the era of Mindless Self Indulgence.

Describing the difference between 2005 and 2018 to young queer people is a source of anxiety for me, because I feel like the old woman talking about how she walked uphill both ways to the library if she wanted to read a book. It’s difficult, however, to put in perspective how quickly the culture around LGBT+ identities has changed. As dangerous as it is for queer kids today, they have much freer access to information about their resources and history than we did, and far greater representation in all forms of media.

When I was a teenager, I was the first person openly LGBT at my school, and my only point of reference for LGBT identities were Rosie O’Donnell and Elton John. There was no “Born This Way” yet, no Halsey and Hayley Kiyoko and Ellen Page, no Troye Sivan and Adam Lambert and Frank Ocean, no Miley Cyrus, no Laverne Cox. There were no empowerment ballads.

Which was fine, because I didn’t want empowerment ballads anyway. I felt disgusting. In reckoning with my LGBT+ identity, I felt small, broken, repulsive, confused, discarded and doomed. I was sickened in my own skin and filled with self-loathing because of my sexual orientation. Sometimes I still am. When I was 15, I drew a map of my heart, and in between the “fields of sexual insecurity” and “possibly irreparable damage” I had written “guilt!” several times and underlined it.

“You’re beautiful” didn’t only feel false, it felt invalidating. I was fiercely defensive of my self-hatred. I was working so hard at it, spending so much time and energy convincing myself I deserved the beating I was giving myself. To this day the barriers I’ve put up against generic bromides persist, and songs like “Scars to Your Beautiful” or “Roar” make me cringe. Maybe someone gets something out of them, but I can only think of the teenagers like me who used that sort of sentiment as fuel for their own self-abuse. I remember once bursting into tears at a “Jesus Loves You” sticker because it served as proof that the whole world was playing a joke on me, telling me that someone so unlovable should have some hope.

It was impossible to internalize that queerness was not dirty, unnatural and loathsome. Any attempt to break that association was drown out by the rest of the messaging we were receiving and our own tried-and-true mental gymnastics. Reassurance could not reach us at the bottom of the well.

At the time, I was obsessed with Mindless Self Indulgence with the kind of all-consuming adoration that only teenagers can possess. I aped frontman Little Jimmy Urine’s fashion, writing slogans across my coats with white tape. “What Do They Know” and “Cocaine and Toupees” were my ringtones, much to my mother’s chagrin. I had catalogues of bootlegs, lovingly sorted and pressed to CD. Mindless Self Indulgence populated my artwork, both in classroom doodles and in art pieces for my portfolio that I labored on for weeks. They were the subject of my college application essay. I met my first love on an MSI forum (which I moderated) and lost a few romantic relationships over my inability to talk about anything else. I owned every shirt. When I was hired on at Barnes & Noble’s music section, I would nominate Frankenstein Girls Will Seem Strangely Sexy for the staff recommendation shelf every single week, and whenever it inevitably got recalled to the warehouse for lack of sales, I’d order it right back.

Sometimes my friends and I would go to the mall parking lot at night and blast Mindless Self Indulgence from my car, dancing around the empty lot with our striped stockings, fingerless gloves and Hot Topic trip pants.

This band kept me from killing myself.

“I’m filthy, disgusting, horrible, irredeemable,” we’d say. “People tell us we’re beautiful and we know they’re lying. I’m a freak.”

“Yeah, you’re fucking ugly,” the music said. “So what? So’s everything else. Have some fun with it.”

Despite the fact that Jimmy Urine has never publicly labeled himself with an LGBT identity, we young LGBT MSI fans claimed him as our own. We enshrined the article where he described being sexually attracted to anyone regardless of gender. We imitated and revered his gender fuckery onstage, the skirts, the pink suits and tutus, the eyeliner, his yelping falsetto leaping up from the masculine shouting, the way he danced. We pored over lyrics - that we transcribed ourselves in many cases, through multiple listens and endless debate - for those nuggets of same-sex attraction and gender ambiguity.

“I make a good girl but I make a terrible boy,” went one song. “These things in my pants that we’re all waiting for, I never really knew what that thing down there was used for,” went another. And the most sacred text of all was “Faggot”, off Frankenstein Girls Will Seem Strangely Sexy, the most beloved record of the vast majority of hardcore MSI fans.

“I played that shit straight / blowing suckas to the side hopin' I get laid / now everybody knows / no way in hell I can ever live it down”.

Shit was a revelation.

Kitty, the drummer of Mindless Self Indulgence, once said of the band’s LGBT fans that listening to MSI’s music was like vomiting: it hurts at the time, but then you feel better. You got it out. And the band always cultivated their relationship with their LGBT fans. Gay marriage was one of the few political issues they openly took a stance on, in a time when states like my own were amending constitutions to protect themselves from Massachusetts’ same-sex marriages.

Thus, we had a place where we felt simultaneously seen and valued by the band, and unseen amongst the chaos surrounding us. The irreverent humor of the band created a safe space where homosexuality could be disgusting, but so was everything else. There was no shame at an MSI concert. You were listening to a man famed for drinking his own urine sing about whipping his meat out, who cared if you liked to kiss girls? That’s old news. We’re all freaks down here at the bottom of the well.

I’m 28 now, and I don’t know if the kids these days have an equivalent band. I don’t know if there’s a market for it anymore; I’m sure there will always be queer kids who have internalized the awful message that they are inherently unlovable, but I’m not sure if they can’t find more accessible and more inherently positive panaceas. I see mutations of the same style of humor in Willam from RuPaul’s Drag Race and in some of the undercurrents of Tumblr’s teen humor. “We’re goblins, trash, garbage babies.”

“Yeah,” my inner child says. “I fucking feel that.”

The paradigm of humor has changed since 2008, at least in my circles, and the reasons for that are manifold, political, social, capitalistic. In many ways, it’s been a good thing: bigotry can be exposed rather than cloaked in excuses. A basic understanding of social inequality is presumed of most audiences. People are responsible for the impact of their words, not the intent. “Equal opportunity hater” is seem for what it is: intellectually lazy and blinkered, the refuge of white guys who don’t want to own up to the fact that some jokes aren’t funny.

But I’ll always have a place in my heart for comedy that meets people where they’re at. Where we’re at isn’t always beautiful or acceptable or healthy, but sometimes it’s the place where we need the laugh most.

[missboomissquick]

This November, the Whitney Museum of American Art offers a major reassessment with “Andy Warhol—From A to B and Back Again,” the first American retrospective of the artist in nearly 30 years. Featuring more than 350 works of art, ranging from paintings Warhol did in his childhood living room in Pittsburgh to his notorious films of the 1960s to his late-career collaborations with Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, the exhibition will later travel to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Art Institute of Chicago.

One of its most groundbreaking aspects will be the concentration on the least-known time of Warhol’s life, the 1950s. During his first decade in New York, he was a young commercial artist and an openly gay man, trying to turn himself into a fine artist. The Whitney show brings together about 70 Warhol works from that period: elegant drawings of shoes for advertising campaigns, ballpoint pen drawings of men in drag, fey illustrated books that he printed privately for friends, male nudes in gold leaf, a sketchbook of men’s torsos. The assumption has been that Warhol’s career as a serious artist began in the summer of 1962, with Irving Blum’s famous exhibition at the Ferus Gallery, in Los Angeles, of 32 soup cans, but the Whitney show allows the earlier paintings, drawings, and commercial work to be seen in a new context. “This early period was critical for Warhol,” says Neil Printz, the editor of the artist’s catalogue raisonné. “It was instrumental and utterly productive.” Blake Gopnik, who has spent years researching a biography of the artist, to be published next fall, believes that past discussions of the period, especially in the context of the hyper-conservative McCarthy era, have been off base. “What truly matters about Warhol’s 1950s drawings is the brazenly gay content they carry,” Gopnik says. “The very banality of their style lets them function as a transparent carrier, you could say, for their queer themes.”

Warhol arrived in New York in the summer of 1949, when he was just 21 years old. On his second day in the city, he approached Tina Fredericks, the well-known art director of Glamour magazine, who told him that she was looking for drawings of shoes and that she needed them the next morning. She hired Warhol on the spot; his first illustrations appeared in the magazine’s September issue, depicting five red pumps ascending the ladder of success. His rise as a commercial artist was meteoric. He regularly illustrated articles for Glamour, Seventeen, and Mademoiselle, and drew album covers for Columbia records. By 1955, he was the sole illustrator for the prestigious ads for I. Miller & Sons shoes, which appeared on the society pages of The New York Times. By the mid-’50s, particularly in the New York fashion world, Warhol had arrived. As a New Year’s gift in 1957, he sent Diana Vreeland, who was at the time the fashion editor of Harper’s Bazaar, a small book of 18 delicately colored lithographs, 25 Cats Named Sam and One Blue Pussy. “How much I appreciate the book I have on my desk of the delicious cats,” Vreeland wrote Warhol. “Your drawings are so charming.”

At the same time that he was making elegant, whimsical drawings of smiling perfume bottles for magazines, Warhol was exploring more personal work, such as sexy portraits of tattooed sailors and fanciful drawings of gold slippers that he named after such iconic figures as Mae West and Zsa Zsa Gabor. But his first attempts to move into the realm of fine art were not successful. In the mid-1950s, Warhol was commissioned for the first time by the department store Bonwit Teller to create displays for its windows on Fifth Avenue. His installation appeared next to that of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, artists just as unknown as Warhol, who worked together under the pseudonym of Matson Jones. Hoping that the visibility would lead to important gallery exhibitions, Warhol used a photograph of a man in drag posed as a fashion model. Even other gay artists were horrified. As Warhol later recalled, “Bob and Jasper came and looked at what I was doing and laughed at me. They pointed their fingers and laughed—they were so mean.” As De Salvo, who met Warhol in the mid-’80s and has become one of the leading experts on his early work, characterizes the incident: “Andy was too swish and chichi for Bob and Jasper.”

Considering that homosexuality was against the law in the U.S. in the 1950s, and certainly not accepted in the New York art world, Warhol was remarkably open about being gay (an essay in the Whitney catalog about those years is cheekily titled, “Picture Portraits: Miss Warhol Knows What the Client Wants”). “Being gay was absolutely vital to who Warhol was in 1950s New York, to how he was seen—both for better and worse—and to the art he made,” Gopnik points out. “All his attempts at making serious art in that era involved imagery that still reads as gay to us and screamed it in the 1950s. That made his art highly appreciated in the gay world around Warhol and almost intolerable, and mostly incomprehensible, to mainstream straights.” The subjects of Warhol’s drawings were often men in drag. He did not hesitate to depict two men kissing or, it is said, to ask nearly any man he met if he could draw his cock. His first exhibition of art, in 1952 for the openly gay Alexander Iolas at the Hugo Gallery, in New York, was called “Fifteen Drawings Based on the Writings of Truman Capote.” “An air of carefully studied perversity,” a leading art critic deemed it.

Although there is overt homoeroticism in much of Warhol’s personal art in the ’50s, later in the decade it is often disguised. “It is the beginning of seeing how Warhol, as the years go on, and his style emerges into the Pop art that we know, has this layered language,” De Salvo explains. “Marilyn Monroe can be read multiple ways. Elvis Presley can be read multiple ways. And the early Popeye, Superman, and Dick Tracy paintings—it is interesting that he focuses on these archetypes, all of these straight, powerful guys. Everything has multiple meanings, and this notion of his sexuality—of gay sexuality—continues to be coded, obscured, but it’s there, depending on who is reading it.”

Male Nude, circa 1957, is typical of a time when Warhol would routinely ask men if he could draw their private parts.

© The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS) New York.

With the Warhol show taking over nearly three floors at the Whitney, making it the largest devoted to a single artist in the new downtown building, which opened in 2015, De Salvo believes that this more complete picture will deepen the understanding of his development into one of the most important postwar artists, particularly for those yet to be convinced of Warhol’s seriousness as an artist. It’s a big Warhol moment: In addition to the Whitney show, the Dia Art Foundation will present Warhol’s Shadows, 1978–1979, a monumental painting in multiple parts, at the Calvin Kleinheadquarters in New York, through December 15. “There are the naysayers who really hate Warhol, who saw him as someone who introduced a crass commercialism, who blurred the line between art and commerce,” De Salvo says. “I think he was making an honest statement about the nature of the United States, which is now true in a way it could not have been imagined in the 1960s. I can’t convince the people who do not want to be convinced, and that’s fine. He’s a provocative figure—he provoked.”

[pass-the-bechdel]

Teen Wolf full series review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

82% (eighty-two of one hundred).

What is the average percentage of female characters with names and lines for the full series?

35.07%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Twenty-eight.

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 50% female?

Seven.

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

Two.

Positive Content Status:

Impressive and uplifting: it’s a show aimed at teens and young adults, and it recognises and takes full responsibility for representing a positive and progressive outlook to its audience. It’s a show full of complex, powerful, smart, skilled, wonderful, diverse female characters, and male characters who are emotional and vulnerable and honest and supportive with one another without judgment, and queer people living openly and happily without fear. I have had relatively minor quibbles, and I wouldn’t call it perfect representation, but it is easily the strongest example I currently have of the kind of positive representation I value (average rating of 3.18).

Which season had the best representation statistics overall?

Tough call, but season six part one edges out the competition by virtue of the highest percentage of female characters for the series (42.52%), which helps it to also score six episodes with 40%+ and three with their casts balanced or female-led at 50%+. It also turned in a 90% pass on the Bechdel.

Which season had the worst representation statistics overall?

Season two, which featured both of the series’ under-20% female cast episodes, and turned in a total percentage of 26.5%, with only 58.3% on the Bechdel. It’s saving grace: the second-highest positive representation score of the series (3.41).

Overall Series Quality:

An absolute delight, end to end. It’s outrageous, it’s bombastic, it is, at times, ridiculous. But it embraces this about itself, it owns it and loves it and revels in it, and it maintains itself with remarkable consistency and never shows any sign of being embarrassed to be just exactly what it is. In a way, that’s another point in favour of the positive message it sends to its audience; there’s no reason to consider Teen Wolf a guilty pleasure, something to hesitate or equivocate before admitting your enjoyment, for it never hesitates or equivocates about itself. It’s an honest and uncomplicated kind of pleasure, and I, unabashedly, love it.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

“You’re not a monster,” Scott declares, at the triumphant conclusion of the Teen Wolf series finale, “you’re a werewolf. Like me.” It’s a reiteration of the same line he uttered to his new beta, Liam, back in season four, and it’s a thoroughly earned mission statement for the show, a declaration that being different is ok, even if others have made you feel like an outcast for it, even if it’s difficult, even if it hurts. The way you are is ok, you have value as you are, and you are not alone. It’s easy to be cynical about that if it isn’t a message you personally need to hear, but for the youths in Teen Wolf’s target audience - especially the large queer contingent - it’s a crystal-clear affirmation that could not be more important, and not one made lightly. After all, it’s easy to make statements that sound glossy and progressive, but if you want people to really take it to heart, you have to earn it. Don’t just say it; demonstrate it. Whatever else you might think of this silly schlocky show, it didn’t just walk the walk with its representation: it strode out with pride. 

With a show that performed so admirably, it’s hard to know what to discuss in summary: the female characters really are so varied and wondrous, so complex and realistically flawed and none of them ever shamed for being different to the rest (because different is ok). The male characters really are so refreshingly low on toxic masculinity, or alternately, they have the limitations and the damage of toxic masculinity so thoroughly exposed through their narrative arcs that there’s no question about the show promoting emotionally healthy openness as a masculine ideal. The queer characters really are so numerous and loved and never made to suffer for their identities (though, if one is quibbling, there was certainly a preponderance of queer males compared to a pretty limited supply of queer females, and don’t think I forgot how they teased us with the idea of queer Stiles early on but never canonically delivered). At the end of the day though, I have discussed the above all over the individual episode/season posts, and what I really want to talk about now is how well they packaged their lesson of diverse acceptance for a young audience, because that target intention is where the show’s progressive ethos really shone.

Not all teen-targeted shows take it upon themselves to teach good morals, and to suggest that they should can come off as infantalising; as if young adults are still children, needing to be taught fundamental behaviours. Setting aside the fact that in some cases they really, really do need that (otherwise they become maladjusted adults who still really, really need those lessons on fundamental behaviours such as accepting other people for being different, et al.), the result of either option is often a bit of a disaster: you get teen shows that ignore their moral responsibility and consequently teach/reinforce incredibly damaging and even dangerous ways of thinking, or you get teen shows that treat their audience like morons while preaching in an embarrassingly out-of-touch fashion. For this reason, I have rarely enjoyed shows targeted at young adult audiences (even when I was part of that demographic) and I normally avoid such programming. As such, I am not a connoisseur of teen shows, but of the ones I have indulged Teen Wolf is absolutely the standout, not only for just getting me on pretty much every socio-political and entertainment level available, but for the attitude it takes toward that aforementioned target audience: specifically, how very in-tune it is with the way the demographic thinks and acts.

Whether a bad teen-targeted show is of the morally-irresponsible kind or the morally-preachy kind, the core problem is the same: they promote shame. It might be shame in the form of peer pressure, encouraging wild, foolish, and inconsiderate behaviour because ‘that’s what teens are like’ and making their young impressionable audience feel like weird losers if they don’t mirror the actions and attitudes depicted on their favourite shows, or it might be shame in the form of heavy-handed judgment, the idea that any experimentation or pushing at the borders of authority are absolutely BAD AWFUL things that only BAD AWFUL people do. For Teen Wolf, being in-tune with the audience means understanding that there are certain things that teenagers are extremely likely to do regardless of whether they have permission, and approaching those things as part of the audience’s reality within that spirit of understanding, focusing not on shame but rather on promoting positive and responsible behaviour. It’s really not rocket science, but somehow it’s still a wonderful anomaly. Instead of depicting teen sex as a taboo or a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t world full of dirty sluts and naive virgins, Teen Wolf is sex positive, even-handed across the spectrum of sexual activity and promoting enthusiastic consent and open discussion of boundaries. Instead of depicting teen drinking as either the worst of crimes or a guaranteed gateway to regrettable actions or something you just gotta do in order to have fun and fit in, Teen Wolf encourages making your own decisions for your own reasons, and watching out for your friends to make sure everyone gets home safe. It certainly doesn’t depict a conflict-free world where no one ever makes a bad choice or does anything stupid or selfish; it just doesn’t approach normal human behaviour with an air of judgment. There’s just no shame.

What makes this really significant is that it’s part and parcel of the whole acceptance ethos: it’s not just werewolf metaphors or telling kids that gay is ok. In order to really craft a message about not feeling ashamed to be who you are and how you are, you need to let the message touch all parts of the story, and all parts of the character’s lives, not just the big obvious points of contention. It’s a great way to be morally responsible with your impressionable audience without getting preachy and trying to tell them how to live: just encourage them to be considerate and wise about their choices by showing them how it’s beneficial for everyone, demonstrate, don’t just tell. Not rocket science at all. The other thing is that it really doesn’t need to be thought of as a ‘lesson’ at all; it’s just people being depicted in a non-judgmental fashion as they try their best to do the right thing in whatever situations they encounter. Sometimes they mess up, and sometimes they repeat mistakes, and sometimes they get overwhelmed, but they’re trying and they’re growing as people, and that’s the best you can ask of anyone, whether they’re supernatural teenagers on a tv show or not. Really, it’d be nice if more entertainment media spared a thought to reinforcing fundamental moral principles in their everyday content, because the world sure as Hell is full of maladjusted adults who are still absorbing and entrenching bad attitudes normalised in their television consumption. There’s no reason we should only expect this level of attentiveness from stories aimed at young people. That said, if this show were not targeted at young adults, it probably also wouldn’t be as good, because the reality is that the majority of ‘grown-up’ programming makes little to no effort to challenge the perceived social status quo. We’re probably lucky they kept the teen part of Teen Wolf when they adapted this story for television (the original 1985 film of the same name is NOT progressive or accepting, and I can’t recommend it - the show kept mercifully little beyond the basic idea of a teenage werewolf).

What Teen Wolf has done - and certainly not by accident - is create an entertaining safe space. For all that Beacon Hills is full of supernatural horror and grisly murders and nightmare fuel and sometimes, straight-up Nazi ideology, on an individual personal level it is a place without shame, a place where even when the characters feel backed into a corner with no good options, we can see that they have support, they have friends and family and slightly-nutty lacrosse coaches who have got their backs in a crisis, they have intelligence and skills and the hard-won knowledge of experience that will help them find a way; there is always an element of virtue shining within every moment. They still feel desperate sometimes, and hopeless, and alone. There are still a lot of bad things in their world, and sometimes that stuff is too big and too terrifying to bear, and the real world is like that too. You don’t have to be a teenager - or a werewolf - for that struggle to resonate, and you certainly don’t have to be either of those things in order to value a fiction in which being judged, marginalised, or mistreated for being the way you are is not a concern you have to add to your roster of ills. There are plenty enough terrible things in the world still, and sometimes what we really need is a little space to believe that there’s some inherent good left, too. Even if no problem is ever completely fixed, even if there will always be hate and evil and horror out there, waiting. You are valuable as you are, and someone’s gonna have your back. 

This is exactly the context in which Scott utters that final triumphant line “You’re not a monster, you’re a werewolf. Like me”, echoing that same thing he told Liam when he was miserable and afraid of what he had become and what it would mean for his life. It’s a sentiment that Scott earned from his own misery, his own fear, his own battle with having his life upended irreparably against his will. Scott is being for the new generation what no one was for him; he’s taking his hardships and forging them into a lifeline for those who come after, so that they don’t have to struggle as hard as he did. He’s doing better, one step, one person at a time. The parallel there isn’t hard to draw; the affirmation can’t get any clearer. You can’t have real representation - on any level - if you don’t have unconditional acceptance, and you can’t have unconditional acceptance if you don’t let the demonstration of it permeate your narrative. You can’t just say it. You have to be the change you want to see in the world. Unlikely as it might seem, schlocky and silly as this show was with its Steampunk doctors and Demon wolves and mountain aaaaassshhh, it was also a show dedicated to demonstrating - in varied and delightful detail - the kind of young people it hoped to be reflecting as they stepped out into adulthood. It’s easy to be cynical about that, but it isn’t useful, and there’s a kind of shame wrapped up in cynicism. Teen Wolf, to its utmost credit, was always far too busy embracing its own quirks to ever let cynicism in. I miss it already.

[caseycardwell]

Coming out at work

Our stories of what makes a great workplace for LGBTQIA+ people

With thanks to: 

Chloe | Social Media Manager | She/her

Stuart | Senior Clinical Support Worker | He/him

Eliza | Freelance Content Creator | They/them

Linnea | Art Director and Visual Designer | She/her

At SH:24, we are all about sexual health. Sexual health isn’t just about getting tested for STIs or using contraception, it’s also about feeling happy and comfortable with your sexuality so that sex is always a healthy, safe and joyful experience. We have lots of fantastic LGBTQIA+ colleagues, and we want to make sure that they are supported at work. 

To celebrate Pride 2021 (and to get some useful tips on how to improve), we asked some of our LGBTQIA+ colleagues about their experiences in the workplace.

How can workplaces better support and attract LGBTQIA+ employees?

“Be open and actively work to help the community and make it very clear that you support them.” Eliza, Freelance Content Creator

“Don’t just support your staff during Pride month! Support them 365 days a year,” said Stuart, our Senior Clinical Support worker. This was echoed by Eliza, a freelance Content Creator, who added, “Just changing a logo to rainbow during June isn’t enough. Companies should be actively looking to hire us.”

Stuart felt that workplaces have come a long way, with some larger companies having LGBTQ+  networks to offer support, raise awareness and communicate that intolerant behaviour is not acceptable. “But we still have a long way to go, for example, in supporting staff who are Trans and encouraging the use of pronouns.” He felt that training and better awareness of LGBTQ+ issues can help to make better working environments.

Linnea, our Art Director and Visual Designer, made the point that understanding LGBTQ+ issues and needs should be the responsibility of the employer, not the employees. “As a queer person it’s easy to become the only one repeatedly pointing out the presence of cis- and heteronormativity. It becomes a heavy burden to always be the one challenging things. It can make you feel invisible. What sets a workplace apart is if they can listen and take on suggestions about how to make it more inclusive, then build on that themselves, rather than relying on queer employees to point it out every time.”

Chloe, our Social Media manager, agreed. “It’s great when companies actively acknowledge LGBTQIA+ issues and are openly putting actions in place to check complicity or unconscious bias.”

At SH:24, we’ve started to encourage colleagues to add their pronouns to their comms profiles. “Joining teams who automatically put pronouns in their bio is a great way for me to feel seen,” said Eliza. “It’s not common practice yet but I think we’re getting there.”

Can you tell us about coming out at work?

“I felt like I had to make a decision about my sexuality to stop people prodding around my personal life, before I even understood it myself!” Chloe, Social Media Manager

“I very quietly put my pronouns in my social media bio and email sign off,” said Eliza. “People slowly started to notice that I’m using they/them. Once I felt more comfortable I came out ‘officially’ online and in the workplace. I was met with great support. A few people didn’t understand it but they were open to learning.” 

As a Freelancer, Eliza moves between workplaces, which presents its own challenges. “I don’t always feel comfortable coming out with new clients,” they said, “but overall I feel very supported.”

Stuart said he’d never had a big coming out at any workplace. “It’s partly because I’ve worked in places where I felt safe or was aware of other LGBTQ+ employees and could see how they interacted with other staff.” He usually just drops it into a conversation: “I talk about my husband and what we did over the weekend.”

Chloe shared a different perspective. Before joining SH:24, she’d worked as an artist in the music industry. “I was very young when I started. I hadn’t had the experience or time to understand my own sexuality, but people were making assumptions and constantly questioning who I was attracted to and making jokes about it and my appearance.” 

Her management didn’t give her much protection, and Chloe felt they actually played on her sexuality to add some ‘mystique’ to her image. “I didn’t realise at the time, but this robbed me of the opportunity to really understand who I was. I felt like I had to make a decision about my sexuality to stop people prodding around my personal life, before I even understood it myself!”

How important is it for you to be able to be open about your sexuality in the workplace?

“Feeling like the exception to the rule can be uncomfortable, especially if you are recently coming to terms with your identity.” Chloe, Social Media Manager

Sexuality is often presented as something secondary, that’s part of your ‘personal life’ but not part of the workplace. But our business is sexual health, so we’re well aware of the importance of sexuality in all aspects of a person’s life.The workplace is where a lot of people spend most of their time. So we want to know, how important is it for our colleagues to be able to be open about their sexuality at work? 

Stuart hit the nail on the head. “It’s part of who I am and not something I should have to hide. Being happy in the workplace allows me to be more productive.” 

Eliza agreed. “It’s important for me to be myself in the workplace. You spend a lot of time with your colleagues and it’s important to feel safe and to feel and be yourself.”

Chloe talked about active inclusivity. “It’s important to not have your sexuality/gender ‘othered’ in the workplace. Workplaces shouldn’t assume ‘cishet’ identities as the default. You shouldn’t feel like you’re deviating from the status quo.”

“Working for companies where other queer people are visible is really imporant,” she went on. “It’s not always possible, but being in a team with other LGBTQIA+ people makes it a lot easier to feel comfortable about being open about your sexuality. It can make it a more joyful, celebratory experience!”

What do you wish you had known before coming out?

“Coming out is an ongoing process. Each time you start a new job, meet new people.” Stuart, Senior Clinical Support Worker

Eliza was surprised at the ‘outpouring of love’ they received after coming out. “I wish I’d known how scary it can be to come out. I also wish I’d know that more people would support me than I thought.”

Coming out isn’t usually a one-off event. You might come out in different ways to different people all the time, especially in the workplace. “It gets easier over time, as you become more comfortable in yourself,” said Stuart. 

But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Eliza often has to ‘come out’ to voice their pronouns. “As a non-binary person who presents very femme,” said Eliza, “I still struggle to correct people when they accidentally use the wrong pronoun.”

“It’s ok for your understanding of your sexuality to change all the time!” Chloe, Social Media Manager

Chloe reminds us that coming out should be totally up to you. “What do I wish I’d known before coming out?” she said. “That you don’t have to. For me, ‘coming out’ felt quite intimidating, like I had to know absolutely everything about my sexuality before I did it. I realise now that’s not true! In the end, I just started exploring my bisexuality, being more open about my experiences, and let others catch up!” 

What advice would you give someone wanting to be out (in the workplace)?

“If your identity makes someone uncomfortable, you are not the problem.” Chloe, Social Media Manager

“It’s your decision to come out at work if you choose,” said Stuart. “Some people come out with a bang, others don’t. Only you know what is the best way to be you. Each place I’ve worked, I usually come out to the people I’ll be working closely with to start with, then let it happen naturally from there.”

Eliza had similar advice. “Take your time, only come out when you feel ready and safe to do so,” they said. “Most people will love and support you. If they don’t, it’s their loss.”

Linnea said she’d had positive experiences coming out in the workplace. “Most people have been really friendly and open about me having a girlfriend. My negative experiences have been structural (like lesbian erasure) and unconscious biases, where some people have made assumptions about me or my relationship purely because it’s same sex.”

Her advice is to go for it. “Try not to take ignorance personally. People might not know anything about it. I like to assume that people mean well (unless they prove otherwise) and I remind myself that we live in a homophobic society, where everyone learns those narratives and internalises them to some degree. Some people will have had the opportunity to have those views challenged, and some not. Sometimes ignorance is just that: learned behaviour that hasn’t been questioned. There will always be some people who don’t want to or think they don’t need to challenge those internalised narratives, but I like to think they’re in the minority.” 

Can you share an experience when you felt your sexuality was recognised in a positive way?

“When I moved to Margate!” said Chloe, enthusiastically. “It was the first time in my LIFE that people didn’t assume my sexuality, despite me moving with a male partner.” Chloe felt able to be herself right from the start. “I feel part of the queer community there, regardless of my heterosexual-presenting relationship. It’s helped me to work through internalised biophobia - it’s tough to feel like you’re not making the whole thing up when people don’t see you. I feel much MUCH more confident coming out to new people with pride, rather than anxiety that I’ll have to defend myself.”

Linnea had a recent experience with some kids on the street. “These cool kids asked me to take their photo. They chatted to me about queer stuff and I was like, ‘Wow! Maybe they saw me and realised I was gay too!’ That’s never really happened to me before! I was happy to be read that way which I’m always nervous about not being.”

Thanks to Linnea, Chloe, Stuart and Eliza for sharing their experiences. We hope this will be an ongoing conversation. If you’d like to tell us about your experience of coming out at work, find us on Instagram @sh24_nhs. We’d love to hear from you.

published first on https://spanishflyhealth.blogspot.com/

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How Utena Helped Me Understand My Queerness

As a queer person (and the word “queer” means so many different things for me), I can call upon any number of childhood moments where my understanding of the gender binary were constantly challenged. When I played Power Rangers with my friends, I always wanted to be the Pink Ranger. The breadwinner of my family is my hard-working mother. My favorite manga growing up were shojo and magical girl stories. These days, it’s easy for me to say I was always the way I am now, but for the longest time, I never had a reference point to help me define my conflicts over my queer expressions. Utena Tenjou was one such anime character who contributed a lot to that end.

As the titular protagonist of Revolutionary Girl Utena celebrates her birthday on December 29, I write this as a tribute to Utena. Her own experience with toxic masculinity and restrictive gender roles helped inform my own, and I consider her one of my major influences on my ongoing queer journey up there with Steven Universe and Bayonetta.

As a character, though, she didn’t start out that way. In fact, her entire worldview was centered around a very black-and-white concept of gender. Or in this case, blue-and-pink. It was her whole journey—tragic and surreal and cathartic as it was—that I was able to empathize with. Utena’s evolution beyond her preconceived notions of society became something of a cautionary tale for me and my voyage beyond the gender binary.

  Utena’s story began after a seemingly-gallant prince saved her from a life of despair. When tragedy befell her at a young age, Utena had nearly resigned herself to darkness and isolation. It wasn’t until her prince came along and showed light at the end of the tunnel. From that point forward, she sought to become a prince herself.

While attending high school, she became a popular tomboy who proudly wore her princely demeanor, quite literally. She was known for preferring boys’ school uniforms as opposed to the girls’ and often bested many of the male students at sports. When it came time for her to fight the Student Council over Anthy the Rose Bride, she took on the role of a prince defending a helpless and innocent damsel.

As the title suggests, Utena sought a form of social revolution with her masculine expression. She refused to let her gender limit herself in both school life and as she fought for Anthy’s hand in marriage and did her best to shake up gender norms. I was initially inspired by her efforts to present her masculinity, but when I look back on it now, that mindset was almost self-defeating. 

She rejected any notion of traditional femininity while also heavily conforming to displays of traditional masculinity. At a certain point when she loses the will to continue her fight, she resigned herself to wearing a girl’s school uniform and trying to act more feminine and delicate. This is almost as if taking on "feminine traits" was supposed to be a form of punishment. She both subverted and reinforced the gender binary and lived her whole life under this paradox. 

Much like Utena, my own expression was also restricted by these guidelines. Growing up, I had no grasp of what was “for boys” or “for girls.” I wasn’t born with any particular notion on how to gender my behavior. I only learned about the gender binary through the lens of how other people structured their lives by it. 

  Being assigned male at birth, the world provided me with the recipe on how to act like a boy I tried desperately to fit into it. It became easy for me to feign masculinity and adjust my personality among my cisgendered friends. But I could feel my femininity trying to ooze out. I felt it through my favorite anime and choice of role models and the crushes I had and this growing desperation I felt to reject the manlihood I could feel infesting me. It would be a while until I realized how harmful this was to my emotional health, but Utena helped me along the path of revolution.

Utena went through a similar struggle throughout her battles for the Rose Bride. What began as a story of her, the gallant prince charged with protecting the helpless damsel, was deconstructed into something much more sinister as she dug herself further and further into the throes of toxic masculinity. 

She eventually started interacting with Akio Ohtori, Anthy’s brother as well as an incarnation of the prince who had saved her. And from that point on, Utena’s principles on gender were constantly challenged to the point where she had to question everything she thought she knew about the world and even herself. 

Her prince was nothing more than a manipulative abuser who sought power for himself. Anthy, while still a damsel in distress in her own right, was capable of cold-hearted cruelty as she remained in the thrall of her brother. And Utena’s efforts to embody a gallant prince were nothing more than her own roundabout way of allowing patriarchal standards to control her life as she continually fell into Akio’s clutches.

Eventually, Utena made a sacrifice that helped her accept the world for what it was and allowed her to achieve some small form of revolution. She fought until her last breath to save Anthy, disregarding all notions of princely duty or the expectations of a maiden. Though she disappeared in the process, her final efforts had touched Anthy’s heart and allowed her to leave her brother behind as she left to answer Utena’s love and find her once more.

As strange as Utena’s journey was, it contains a rather simple message that has since resonated with me: the gender binary is simply a construct and affixing yourself to it is poisonous. There is no right or wrong way to present your gender identity, but the necessity to draw that distinct line between how to be feminine or masculine is a strict and narrow-minded concept that all but destroyed Utena's life. 

Utena helped me realize how I prefer to present more feminine. Whether it's through my cosplay or the clothes I wear every day or the way I speak, my femininity is vital to who I am as a person. I long for the day when I’m able to appear as girlish as I please and have people question the very nature of gender expression. But even when I feel as far from content with my gender identity as possible, Utena's story taught me that my queerness doesn’t change. My being trans and being femme is a constant, and even at my lowest points, she reminds me that I’m always as queer as I should be. 

When I first watched Utena, I thought I wanted to be her. I viewed her as someone who challenged gender norms and shattered expectations. But as I saw her grow and change, I learned that that wasn’t the whole truth. Defining her whole life between being either a prince or a damsel was her downfall, and it wasn’t until those final moments that she realized that being herself was more important than fulfilling an idyllic yet flawed patriarchal fantasy. 

In Adolescence of Utena, she does achieve a more fulfilling catharsis. After winning the right to marry the Rose Bride, she rejects the marriage entirely. Her only wish was to live freely with the girl she loved, and she fights tooth and nail and race car to achieve it with Anthy. True to the title, Utena more readily overcame her adolescence and rigid gender structures to come out and love both Anthy and herself more openly.     

As for me? I suppose even in my mid-20s, I’m still in that same proverbial adolescence that Utena went through. This is still a world where people still adhere to that rigid binary and leave little wiggle room for people to safely explore themselves. And I still have plenty of days when I don’t feel nearly as queer or as trans as I want to be. 

But Utena Tenjou’s story gave me so much guidance at a time when I really needed it. I learned alongside her that we have no obligation to fit into anyone’s molds but our own. As a queer person, I choose to be feminine and how I achieve that is up to me. Once upon a time, I would’ve called Utena Tenjou a role model. That isn’t the case anymore. More truthfully, we were kindred spirits who were, and still are, desperate for revolution within ourselves. So to celebrate Utena's birthday, I'll keep trying to revolutionize my own world. Happy birthday, Utena!

What's your take on Utena's tumultous coming-of-age? What's your favorite Utena moment? Comment below and let us know!

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Carlos is a freelance features writer for Crunchyroll. Their favorite genres range from magical girls to over-the-top robot action, yet their favorite characters are always the obscure ones. Check out some of their satirical work on The Hard Times.

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com