Category: queer

SAG Awards: Chris Colfer and the smartest tuxedo ever

I haven’t written about menswear here since the great customized pinstripe discussion from almost a year ago, but I can’t stop thinking about what a clever choice Vivienne Westwood’s harlequin-evoking tuxedo was for Chris Colfer at the SAG Awards last night (look, the SAG awards are a snoozer, but clothes are fun and since I get to vote in them I do feel faintly obligated to watch).

Aside from the fact that the man knows how to wear a suit and seeing him going a little more daring in that regard was delightful, the more I’ve pondered the various origins of what we think of as the harlequin, the more taken I am with this choice. A trickster, an acrobat, and a being that runs around with a bunch of demons chasing damned souls to hell is some pretty powerful stuff. It’s also some pretty clever and wry stuff when the person sartorially referencing this bit of theatrical history is a young performer and writer who just happens to be gay in what is still a homophobic culture.

Making it all even more delicious is the fact that the Vivienne Westwood suit’s harlequin details only extend from the shoulders to mid-chest, so what we’re looking at isn’t the full garb of the harlequin, but merely the mantle. All clothes are about playing a role, of course, especially clothes worn for the camera at an awards ceremony, but this particular tuxedo, on anyone, is explicitly so.

I haven’t the faintest idea if anyone in Colfer’s camp thought consciously about the motif of the suit, although I imagine all those people are certainly smart enough for it to be a possibility.

Regardless, I can’t stop being tickled by what I read immediately as a playful and intellectual skewering of a weird business and its intersection with an often cowardly culture. Reception is only within an artist’s control to a profoundly limited degree, and I love seeing that celebrated and played with, even if my experience of such is well outside its original intent.

Glee: Marriage, public status, and private lives

There are a few things we know unequivocally about Kurt Hummel. He has an astounding voice; he has an uncanny ability to spot trends in men’s fashion; and he knows when it comes from a bottle. He also really, really likes weddings. Just look at his fixation with the royal event (who could forget his still unrealized musical about Pippa Middleton?), and, of course, his amazing wedding planning for his father and Carole.

So, in an episode all about planning weddings and proposals, where the hell was Kurt Hummel?

The fact is, I have no idea. Because in an episode that gave us amazing content around Artie and Becky, underscored the very real chemistry between Sam and Mercedes, and treated us to another round of Finn Has No Idea What To Do With His Life, there really wasn’t room for another great scene that had no tonal relevance to any other scene in what was an information-rich, but largely hideously structured episode.

But I do have a theory. Although it’s one built, largely, not on the presence of data, but the absence of it, which isn’t my favorite basis for constructing an argument. I suspect whatever was going on in this episode goes back to the ring box scene between Kurt and Blaine that was supposed to be in the Christmas episode, but got yanked for time because what the episode needed to say about Kurt and Blaine got said in other ways.

The ring box wasn’t necessary to the Christmas episode, no. But it was necessary to this one, and if it had been broadcast, it might help explain not only Kurt’s non-participation in the marriage narratives of “Yes/No”, but why Beiste’s elopement was also a critical detail when it comes to this season’s ongoing marriage theme.

That season three is all about marriage we learn right at the start of 3.01. Kurt and Rachel are being interviewed by Joseph ben Israel about their plans for the future and Kurt says, “Married by 30, legally!”

I squealed at that line when it aired because of the turning tide, because of the recent marriage equality decision in New York (which Colfer gave a shout-out to while that was in process during the Glee Live dates here), and because of the state of marriage equality in Ohio.

You need to know it’s bad. Like really, really bad. Like, should the state, its people and its government have the will, it will still be a hot mess to fix. Ohio has multiple laws and even an amendment in the state constitution banning marriage equality. It’s not that it’s not legal, as is the case in many states; it’s that it’s explicitly, constitutionally illegal. In fact, despite not being the worst place to be gay, at all (especially if you’re in the Columbus area), Ohio has some of the ugliest legal language out there on marriage equality.

At any rate, 3.01 is hardly the last time we hear about marriage. 3.05 and the ramp-up to it is littered with references to spiritual marriage (I’m working on something with someone on that theme for this blog; we’ll get it to you one day), and that theme continues in its immediate aftermath through everything from Kurt’s wardrobe to a number of interactions between Santana and Brittany.

The Christmas episode also underscores marriage themes — around Kurt and Blaine euphemistically, and around Finn and Rachel and all that fretting about jewelry purchases. We also, of course, lost a Santana scene in the Diamond Basement in that episode, as well.

And then we come to “Yes/No”, an episode centered around something Kurt adores, and yet he’s no where near it. Why? Or, as gets said on Tumblr (and surely other spaces): “Why is Klaine being left out of this incredibly romantic episode?”

But I don’t think that’s the right question, because I don’t think this episode is supposed to be about romance. Or even marriage, as an act or a state of being. I think “Yes/No” is about the public spectacle and status conferred by marriage (and relationships) and the toxicity excessive focus on that public spectacle can engender.

When Will wants to marry Emma everything is fine until he starts to engage with the expected rituals of marriage with others by asking her family’s permission to marry her. Things then promptly go (temporarily) to hell.

Meanwhile, Finn’s proposal to Rachel at the episode’s end is far more about trying to find an identity for himself than it is about loving her, despite the fact that he does love her. Not knowing what will mark the culmination of his high school career, he chooses to propose to her — again, the need for spectacle and status getting in the way of good choices and the actual relationship.

Additionally, the glee club worries about Artie’s reputation if he is romantically linked to Becky; they can say it’s because they don’t trust her, but people on Glee date unpleasant people all the time, and Artie is right to call them out on their discomfort with her Downs.

And let’s not forget Shane, pulling Mercedes away from Sam right after he gets slushied. It’s all about relationships and partners as status items and possessions.

Even the opening use of “Summer Nights” focuses on that. The currency in that song is gossip, cars, and sex, and in case you forgot about the sex, Rachel was back with an I’m-about-to-lose-my-virginity-oh-wait-I-already-did capelette in that number.

So were does that leave Kurt, a young man who loves the spectacle of weddings, but also recently, according to canon we haven’t actually seen, received an age-appropriate token of affection from his boyfriend in private? In a pretty awkward place, I’m guessing. Because Kurt, more than anyone else in this show, has had significant time and cause to consider the status impacts of relationships conducted both in public and in private. Remember, it’s dangerous to other people for him to be their friend too; I wonder if he and Becky ever talk about that.

That the status of how people relate to him is critical to Kurt is something we see in play at Burt’s wedding. We see it at Kurt’s prom. We see it in Kurt and Blaine agreeing to have sex with each other for the first time in a conversation on a stage in an empty theater.

There is no audience for Kurt an Blaine’s commitment to each other, whatever it may be. No matter how out they are, the audience cannot exist; they aren’t paying the right type of attention; the script and framework are absent. Because this is Lima, Ohio, and certain spectacles are barred to boys like Kurt and Blaine in this place and time. Really, it’s even written down.

For Kurt, that has to be profoundly challenging. Here is a boy who just wants to be both seen and valued for what he is, but is often misinterpreted and devalued. Now that he has something that elevates his own feelings about himself and seems to fit the model for public celebration and status, he still doesn’t quite get to have that. Remember how tainted the prom was?

And then, we hear, Blaine gives him a ring and a promise. The ring is too delicate to wear regularly. The promise would make no sense to those around them: not to Rachel, who is leaning harder and harder towards her career and doesn’t have a partner who can take that journey with her; and not to Finn who would just shrug and say, “Dude, sucks you can’t get married.”

In a world where the ring box scene had actually been broadcast in the Christmas episode, there would be a clear thru-line from Kurt’s marriage fantasies about New York through the spiritual marriage theme of “The First Time.” This would then journey on to the commitment of the gum-wrapper ring, followed by this episode that largely shames the ways status rituals around marriage can get in the way of love. Note, of course, the one angst free marriage/partnership situation in this entire episode was Cooter and Beiste, and they eloped.

These themes, currently elucidated murkily thanks to the absence of that critical piece of connective tissue from the Christmas episode, seem as if they will be further underscored based on the spoilers we have for the Michael Jackson episode, in which we apparently see Kurt comforting an injured and/or emotionally miserable Blaine. This is something very different from the demonstrations of affection we see in the other couples on the show, and will probably then be in play again (in a state of absence due to Blaine missing a few eps due to Darren Criss’s run on Broadway) as the Valentine’s Day episode likely once again focuses on the toxicity of status issues around love and romance.

Glee, increasingly, seems to be about the public/private divide, about what you keep close, and what you can feel belongs to you — your pride, your talent, your capacity to love, and what is beyond your control — other people’s reactions, your success, the people you love. This is unavoidable in a narrative in which kids learn about themselves by performing, and Kurt, for all his striving since the show began, has, unfairly, some of the hardest, cruelest lessons to learn in this regard, in part, because of inequalities that are underscored by his blessings: his voice, his fashion sense, and, yes, his boyfriend.

Would “Yes/No” still have been incoherent on the “where is Kurt?” issue if we’d had that ring-box scene in the Christmas episode? Probably. The structural flaws were pretty epic on multiple fronts. But with the connective tissue of that ring box scene, I’m fairly sure we would at least know what Glee was aiming for, not just tonight, but with its ongoing marriage theme, that keeps making me want to quote Leonard Cohen: Love is not a victory march — not for Kurt and Blaine, who don’t get a parade; and not for Finn and Rachel for whom marriage seems to be a plan B to bigger dreams.

Where this will all go in the end, I’m not sure, but I am certain we’re not done with this marriage theme, nor are we done with Kurt and Blaine being absent or ambivalent around public displays of romantic status. They’re getting a little older and the realities of the public spectacle fairytale are getting much clearer for them — both in terms of what they can and can’t have, but also in terms of whether that’s really a fantastic mode for building a life.

That’s one thing about being a gay kid. Fewer blueprints on hand. And sometimes, that’s the best thing in the world.

Details: a first fandom, a lost world, & discovering that fame has an architecture

In the 1980s, before it was what it is now, Details magazine was a style bible for New York’s downtown party scene, and it covered the social life of night clubs in dozens and dozens of pages of gossip columns about people with funny names most people had never heard of.

My mother read it religiously, sending my father out to check the newsstands for it regularly. We lived uptown, but my parents had owned an art gallery once and my mother had worn Norma Kamali before anyone had ever heard of her. And so, instead of Vogue, this was what was in our house, and as my mother read it, so did I.

I loved it. I loved its gorgeous over-saturated black and white photos, and the hint of danger and fantasia there was in scurrilous stories about people with names like Kenny Kenny and James St. James and Magenta. I was ten-, twelve-, fourteen-years-old, and I wanted to be a club kid too.

I wasn’t, not really, not ever, but it was New York in the 80s and people my age often got to do things it never should have been reasonable for us to do. I went to Area, to MARS, to the Limelight and Tunnel, the Palladium before it was an NYU dorm; I remember squirming out of the grasp of some 25-year-old med student in the bathrooms at MARS late one night when I was 13; he’d grabbed my wrist and tried to get me to touch his dick, and I ran back out into the crowd and then danced until dawn.

But mostly… mostly I just read Details in my parents’ living room, my mother insisting I just liked it for the clothes, and my father approving because it was so beautifully art directed.

After my junior year in high school, I decided I didn’t want to be in school anymore. Freshman year had been spent at the private school that had dwindled down to a class of eight, and I’d been at Stuyvesant for the following two years.

A selective, hard-to-get into public school focused on science education, Stuy had an intense party culture that overlapped with the world of Details more than any of our parents would have liked. But I was bored, felt at sea in the circle of friends I had managed to develop, and had humiliated myself epically over a boy, and I wanted out.

So I applied to an internship program through another high school. Once accepted, it meant I would work full time and write essays about the experience and then graduate, on-time, with my Stuyvesant class, without having to deal with actually being in school. It seemed perfect.

And so, I set out to become who I had always wanted to be, alternately laying on my living room floor and dancing (when I could find an excuse to be out) alone in clubs, and I called up Details magazine, and said, “I want to work for you.”

Somehow, I secured an interview. I wore this gorgeous suit I had — brown, high-waisted sailor pants with a cropped, black, asymmetrical jacket with bronze buttons. I put a flower in my lapel and geta on my feet and decided I was Oscar Wilde as I took myself off to that interview. I was 16.

And it went well! It really did. It was everything I’d ever wanted, although, to appease my parents and my internship coordinator, I also talked to the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation, for which I did a ton of volunteer work in high school and college (that, by the way, is its own set of amazing and bizarre stories), as a backup plan.

And then I heard nothing.

Nothing and nothing and nothing.

And my parents said, “Well, you know, they are all gay boys over there, they probably don’t like you because you are a girl.”

“No,” I said. “It’s not like that. Same tribe. I wore the best outfit.”

Late the next night our phone rang, and I, against house rules (we screened all our calls because of the harassment and prank phone calls I would receive from peers), answered it. It was the man I had interviewed with.

Details was being sold to Conde Nast. I couldn’t tell anyone. It wasn’t public yet. He thought they all might be fired any day. He certainly couldn’t bring me into the middle of that.

And then we talked. For thirty minutes, me on the plastic Garfield phone my parents had bought me for my 13th birthday, sitting on the floor of my room in the dark, as this stranger told me to be beautiful and fabulous and fierce and just as sharp as I clearly was, and to remember that in the homes outcasts make for themselves it’s normal to still feel like an outcast.

Details announced its sale a few days later, and continued as what it had been, briefly. Eventually it was moved to Conde Nast’s Fairchild unit and publication was ceased, before it was relaunched as what it is today: a men’s magazine that anticipated the metrosexual craze and created itself by gutting its original content that was queer in both senses of the word and also ridiculously provincial to this one small corner of my beautiful New York.

I wound up working for the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation for a woman who is younger than I am now, who once sent out a letter to 400 people that accidentally listed her title as “Director of Pubic Relations” (lesson: why spellcheck is not enough). She took me under her wing and showed and told me things about adult life she probably shouldn’t have, and, while grateful, in retrospect I am also embarrassed for us both.

Snippets of what Details once was can be found with some effort on the Internet. WFMU managed to preserve this random sample album of behind-the-scenes celebrity wackiness. The stunning photography of its Hidden Identities series also, thankfully, still exists. And, if you search hard enough, some of the old cover images and table of contents can also be found.

All in all, it was a lovely dream that it was probably for the best that I never achieved in any particularly concrete way. I got into quite enough trouble as a teenager in New York without ever being able to say I worked at Details. But in many ways, Details was my first fandom, my first keen media interest, the first time I sat down and said, “Fame is this constructed thing, how is it made? and what is it about beyond the things it claims to be about?”

From time to time, that magazine and the world it covered pops back to mind for me: like when the Michael Alig murder case happened (a story later made into the film Party Animal) or when the Limelight got turned into a high-end mall. I hate that it is a lost world, a queer one, that was erased by mainstream culture, but I also recognize that it met its end in poetic fashion, as narrative in the mists, and that’s satisfying, not only to who I am today, but to who I was at 16 sitting in the dark of my bedroom, listening to a journalist who, scared about his job, for thirty minutes treated some kid he didn’t know as if she was his friend.

This bit of history no one really cares about anymore brought to you by members of one of my current fandoms cooing over an article in Details as it is today.

But, oh, the things it once was.

Glee: tokens of affection, public approval, and the lives of stories

While I feel like discussions about Glee often focus on what was missing, it’s unusual for that focus to actually be about something that was originally meant to be there. In the case of episode 3.09, which had a delightfully weird send-up of classic B&W Christmas specials, the big discussion on Tumblr, Twitter and LiveJournal has largely been about what’s in the box?

Except the scene where Blaine gives Kurt what looks like a ring box got cut (along with some other, unrelated scenes) from the final show. Rumor on Tumblr that seems to be coming from someone with a friend who works on the show is that the box contained a ring made out of gum wrappers, to serve as counterpoint to the Rachel and Finn narrative involving expensive gift-giving and proof of love. It may or may not have also been meant to be a promise ring. (Since the initial writing of this piece, the gum-wrapper ring has been confirmed by TV Line, but context speculation remains. The scene will, however, be included on the season 3 DVDs).

Narratively, the cut makes sense. The broad middle of the episode and the decisions that set it up are extremely focused on Kurt and Blaine imagining an adult future together and their friends presuming one. Therefore, we didn’t actually need further narrative development around their commitment, and really, the Finn and Rachel storyline was completely resolvable without it (and filled with its own bucket of problems that I’ll perhaps address in another post).

Other than the rumored possibility that it was a promise ring used in its original sense, not as a placeholder amongst children with grownup dreams, but as a placeholder from someone who doesn’t yet have the means to purchase an engagement ring (there’s more than one story in my own family about gum wrappers and paper bands from cigars, including my parents), what’s been super interesting to me has been one of the key phrases going around Tumblr about the whole affair: My OTP doesn’t need a box or a ring. (OTP, for those not in the know, means “one true pairing” and is what fans refer to their favorite couples, on-screen or fantasy only, as).

I don’t think it was said with the queer culture discussion it evokes in mind, but it’s a powerful and confusing statement at a time when queer identity and the public reception of queer identities is deeply in flux.

Because right now, so much of queer identity is a discussion about equal marriage rights, and equal marriage rights are complicated, not just because of the obvious stuff like queer families needing equal protection under the law and keeping other people’s religious beliefs out of our lives. But because marriage equality is having, and will continue to have, a huge impact on queer culture.

Because suddenly, we have to talk about, in far more practical ways than in the past (the past on display in the black and white portion of tonight’s episode) about marriage, and if it’s for us, and what its impact on queer culture is. Do we need and want rings and rituals that to many of us feel are borrowed from a straight culture we don’t get? And if we do need or want those things are we allowed to talk about how incredibly conflicted we do or do not feel about them?

I’m such a fierce proponent of marriage equality, and am very happy for friends who have or will be marrying same-sex partners. I’m also a huge romantic, and, unfortunately, am also someone who was raised to believe that marriage is the only possible marker of success and adulthood I could ever have (oh, being a girl in the world I was a girl in).

But I also love — loved — the perhaps vanishing queer culture that raised me as a queer person, and it was a land of not needing boxes or rings. It was a land of massive pride in keeping it together day after day after day, because it was a choice every day, because there was no glue that was easy to show off or receive approval for. There was no paperwork.

In the land of Glee, we know, at least somewhat, where Kurt and Blaine stand on marriage. Kurt’s already told us about his fantasy life in New York, “married by 30, legally” (3.01), and Blaine may have given him a promise ring made of gum wrappers for Christmas. (For the record, I remember making those in summer camp on rainy days as all of us girls — all presumed straight — sat around wearing them and imaging futures full of shiny bragging).

That the Kurt and Blaine gifting scene got cut tonight was pure narrative common-sense; the most important part of storytelling is always editing, and what we needed to know about them got told elsewhere in the episode.

But I have to say I love that the fannish discourse, which has gone from outraged to trying to get comfortable with the cut, brings up this issue and the idea that commitment doesn’t need a ring, or, perhaps more importantly any public display or approval. This is especially critical considering the frequent concerns many fans express about the level of physical contact between Kurt and Blaine on screen, often with little awareness of safety concerns gay teens in their environment would face.

While I can’t wait to get a look at the cut scene because I am endlessly charmed by Kurt and Blaine, I am also thankful for the cut, because it really reminds me of why I love fan culture. Because fan culture always promotes, explicitly or implicitly, the idea that stories continue and live full lives, whether we’re looking at them or not.

Personal note: Swordspoint audiobook

Even when I’m aggravated by it (and let’s face it, we’re all aggravated by stuff we love sometimes), I adore fandom and, particularly, fanfiction. I will always be inclined to defend it and be honest about my participation in it for all sorts of different reasons including that it’s just fun and that it’s arguably an act of perpetual longing, which just totally fits how my brain works. But, most importantly, it’s also how I met my partner.

Specifically, Patty and I met writing fanfiction about Ellen Kushner‘s Swordspoint, which is sort of hilarious as far as romantic impetus goes. Because even with a glorious couple at its center, Swordspoint is not a romance, and wow, neither of those guys are anyone you want to date, even if they’re pretty awesome as far as narrative kinks go and are people that Patty and I can be said to be bear some slightly hilarious and superficial resemblance too: she is a scholar, who is taller than me, and is, on occasion, quite difficult; and I do, in fact, keep swords by our bed.

Anyway, Swordspoint is now available as an audio-book from SueMedia Productions for Neil Gaiman Presents/ACX. I’m telling you all because I love this story like burning, and it helped me find Patty, and there are some rockin’ voice actors on this, and oh hey, I also have a teeny, tiny, awesome credit on it.

It’s cool stuff that I think many readers here would enjoy — swords, queer people, intrigue, and witty insults, just to name a few. If you do check it out and want to find the fandom, it seems to live on Livejournal.

Glee: Kurt Hummel, heteroaesthetics, and feminine modesty

When Glee‘s season 3 started, one of the things we were told was that Kurt’s outfits would be less outrageous — he’s getting older, he has a boyfriend, there’s less need to shock. And for the first four episodes, this was by and large true: there were fewer inexplicable pieces and gender non-conforming choices, and Kurt largely stuck to vests, dress shirts, trousers and stylish scarves. Sure, there were some outrageous accessories, but he’s growing up, not dead….

And then there was sex and Kurt Hummel’s fashion started knowing no gender once again.

At first I thought I was just seeing things as I watched too closely for all the ways I expected a heteronormative bucket of fail to get poured all over the first time narrative in 3.05 in a desire to appease straight audiences. But after watching 3.07 last night, I’m convinced that 3.05 marks a specific and intentional turning point regarding Kurt’s clothing that actually echos back to, among other things, season 1, and is designed to amplify the passing-related plotlines of the current season.

It’s all about the knitwear, starting with Kurt’s first outfit in 3.05.

Sure, he’s wearing a tie, but he’s also wearing one of those form-fitting knee-length sweater (dresses) that he made clear his dad abhors in S1 (he promised to stop wearing them to get his car, remember). It’s a brilliant outfit choice for the scene where Blaine’s nattering on about masturbation and Kurt’s unsure of his own desirability. The male/female content of the outfit combined with the ridiculous animal print and Kurt lounging on Blaine’s bed like a girl goes a long way towards saying, “I’m not like other boys, and there’s not even a short explanation.” But Blaine blows right by that and a conversation that starts about insecurity winds up being about flirtation.

It’s later in that same episode when we see the first of the many, many capelettes and ponchos we’ve seen since (and just in case you weren’t clear these capelettes are girl clothes, Rachel wears one in this episode as well, when she arrives at the Hudson-Hummel home to sleep with Finn for the first time). It’s that scene with Sebastian in the Lima Bean, and Kurt has this severe almost nun-like look going on, what with the high white and black collar, the amorphous shape of the cape over his chest, and the prim disapproval. But it’s important to remember that Kurt never intended to see Sebastian in this scene — this supposed to be him and Blaine engaging in their private routine — and therefore a private, relationship-centered moment, even if conducted in public.

In fact, outfits that are arguably supposed to be about Kurt and Blaine time (or at least Kurt explicitly addressing Blaine with the outfit), remain resolutely feminine in influence from this point on. There’s that equestrian moment in 3.06 in which Kurt is wearing something not only feminine in nature, but in which Blaine is solicitously helping him down from a chair he was standing on (said equestrian outfit, it should be noted, echos the polo motif in Blaine’s bedroom as seen in 3.05).

There’s also that hideous outfit involving the belted shawl/poncho and the leather Sunset Boulevard turban. And then are the three feminine outfits of 3.07 — the kilt (without leggings this time), the long grey knit turtleneck poncho, and the asymmetrical knit poncho worn during “Perfect.”

These clothing pieces aren’t just feminine for all the ways they aren’t masculine. Rather, they are all deeply representative of feminine modesty. Ponchos, in particular, minimize the figure and frequently show up in modest dressing blogs with a range of cultural emphases. That we also have Kurt covering his hair with greater frequency post-3.05 (sure, he’s always been into hats, but I have to argue this is different), particularly in that ridiculous Sunset Boulevard outfit, is also notable. In fact, the only time Kurt shows skin in one of his feminine outfits is when he has some leg on view in 3.07. But, if we argue for the school girl uniform reference, there’s a primness and social modesty connotation here too — regardless of what we’re all thinking on Tumblr.

But Kurt’s clothes haven’t gone entirely this direction. Not in the least. In fact, when he has to engage in public moments — such as his student council election speech (3.06) and election day (3.07) — he’s in masculine attire. Kurt Hummel performs a lot of things — queerness and femininity, of course, but also masculinity — when it suits his needs. There’s a discipline in that, a reading of and playing to the audience that he lacked in earlier seasons. It’s a savvy he’s acquired now, one that speaks both to politics and his own goals as a performer, even as it in no way impinges upon how he chooses to present himself in his private (even if conducted in public) life.

The big aberration here, of course, are the outfits he wears on his date with Blaine to Scandals and when he tells Blaine he’s going home with him (for sex) at the end of 3.05. Those are both what should arguably be private moments, and therefore, to fit the pattern above, involve feminine attire. But they don’t. At all.

My suspicion is that the variance here comes from two things: extradiegetically, to make it very clear that Kurt and Blaine are two gay boys; and intradiegetically, because Kurt is worried in both of these situations about proving man enough — first for gay culture, and then second, for his boyfriend who so clearly wants to be wooed and seduced (see: the Sadie Hawkins dance and Blaine’s interactions with Sebastian). In fact, extradiegetically, the auditorium outfit is actively hilarious, at least if you’ve been following the hanky code discussion over on Deconstructing Glee. That hanky code queer in-joke is, however, part of what makes Kurt’s adventures with gender so utterly subversive and queer.

For folks (largely queer folks) paying attention, Glee informs us that Kurt is happy and eager to be an aesthetically feminine partner in his relationship and play act at that very role… when it’s about his relationship. But that in no way makes him a passive, submissive or traditionally feminine partner; it doesn’t even make him a girl (sidenote: I loathe all the stereotypes it’s necessary to address to untangle what’s going on with Kurt, but it’s the world he, and we, live in). It places a heteroaesthetic dynamic around Kurt and Blaine, while firmly removing any hint of a heteronormative one.

That heteroaesthetic dynamic serves to amplify queerness for the viewer interested in queerness, but also to minimize queerness, by suggesting the actually rejected heteronormativity, for the viewier not interested in, or not comfortable with, that same queerness. This is a type of relatively outrageous passing, one that offers Kurt and Blaine safety both intra- and extradiegetically, without imposing restriction on their significantly queer gender expression and sexuality.

Finally, that Kurt’s feminine aesthetic choices evoke modesty seems to play into broader issues around his experience of sexuality. Kurt has, for all his “baby penguin” denial, always been a sensualist — it’s present in his fretting about fabrics, skin care, and even food (despite the toxic, self-restrictive tendencies we’ve seen there).

Since 3.05 we have seen him project physical modesty and avoid physical contact with people who aren’t Blaine (including, but not limited to, Rachel and the awkward hug that required warning; and Brittany and the lack of hug response/cringe thing), and it is emotionally touching as well as indicative of how much work he is having to do to both segregate his desire from the rest of his life and to integrate it into a necessarily public existence. This parallels neatly with the male/female dichotomy of Kurt’s presentation and additionally with the heteroaesthetic/queerness passing game he and Blaine are, I think, knowingly playing.

Star Trek TNG: Remember that LGBT issues episode that’s actually about straight people?

Since one of the themes of this blog lately has inadvertently become “Well back in my day all we had was Willow and Tara and all that ‘magic is an allegory for orgasm’ nonsense,” I feel compelled to mention that I’ve somehow stumbled on to a marathon of Star Trek: The Next Generation (inexplicably on BBC America) and am currently watching “The Outcast.”

For anyone who may not remember this episode or never watched the show: The Enterprise encounters a species without gender; Kirk stand-in Commander Riker works closely with one of these individuals, who then reveals that she considers herself female and has to keep this a secret on her world lest she be subjected to ridicule, violence and reparative therapy. Riker and this person hook up, and then get busted. Sure enough, she’s subjected to said reparative therapy (which on her awful world actually works), but not before a few impassioned speeches that will sound almost too familiar to any queer person out there.

This episode is central in an annoyance that many people feel about Star Trek. The original series was so cutting edge regarding race, and yet the newer series (TNG, DS:9, Voyayer, and Enterprise) have never exactly included a gay character (despite one or two similarly murky moments as “The Outcast” and quotes from more than one actor on the shows regarding their own interpretations of characters they played to include queerness).

“The Outcast” was their attempt to address LGBT issues in a way that was arguably comfortable to mainstream audiences: It’s upside-down world, no actual gay people here! You can have compassion without being squicked!

I’ve often ridiculed the episode myself. As a gay person, it is annoying in that instead of representing gay people, it is an “issue moment” that made it all about straight people; after all, the structure of the episode allowed the people our society would view as queer to remain the bad guys. Really, in its own way, it’s clever, if a little nauseating.

But watching it tonight for the first time in years, I find myself struck by it as genderqueer person. From that standpoint, it feels far less like a sloppy (and cowardly and annoying) attempt to tell a gay story without a gay character and more like an almost deft look at the reality of those of us who experience gender as non-binary and/or divorced on some level from traditional external perceptions of our physical form.

Emphasis on almost, since I don’t actually remember feeling this way about the episode at the time, and I was definitely identifying as gender-variant by the time this aired.

Most amusing (to me anyway, long story, don’t ask), perhaps, in the end, is that Jonathan Frakes, the actor who plays Riker, apparently has been quoted as saying that the female character in the gender-neutral species should have seemed more male in order to make the message clearer. On one hand, I’m impressed, on the other, that sentiment just seems to muddy already murky waters further.

Then again, I’m the girl who often dresses/feels/identifies as a boy and who gets told that people don’t question my maleness, just my masculinity; since I tend to shop for dresses with masculine avatars in mind and go for pure camp in my feminine selections, I suppose this actually makes sense. Anyway, as such, I may be the worst person to evaluate this hot mess of an ancient Star Trek episode ever.

But if you haven’t seen it, and you’re interested in queerness on TV, this thing is almost required viewing.

Glee: Santana, Dave Karofsky and the naming and shaming of desire

While I continue to attempt to draft a post about what’s wrong withfor Blaine Anderson, this mini-hiatus really belongs to Santana.

To get the basics out of the way: Santana is cruel, and it’s no surprise someone snapped and outed her (Finn) admittedly poorly kept secret (her love for Brittany). But if Santana doesn’t deserve our sympathy (and I think whether she does depends on who you are and how you watch TV), she certainly deserves our notice.

Santana is, in part, the conclusion to the Dave Karofsky story we never got to see. She, like Dave, is a bully. That bullying, while not addressed to her object of desire, is often related to sexuality and gender and is designed to keep her safe, or at least throw up a good distraction. She beards for Dave at the end of Season 2, not just because they are both closeted gay kids, but because they are both closeted gay kids with the same defense mechanism.

While Dave’s been working his issues out largely in private – a conversation with Kurt here or there, a transfer to a new school, hiding out under a cap at the local gay bar – it’s been so private that it hasn’t even happened on our TV screens.

But Santana’s working her issues out in public. And even if that weren’t already clear by the way she baits Finn and moons over Brittany, she certainly doesn’t have a choice now; she’s about to be outed to the entire congressional district.

It’s a critical narrative choice about a character who looks nothing like many people’s stereotypes about gay women, because Santana is the exception to no rule when it comes to the intersection of her gender and her sexuality. Women often simply don’t get to resolve these matters in private the way Dave does.

Sure, Dave got lucky in the generosity that Kurt afforded him, but who women sleep with, how often, and whether they like it too much or not enough is pretty much always a matter for public discourse and opinion. Especially in places like William McKinley High School.

Had Dave’s journey from bully to self-accepting gay man been documented more on our television screens and transpired in the halls of William McKinley, gender-based insults, placing him as a woman, would have been central to the narrative. But that’s not the story Glee is telling about Dave.

It is, however, one that Glee is telling about Kurt.

So let’s predict what happens next, or at least discuss what we’re clearly supposed to expect to happen next: With Santana’s sexuality dragged into the congressional race by a third candidate, she has to attend to her now very public personal life. So does Sue Sylvester, who spoilers tell us will be on a quest to prove her heterosexuality, possibly at the expense of butch-appearing straight gal Sharon Bieste.

But if we’re talking about how homosexuality is used in American politics, especially in places like Lima (my partner, a third or fourth generation Buckeye, may throttle me if I cast aspersions on the entire state of Ohio), there’s no way that Kurt’s not going to get similarly dragged into the race, and it will be Burt’s job to, in an echo of Kurt’s speech for class president, try to rise above the mudslinging.

That it is women — or male characters “tainted” with femininity — that have to defend their identities in public, while people like Dave can grab a fresh start somewhere else is one of those moments of real-world nastiness that can make Glee seem like such an unkind show. For a fantasy, it sure is mean.

But predictions aside, we’re still early in season 3, and I’m still unsure where they are going with a lot of things including Blaine’s constantly shifting self; Kurt’s sudden return to more feminine attire around the events of 3.05; and Rachel and Finn’s struggles with gender role expectations around their relationship to each other and Lima.

But I am convinced that if we’re looking for clues to those sorts of questions, the answer unavoidably rests with Santana. Despite (or perhaps because) Glee‘s main narrative drivers outside of Rachel are male, the show is often overtly about people’s reactions to unusually-located femininity.

So if we want to know what happens next, who better to look at than Santana? She’s an archetype of femininity (a cheerleader) who’s broken the rules (not by being mean, but by being gay) and is about to undergo one particularly unpleasant ritual girls and women face — a big public discussion of the appropriateness of her desire.

It’s something we’ve gotten with Rachel (with Kurt and his gender non-conformance playing mirror) around ambition. Now we’re going to get it with Santana (with Kurt and his gender non-conformance playing mirror again, but he’s a magician, of course, and exists in that other world made up of shadows and the looking glass) around the public naming (and shaming) of desire.

In light of all of that, I bet Dave Karofsky’s glad he managed to get the hell out of dodge right about now. But part of me wishes he would come back in this particular arc and speak up with his masculine affect and relative safety for Santana, Kurt and the relentlessly flawed strength these two — the girl he pretended to want and the boy he actually did — have been forced to have by the way the world so often feels about girls.

Glee: It’s different for queers

Last night, in what was essentially a successful attempt to make it very clear that gay stories are just like straight stories, Glee became the very passing narrative it’s been attempting to elucidate since the start of season 3 around Kurt and Blaine’s disparate gender and sexuality presentations. And, just as that narrative has not mentioned that for someone like Blaine passing can hurt as much as not passing does for Kurt, “The First Time” was, for this queer viewer, uncomfortably silent on all the ways that gay stories aren’t like straight ones.

This isn’t a political judgement. It’s not really any sort of judgement at all. I thought, frankly, that the episode was gorgeous (always, always let editors direct, because nearly every shot and transition will be visually astounding), and despite the tone of a lot of the advance marketing (“a very special episode” indeed), not actually an after school special.

I also thought it got a lot of things right about virginity: how you can’t ever really know what ready means and how terrifying it all is, sometimes, even moreso, when it is right, because you just want to do right by the other person. I also thought it gave us some great character moments and a bucket of interesting when it comes to your favorite preoccupation and mine — Dalton as faerieland (that’ll be a separate post).

But what the episode didn’t give us was the idea that virginity is, actually, not a cut and dried issue, especially for queer teens who, until last night on Glee don’t, for better or for worse, particularly have pop-culture narratives that tell them what their virginity is. And, despite the lovely, “The First Time” didn’t really do anything to solve that problem.

This is where I could tell you about the Great Condom Wrapper Debate on Tumblr (Is it, or is it not empty? Are there one or are there two?). Or the fact that not even the actors can apparently place the scenes cut in with the performance of “One Hand, One Heart” in time (before, after or during sex? Chris Colfer gave a big “I don’t know!” in at least one interview).

I could also mention that it strains my credulity that two boys who had, for a year, refused to touch each other below the waist, decided that their first time was going to be all about penetration, managed said act, and then got dressed for the post-coital snuggles (although the Internet is working hard to make that make sense, and will probably succeed by the end of the day. The Glee writers should thank us all).

But the fact remains that no matter how inappropriate and unfair I think it is, even for straight people, penis-in-vagina or as close as you can get to same, remains the standard for virginity loss in American culture and pop media. This is generally without discussion or challenge unless we’re talking about good girls staying “virgins” by having anal sex on some mediocre b-level cable network movie of the week. And, in making absolutely sure the Kurt/Blaine and Rachel/Finn narratives ran in tight parallel, this is where “The First Time” went, even without explicitly saying so (or, you know, actually making a lot of sense).

This erasure of a part of queer experience (“What is my rite of passage?”) in an effort to show that the two couples are equally as beautiful, in love, and facing the same challenges, is a case of a queer narrative passing as if the world is not different for us, just as Blaine experiences passing because of the style of his performance of masculinity; no matter what people take him to be, the world is still different for him than for a straight boy.

Here, the Glee narrative is able to pass because it’s 8pm on Fox, where we don’t look too closely at certain things on US TV, and where the powers that be worked hard to make sure they would submit nothing in the final cut of the episode that would force later cuts that might un-equalize the focus on the two couples.

But the fact is Rachel wearing a slip to bed to lose her penetrative virginity is just plain logistically different than boys in their trousers. And Rachel deciding that penis-in-vagina sex is what her virginity is about is also logistically different than Kurt and Blaine deciding that their virginities are also about penetration; Rachel probably came to her conclusion in under an hour, possibly in under five minutes. Did Kurt and Blaine?

This what-is-virginity? gap is also mirrored by the fact that we know Brittany and Santana have sex, but yet, this just gets blurred away in the show’s long-term narrative, not, I don’t think because they are still a b-plot or because their virginities are long gone, but because Glee doesn’t know how to say, “these two girls are fucking” without the penetrative assumption, and you really can’t talk about the nitty-gritty of lesbian sex (which is perhaps, sadly, the biggest mystery of all to the American mind) on Fox at 8pm. You can’t particularly de-essentialize the penis. People just don’t get it.

Back when we first found out “The First Time” was coming, I made a lot of dismayed noises about the prurient “Who tops?” conversation around Kurt and Blaine. In fact, I was probably kind of an asshole about it. And, while I remain chagrined by the casual and snarky nature of a lot of that conversation by people outside of the queer experience, I have to sort of eat my words here and apologize.

Because a huge piece of the analysis I want to do about this episode involves Kurt and Blaine’s gender positioning — Kurt, for the first time in this season, is back in his “fashion has no gender” and “I’ve never met a sweater dress I didn’t like” attire; while Blaine gets serenaded by Sebastian as the naive “Uptown Girl.”

This, combined with the Rachel/Finn parallels, and the degree to which teen gay sex became about Glee trying to make a queer experience pass for a straight one, makes who topped (again, if penetration happened, see: the Tumblr condom debate) a somewhat salient question if we’re trying to figure out what Glee’s agenda is around masculinity, femininity and queerness. But because we’re in this cultural moment of normalizing gay, often aggressively, I’m left with what feels like a lot of peculiar and specific road signs pointing, well, nowhere.

This is, perhaps, as it should be. Maybe, we all just need to make up our own minds, and tell the stories we need to have told. But I find myself a little frustrated for gay teens and for passing gay teens, that this narrative was so aggressively about normalization and spoke so little to queer experience, even if it was kind of a great thing to show our straight parents.

On the other hand, when Patty went to bed last night, she said the episode had made me mushy. “But I’m always like this,” I said, brushing my nose against hers. And it’s true, we always are. So I suppose this is one of those things I’m just going have to let go, because this is what fiction always is for each of us, stories that are, and aren’t, our own.

That said, don’t worry, that gender/sexuality positioning post is totally coming, even if it’s going to drive off into a vortex of passing vagueness thanks to the construction of this episode. Like whatever is next for Kurt and Blaine and Finn and Rachel, I think it’s safe to assume: Detours Ahead.

V for Vendetta: I have a pencil

I don’t know who you are. Please believe. There is no way I can convince you that this is not one of their tricks, but I don’t care. I am me, and I don’t know who you are but I love you. I have a pencil. A little one they did not find. I am a woman. I hid it inside me. Perhaps I won’t be able to write again, so this is a long letter about my life. It is the only autobiography I will ever write and oh god I’m writing it on toilet paper.

I was born in Nottingham in 1957, and it rained a lot. I passed my eleven plus and went to girl’s grammar. I wanted to be an actress. I met my first girlfriend at school. Her name was Sara. She was fourteen and I was fifteen but we were both in Miss Watson’s class.

Her wrists. Her wrists were beautiful.

I sat in biology class, staring at the pickled rabbit foetus in its jar, listening while Mr. Hird said it was an adolescent phase that people outgrew… Sara did. I didn’t.

In 1976 I stopped pretending and took a girl called Christine home to meet my parents. A week later I moved to London, enrolling at drama college. My mother said I broke her heart, but it was my integrity that was important. Is that so selfish? It sells for so little, but it’s all we have left in this place. It is the very last inch of us…

… But within that inch we are free.

London: I was happy in London. In 1981 I played Dandini in Cinderella. My first rep work. The world was strange and rustling and busy, with invisible crowds behind the hot lights and all the breathless glamour. It was exciting and it was lonely. At nights I’d go to Gateways or one of the other clubs, but I was stand-offish and didn’t mix easily. I saw a lot of the scene, but I never felt comfortable there. So many of them just wanted to be gay. It was their life, their ambition, all they talked about… And I wanted more than that.

Work improved. I got small film roles, then bigger ones. In 1986 I starred in ‘The Salt Flats.’ It pulled in the awards but not the crowds. I met Ruth working on that. We loved each other. We lived together, and on Valentine’s Day she sent me roses, and oh god, we had so much. Those were the best three years of my life.

In 1988 there was the war…

… And after that there were no more roses. Not for anybody.

In 1992, after the take-over, they started rounding up the gays. They took Ruth while she was out looking for food. Why are they so frightened of us? They burned her with cigarette ends and made her give them my name. She signed a statement saying I seduced her. I didn’t blame her. God I loved her. I didn’t blame her… But she did. She killed herself in her cell. She couldn’t live with betraying me, with giving up that last inch.

Oh Ruth.

They came for me. They told me that all my films would be burned. They shaved off my hair. They held my head down a toilet bowl and told jokes about lesbians. They brought me here and gave me drugs. I can’t feel my tongue anymore. I can’t speak. The other gay woman here, Rita, died two weeks ago. I imagine I’ll die quite soon.

It is strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses and I apologized to nobody. I shall die here. Every inch of me shall perish…

… Except one.

An inch. It’s small and it’s fragile and it’s the only thing in the world that’s worth having. We must never lose it, or sell it, or give it away. We must never let them take it from us.

I don’t know who you are, or whether you’re a man or a woman. I may never see you. I may never hug you or cry with you or get drunk with you. But I love you. I hope you escape this place. I hope that the world turns and that things get better, and that one day people have roses again. I wish I could kiss you.

– Valerie

I posted the film version in my Tumblr earlier, but this is the one from the original graphic novel, that a boyfriend (who was gay; I was something of an exception; hell, we even met at the campus LGBT group) made me read when I was eighteen and in the incredibly homophobic environment of our university.

I was already out, so it was not a catalyst for my coming out. But reading it meant I never, ever wanted to be in again, no matter what was happening, and could never stand myself on those occasions that it felt safer or easier to allow for misunderstanding to closet me.

I post it, and write about it pretty much every November 5th, because of the context in which it was written. And I post it here, in the graphic novel form, to tell you how terrifying it felt to read it in 1991 when it felt like a pretty terrible and frightening time to be gay; the 80s had been terrible, and it didn’t feel like they had ended. The tone of protests around AIDS — and I actively participated in those — was angry and frightened, directed at a government that we were sure wanted us dead and perhaps viewed the disease as a convenience.

I remember sitting in a restaurant now long gone in Washington DC that I much loved and jokingly called my lesbian blues bar and cafe, even though it wasn’t technically any of those things, with a group of my friends, and one of them, a woman, stealing a piece of cheese off my plate, popping it in her mouth, and asking, “yeah, but how are they going to get rid of us?”

I was 18, highly imaginative, political through what seemed like an utter lack of choice, and frightened. And “Valerie’s Letter,” in all the weird and possibly unhealthy ways I connect with fiction, was a constant reminder to me to be brave and kind and speak.

I fail at each of those things, especially kindness, at least as much as anyone else, but I’ve got to try with whatever I have left on any given day, because that one inch, if you aren’t paying attention can be stolen so quick and so fast.

I still sob reading this. I suppose I always will. I imagine a world where people won’t, because it won’t make any sense. It’s closer all the time.