On Being Queer in the Caribbean
To find themselves, and safety, many gay and trans people choose exile.
Monthly Archives: October 2015
TIL that birdseed can hurt
TIL that birdseed can hurt
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Leah Remini Tells All on Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes and Her Departure from Scientology: WATCH
Leah Remini Tells All on Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes and Her Departure from Scientology: WATCH
In a lengthy new interview, actress Leah Remini is opening up about her decision to leave the Church of Scientology as well as her experience with Scientology poster boy Tom Cruise and his ex-wife Katie Holmes.
As we previously reported, Remini told ABC news that, “Being critical of Tom Cruise is being critical of Scientology itself… you are evil.”
In her full interview, which aired last night on 20/20, Remini said that Cruise, Holmes and others in the Church accused her of ruining “the wedding of the century”, aka Cruise’s marriage to Holmes in 2006. Remini shared a Church document known as a “Knowledge Report” that she says Holmes wrote about her after the wedding:
“It starts with, ‘I was dismayed at the behavior of Leah Remini during the events leading up to our wedding … At the wedding, the behavior as a guest, a friend … was very upsetting,’” Remini said, reading the document.
Remini says she was then sent away to a Church facility for “reprogramming.”
Remini was critical of Cruise during her time in the Church, particularly surround his at-times erratic behavior circa 2006-2007:
“I’m saying, ‘I don’t think he’s becoming of a Scientologist, jumping on couches, and attacking Matt Lauer… and attacking Brooke Shields,’” Remini said. “Like… ‘What the hell is this guy doing?’ … we need to rein it in, we need to stop all this, and he just needs to be an actor.”
But after she spoke out about Cruise’s actions, Remini said she “was immediately dealt with,” saying she was taught that “the only reason you’re saying these things is because you have your own transgressions.”
Holmes has since divorced Cruise and left Scientology, something Remini felt vindicated her. Holmes released a statement to ABC News saying, “I regret having upset Leah in the past and wish her only the best in the future.” Remini said she was “touched” by Holmes’ statement.
Ultimately, Remini says she doesn’t regret what she has been through:
“I don’t regret spending my life there, because it really did teach me a lot … and because we’ve all survived it, we’re all surviving it and living life and it’s kind of like we have a gift of second chance of life.”
Watch the full interview from ABC News, in which Remini details some of the “crazy s**t” Scientologists believe, below:
The post Leah Remini Tells All on Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes and Her Departure from Scientology: WATCH appeared first on Towleroad.
Sean Mandell
Leah Remini Tells All on Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes and Her Departure from Scientology: WATCH
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ShotsBySian posted a photo:
If You Think You Understand Houston’s ‘Bathroom Ordinance,’ You Probably Don’t
If You Think You Understand Houston’s ‘Bathroom Ordinance,’ You Probably Don’t
With prominent celebrities and activists endorsing the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance, activists continue to spar over what it would actually do as Tuesday’s vote approaches.
The post If You Think You Understand Houston’s ‘Bathroom Ordinance,’ You Probably Don’t appeared first on ThinkProgress.
Zack Ford
thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2015/10/31/3718110/houston-hero-endorsements/
Open Question: Do you think the LGBT community should have rights?
Open Question: Do you think the LGBT community should have rights?
Gay Horror Short ‘Danny’s Nightmare’ Exposes the True Terror of Bullying: WATCH
Gay Horror Short ‘Danny’s Nightmare’ Exposes the True Terror of Bullying: WATCH
In a new gay horror short, YouTuber Calum McSwiggan shows just how terrifying bullying can truly be.
Danny’s Nightmare centers on 15 year-old Danny who is closeted and afraid to come out. He wakes up in a strange and disturbing place, living his worst nightmare: being face-to-face with the hateful bullies that haunt him.
Said McSwiggan of the inspiration behind the project,
“Thinking back to when I was a teenager I remember how terrifying my school bullies seemed, the fear I felt when walking through the school corridors was far worse than the fear I felt when watching my favourite slasher flick. My school bullies were far more frightening than any ghost or ghoul dreamt up by Hollywood.”
“I really want the viewer to feel that fear and to understand how horrifying it can be to be tortured by a bully, I want them to understand why it leads so many tortured young LGBT+ kids to suicide, and I want them to understand that they have a responsibility to speak up and do something when they see bullying taking place.”
Watch the powerful short that simultaneously terrifies and sends a strong anti-bullying message, below:
The post Gay Horror Short ‘Danny’s Nightmare’ Exposes the True Terror of Bullying: WATCH appeared first on Towleroad.
Sean Mandell
Gay Horror Short ‘Danny’s Nightmare’ Exposes the True Terror of Bullying: WATCH
Why Sharon Needles Still Pierces Our Hearts
Why Sharon Needles Still Pierces Our Hearts
Picture this: “A teenage girl who had it all floating in the bottom of a pond that was never going to be found.”
No, it isn’t the plot of the new Twin Peaks movie. Rather, it’s the apparition that Sharon Needles, the most ghoulish winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race, imagined when she sat down to conjure a concept for her new album, Taxidermy.
Naturally, the ghost visited during a Christmas holiday in snowless California, which during the season is “one of the most depressing things ever,” says Needles. Usually, she adores the “big old drag queen” of that yuletide time of year, when “even the fucking Christmas tree’s wearing a skirt.”
But there, broke and sitting in a “shitty Burbank hotel,” with the carols of Lana Del Rey and “cry baby” soul singers ringing in her ears, the “melancholy reality” poured forth on the page.
“Our time is borrowed. We’re all just skin and bones. What is forever? You’re my addiction and heaven is fictional. Baby, no place to go,” Needles wrote, with what one could imagine was a quill pen dipped in blood and glitter, a bewigged raven perched above the chamber door.
For fans of Needles’s music, Taxidermy is a marked departure from her debut record PG-13, which boasted tracks that spun around sass and witty one-liners, a staple of the musically aspirational RuPaul’s Drag Race alum. The new album, an electronic assemblage influenced by disco, early ’90s, and dark EDM, is deeply personal, lyrical, and autobiographical.
“It’s a love record,” she declares. “In the time of PG-13’s release, I had love lost, and love gained, so I was very inspired by love. Love is a universal, attractive element. And other than death, love is the one thing that binds all of humanity. So I think it’s a record for everyone.”
The public’s love of Needles, now 33, began over three years ago, when she skyrocketed to fame as the winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race with a velocity perhaps greater than any other contestant in the show’s prior history. Her predecessors — BeBe Zahara Benet, Tyra Sanchez, and Raja Gemini — were poised and pageant-perfect. Needles, who left a bloody trail on her first runway as a drooling drag zombie, was clearly an undead horse of a different color. And fans adored her for it.
Until Drag Race, however, Needles had spent her career being, as she calls it, “scrutinized” by pageant queens and booed offstage. Her rival that season, the showgirl Phi Phi O’Hara, also sought to diminish her drag by telling her to “go back to Party City.” This history led Needles to remark, off the cuff, that boos are just applause from ghosts, during the season’s reunion special. Actual, thunderous applause ensued when Needles was crowned the winner.
“That just flew out of my mouth,” the Pittsburgh native reflects on the now-famous remark. “It resonated with a lot of people… It’s my way of saying, ‘Pay them bitches no mind.’”
The spotlight, while empowering, may have also been blinding in the beginning. In an interview with Out magazine shortly after her win, Needles made waves with some hubristic remarks about her newfound status as drag royalty.
“I’m bigger than fucking RuPaul – I have no qualms saying that. It might not last – my reality fame might be as temporary as fake tattoos – but I am determined and have never been more certain about anything in my goddamned life,” she said at the time.
Clearly, Needles has never lacked for passion, or “nerve,” as RuPaul might call it, given the requirements of “charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent” to be America’s Next Drag Superstar. But much as her sound in Taxidermy exhibits a more mature quality, so does she, exhibiting powers of reflection that come with growing older. These powers have helped her in her art.
“PG-13 was written by an entitled, excited brat,” she says. “And this one is written by a more precarious, more aware adult. It’s much more glued together.”
The glue between sex and death runs through Taxidermy. In the song, “Dracula,” the video of which was released this weekend, Needles sings of sharing a coffin as a bed. Throughout the album, love is a dead dandelion, a scream, a light pulsing in the darkness. Even the title track, “Taxidermy,” has a heart beating under its glass eyes and formaldehyde.
“I love taxidermy,” Needles says about her reasoning for choosing this track as the name of the album, in addition to the word’s composition of “masculine letters” like T, R, and Z. “I collect taxidermy. I’m fascinated by the art of taxidermy. But on a more artistic level, I look at taxidermy as pulling something from the wild and taming it, and posing it in a style of your own personal pleasure that will last forever, and ever, and ever. And that’s kind of how people [in love] treat each other.”
When Needles speaks of love lost, she alludes to Alaska Thunderfuck 5000, a spectre that haunts a few of the tracks on Taxidermy. Drag Race fans will know that Needles and Alaska dated for over four years before ending their relationship, and fame was certainly a factor. Alaska had auditioned for every season, and was selected as a contestant in the fifth season, after Needles’s win. They broke up that year in December 2013.
“I saw [how] a relationship in the public eye affected me and Alaska’s relationship,” admits Needles, who has since striven to guard her heart against the hazards of fame. “And I also saw how it affected the way about how our fans saw us.”
“When we and Alaska decided to break each other’s hearts, we didn’t really realize that we were going to be breaking tens of thousands teenage hearts as well. A lot of people used our relationship as a template of what other freaky weird gay kids were looking for, and we unfortunately had to be brutally honest: that some things don’t last forever.”
Afterward, Needles wrote about the experience of “love lost and loving again” in the lyrics of “Glow in the Dark” on Taxidermy: “I was lost in outer space, trapped in the darkest place…my heart was black and blue, the rumors were all true, and I knew all I had to blame was me.” The song, says Needles, was about “being a little honest and taking responsibility, or at least taking my responsibility of why me and Alaska didn’t work out.”
“I think she has an identical song on her record Anus as well, which is fascinating, because we weren’t corresponding on our artistic adventures with our records, yet they both have a similar tone in some of their tracks,” Needles marvels about her ex-partner’s recent album.
Ultimately, the singer finds hope that they and another soul will once again “glow in the dark.” And for Needles and Alaska, who performed together last year in the Battle of the Seasons tour and recently went on a shopping trip together in Brighton, U.K., there is still a light in the darkness.
“I’m not gonna lie. I did interviews right after the breakup and said we were fine, and we certainly were not. It was a nicer answer just to get off that topic,” she says. “But now I can most certainly say, if you’re lucky enough, you may lose a boyfriend, but you can gain a best friend for life. And that’s most definitely what she’ll be. We’ll always have each other’s backs. And still, no one makes me laugh as hard as her.”
“We just don’t fuck!” she clarifies.
However, there is no lack of sex, or death, in Taxidermy. Their juxtaposition here is only natural. The French have been calling an orgasm la petite mort, or “little death,” for time immemorial. But Needles is attuned to the unique ties that bind horror to the gay community, and how the violence inflicted upon gay people, and the demonizing of gay people as monsters, are connected.
If a gay man loves a horror film, he loves it for a different reasons from a straight person, Needles reasons. In this universe, jocks and the cool kids, who are often the torturers of queer youth, become the victims. And it’s the tortured souls, like the villains in Halloween and Friday the 13th, who become empowered.
“Jason Voorhees was a kid who was picked on at summer camp, and Michael Myers was someone vilified by his own family,” says Needles, who recently shared several of her favorite horror movies with The Advocate. “I think that’s why gay people like horror movies, because it’s seeking revenge on the privileged.”
As to the gay community’s cultural connection with vampires in particular, as also referenced in her song “Dracula,” Needles explains that the association is more sexual.
“I think we associated sucking blood with sucking dick,” she says. “And out of all the monsters, vampires tend to be the sexiest, or the more sexually driven monsters.”
“No one really wants to have sex with a zombie. Well, plenty of people have had sex with me. But no one really wants to have sex with a werewolf. Well… I guess I can’t say that either… I’m sure gay men would probably even sleep with Frankenstein if they got drunk enough.”
The fusion of fear and attraction, love and death, lies not only under the skin of Taxidermy or gay men. It is part of the DNA of all of humanity. And in her new album, Needles unravels these strands as expertly as a treasure hunter might unwrap a mummy.
“Love and death are the only things that bind all of humanity. And love and death are the only inevitable things [in life] I suppose,” Needles says. “But they have a great contrast. Love is the one thing everyone is looking for, and death is the one thing everyone’s running from.”
Taxidermy is now available on iTunes. Watch the music video of the song, “Dracula,” below.
Daniel Reynolds
www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/2015/10/31/why-sharon-needles-still-pierces-our-hearts
Why Are Trans People Left Out Of LGBT History So Often?
Why Are Trans People Left Out Of LGBT History So Often?
Despite their pivotal role in advancing the queer community, trans people are often written out of history, Lourdes Hunter, the national director at Trans Women of Color Collective, explained to HuffPost Live earlier this week. But why is there such a tendency to cut out some of our most crucial trans pioneers from lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) history?
In the video above, Hunters, LGBT Healthlink director Dr. Scout and National Center for Transgender Equality executive director Mara Keisling discuss why trans people are often ignored in historical retellings and the impact that has on the trans community.
Watch the full HuffPost Live conversation on transgender history here.
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Open Question: Should I tell people I met a guy on Grindr?
Open Question: Should I tell people I met a guy on Grindr?
I made a Grindr just as another way to meet people in the LGBT community around me. I’m not looking at anyone who’se interested in hooking up/sexting. I started talking to this one guy on there and he is pretty cool. We talked for a few days and met up once to get some food. I could see us possibly being more than friends in the future. The thing is….if we do end up dating or something, what should I say when they ask where we met? I feel like saying on an app like Grindr is weird, especially because Grindr is known for just hookups. What do you think.
