the awesome/terrifying freedom

kevin emailed me with a link to a pertinent article in the times about the new straight male: the metrosexual.

it basically says that straight men are now able to crib from gay culture without threatening their masculinity.

it's the wave of the future... at least in metropolitan areas. i don't think a straight guy wearing clinique for men and deisel jeans in lincoln nebraska is going to be very well accepted by his chums on the company baseball team.

here's another pertinent article about gay retirement homes.. another wave of the future. let's all pray that socal progress continues in this direction. who knows what kind of rights and services we may have in sixty years? sixty years ago you could end up with a lobotomy for being gay!

saw the musical 'zanna don't' last night. it was very fun and almost gratingly cute, but by design. the premise is that it takes place in an alternate universe where gay is the norm and the straight high school kids must go through the same tortures of closeted self discovery that we all went through as gay kids. a very fun time.

my only complaint, and i often have this complaint - is about the treatment of the lesbians. sorry - i'm going to give away a major plot point, so if you've got tickets for one of this week's final performances, don't read: in the end, the world is transformed and all the gay kids become straight. the once flaming homos now exhibit jock behavior (some of the flames in the cast tried valiantly, but couldn't pull it off for a second), and the once lesbian girls are now, wait.. oh, the girls are pretty much exactly the same as they were before, except holding hands with men.

and here it is again.. this gay-male-filtered version of lesbians in our (our meaning 'gay') media. we only ever see images of lesbians as gay men would like them to be, meaning that 'they should be just as fabulous as we are!'

i think the problem with lesbian visibility comes from two factors:

1) male domination (straight and gay) of media, which has two facets: straight men like to see traditionally hot women as lesbians from a sexual perspective and gay men like to see it from an aesthetic one.

2) a general absense of lesbian voices in entertainment. i'm not talking about ellen or melissa etheridge (who do a great job of representing themselves).. i'm talking about movers and shakers.. the ratio of lesbians in the entertainment industry seems to be about proportionate to the number of gay men in sports. hmm. maybe that works the other way too: the ratio of lesbians in sports is about proportionate to the number of gay men in entertainment.

so gay men have carried most of the voice for the entire gay community, and the lesbian presence has been almost insulting - like the token black characters in 'the real world,' or the token ethnic friend in every sitcom, they exist only to say 'i am here only to let everyone know that the person who wrote this wants to be considered 'all inclusive.' they are not all-inclusive because they do not care to expand my character beyond an image deemed 'safe' for my community. thank you.'

perhaps i only have this problem because i am only ever really exposed to gay male media - i don't read 'curves' or 'diva.' so then the problem is that gay male magazines need to stop pretending that they represent all gay people. in many issues of the gay magazines i subscribe to there are letters to the editor from lesbians complaining that the publication is too male-centric. i agree. if it's going to be a gay mag, then make it an all-inclusive, equal coverage gay mag. if it's going to be 'male cosmo for the homo,' fine. stop pretending that it's anything else.

showtime has a new show coming up called 'the l word,' which looks to be a kind of 'queer as folk' for women. such mixed feelings. congrats to showtime for separating the lesbian voice from the gay one, but god, i hope they get better writers than we did. i hope it's a great show. i would love to learn what life is actually like for a lesbian in our sociey. based on what gay men have told me, i know absolutely nothing. in the meantime, i think i'll pick up an issue of 'curves.' i'm sure it's more than the writers of 'queer as folk' ever did.

are there any lesbians out there? what do you think??