Pop Culture Fix: Finding Dory’s Lesbian Couple Will Finally Empower Ellen To Turn All Children Gay


Look What The Homosexuals Have Done to Us, Mickey

Just Keep Scissoring 

A new trailer for Finding Dory landed on the internet yesterday afternoon, and in addition to more delightful DeGeneres-ness, it looks like Pixar is finally putting a lesbian couple in a movie.

gaydory gaydory2

I remember when Ellen came out back in 1997 and all the Baptists I was surrounded by couldn’t stop talking about how they were going to Boycott Disney because Ellen’s show was on ABC and ABC was owned by Disney. They thought she was going to turn all the children gay, and now, 20 years later, she’s finally getting her chance to prove them right. By adding coded gays (let’s call them Sam and Mary Anne) to the background of an animated movie, Ellen and her cronies at Disney are basically forcing elementary schools to teach children about gay sex and President Obama to issue an Executive Order rendering all straight marriages void and illegal.

Do You Want to Build a Homo? 

Oh, and that’s not all the debauchery over at the Mouse Factory. Idina Menzel has heard the pleas of Twitter and agrees with you that Elsa should have a girlfriend in the next Frozen movie. Entertainment Tonight asked her about it on the red carpet at the Billboard Music Awards and she said, “I think it’s great. Disney’s just gotta contend with that. I’ll let them figure that out.”

Well played, Ellen. Well fucking played.

Teevee

+ Shonda Rhimes hadn’t planned for Callie to leave Grey’s Anatomy in that bizarre and inconsequential way, and I’m awfully relieved to hear it. She told The Hollywood Reporter this thing, which also makes me think Callie might return to Seattle Grace at some point.

“This one was interesting. It was different because it wasn’t a big, planned thing. I had a different plan going and when Sara came and said, ‘I really need to take this break,’ it was sort of lucky that we had shot the end of the season with her going to New York … I felt really good that we had shot that ending and that she said she wanted to take this break and we were able to give it to her because I love the woman and I want to do everything for her. It all worked out in that sense.”

+ A lesbian deckhand on Bravo’s new reality show Below Deck: Mediterranean makes my good buddy Ali Davis wonder if queer people are really ready to let the world see our flawed reality.

+ Let me tell you something: Mey Rude is so psyched about this new legal drama, Doubt, starring Laverne Cox and Katherine Heigl, that I am getting amped on it now too. And especially after Mey told me they’ve hired trans writer Imogen Binnie!

+ This is a new secret track from Marceline the Vampire Queen, further proving her (literal) undying love for Princess Bubblegum. It will make you swoon. (It made me swoon.) (If it doesn’t make you swoon, you’re probably dead inside, sorry.)

+ Whoopi Goldberg is producing a new Oxygen series about trans models. It’s called Strut!

The show is important, Goldberg said in today’s announcement, because despite advances the community has made, “transgender” still is “a hot-button word that gets people hysterical … People tend to focus on the stereotype instead of the person,” she said, calling the series “a unique opportunity to spend time with real people who are struggling with the same challenges we all face as we make our way through the world.”

Queer Humans, Out and About

+  Amandla Stenberg covers V magazine this month. They talk about how they were cast in their first indie film, As You Are, because they criticized the writer/director about the way he portrays women in the movie when they went to read for the part.

+ Hannah Hart shares a whole day full of meals with Elle and also a very gentle pep talk about exercising.

I wish we could give the whole big world a hug, and say, “You can start as slowly and simply as you want. You can go to the gym and walk for 10 minutes and leave, and good job, dude.” It’s about building a pattern, and you can build a pattern once you set a foundation.

Also.Also.Also.

Socks Bobbi helped me prepare this morning’s Pop Culture Fix. He says you’re welcome.

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Heather Hogan

Heather Hogan is an Autostraddle senior editor who lives in New York City with her wife, Stacy, and their cackle of rescued pets. She's a member of the Television Critics Association, GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, and a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer critic. You can also find her on Twitter and Instagram.

Heather has written 1718 articles for us.

50 Comments

  1. Your kittens really make me wish I wasn’t allergic to cats.
    Your felines and OKCupid, that is.
    I swear, every single Lesbian or wlw over the tender age of 29 owns at least one cat.
    And you know how it goes, you date, you fall in love and at some point it comes down to:You or the cat.
    And the cat always wins.

  3. Good job, team. It’s all going according to plan. #gayagenda #allhailellen #giveelsaagirlfriend

  4. I think Amandla Stenberg uses they/them pronouns? Please correct me if I’m wrong :)

    • I was just going to comment on this. They said on tumblr that they/them is their preference and makes them feel the most comfortable.

    • Can someone please build a pronoun database that googles the most recent interviews/tumblr posts/instagrams to keep us up to date? We can put a person on the moon, I know we can do this!

      • I wish we could just get rid of pronouns, or use the same one for everyone, because it would be so much easier than maintaining the database.

  5. “Do you want to build a homo?” is my favorite phrase that I have read this week and it inspired me a little:

    Do you want to build a homo?
    We’ll make her super gay
    She could be vegan also gluten free
    She’d let me see
    Queer rep a different way
    We lack a sapphic princess
    Or lesbian queen
    There is no good reason why!
    Do you wanna build a homo?
    She doesn’t have to be a homo…
    She could be bi

  6. Why are we assuming this is a lesbian couple? It’s a same sex couple. Let’s cut it out with the bi erasure, folks…

    • What if you found a way to actually help bisexual women instead of manufacturing outrage over something as innocuous as this? There’s actual bisexual erasure in the world and you’re just exhausting real activists and allies.

    • I agree. As bisexuals we must make sure lesbians never use the word “lesbian” unless the proper paperwork is filled out.

      And honestly are we even sure they’re a “couple?” They might just be consensual sex friends raising a baby as a mutually agreed upon joint venture.

      I applaud Disney for incorporating this same sex presenting single digit numbered assortment of individuals including two adults and one infant in their movie about predominantly nautical nonhuman fauna.

  10. I thought for a minute they were the main parents in the movie and got SO EXCITED. I can’t wait for that to actually happen.

  11. I’m glad to hear Shonda say Callie’s ending was basically an audible…I hated having to blame her for my disappointment.

    I want to be excited about Doubt…I mean, it’s Laverne Cox on network television! And Charlie Young Dulé Hill’s also in it!

    But then there’s Katherine Heigl who…sigh…

    • that sigh better be a “sigh, she’s dreamy and wonderful” and not a “sigh, she’s terrible/boring/anything bad” bc i will not have people trash talking Dr. Izzie Stevens in my comments.

    • Pecola, I forgot to warn you about Mey’s truly undying love for Katherine Heigl.

      • Duly noted.

        I suppose it was inevitable that one day I’d discover that Mey Rude actually does have a flaw….

        • Pecola, I read this out loud to Mey yesterday and she scream-laughed. It was amazing.

  12. I’d like to see Elsa as aro/ace. Or better yet, forget about her sexual orientation and leave her single and happy with it. I just want one princess who doesn’t need to be in a relationship to have her happily ever after. That’s what I loved about Frozen and I’m so proud about Elsa’s popularity with young girls.

    • You’ve heard of Merida, right? The one whose entire plot begins and ends with her refusing to marry anyone? I’d say she’s already “one princess who doesn’t need to be in a relationship to have her happily ever after.” While I agree that it’s important to show that people don’t need a partner to be happy, Frozen wasn’t the first princess film to end without a romance. The idea of an LGBT princess in an LGBT relationship has presented itself as a (very) slim possibility, and it could be revolutionary in showing LGBT kids that it’s actually okay to have a sexual identity that isn’t just heterosexual. The breaking down of barriers that would occur in the wake of an LGBT relationship for a disney princess would also help the ace community, as it would further the acceptance of non-heteronormative lifestyles as a whole. And frankly, a woman staying single and being happy has already become an acceptable thing. Sure, our society remains somewhat traditionalist overall, but times have been changing in that regard for decades, and it shows in the opinions of today’s youth. A princess staying single is not controversial, but an LGBT princess is. We can forget about their sexualities when all sexualities are accepted and represented as something normal, rather than harmful. The fact that making Elsa LGBT is such a controversy is living proof that the issue should be actively confronted. There’s a lot of hate for everyone to unlearn, both external and internalized, and it should begin with children’s media. Representation serves only to build compassion and understanding, especially in children.

    • I would just like there to be a children’s movie where a female character is single without it being a major plot point. Merida’s entire story revolves around how she doesn’t need a husband, she isn’t “girly” and that’s rebellious. I thought “Brave” was cute, but it didn’t get the massive popularity that “Frozen” did so keeping Elsa single would have a major impact. I appreciated that Elsa became a queen without a king in the story-seems totally out of place in the Disney world. Even though there was a romantic storyline for Anna (who was actually the main character in the story, to be honest), Elsa doesn’t have a romantic story and it’s a total non-issue and I love that. Like, millions of girls are out there playing with Elsa dolls and there’s no male counterpart. And years after the movie came out, they’re still plastering Elsa’s face all over every fucking thing imaginable from toys to soup to band aids and there’s no “Prince Charming” involved. I think that’s pretty incredible.

      Having an LGBT princess would be cool, sure, but we all know damn well Disney isn’t going to do that and risk their bazillion dollar Frozen empire. If anything, I would rather a new LGBT character because I like what they’ve done with Elsa-she’s a single princess who doesn’t have to constantly talk about being single. Kids do pick up on that stuff.

  13. I was having some doubt about Doubt, but now that they have, not just Lavern Cox, but a trans writer too, it’s going to be a must watch for me!

    • and not just any trans write, Imogen Binnie! She is super amazing. She wrote Nevada!! I’m so stoked she is writing for TV and I will get to watch it.

  14. So we have the little men outrage with an all-female cast for Ghostbusters, any thoughts about what this may cause if it happens?

Comments are closed.