Education Dept.'s LGBT Employees Make Plea to DeVos
A letter set last week asked the controversial Education Secretary to protect LGBT students.
www.advocate.com/politics/2017/2/19/education-depts-lgbt-employees-make-plea-devos
Daily Archives: February 19, 2017
「幸せは自分たちで選べる」男性カップル、葉山でボーダレスな結婚式（画像）
Lady Bunny's Trans-Jester at Soho Theatre 18 February 2017
Lady Bunny's Trans-Jester at Soho Theatre 18 February 2017
bitter69uk posted a photo:
We’re spoiled rotten in London at the moment when it comes to drag queen aristocracy. Last Sunday we all assembled to see Joey Arias. Later in the same week Lady Bunny – the veteran American drag legend (from New York via Chattanooga, Tennessee) with the lacerating wit and truly filthy mouth – came to town. Saturday night we caught her latest one-woman show Trans-Jester at The Soho Theatre – and she rocked the freaking house! This was the first time I’d seen Bunny onstage since she performed at the little basement Freedom theatre on Wardour Street in the nineties – and she didn’t disappoint. Bunny’s sold-out Soho Theatre residency is from 14 – 25 February. After her big opening (insert your own joke), she was stricken with laryngitis and had to cancel a few gigs last week. Luckily, Bunny recuperated in time for our night and was on scathing form!
Her show crammed-in all the huge wigs, rapid-fire Laugh-In-style jokes, X-rated parodies of pop hits by the likes of Bruno Marrs, Kesha and Adele and sequined costumes you’d imagine. But Trans-Jester also zeroed-in on pointed and unvarnished social commentary, with Bunny lashing out against political correctness and the sanctimonious queerer-than-thou, language-policing brigade (something her NYC peer Penny Arcade also touched on with her Longing Lasts Longer performance piece at The Soho Theatre last year).
For example: Bunny defiantly reclaims the word “trannie”, which is now a verboten slur in many circles. She also tore strips off Caitlyn Jenner as a supposed trans ambassador, when Jenner is a clueless Republican stooge who’s repeatedly voiced opposition to gay marriage. And as Bunny pointed out, Glamour magazine anointed Jenner Woman of the Year “when she hadn’t even been a woman for a year!” Bunny ridiculed the concept of “trigger warnings” and the various forms of “shaming” (Bunny is a self-professed slut – especially for Puerto Rican dick – and pointed out that we really need “prude shaming” far more than we do “slut shaming”).
Bunny employs viciously self-mocking humour in the tradition of Phyllis Diller and Joan Rivers. Claiming she consulted a doctor to request a sex change, he asked, “From what to what?!” and then shrugged, “Well, if you want to be a woman I guess we could start with a breast reduction.” Instructing Bunny to undress, the doctor then gasped, “Whoever did your first sex change made a real mess!”
In one of my favourite bits Bunny solemnly announced she wanted to pay tribute to an iconic musical legend who died last year, one beloved by generations of gays who really showed us to how embrace and be ourselves. Everyone was thinking: Bowie? Maybe Prince? And then she declared, “Lynn Anderson!” to a sea of blank expressions (which made her snap, “Ageist!”). Except for me – I gasped with pleasure! Bunny meant the old-school big-lunged and bouffant-haired Country & Western diva of “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden” fame. (Bunny is a good Southern hillbilly gal, remember). She then launched into a sing-along version of “I’ve Been Everywhere.”
I also loved Bunny’s analysis of the acronym LGBTIQA letter by letter. The “A”, she noted, stands for “asexuals”. “Why do*we* get stuck with them?” she asked.
Afterwards Lady Bunny held court in the bar upstairs. We quickly ambushed her for a red-hot camera session.
Lady_Bunny_6
Homophobia Explodes In Tanzania, Health Minister Threatens 'Gay List'
Homophobia Explodes In Tanzania, Health Minister Threatens 'Gay List'
The situation for gay and bi men in the east African nation goes from bad to worse.
www.advocate.com/world/2017/2/19/homophobia-explodes-tanzania-health-minister-threatens-gay-list
[Ҁомміэ☭Бlоскѕ] The Internationale
[Ҁомміэ☭Бlоскѕ] The Internationale
SuperLushFeverDream posted a photo:
![[Ҁомміэ☭Бlоскѕ] The Internationale](https://farm1.staticflickr.com/274/32954860476_2e4b79622f_m.jpg)
The Internationale ft. (~left to right:)
Marx, Engels, Mao & Red Guard, Lenin, Stalin, Rosa Luxemburg, Huey Newton & Angela Davis, the LGBTQI Pride flagbearers, Thomas Sankara, and 3 trans comrades (they’re Gender Maoists)
part of a series! more @ commie-blocks.tumblr.com
![[Ҁомміэ☭Бlоскѕ] The Internationale](https://live.staticflickr.com/274/32954860476_2e4b79622f_n.jpg)
Lingerie on Leather
Get Pietro Boselli’s abs; make lunchtime supersexy; and ogle studly superheroes
Get Pietro Boselli’s abs; make lunchtime supersexy; and ogle studly superheroes
In the below video, physique model Pietro Boselli teaches you how to stare, mouth agape, at your computer screen. Also, abs:
Written and directed by Jake Graf, Headspace is a short film charting the uncomfortable social situations trans people navigate every day. It stars model Laith Ashley, Kieran Moloney, Munroe Bergdorf and Captain Hannah Winterbourne.
Hungry? Lunchtime becomes oddly erotic in this short film starring the distractingly beautiful Orion Griffiths and Ryan Obermeier.
If you’ve ever looked at drawings of female superheroes and asked yourself, “But how would they look if they were really hot guys?”, the work of ZachArt is for you:
Check out Raja (winner of season 3 of RuPaul‘s Drag Race) in a cameo for Blondie’s video for new single “Fun,” playing some sort of intergalactic amazingness:
John McCain Blasts Trump’s Attacks on the Media: ‘That’s How Dictators Get Started’ – WATCH
John McCain Blasts Trump’s Attacks on the Media: ‘That’s How Dictators Get Started’ – WATCH
Asked by Meet the Press host Chuck Todd to react to Donald Trump’s tweet attacking the media as the “enemy of the American people,” Senator John McCain (R-AZ) warned that those kinds of attacks are the start of fascist suppression.
The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2017
Said McCain:
“A fundamental part of that new world order was a free press. I HATE the press. I hate you, especially. But the fact is, we NEED you. We need a free press. We must have it. It’s vital. If you want to preserve democracy as we know it you have to have a free and at many times adversarial press. Without it I’m afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That’s how dictators get started.”
Watch:
The post John McCain Blasts Trump’s Attacks on the Media: ‘That’s How Dictators Get Started’ – WATCH appeared first on Towleroad.
John McCain Blasts Trump’s Attacks on the Media: ‘That’s How Dictators Get Started’ – WATCH
The ageist contradiction: If you’re not looking for an “oldie,” why did you Grindr me?
The ageist contradiction: If you’re not looking for an “oldie,” why did you Grindr me?
“No” might be the unsexiest word in the English language. But I suspect that if someone were to do the research, he or she would discover that’s it’s the one most commonly used in Grindr profiles.
No Asians. No blacks. No whites. No fems. No trans. No oldies. No this. No that. No! NO! NO!!!
For a community that’s so intent on demanding acceptance from outsiders, we seem to extend so little of it within.
At the risk of showing my age, I must say “No oldies” has a particularly brutal sting, perhaps partly because so many guys who go there can’t resist twisting the knife by expounding on it.
“I already have a dad–don’t need another one,” with its suggestion of paedophilic tendencies for anyone of a certain age who dares to approach a fresh young thing, seems to be a favorite. There’s an extra layer of hostility there. It’s almost as if they’re actually saying, “It’s not just that I’m not attracted to your kind. Why do you even still exist?”
Related: 10 things you should never say to a black guy on Grindr
The grand irony is that, unlike the other categories of “No,” older is something we’ll all get to experience eventually, if we’re lucky enough to live that long. And as someone who has lived long enough to hear the gay death knell toll on my 40th birthday, I can confirm that youth is frighteningly fleeting; the gay death knell tolls for you much sooner than you think.
But there’s another twist: Despite my advanced age (which I choose not to reveal in my Grindr profile because, as a black man, I’m already subject to quite enough stereotypical sizing-up, thank you), most of the messages I receive on Grindr are from guys in their teens and twenties–many of whom insist they don’t want anything to do with anyone over 30.
Usually, I’ll ignore them the way I do profiles with any kind of “No” list, even if none of them apply to me. But sometimes I can’t resist calling them out for hitting on a dreaded “daddy.”
“Um, I’m sorry. But I’m over 30, mate. In fact, I’m over 40,” I recently responded to a twenty-something who insisted he wasn’t looking for a dad. He even included an ultra-specific age range: 25-28.
“That’s OK, man. You don’t look it, and you’re hot, so it doesn’t matter. But it’s up to you,” he wrote back within minutes.
Related: The Trump effect: How American politics are ruining gay etiquette and making us meaner
So if it doesn’t matter, then why mention it? If you are going to bother putting age restrictions in your profile, if you are going to risk making any “oldie” who happens to read it feel inferior just so you can avoid having to hear from undesirables, shouldn’t you at least have the integrity to stick to your ageism?
The more I thought about it, the more I realized the rejection of older men on Grindr has nothing to do with numbers. It’s just another form of prejudice. It’s not that they’re not looking for another dad. That really goes without saying. Grindr is about a lot of things, but incest isn’t one of them. What they’re really saying is that older equals not hot, which is not only offensive, but it’s an urban myth. After all, have you seen Ryan Reynolds, 40, Ryan Phillippe, 42, Mahershala Ali, 42, Will Smith, 48, or Viggo Mortenson, 57, lately?
It’s one thing to look for a match who is close to your age because you’ll probably have more in common with him. But guys are constantly reminding me that Grindr is a hook-up app, not a match-making one. And so the implication of age restrictions, as with race restrictions, is that the prohibited group is unattractive: Yuck! Who wants to go to bed with someone like that?
The great thing about meeting guys online is that, unlike in a bar or club, if you don’t fancy a suitor, you can just ignore him. But, despite the higher likelihood of having to deliver an awkward rejection in a bar or club, no one walks around in public wearing signs that say “No Asians” or “No oldies.”
Related: Gay men, please stop using the term “BBC,” It’s racist, blogger says
Has the gay community been so overtaken by the “mean girls” mentality in the internet age that we can’t just ignore messages from people we don’t find attractive? Is it absolutely necessary to make pre-emptive strikes so that they won’t clutter our precious inboxes with yet another “Hi”?
There are a lot things that frustrate me about Grindr, but something I’ve always appreciated is that there’s no built-in way to specify race and age restrictions. Guys have to put those in themselves.
And if it’s important enough for you to include, this is one oldie-but-(alleged) hottie who won’t be biting the bait.
Jeremy Helligar is the author of Is It True What They Say About Black Men?: Tales of Love, Lust and Language Barriers on the Other Side of the World. You can tweet him @Theme4Gr8Cities