#this was meant to just be about queer rep in general but the strike is never not on my mind honestly

[rebloggedsunsox]

Sometimes I forget that queer representation is often still buried in subtext and cut to fit corporate demands and definitions of "appropriate". With all the lesser restricted/indie works I have the delight of indulging in – whether it be webcomics or games or books or youtube animated shows – I tend to get lost in the joy of the representation they are able to express and forget about all the media we lose every year to companies that refuse to show the queer community for no reason other than their fear of losing revenue.

It will never not tear me apart every time I remember how many shows, how many characters and works of art I hold so close to my heart that were discarded because of this. I genuinely feel like crying every time I have to think of all the passionate, earnest people who put themselves into those works and never got to see them finished, the way they wanted and on their terms. There are people out there who needed to hear those stories, and the permanence of the fact they they never will is devastating to me.

These projects are not cut off because their ideas are too inappropriate or "off brand" to show their target audience. These projects are cancelled because higher ups will not admit that their decisions are rooted in bigotry and what they believe (believe, not know, look at The Owl House as just one example) will make them the biggest profit.

You're not paying your writers or actors or vfx crew with this money you so desperately scramble to rake in with every piece of media you deem worthy to release. What makes you think we're rooting for you?

[bulbabutt]

Wait but can you do a little vibe check explanation for cyberverse and earthspark? Im curious about them but ive been burned by tf shows so much

AH OKAY!!!

well cyberverse is a great mix of lore, it doesnt REQUIRE you to know much about transformers, but i think it helps. like you wont care who skybyte is, but he shows up to do haikus, its a reference but it doesnt mean you NEED to watch RID 2001 to get it. its very fun, it tells its story out of order at first, as its windblade helping bumblebee recover his memories after a streak of amnesia after being stranded on earth. due to the nature of its storytelling, you get this grand picture of the story of the war, where it came from how it started, how the characters feel about it. it takes things that didnt work in other iterations and blends them well here. its really great at mixing the silly stuff and the dark stuff, it strikes a happy balance and by the time it ends you really will feel like youve seen an entire history and feel satisfied with how it ends. it can be goofy, it can be dark. its always good. also BEAUUUUUTIFUL show.

earthspark is still ongoing, but i think that show really lends itself well to being something thats saying "yes" to every show thats come before it and saying "and now what?" so if cyberverse was the show that ended the war, the show that said "okay heres how you end the war realistically", earthspark says "now that the war is over, whats next?". its about a new generation of transformers, who are born on earth! theyre part organic, theyre from a mixed family. the show blends metaphorical representation with real representation. the father of their family is an immigrant (or child of immigrants) and transformers are too! theres queercoding when talking about 'hey, maybe your alt mode isnt meant to be like your siblings' and then queer rep with actual non binary characters! its full of so much love and acceptance its so beautiful. its not about autobots and decepticons, its about the maltobots! and how they relate TO the autobots and decepticons. its still ongoing so we dont know how it will end, but WOW is it ever breathtaking and full of more heart than anything else has been. theres a bit of a jump between s1 and s2a where they changed animation studios and people are having a hard time, but honestly its STILL really good to look at. its just that s1 was like.... TOOO good so everyones a lil dissapointed. but it was so good they COULDNT keep making it. if that makes sense.

i hope that helps. i would rec watching cyberverse THEN earthspark, and like having some base lore knowledge before that (but it sounds like you do) whether its from g1 or animated or something like that. just so you know who the guys theyre talking about are in cyberverse but its not really required.

but yeah!! i cant rec those two shows enough theyre so heartfelt. if youre a rottmnt fan like me youll like the tone of both.

[tuiyla]

what are the other things you enjoy writing about?

what are your least favorite glee friendships (canon or crack), if there's any?

Glee things or in general? Imma assume Glee and if you meant in general let me know and I'll answer that!

There are so many topics within Glee I want to tackle. My magnum opus that I'm currently taking notes for as I rewatch the series is gonna be an examination of Glee's underdog obsession, where it worked and where it didn't, how it ultimately defines the show. Other things I'd enjoy writing about if I ever got around to it would include a lot more Pezberry (seriously I have all these thoughts they need an out), Sancedes(!), basically just every single friendship that existed on the show, more about the newbies, how season 6 is good actually, and then just pinpointing larger themes within characters arcs is my Thing, I guess. I've also written a lot about Glee's queer rep.

I have a few particular topics that I already have drafts for but disclaimer, most of these have been drafts for months oops:

Quinntana and anger

The popular kids (Finn, Puck, Quinn, and Santana) and all their parallels ("The fragility of top dog popularity", I looked up the WIP title)

Santana's comphet in the first two seasons

a Kitty Wilde deep, deep dive

Unholy Trinity character analysis through the lens of cheerleading tropes, how they play into and subvert them

Kurt Hummel wasn't a walking stereotype and here's why

Aand I think that's it for stuff I have outlines for. In order of how soon they'll most likely happen unless inspiration strikes or someone just like, asks me to prioritize one over the other. Legit thanks so much for this question Anon because you made me take stock lol.

As for Glee friendships, I generally either outright appreciate or am neutral about all. If I had to pick one, I think Will and Finn's bond had sweet aspects but I couldn't fully appreciate it because of the inappropriate nature and how much the things they share are my least favourite things about the characters. It's also just framed weirdly most of the time, first there are father figure allusions then they're best buds and peers. It's just not something I could get into. This is my own personal pettiness but I also just, hate how Finn is the only kid Will actually consistently cares about and treats well. But to be clear I do like parts of even this friendship and in general I really just appreciate all that Glee could bother to give us.

There wouldn't be any crack friendships I dislike because all of them have the potential to be good. If anything the versions we have in our heads are probs better than what Glee would have done lol.

[checkdispleased]

re. ep. 21 on Lardo, what are your thoughts on the idea that Lardo's haircut/ art student vibe, is sort of trading on the visual cues/ imagery of queerness, to provide an illusion or semblance of queer rep, while not actually doing the work to write an actually queer character? You guys have touched on N using a sort of visual/generic shorthand in her characterization in other areas, but the mentioning the Ollie/Wicks thing got me thinking again about how few canonical queer characters are 1/2

2/2 are in the majority of the comic, for a comic supposedly all about queer rep. [it kinda reminds of that author of the wizard books and her word of god gay character after the fact, though i don't think N is doing it to nearly the same degree], but i can't help but see similarities in how cultural cues are used to a nod to representation that's not actually treated as canon by the text itself.

I just deleted a whole stupid Harry Potter essay and will instead say this: I was about to say we found out Dumbledore was gay 15 years before OMGCP even started, and then I remembered I’m an idiot who can’t do math. Still, not that I think JKR needs or deserves the very meager fairness I’m about to lend her right now, but, one difference between that series and this comic is, Harry Potter is not about queer experience, and it never claimed to be, and it wasn’t de rigueur for YA book series to feature any LGBT characters necessarily over the period when it was begin published. Check Please is supposedly about that exact topic! And it was created and presented in a space -- specifically the slash fandom subculture on Tumblr, in 2013, working on the vernacular of webcomics -- where the expectation of queer content was de rigueur. In addition to the fact that I got into the comic because I had heard Jack and Bitty got together, this is maybe why I diverge from @tomatowrites​‘ uncertainty that they would get together: this was being created from and presented in the space where that was exactly what would happen.

To be also fair to Ngozi, I guess the comic never really positioned itself as speaking to LGBT experiences other than Bitty’s. Still, he says he’s come to Samwell because of the breadth of its queer community? I think, through the lens of the comic alone, what he must have meant was that he wanted to be in a place where he could be openly gay to find a boyfriend, not that he wanted to like, have LGBT friends broadly speaking. One interesting thing about the Y4 Tweets, which I have only ever seen in the chirpbook, is that it is established that Bitty, uh, addresses one of the most pointed criticisms of Check Please:

“ducksducksducksducks,” I’m entirely sure based on other Tweets in here, is Lardo.

Hey, this is loooong.

This is SO confusing because it’s like, Lardo’s not a lesbian ... probably? She’s very into Shitty? They live together? Like sharing-a-bedroom live together? There is nothing in the physical comic, or anywhere else that I’m aware of, period, where it’s implied that she’s into women at all, beside the fact that she’s got short hair for a while? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think these were ever tweeted; I think they were written to go in the chirpbook. So it’s tough to know, in a Watsonian sense, what precisely Bitty is responding to, or if he’s responding at all. There’s no context for this. Like much of the comic, it’s just there, implying some things broadly while also addressing a major criticism of the text (that Bitty has no gay friends) without actually examining it within the text itself. Confusing!

I’m not sure what was originally intended in regard to Lardo. (Would love to hear Tomato weigh in on this, if she has time.) It could be as straightforward as, some people at art school look like this. It would be absurd to code a character as queer and then do nothing to establish them as queer in your queer webcomic, of course. Anyone who understands the potential gain of having people think Lardo is not cishet must also understand the potential cost of not just making it canon?

Part of the essay I started writing about Harry Potter up there was to say that, of course, fuck JKR, but also, I think people are making a very 2020-based criticism of the “Dumbledore is gay” reveal, which happened in 2007, concerning a book series that was written starting in the mid-1990s. Not that nobody was ever gay in mainstream media before Check Please, but I do think it’s possible that as popular as those books were, and as powerful as the author was, she may actually have felt she couldn’t put that in there? At the time, I felt like it was a cheap nod to an obviously huge slash fandom -- but now I actually kinda feel like, okay, maybe it was a cheap nod to her obviously huge slash fandom and also she genuinely didn’t think she could have it in there? The very conservative principle of universally legal gay marriage still felt, at the time, like a distant prospect. My goal in thinking this through isn’t to say it’s okay because it happened in ~the past~ when things were less socially just, but rather, to try to explore the thinking that must have gone on around these decisions.

Which leads me, finally, to the actual point of this post: conceiving of Lardo, and OMGCP, in 2013, Ngozi was coming from a slash fandom perspective that largely held these two beliefs:

It is unrealistic for a story to have more LGBT characters than the main pairing; 10 percent of people are gay so if a friend group has more than one or two gay people in it, that’s submitting to some kind of slash-brain internet logic that can’t hold; and

Just as it is homophobic to presume that gay people are or have to be any particular way, it is similarly problematic to presume someone is queer just because they look or act any particular way

The first one is really rooted in fanfics where an entire cast of characters who aren’t gay in canon are suddenly gay in fanfic; this is presumably not a problem for OMGCP because OMGCP is not actually a fanfic. But it is heavily influenced by fanfic; it functionally works as a fanfic ahout two characters named Jack and Bitty who just happen to have also originated within the fanfic. But the comic’s initial readership is going to be people whose interests cross with fandom, because Ngozi is a prominent fan artist so her audience is gonna be that! So you can kind of feel why maybe Bitty is the only gay in the cast until it turns out Jack magically (??) is also.

Which brings us to Lardo: she looks like someone you would think is into women? But I think she was potentially designed as an example of a character who seems gay but isn’t, because it is not okay to presume things about people based on how they look. This is pretty complicated because, well, yes, in general there’s a saying about not judging books by their covers because that level of superficiality perpetuates harmful biases. At the same time, people do judge just about everything by their appearances regardless of whether it’s superficial or not, and so most people know this and use their own appearances to construct their own identities, that is, try to tell people how they want to be read. It’s very 90s-2000s to assert that it’s wrong to make assumptions about whether someone is gay based on appearances, and you can understand why: normalizing gender non-conformity was and is an important project, but until recently the only way to do that was to do it from a position of insisting cishet people could be gender non-conforming. Of course, looking back, this feels like an insane supposition because of course there is a gay aesthetic, or gay aesthetics? Of course queer people have always looked and acted certain ways to try to subtly identify for the purpose of finding fellow travelers?

If I recall correctly, this came up in fanfics a lot, where you’d have one character who is the straightest man making jokes about how much he loved to suck dick, or whatever. And maybe, maybe, some of this lingers in Lardo. I’m thinking mostly of how Kenny was used in South Park fics, but also, come to think of it, Butters, who doesn’t so much crack jokes but he does seem pretty gay, if you take soft-spoken weak-willed effete boys to be gay, which, of course you do. We all do, sometimes. (There’s also an episode about him cross-dressing.)

But what’s even more striking is that there’s already a character who embodies this particular trope in Check, Please: Shitty. He’s theatrical (flamboyant?), he’s writing his senior thesis on the homoeroticism of hockey, and in a very brief (very badly written) ficlet from the back of Huddle Vol. 1, he checks out Jack’s body in the lockeroom and tells Jack he’s a “Greek god.” When Jack says, “That’s so gay,” Shitty responds with, “Welcome to fucking Samwell. Sometimes dudes will tell you you’re hot without even saying ‘no homo’ afterwards.” So we’ve got Jack, who is gay, telling Shitty it’s gay to admire another man’s body as he reddens and is visibly uncomfortable, while Shitty, who is straight, acts like it is somehow normal for all men to be attracted to other men without it being much of an issue for him personally or society broadly. This is not to say that you can’t find these attitudes reflected in the real world; Jack, who’s closeted, obviously has reasons to posture like this, or be uncomfortable with another man complimenting his appearance. But paired with Shitty’s comments the comic is engineering a reversal that claims it’s not inherently gay when a man is attracted to the body of another man -- except, it is? It’s a fiction that serves a kind of post-post-modern post-queer theory pop cultural attitude that I think, in 2020, we’ve moved on from. Underneath Shitty’s posturing is the sad truth that it’s a straight man, particularly a man like Shitty, whose comments on other men’s bodies would be tolerated; it’s unlikely that this is something Bitty (or Jack) would feel it was socially acceptable for him to say. Shitty’s working here as a type.

An I think it’s not a coincidence that he’s paired with Lardo within this story? She is similarly gender-transgressing; beyond having short hair she is characterized as a “bro” (an inherently male-coded performance) and crushes at beer pong and belches on her opponents. Not in the comic, obviously, but we’re told she does -- maybe kind of like Shitty only finds Jack hot off-page? (When he’s not lounging naked in Jack’s bed--again, something that Jack is uncomfortable with, but if a gay man did this, it would certainly be a problem.) I think these are all jokes that are very of their time for fannish texts in the period leading up to when this comic was started.

Again, nothing is impeding Ngozi from putting a female-identifying character who’s attracted to women into her markedly LGBT webcomic in 2014. I think it’s more than likely that if Lardo were meant to be queer, it’d be in there, somewhere. Or, rather, I think if it were an intended reading from start, it would have been in there. Or it would have been in a Tweet. In an extra. In an FAQ. On the Patreon blog. Mentioned in a Livestream. Somewhere? But where we get one incredibly disconnected hint that she might be, it’s in a Kickstarter-backed volume of post-canon content in a way that ties into the actual story or Lardo’s nonexistent interior life not at all. It’s not a story about her--but that’s the point? It’s not a story about her. If it were meant to be a story about a friend group, how would this particular detail not be enriching? When Lardo notices Bitty fretting over Jack’s game in the library, doesn’t the moment have more weight if she can empathize with even slightly more incision?

And like, you can say a lot of things about JKR, and the politics of gender and sexuality within her books was always bad, so this isn’t giving her, like, credit. But you can totally see how using cultural cues might have been all she felt she was able to do in the 1990s and early 2000s, yes, even as one of the most powerful authors working at the time. This doesn’t mean she shouldn’t have done more, or that her bad views are actually understandable, see. (I mean, they’re perfectly understandable, also abhorrent.) 

Ngozi is making a fucking gay webcomic for a gay readership on Tumblr in 2013-2020. She had no reason to use cultural cues to hint broadly unless she wanted credit for something she felt she couldn’t represent (which makes no sense, see previous sentence; entire essay) or Lardo was never intended to be anything other than a cis straight woman -- which is a fine thing to be, by the way, nothing against cis straight women? It’s just that like, this comic got a lot of flack from an internal crowd of complainers, myself included, about the things it didn’t do -- and one big thing it neglected to do was introduce meaningful relationships with other LGBT characters for Bitty. So I think that Chirpbook shit is just a late-in-the-day retcon for virtually nobody.

But this is a conspiracy theory so like, take it with a grain of salt.

[bomberqueen17]

demi dithering pt 2: snippet boogaloo

I wrote a whole mini-essay on liking things and Good Omens and ace vs gay vs generic queer rep over here, and it was meant to be a prelude to a fic snippet but then it went on for too long. Anyway.

Mostly I’m trying to gauge interest in whether I should bother pursuing this fic idea, which is simmering alongside a bunch of original writing and some leftover Goblin Emperor things, and it’s hard to focus. But the premise is: what kind of love is it, anyway? 

Anyway, here’s a chunk of what I have so far. 

-

Aziraphale pulled away another inch or two, giving him a soft and wondering look. “Crowley,” he said, “have you not-- done this before?”

“I-- well,” Crowley said, flustered. “Well not with you!”

Aziraphale laughed gently. “I mean, I knew that,” he said. “Have you not-- it’s one of my favorite kinds of love, Crowley, the silly physical nonsense humans get up to with their bodies.”

“Isn’t it a sin?” Crowley asked, feeling stupid.

“It can be,” Aziraphale answered, “but much less often than humans think. Like anything sacred, it can be profaned, but if done with good intentions, Crowley, it’s really quite holy.”

“I don’t think I can do that,” Crowley said. “Oh fuck, are angel body fluids holy?” He put his hand to his mouth, recoiling slightly; was Aziraphale’s saliva going to melt him? But it would have, already, if it were going to. Still.

“No,” Aziraphale said, “don’t be silly, or we could just have wars by spitting on each other.”

“Or, er, something else,” Crowley said. “Still, if you-- what if you and I fucked and it was holy? Wouldn’t I die?”

“No, dear,” Aziraphale said. He took Crowley’s hands in his, and held them. “Nothing of me could hurt any of you.” He looked up into Crowley’s eyes, and it was almost searing, how earnest he was. “I wouldn’t allow it, Crowley.”

There were some snakes, it was said, that hypnotized their prey with their gaze. Crowley was not that kind of snake, and knew enough about other snakes to recognize that it was just rumor, it was more that the prey would be paralyzed with terror. But he thought, in that moment, that maybe there was some truth after all, in some of it. Maybe angels subdued their prey with hypnosis. Whatever it was, it made him close his eyes and lean in and kiss Aziraphale again, even though that was a corny line and shouldn’t have worked.

And it wasn’t true; Aziraphale had hurt Crowley before and would hurt him again. Not physically, not corporeally, but those sorts of hurts were trivial. No, he could strike far more dangerous blows in other ways.

[rachelillustrates]

Some thoughts on the “Steven Universe” movie

Spoilers under the cut 8,000 percent!

This is gonna be mostly just me processing, cause the movie was beautiful - but not exactly what I’d hoped/expected. There was a LOT I loved, but some that I didn’t in a major way. 

Note: I’m writing this mostly for myself, so if you disagree/disapprove of my thoughts, please just don’t interact.

I guess I should start with noting what I’d hoped to see. I’d hoped we’d get to finally see Lapis and Peridot fuse (though I am still, at heart, an Amedot fan, and I loved what little moments we got of them together, and of course Peridot shined like the Absolute Queen she is). I’d hoped we’d get a more solid idea of where we’re going from here - so maybe that’s what my disappointment boils down to. Maybe I’m just afraid that this show, which has meant so much to me and means so much to so many others for queer representation, body positive representation, etc. - maybe I’m just afraid that it’s truly coming to an end, since the movie ended up being more of a nostalgic piece about how far we’ve come. 

I feel like I will appreciate the nostalgia a lot better on my first rewatch of the film, but at first glance, resetting the gems to who they were before - erasing their character development in order to remind us of what we’ve already seen - felt out of place. I was really uncomfortable watching it, and I don’t know why it was necessary. Granted, it did set up an amazing Bismuth moment in “Who We Are,” the way that Steven inspired each of his family to remember themselves was heartwarming in every case (especially Amethyst’s), and it didn’t end up dominating the entire film (just half of it). But I still wish we could have acknowledged the growth each character’s had without totally erasing it and having to rebuild it.

That said, we did get some solid queer-romantic representation with Ruby and Sapphire’s remembering/reunion (and I did love that Sapphire saved Ruby this time), and with Steven calling Rose the literal love of Pearl’s life (FINALLY). Both of those things are no small thing, especially since this show has been so instrumental in pushing queer rep in general. So a very good note there.

About body positive representation, though.

I feel like the movie was a step backward for body positivity, with Steven slimming down, and the hyper-muscular Steg. 

I do actually still read Steven as chubby, but it seems like most of mainstream media doesn’t anymore (if I see one more post celebrating his new neck I am going to SCREAM). So that is a HUGE step back, considering the round, soft boy we used to know. The fact that Steg - despite being a fusion of chubby Steven and fat Greg - manifests as a hyper-muscular manly man also feels like a step backward, or at least a slap in the face. How would a fusion of those two softer bodies produce that kind of body, instead? How? I feel like they were trying to rely on hyper-masculinity because Steg is the first entirely-male-coded gem we’ve seen, so maybe that was a part of it? Or maybe his body formed from Greg’s ideals of masculinity, since he’s expressed fat-negativity himself before (In a minor way, but still)? Either way, that striking aspect of his appearance struck me very wrong, no matter how charming his song and duet with Opal was. 

All of that said, I did appreciate the end result of the film - it’s general message, and the fact that we still got decent queer representation. Spinel’s story was heartbreaking in the best of ways and very well articulated, and she grew on me as the film progressed, too. The way they began and ended the film with the Diamond’s devotion, and how they wrapped that up, also felt like the perfect note. And again, I loved Peridot’s time, and seeing how she and Lapis and Bismuth have settled in together to help build Little Homeworld.

(Also though, where was Jasper???)

*deep breath* Okay. Now onto a rewatch, and here’s hoping for more news on where we’re going from here, soon. 

[glittergummicandypeach]

How a Stars and Stripes Hijab on ‘Rupaul’s Drag Race’ Reveals America’s Troubling Relationship to Gender, Ethnicity and ‘That’ Religion | Religion Dispatches

Honestly, we blame ourselves.

We should have known that releasing an episode of Keeping It 101 (A Killjoy’s Introduction to Religion Podcast) about religion and RuPaul this past Wednesday meant we were in for some goopery when the next episode of Rupaul’s Drag Race aired two days later.

But how could we have known season 12 contender Jackie Cox would bring a freaking STARS AND STRIPES CAFTAN AND HIJAB to the ball? We. Were. Gagged. 

That said: if we had known Ms. Cox would be featuring this garment on tonight, we could’ve clocked Jeff Goldblum’s Islamophobic response from clear across the club. We would’ve told you that women who dress like Cox to express modesty are immediately racialized as Muslim, forced to defend Islam against accusations that it is uniquely hostile toward women and queer people, and especially vulnerable to violence.

The Persian Princess of Drag

Cox has made much of her Iranian heritage, dubbing herself “the Persian Princess of Drag” and tearfully thanking Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for her advocacy work on behalf of immigrants like Cox’s mother, an American citizen born in Iran. But so far this season—as we literally just said!—Cox has claimed her Iranian-ness solely in racial and cultural terms. Even when commending AOC for “working in Congress in solidarity with Congresswoman Tlaib and Congresswoman Omar,” the first two Muslim women elected to serve in Congress, Cox never said the words ‘Islam’ or ‘Muslim’.

L to R: Jaida Essence Hall, the now-disgraced Sherry Pie, and Heidi entreat viewers to vote in the November 2020 presidential election while Jackie Cox waves from the top of the runway. See? Subtle. (Screengrab from episode 12)

We assumed that Cox or the producers or both had decided to frame Cox’s story explicitly in terms of racism and immigration, which fit neatly into season 12’s pronounced emphasis on urging viewers toward increased political engagement. (In drag’s grand tradition of understated subtlety, every episode now ends with the remaining queens prancing down the runway waving huge “REGISTER TO VOTE” signs. Image left.)

As religious studies scholars, we were thirsty for more explicit engagement with Cox’s religio-racial heritage. But we allowed that the show’s glossing of anti-Iranian hostility as racism was still important political work: though classified as white, Iranians in the United States (religious or otherwise) often face anti-Muslim hostility, which is related—but not reducible—to American white supremacy.¹ American whiteness is fragile, contested, and—especially for folks associated with Islam—contingent on good behavior. On episode 7, Jackie Cox wept while outing herself as the child of an immigrant from a Muslim-majority country and claiming “this part of [her] heritage that [she] hid for so long.” We were prepared to leave our analysis of Ms. Cox at that: viewers might suspect their Persian Princess had a relationship with Islam, but the show left Jackie’s religious commitments (or lack thereof) safely tucked out of sight.

But then SOMETHING HAPPENED, America. 

Salaam RuPaul Joon

Episode 9, “Choices,” had contestants facing off in a debate to become America’s first drag president.² The pinnacle of every episode is the queen’s final runway looks; this week’s theme was “Stars and Stripes Forever.”³ And heeeeeere’s Jackie:

She’s giving us “a beautiful, [red and white] striped, flowing caftan” and “a midnight blue hijab that is outlined in fifty silver stars.” She’s insisting “you can be Middle Eastern, you can be Muslim, and you can still be American.”

In the immortal words of Latrice Royale: she said THAT.

As Jackie Cox swanned down the runway trailing her patriotic caftan behind her, guest judge, dinosaur Zaddy, and Woody Allen defender Jeff Goldblum let out an “oooooh” or a “nooooo.” Either way, it was clear Cox’s look evoked a strong response from Goldblum. Camera held tight on his face for reactions; Goldblum seemed fixated and (to our trained killjoy eye) bordering on disgust. 

A smiling Cox faced the judges with a cheery “salaam RuPaul joon!” Veteran judge Carson Kressley called her outfit “beautiful and touching” and said it “makes a political statement;”4 guest judge Rachel Bloom celebrated that Cox’s “simple outfit…says so much” about what “America really is.”5 This presentation primes the viewer to see Cox’s eleganza as boundary-pushing and indicative of something essential about Jackie Cox as a performer.

If you watched the show or you study religion or you exist on the internet, you already know what happened next. 

“Are you religious, may I ask?” Goldblum inquired, because OF COURSE HE DID, eyebrows raised above thick black nerd glasses, elbow propped on the judges’ table, supporting a face slouched casually against his hand. Cox replied that she’s not religious and insisted that the importance of her outfit lies in “the visibility religious minorities need to have in this country.” 

“Isn’t this an interesting wrinkle, though,” Goldblum continued, waving his hands around his face with pre-COVID abandon. “Is there something in that religion that is anti-homosexuality and anti-woman? Does that complicate the issue?” (emphasis added, and Reader: feel free to pause and hit the shade rattle button if you need to). “I’m just raising it and thinking out loud and maybe being stupid. What do you think?” he concluded.

We’re so glad you asked us that, Jeff Goldblum. Here’s what we think:

Seeing a hijab-wearing woman and dribbling half-baked, anti-Muslim talking points from out the mouth atop your admittedly striking and grizzled jawline does not make us think you’re interesting, Jeff Goldblum. It makes us think you haven’t done your homework.

Islamophobia is Not an “Interesting Wrinkle”

Here’s the T: religion has always been messy on Drag Race—which makes sense, since religion is messy in general. Keeping It 101, like Marie Kondo, loves mess, so you know we had to get into this gig. Whether it means to or not, Drag Race has always given us characters with complicated relationships to religion: Monique Heart’s devout Christianity despite undergoing conversion therapy; Valentina claiming la Virgen de Guadalupe as her drag mother; debates about whose religiously-inspired garments are culturally appropriate and whose are appropriation. 

Religion should be messy on Drag Race, we’ve argued, because religion is what people do, and people are some messy bitches. Lived religious experience changes as people change; rarely are people just one thing or one thing all the time or one thing throughout their whole lives. Jackie Cox has been bringing the complexity of her Iranian identity to us every week. But despite Cox asserting her Iranian-ness in terms of culture, national origin, and ethnicity, the judges read her “Stars and Stripes Forever” outfit exclusively and explicitly as religious. 

As RuPaul’s longtime co-host Michelle Visage would say: meh.

Look, we’re not surprised. Americans know disturbingly little about pious fashion, which has led to some truly tragic and dehumanizing feature items on nonwestern modesty practices. Most Americans still seem unaware that how people cover their bodies has far more to do with where they are than whether they belong to a particular religious community (though students always nod when we explain that folks going out on the town in New York City dress differently than in, say, Tuscaloosa). Folks who wrinkle their noses at Muslim modest fashion seldom express the same concerns about conservative Christian women in long skirts and long-sleeved blouses. We know how you do, America. We work on racialization and religious intolerance.

As we discussed on our “Religion Is Not Done with You” episode, we also know that Muslim-coded people don’t get to opt out of Islam: “Arab-looking” folks, folks with “Muslim-sounding” names, Sikhs in turbans, folks who dress in “Muslim garb,” all get read as Muslim. Identifying as atheist doesn’t get anyone who can be read as Muslim out of “totally random” TSA pat downs. This is how we racialize Islam, distilling a billion-person millenium-old global religion into one (terrifying, not-American) thing.

So yeah, when Jeff Goldblum looks at Jackie Cox in a hijab and says “that religion,” of course we know what he means. Goldblum doesn’t say “Islam”—in fact, no one says Islam or Muslim for the rest of the episode. No one has to. With this question-cum-critique, Islam became what was happening On Tonight, and Goldblum became every white dude in any audience or classroom who doesn’t think he’s racist, who doesn’t realize he’s part of the problem, and who definitely didn’t do the reading. 

That Religion

Goldblum’s use of that here—making Islam “that religion,” unnamed and unsafe for women and queer people—belies the disgust we clocked on his face as Cox brought modest fashion to the runway. He’s asking (though it’s really more of a comment than a question) whether the religion he projects onto Cox’s queer, feminine-presenting body hates her queer, feminine-presenting self; hates all women and queers. 

Goldblum is asking Cox if Islam hates her, the beautiful queen standing before him, who chose to wear this clothing to represent herself and her communities. Goldblum begs the question of Islam-as-oppressive, as though expecting Cox to thank him for liberating her with his tired, basic question. 

Dinosaur Zaddy, WYD? Why are you proving our point by assuming folks who look like Muslims must be religious—immediately racializing and pigeon-holing literal billions of people? Why would you assume you already know everything you need to know about Islam? 

Oh, right. Because you’re American, and America is that girl. We knew she was. 

Cox, to her credit, ignored the bigotry and argued for complexity: “I’m not [religious],” she told Goldblum. “I have my own misgivings about how LGBT people are treated in the Middle East, and at the same time, I am one. But…when the Muslim ban happened, it really destroyed a lot of my faith in this country, and it really hurt my family.” (Jeff Goldblum, open-mouthed, nodded along as Cox spoke.) “I’m here, and I deserve to be in America as much as anyone else.” 

In a challenge meant to celebrate American inclusivity, Cox had to share her personal trauma and champion religious freedom (very American of her, no?) so as not to have to defend a religion of 1.9 billion people (Islam), a nation-state of 82 million (Iran), and an immigrant community already under siege. 

Goldblum’s comments are dangerous. Characterizing Islam as inherently anti-LGBTQ, anti-women, anti-anything, really, falsely collapses the complexity of Islam and Muslims into a conservative anti-American monolith—while letting America off the hook for the very real damage it’s doing to women, LGBTQ people, immigrants, and Muslims every day, and with increased urgency during our nation’s public health crisis. 

We the People

Standing on the stage in front of the judges, Cox—like so many women who cover—found the complexity of her identity reduced to the fabric on her head. Despite not being religious, Drag Race stripped her complicated performance down to its proximity to Islam. It might be too much to expect a campy televised game show to give us realness about religion, except that historically, that’s exactly what Drag Race has done. 

Shepard Fairey’s “We the People Are Greater than Fear.”

RuPaul loves a reference, but no one on that judges panel seemed to get that Cox’s caftan and hijab were inspired by Shepard Fairey’s “WE THE PEOPLE are greater than fear,” part of a poster series created in response to the 2016 election [image left].  

Many people carried this image during nation-wide Women’s Marches in January 2017 to protest the 45th president’s inauguration. The poster inspired praise (for including a modest Muslim woman as a symbol of American patriotism) and criticism (for implying Muslims need to support American militarism and imperialism to be “truly” American). 

Not all Muslim women feel liberated by the image Cox is referencing; as Muslim fashion blogger Hoda Katebi says, “Know that Muslims are tired of having to ‘prove’ they are American [and] know that one does not need to be American to deserve respect, humanity, dignity, equality, rights and freedom from hate and bigotry. An over-emphasis on being American as a prerequisite of deserving respect is harmful for immigrants and refugees.” 

How a woman (or a man dressed as one) engages with religion (or not) is not something you can tell by looking at her. Muslim women are more than what they put (or not) on their heads. Looking at a woman who covers and assuming she’s an observant Muslim contributes to the racialization of Muslims—the fear that Muslims are too different, too dangerous, to be allowed to be fully American. Asking a female-presenting person who covers her head with a hijab whether Islam hates women or queers implies that the woman needs saving, that she hasn’t chosen to dress herself in a way she knows makes her a more likely target for hate speech and violence. Assuming Islam hates Muslim women or queer Muslims is some white nonsense: Islam hates nothing; all religions are made up of people. 

Assuming a Muslim woman or a queer Muslim must be especially at risk because of their religious belonging collapses a long, complex history of gender relations in Islam into a soundbite that makes the internet yell at you, Jeff Goldblum. It ignores that many religions, including Islam, can and do contribute to both the empowerment and the oppression of women. Because religion is what people do, DinoZaddy, and history has shown us that people oppress women. 

When you look at a woman who covers her head and assume you know everything worth knowing about her, Jeff Goldblum, you make an ass out of you. And us, as it turns out, for releasing our hot take on RuPaul and religion too early to yell about this on the air. Better luck next season, we guess. 

In the meantime: salaam, Khanoom Jackie Cox joon. Thank you for not turning your pious fashion runway moment into a reveal. We stan.

1 Check out the Islamophobia Is Racism syllabus and especially Neda Maghbouleh’s excellent Limits of Whiteness (Stanford 2017) for more on this religio-racial tension.

2 Again. Season 4 episode 9, “Frock the Vote,” featured precisely this format — but that was before the show hit basic cable and expanded its mainstream viewership.  This is probably for the best, as Chad Michaels’ “LadyPimp” platform has not aged well. And PhiPhi O’Hara’s calling Black queens “the help” didn’t play well even then.

3 Personally, we would have gone with “Amer-I-Can!” but we’re still waiting for our recruiting call from the show’s producers.

4 Speaking of political statements: don’t even get us started on Carson telling Widow that she came off as an angry Black woman, or on the fact that the lipsync for your life literally pitted a Black queen against a hijabi queen while declaring the white queen in ACTUAL IMPERIAL GARB  safe. We cannot even.

5 Bloom called America “a nation of immigrants,” which obviously obscures the genocidal violence perpetrated against the Indigenous peoples of what is now the United States and against those forcibly removed and enslaved to become the bedrock of this country’s economy.

This content was originally published here.