“Real L Word” Gets a GLAAD Nod and Gaga Starts “Born This Way” Foundation

GLAAD AWARDS

Nominees for the 23rd Annual GLAAD Awards have been announced. Some of your favorite things earned nods, like Pariah, Degrassi, Pretty Little Liars, Glee, Exes and Ohs, Modern Family, Becoming Chaz, Dancing With the Stars, Conan O’Brian’s gay wedding show, Zach Wahls on the Ellen DeGeneres show and Lady Gaga.

Inexplicably, The Real L Word was nominated for Outstanding Reality Program, which I think means that the terrorists won.

Sidenote, this year I learned that although most of GLAAD’s nominations are culled from year-round media monitoring of mainstream media, but if you make media by and for the LGBT audience, you or your media outlet must submit an application to be considered (with a $50 processing fee).

LADY GAGA

Because the world gets curiouser and curiouser every goddamn second, Lady Gaga and her mother Cynthia Germanatta will be launching her new non-profit, The Born This Way Foundation, on Wednesday, February 29th at Harvard University. Along with some “very special guests” and co-hosted by The John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The California Endowment, Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the Harvard Graduate School of Education, this one-day event will involve unveiling BWTF “before a crowd of policy makers, non-profit organizations, foundation leaders and youth themselves who are working to create a kinder and braver world.”

Germanotta says: “My daughter’s foundation was born out of her passion to create a better world where people are kinder and nicer to one another and are accepted for who they are, regardless of how different they may be. She has experienced many of the struggles that our youth encounter today, and identifies with the lasting effects they can have without proper support. Together, we look forward to creating a new movement that will engage and empower youth and accept them as valuable members of our society.”

More details about what the organization will do will be announced as the day nears. Anyhow, it sounds delightful and I applaud you, Lady Gaga.

OOPS 

So Britney Spears‘ ex-bodyguard Fernando Flores, out of the kindness of his heart I’m sure, is releasing a book which promises to reveal all the deep dark secrets of Britney Spears’ sexual activities with other women! I believe the term is “lesbian orgies.” Firstly, it’s true that Britney was alllll up in some girl-on-girl action earlier this century, but I mean, really, who wasn’t? This is what the guy says:

“Britney has a huge sexual appetite and, from what she told me, her tours were an anything-goes environment. I heard stories of threesomes, orgies, girls making out – things that would make your hair stand on end.She had a lot of young, attractive dancers around her on tour, and things would get crazy. There was drinking, drugs, steamy sessions in hot tubs, all sorts of things.”

By the way, he’s also suing Britney for sexual harassment, so on a scale of one to ten I wouldn’t trust a word this asshole says. Regardless, there’s something about her that has always really pinged, you know? Does anyone else feel this way?

MEGAUPLOAD

Megaupload, where I’ve watched more television episodes than I should perhaps disclose, has been shut down. The CEO, Kim Dotcom (formerly known as Kim Schmitz) and three other men were arrested by U.S. officials on Thursday in New Zealand. The indictment claims they cost copyright holders more than $500 million in lost revenue.

Kim Schmitz has a long history of lawbreaking, he’s been prosecuted for insider training, embezzlement, computer fraud and handling stolen goods in the past.

I’d like to point out that this is a great example of how the government can prosecute content pirates without passing a bill to fuck up the entire internet!

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Riese

Riese is the 43-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish and has a cute dog named Carol. Follow her on twitter and instagram.

Riese has written 3279 articles for us.

47 Comments

  1. If anyone needs me I’ll be over here ripping my hair out because the Real L Word got a nomination and RuPaul’s Drag Race and RuPaul’s Drag U — which both are all about loving yourself and being fierce and whatnot — were not.

      • RuPaul as a person is not all that great w/r/t trans* issues.

        RuPaul’s Drag Race/Drag U is a much more life affirming, self esteem building, positive queer imagery than watching gratuitous shots of lesbians fucking. In fact one of the past contestants of Drag Race came out as trans and everyone’s response was WOOOO YOU GO GIRL!!

        So… you know… Drag Race > The Real L Word any day.

        • In my current state of sleep deprivation I have read this entire chain of comments as being about Ron Paul. It was interesting.

    • I just want to sit with someone from GLAAD and have them explain to me how the content of the show is irrelevant and that really they are just happy to see lesbians on tv..

  2. My broken English above is a great example of how distraught I am over this.

    There are other shows that are also a better representation of the community as well! The Fabulous Beekman Boys! Come on, GLAAD!

  4. I just like the (slightly incorrect) initialisation of “Born This Way Foundation” as “BWTF”.

  7. Wait, Exes and Ohs doesn’t have a link? Exes and Ohs never got an Autostraddle post? No way! That makes me a sad panda :(

      • C’mon, it’s a lesbian sitcom. Cut it some slack.
        Is Exes and Ohs a great show? No, it’s not but I feel morally obliged to support it since it is one of the very few north-american shows centered on queer women and it is really difficult to see lesbian content on Logo.
        Plus, Michelle Paradise is adorable. She even managed to be cute when she was on that (literally) cheesy Denny’s commercial.

        • i genuinely love michelle paradise, mostly because she was big in to tinkerbell at the 2008 newnownext awards and i liked her cute outfit. i do like her, for real.

          but i thought the show was just like, stale, i guess, like recycled cliches from early 90s lesbian films. however, i recognize that a large contingent of autostraddlers enjoy the program and i respect that. also, i think the time that i saw it was around the same time carly and i had written a sitcom we were trying to sell and so i was extra bitter at anyone else who’d gotten their lesbian sitcom on teevee

          • I agree with what you said regarding the cliches and plots that have been done to death (pregnant lesbian? again?) but it has quite a few funny moments.
            I see so many people complaining about the lack of gay ladies on TV and bitching about the kind of visibility that TRLW brings us and yet no one pays Exes and Ohs any attention. I think this show should be treated better, both by Logo and the community.
            Season 2 was way better than season 1. Give it another shot one of these days… I’m crossing my fingers for season 3.

  8. JD Samson’s band MEN also god a GLAAD nomination, but so did Lady Gaga in the same category (I think), so I feel like a Jon Huntsman supporter all over again.

    But seriously. MEN needs to win.

    • JD Samson is super dreamy and MEN is great. I would even go as far as to say that I prefer Talk about Body to Born This Way.

  9. It seems that it doesn’t matter if there is racist (glee), sexist (glee, Chaz Bono), transphobic (glee, Lady Gaga), or any other kind of problematic content or unfortunate implications in a show; as long as it has queer characters/content, it gets a nomination, which is just really fucking depressing because it shows just how underrepresented LGBTQ characters/storylines/issues are.

    Or maybe I’m just being really cynical today. (Which is a very real possibility.)

  10. Im convinced IFC is dumping loads of the money she’s making from the average american male who watches her “reality” show into getting GLAAD to acknowledge her. Effff.

  11. Q: Why would Britney’s past girl-on-girl flings jeopardize her custody…? =\ Are we really going there, tabloids? Really?

  12. I’m mostly confused about Glee getting a nomination. Really? A show that treats female homosexuality as a joke and barely shows any romantic interaction between its queer couples gets praised for being LGBT positive. Really?

  13. Guys, I was in the middle of streaming the L word on Megavideo.

    I feel like I should be happy that this forced me to stop watching before the show got bad.

  15. Maybe I’m overreacting, but I’m legitimately horrified for the internet.

    First we get a bunch of awesome internet destinations protesting SOPA and PIPA…then we hear that Hollywood and media money is planning to withdraw campaign funding/staging their own powerful “counter protest” essentially.

    Then lo and behold, government prosecutes big website for copyright infringement, no law necessary. The timing is really pretty frightening, actually. What pressure were government agencies under from Congressmen, wealthy/powerful political lobbies? Specifically in the wake of these protests?

    The message is rather chilling.

    Perhaps the singular achievement of the internet is “crowd sourcing” – the technique utilized by Youtube, Wikipedia, and other user-content based sites. The problem is when users are uploading their own data, it is literally impossible for a website to monitor all or even a majority of this data. Especially if the site is free, like Wikipedia. Corporately funded or backed sites can scratch the surface (Youtube is effective like 1/1,000 times right? hah) but the more open-source, “free” a platform is, the the greater the risk.

    The trend really is threatening to kill the internet, and for no good reason…Swedes just did a study that found that those who download illegally also buy more legally!

    • Well, the thing is it really is a gigantic issue with lots of ramifications, so it’s kinda impossible to go with “one law to rule them all” when it comes to internet content.

      As someone who is intending to make a living in the creative industry, I would hate to have to flip burgers and babysit kids my whole life to pay my rent and food because the second one of my creations gets online I can kiss byebye any rights over it and ability to sell it.

      Whether it’s music, illustration, games or TV shows, creating art takes time and money, and the more people download the less the artists have the money to produce new content – which leads to big companies putting all their money into mainstream over-marketized bullshit so they KNOW they’ll get enough money back to counterbalance the piracy, and, new, independent, original or “niche” artists to be out of fundings or unable to find publishers and contracts and ceasing production.

      It’s already happening in the music industry, big labels are signing less artists than they used to if they aren’t sure it’s gonna make enough money – producing a CD still costs as much money as it used to, but proportionally the benefits by CD are divided by like half because for every buyer there’s a downloader, so they don’t dare to gamble on original stuff anymore. Not only that but the small independent labels are the ones getting the biggest hit and end up being bought by the bigger sharks who don’t give a shit about good music and only want to make $$$.

      Piracy is now also hitting hard the concept-art and illustration industry with assholes stealing professional or good amateur/student work on art forums and online portfolios, and then presenting it as their own – essentially stealing a gig the original artist could have landed. It would be easy to say “yeah well artists just shouldn’t put their pictures online then”, except that nowadays companies are looking for their artists to hire in those exact same places too, so those people HAVE TO take the risk and put their stuff online to get noticed and land contracts. And even then sometimes companies jump the step and do the stealing themselves – I’ve read about a huge Facebook game last year (“Castle Age” or something like that) who built their entire game with hundred of stolen pictures and made shitload of money with it without reversing a dime to all the artists.

      It’s all a huge neverending circle, Internet made people feel entitled to cultural products and if we don’t find new ways to protect intellectual property or even revamp the whole system, soon it’ll all collapse. I think we first need to kick out of the art business all those fucking sharks who stand between the artist and the consumer as the gatekeepers of production (for the artist) and access (for the consumer), but consumers habits need to change to. They need to realize that art don’t appear out of thin air and respect the artists’ hard work for what it is – work. I can’t draw you a picture or sing you a song if I’m to busy filing papers in a cubicle to pay my bills.

      • The problem is that the big media companies are flat out refusing to do things that would actually make them money as opposed to sticking strictly with tired business practices that haven’t worked since they started making CDs.

        There are so many small and independent artists who make GOOD MONEY from using the internet the way that the users of the internet do it. So instead of moving with the times big media would rather sue the pants off the 14 year old girl who made a fan video of her favorite song.

        SOPA and PIPA aren’t there to protect you, independent artist.

        • I wasn’t talking as much about SOPA and PIPA (which I know are mostly about protecting the suits and not the artists), I was mostly responding to the claim that closing illegal piracy websites such as MegaUpload is “killing the Internet”. I’m well aware that Internet is a amazing platform for independent artists to make their promotion and sell their stuff, as well as I’m aware that the current way things are done is outdated and doesn’t work anymore and we need to drop it all and adjust to new technologies NOW.

          But websites such as MegaUpload aren’t doing anything for the art industry, and it seems a bit stupid to me to whine about them closing. I’ve been using these kind of websites for years to download TV shows that don’t air in my country, they close regularly and are as quickly replaced with new ones. No big deal.

          I wasn’t defending those laws who are actually hurting the artists more than helping, as I said in my last paragraph the art industry is rotten to the core and parasited by those companies who are only in for the money. I guess I wasn’t clear enough, it’s a topic I have a lot of strong feelings and opinions about so sometimes my arguments turn into feverish rants (especially when I’m trying to keep it short like here, I could write a whole book about it!)

          • I feel you, thanks for clearing up your opinion.

            I could also go on for hours about this. I’m no stranger to censoring myself on AS so that I don’t come across like a ranting lunatic. Usually I’ll type and type and type and then edit down like 3/4ths of what I wrote. ;)

  17. Three Cheers bars for Lady Gaga, yeah I know she is a Madonna wannabe, but even if LGT wasn’t mentioned in her song she got her point across and she appreciates us.

    Let’s play word association. Britney-Barf

  18. “threesomes, orgies, girls making out – things that would make your hair stand on end.”

    None of those things make my hair stand on end, dude. And I like how “girls making out” is the last item on the list, like it’s the most extreme item on it, or something. Like “threesomes and orgies, oh my stars! AND girls making out! Horrifying!”

    • Right? Isn’t ‘girls making out’ just sort of a given in threesomes and orgies? Idk…

  19. Maybe I’m just a cranky cynical, but I’m so sick of anything with anything vaguely gay in it being labeled as progressive or brilliant in some way. Sorry but I can’t stand Gaga and she is clearly exploiting the community and the momentum behind the movement for her own devices.

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