The Second QDDR: Great Progress, But Much More Work Remains
The State Department released its second Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) last week in a document that articulated the Department’s vision of America’s role in the world.
HRC.org
PHOTOS: Gay/Straight BFFs Have Best Prom Ever, Despite Walmart Cake Controversy
Going viral certainly has its upsides.
Jacob and Anthony’s modern day prom bromance had the internet feeling all the feels. Which meant Ellen wasn’t far behind with an oversized check (two, actually).
Related: Two Gay Teen Athletes Share High School Prom Pics, Melt Hearts
And with cash in hand, Janthony was ready to have the best prom ever, and Teen Vogue made sure it’d be one to really remember.
They picked out some sharp attire:
Took lots of photos, of course:
Instagramed some food porn:
And shared a bromantic dance. Watch those hands:
The only hiccup came in the form of (what else?) a minor cake controversy.
Anthony’s Aunt went to the Las Vegas Walmart to get a cake to surprise the boys. She wanted it to say “You’re gay, he’s straight, you’re going to prom, you couldn’t have had a better date,” but the store refused to write the word gay in icing.
Related: High School Wrestler Comes Out To Homophobic Coach, Who Also Happens To Be His Dad
She finally settled on “You matter, prom kings,” which is much less fun than the original.
A local news station reached out to Walmart to find out what happened. Fox5Vegas reports:
“…a spokesperson said that after investigating the incident, it was discovered that proper management wasn’t contacted. They said nowhere in their store’s policy does it say the word ‘gay’ can’t be written on a cake.”
Why’s it always got to be a cake?
Related: “Two Boys Kissing” Is Too Hot For A Virginia High School Library
Dan Tracer
Gay Australian Envoy to France Offers Resignation After PM Tony Abbott Snubs His Partner
Stephen Brady, Australia’s ambassador to France, offered his resignation this week after Prime Minister Tony Abbott sent advance instructions that Brady’s partner of 32 years should wait in the car rather than join Brady to greet the PM on the airport tarmac in Paris, the Sydney Morning Herald reports:
According to multiple sources, the ambassador, Stephen Brady, was on the airport tarmac with his partner of 32 years, Peter Stephens, waiting to meet the incoming plane around 7pm Paris time.
The prime minister’s travelling party sent an instruction that Mr Stephens should not take part in the greeting but should wait in the car. It is understood that no explanation was given.
The ambassador, a career diplomat and formerly the official secretary to two governors-general, refused the instruction.
Abbott’s office has denied there was any controversy at the airport, AFP adds:
According to the Herald’s sources, Brady was “literally screaming” at the protocol officer who passed on the request. Brady reportedly refused, took Stephens along to meet Abbott and later offered his resignation to the foreign affairs department, but it was rejected, the report said.
A spokesman for Abbott told AFP “the prime minister was very happy to have been met by ambassador Brady and his partner when he arrived in Paris”.
The SMH adds:
One theory doing the rounds on Tuesday night was that it was simply a matter of protocol. Mr Abbott was not accompanied by his wife Margie and therefore it was not protocol for Mr Brady’s partner to be present.
Mr Brady, a career diplomat with the Department of Foreign Affairs, was said to be furious with the request for his partner to wait in the car. He was, according to sources in Paris, “literally screaming” at the protocol person.
Watch a report on the incident from 9 News Australia, AFTER THE JUMP…
Andy Towle
Kids, Gender, and Being a Grownup: How Love Can Win Over Fear
What do you do when your young son walks over in a flowing dress, smiling and looking at you expectantly?
That moment began my journey as a parent of a gender-non-conforming, or gender-fluid, child. There I was, at a clothing swap in my happy little home with open-minded friends, watching my son fall in love with the feeling of wearing a dress. I myself have never liked wearing dresses — in fact, I kind of hated it. I always resented that I was supposed to wear them.
Since starting the Rainbow Train project, a children’s gender liberation album being released this week, I have heard countless stories similar to mine from teachers, grandparents, friends and parents. They feel conflicted about how to respond to a child’s natural self-expression. In conversations I had before writing and co-writing the Rainbow Train songs, a recurring theme emerged: Children don’t have baggage around gender; we do! The more adults can examine the rules we learned, the more space we can give children to find what psychologist Diane Ehrensaft calls their “true gender selves.”
Seeing my young son twirling in a borrowed dress made it starkly clear that we live in a society which forces people to choose “male” or “female” at every turn — from bathrooms to clothing to government forms. The idea that a person can be both, or neither, is a growing reality in many parts of the world, and is, in fact, an ancient truth. In my favorite film about the indigineous term “Two-Spirit,” we see that before colonization there were many places where a person could be both, neither, or gave themselves a gender when they were old enough to speak. The truth of multi-gendered existence is making its way back into mainstream culture — with places like the University of Vermont recognizing a third gender, and this very sweet and useful video by gender-non-conforming youth in Australia called “What Are Pronouns?”
But there is a disruptive force pushing back against the exhilarating progress we are making: bullying.
Bullying has been a popular topic in schools and parenting blogs, especially after bullying-related youth suicides — of which there have been far too many, especially trans youth. A large percentage of bullying in schools currently is based on gender presentation. The response to Olympian Bruce Jenner’s recent announcement that he will be transitioning out of his assigned gender has unleashed a clear stream of unresolved feelings many adults have about gender, and the panic they feel when challenged to re-examine the rules that raised them. Even New York Times family blogger KJ Dell’Antonia acknowledges her discomfort in speaking with her child about Jenner’s gender identity.
Anti-bullying conversations and curricula sometimes “wimp out” by avoiding uncomfortable questions, like “How do I feel about a boy wearing a dress?” or “What are gender norms? Do we have to follow them? How do I treat someone who doesn’t fit into my worldview?” in favor of non-threatening universalisms like “We are one community,” and “No place for hate” which, while true, do not always push adults or children to get to the heart of the matter — and therefore avoid the tough conversations that lead to social change.
Children are spiritual and ethical beings, just like adults. They are keenly able to synthesize ethical questions — “How do I treat someone who is different from me?” — with spiritual realities — “Every person is holy. People who make me uncomfortable or confused are holy. Every person deserves a chance to grow into who they need to be.”
While sharing Rainbow Train songs and curriculum recently at an early childhood educator’s conference, I included a “self-challenge”: How do I feel around people who are different than me? What are some parts of me that don’t fit into one category or another? We as adults need to answer questions for ourselves so we can help guide children through these challenging waters. In this way, we make space for the gender liberation movement that is upon us.
Looking at my son in a dress, I wondered: what would it be like to see someone with “two spirits” and know that they are holy — and know that they are safe? I vowed to help create a world where this is true. I wrote this song, “Holy,” for my child and for the hundreds of other families I have met who have lived that moment and need the world to change — like my dear friend Courtney Mandryk, who created this powerful series of images for the song, which lays bare the innocence in her child’s gender experience.
Back to the moment that began my journey: I have a decision to make about all the voices in my head. I take a deep breath, look at his sweet face, and tell him he is beautiful. Because he is.
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World Congress of Families Hires Notorious Anti-LGBT Activist
Today, HRC condemned the World Congress of Families (WCF) for appointing Janice Shaw Crouse as the executive director of their upcoming WCF IX conference in Salt Lake City.
HRC.org
“RuPaul’s Drag Race” Recap Realness: Four Left Feet
Remember how last week on the runway, everyone was all, “Fame should probably go home,” and then RuPaul agreed? Well, if it had slipped your mind, there are flashbacks helpfully inserted into the beginning of this episode. It’s not any more interesting the second time around. Violet worries that those verbal attacks might have made Fame feel attacked. I worry that Violet might have the worst deductive reasoning skills of any contestant in this show’s history. (Which is saying something, because RuPaul’s Poor Deductive Reasoning Skills Race would be just as fierce a competition as the actual show.) Sensing Ms. Chachki’s ever-diminishing mental capacity, Katya and Ginger question whether she can last. The editors try desperately to rope Kennedy into the drama in an old queens vs. new queens showdown, but it’s too late: this season is already boring and there’s no saving it now.
The next day begins without a talking head segment announcing “it’s a new day,” and I’ve been Stockholm Syndromed into actually missing it. The girls find that Fame has followed up her message on the mirror with personal, hand-written notes for each of them. This action perfectly encapsulates Fame’s sweetness and chronic inability to shut the hell up. Everyone reads their glamorous fortune cookie aloud, awkwardly wonders whether to pretend like they miss her, and then ultimately decides against it. The tension is relieved by the latest video update from Ru.
It’s something about dancing, but before they get further details, the gals will have to stick it to this week’s mini-challenge: an intro video to The Fake Housewives of RuPaul’s Drag Race featuring Scotch-taped botched surgery makeovers. The credits sequence is so uniformly hilarious that I wish it were followed by a full-length show. If the regular competition is going to be this sleepy from now on, maybe we should go with the Housewives format full-time next year.
Since everyone did well, Ru selects Violet as the winner on a whim. Her prize? To pair the girls up for another group-based performance challenge. It’s like the producers are worried that one of the queens will wander off and get lost if we don’t have a buddy system set up at all times. This isn’t a field trip to the museum, let them work alone. Just once. Pretty please. Violet chooses Katya for herself and reunites Ginger with Trixie, leaving Pearl and Kennedy as the third group.
Their challenge will be to do a choreographed dance that melds old and new styles while dressed in half drag. After setting up the battle between seasoned queens and fresh faces, you’d think that a task highlighting this divide (with three pairs made up of one child and one adult) would yield all sorts of juicy drama. You’d be very wrong.
Each of the teams rehearses with noted choreographer and ballroom sensation Carson Kressley. His continued presence is some of the best publicity Ross Matthews has ever gotten. The ladies are actually tossed some decently challenging moves, given how little time there is to learn them, and at least one person from each duo struggles to look as though she has full control of her own limbs. Maybe someone will crash and burn during the judging presentation and it’ll be a delicious disaster!
Nope, afraid not. The runway at least starts off with a bang when RuPaul tears away the bottom half of her dress to reveal her long luscious legs. I immediately shit my pants. The place where her skirt lands sprouts a tuft of hair that blossoms into a magical wig tree that all the up-and-coming legendary children can harvest. For a bright, beautiful moment, the lesbian seagulls sing and everything is perfect.
But then the contestants take to the stage. Half-drag, as it turns out, is precisely 50 percent as interesting as full drag. Like, I wonder what the rest of that dress looks like. Or how that face would work if it were painted all the way. I guess it’s nice for the judges, who don’t usually get to see these dudes as dudes, but I’ve been watching men in t-shirts for the past 45 minutes and I want a god damned ball gown and a full set of lashes.
The dance performances aren’t spectacular enough to impress me, but neither are they misguided enough to entertain me. The only real tension comes from whether Ginger will cry on the runway. She’s worried that people will judge her, she tells the judges. (She’s also worried that she looks like a cross between Honey Boo Boo and Rosie O’Donnell, so no one give her a mirror, OK?) Oh, and Pearl spouts legitimate gibberish so confidently that the panel actually tries to dissect the etymology of the non-word rather than checking to see if the poor girl is having a stroke.
Given how uniformly OK everybody was, Ru has a hard time making a choice. I feel you, girl. Try recapping an entire season of inexplicably boring TV. I’m glad the queens and editors and producers are all taking their allergy meds, but maybe for Season 8 we could go back to a format in which things happen? If we could guarantee that two or three things definitely happen every episode, that would be fantastic.
Anyhow, the pairs end up being evaluated as units, which earns a win for Katya and Violet and a lip sync for Trixie and Ginger. Both girls sell the song, but the plastic lady has already been recycled once and we have outgrown this particular doll. Getting eliminated twice has to suck. Plus, now she has to think of a second cute thing to write on the mirror.
Chris J. Kelly performs under the drag name Ariel Italic; in addition to this recap, he hosts weekly Drag Race viewings at the 9th Avenue Saloon in New York City.
Chris Kelly
NEW MUSIC: Fight Like Apes, Tracey Thorn, LÁ BAS, itsabrightlight, The History of Colour TV
New Music is brought to you by Deadly Music! which covers mostly independent indie, alternative, electro pop, post rock and ambient music, with a bit of everything else deadly thrown in for good measure.
Most songs reviewed here are available on a Soundcloud playlist, some of them on a Spotify playlist….both of which are embedded at the end of this post.
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Dublin-based electro pop punk act Fight Like Apes have announced the release of their eponymous 3rd album.
Due out on May 18th, it would appear that Fight Like Apes have finally embraced the nascent epic pop hooks that they may have backed away from to an extent in the past.
Known for their occasionally snarling take on pop punk, the songs on their latest release retain the rough around the edges approach but add in an element of pure pop that could well – and should by all rights – do the unheard of and find a brand new audience at a late stage in their career while keeping existing fans happy.
The transformation isn’t quite as extreme as that of DIY act We’ve Got A Fuzzbox and We’re Gonna Use It!! into Fuzzbox but with songs like “Numbnuts,” “Pretty Keen on Centerfolds” and the verging on glam rock “Carousel,” this is an explosive return for a band that could have gone awry many moons ago.
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Tracey Thorn – The Falling
After a fairly quiet couple of years following 2012’s sublime Christmas album Tinsel and Lights – apart from writing award winning books obviously – Tracey Thorn (one half of Everything But The Girl) is making her inimitable presence known once more.
Following on from a rather lovely cover of Kate Bush‘s “Under the Ivy” back in December, Thorn is back with The Falling, a 16-minute soundtrack to accompany British filmmaker Carol Morley’s first full-length feature, which stars Maisie Williams (above).
Thorn explains:
“I’d seen [Morley’s] two previous documentary films, The Alcohol Years and Dreams of a Life, and I tweeted about how much I liked them. She saw that and came to a book signing I was doing for Bedsit Disco Queen.”
After Thorn appeared in one of Morley’s dreams, the director reached out immediately. “When I said that I’d never done a film soundtrack before and didn’t really know how to do it, she said, ‘Perfect.’”
Thorn’s goal was to provide music that could have been made by the schoolgirl characters, a creative process unexpectedly brought her back to some of her own early recordings:
“It sounds more like music I made with the Marine Girls or on my first solo album, A Distant Shore. I think that’s because I was deliberately trying to inhabit the mindset of these teenage girls. So it took me back into myself, in a way that I found really enjoyable.”
***
Listen to new tracks by LÁ BAS, itsabrightlight and The History of Colour TV, AFTER THE JUMP…
LÁ-BAS – “Give Them Your Good Side”
LÁ-BAS is a supergroup of sorts based around Angelica Allen of My Midnight Heart and Trans-Siberian Orchestra, film composer Nathan Larson and Jordan Kern from Hot One.
Joining the trio on their self-titled May 12th debut album are members of The War on Drugs, David Byrne‘s band, St Vincent, The Cardigans, The Shins and Guided By Voices (among others).
The album apparently “vibes on the aesthetic of German Expressionism and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, and very specifically over the vast brutalist Ryugyong Hotel (aka the “Hotel of Doom”) in North Korea. Lyrical content owes much to Philip K. Dick, Orwell, J. G. Ballard, and Afrofuturist authors such as Octavia Butler. Allen brings soulful grit, operatic range, as well as a smattering of Kate Bush luminosity.”
Following “Automaton” and “Give Them Your Good Side”, the band has shared a more downbeat track in the form of “Be Afraid Baby Be Very Afraid,” “a stark groove about the futility of hiding, and the exposure that comes with love.”
***
itsabrightlight – “Weaken Me”
itsabrightlight is the solo project of Sarah Frey from Sweden.
Something of the classic 80s pop about this one, the very beautiful, loungey debut single “Weaken Me” wraps you in a warm blanket and is reminiscent of the likes of George Michael, The Lover Speaks, Scritti Politti and A Certain Ratio.
***
Starting out as a conceptual audio-visual project, The History Of Color TV was created by Jaike Stambach in early 2010.
Signed to Sainte Marie Records and following on from their debut album Emerald Cures Chic Ills, last year the band released the brilliant follow-up album When Shapes Of Spilt Blood Spelt Love which fuses emo, indie rock, shoegaze and good old fuzz.
With songs harkening back to early Cure and Felt introspection with a hazy swirl of reverbed guitar that takes on Cocteau Twins late pop and Lush dreaminess, a series of massively pumped up stadium-bound fuzz guitar anthems and a final epic blowout on closing track “Emerald”, its one to track down if you missed out last year.
In the meantime, have a look at this brilliant live performance from last week.
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Soundcloud Playlist
Spotify Playlist
Jim Redmond
The Bottom Line: Maggie Nelson's 'The Argonauts'
As a poet, Maggie Nelson is concerned with the sufficiency of words — their ability to accurately convey how we feel, and who we are. As a visual artist, her partner Harry Dodge is less convinced. So when the two met and fell in love, a life event that her new memoir, The Argonauts, centers on, Nelson began to question her allegiance to language. “Words,” she notes, “change depending on who speaks them; there is no cure.”
Most of the words she examines, positing their inadequacy along the way, are used to describe sex or gender, directly or indirectly. She’s saddened by Harry’s inability to publicly convey a gender-fluid identity — born Wendy Malone, the artist has undergone a handful of name changes. When The New York Times ran a profile of Harry’s work, the publication asked that a choice be made between “Ms.” and “Mr.” “Mr.” was settled on, but begrudgingly. Though our current set of pronouns doesn’t come close to representing the spectrum that is gender, Nelson says, “The answer isn’t just to introduce new words and then set out to reify their meanings […] One must also become alert to the possible uses, possible contexts, the wings with which each word can fly.”
The strictures of written thought have never come naturally to Nelson, who says that as a woman, her language is riddled with “tics of uncertainty.” Adverbs are peppers throughout her sentences, verbal hedges are tacked onto her proclamations, and unnecessary apologies are affixed to her emails, before she edits them into bolder versions. Tackling writing this way is tiresome, she says, as are the rest of the gendered habits she’s been working to unlearn.
One such norm, which she confronts with grace, is our collective tendency to view the child-rearing choice as the gap in an impassable rift between the intellectually ambitious and the painfully dull, guided only by their boring biological wants.
Using her own transition from baby-phobic naysayer to proud mother to frame her argument, Nelson is indignant about how polar the choice has become. She examines both journalists’ and historians’ tendency to call art about motherhood banal, arriving at the conclusion that everyday actions get a bad rap in the creative community — so, she claims, does plain-old happiness. Pages of her slim, undulating memoir are devoted to an exhibit called “Puppies and Babies,” offhand snapshots of artist A.L. Steiner’s friends interacting playfully and intimately with said subjects. The exhibit, as Nelson tells it, celebrates the sometimes purely pleasurable experience of raising a child.
The joy and pleasure Nelson takes in raising her son Iggy is shown throughout the book, too, as she vividly brings to life the small games they play as a family. These scenes are punctuated with theory — she enjoys 20th century psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott in particular — demonstrating her belief that ambition and a joyful home life shouldn’t be characterized as at-odds. According to Nelson — who, it’s worth noting, is upfront about her privilege — you can have it all.
Although her story drifts pleasantly between ideas, implying that concrete boundaries have little value to her, she occasionally slips up, revealing a stubbornness that seems counter to her claims to openness. When discussing a photo exhibit, she cringes that the artist’s husband’s name is Dick — “heterosexuality always embarrasses me,” she writes. Still, she doesn’t ever claim to be consistent, so if an argument seems half-baked, it may be that a firm commitment to a viewpoint just isn’t Nelson’s style.
“I am interested in offering up my experience and performing my particular manner of thinking,” she writes, “for whatever they are worth.”
The Bottom Line:
Nelson’s writing is fluid — to read her story is to drift dreamily among her thoughts. And, although some of her assertions are problematic, she masterfully analyzes the way we talk about sex and gender.
Who wrote it?:
Maggie Nelson is a poet and nonfiction writer. Her 2005 book Jane: A Murder chronicled her aunt’s untimely death, and her personal response to it. She lives in Los Angeles.
Who will read it?:
Those interested in narratives that combine the personal and the theoretical, and thoughtful memoirs about gender, feminism, and sexuality.
Opening lines:
“October, 2007. The Santa Ana winds are shredding the bark of the eucalyptus trees in long white stripes.”
Notable passage:
“But whatever I am, or have since become, I know now that slipperiness isn’t all of it. I know now that a studied evasiveness has its own limitations, its own ways of inhibiting certain forms of happiness and pleasure. The pleasure of abiding. The pleasure of insistence, persistence. The pleasure of obligation, the pleasure of dependancy.”
The Argonauts
by Maggie Nelson
Graywolf Press, $23.00
Published May 5, 2015
The Bottom Line is a weekly review combining plot description and analysis with fun tidbits about the book.
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