Just been reflecting on youth power and intersectionality and why the Parkland students have the mic right now and also how awesome they’re doing at sharing the mic with students from schools that have been ignored and ravaged by gun violence for decades and wow, it was a big weekend for the U.S.
If you went to a March for Our Lives action in one of the over 500 places they were happening of this big one in DC yesterday, I hope you left feeling inspired. Honestly, the #1 impact of a rally is to make people feel connected and energized and ready to go home and take more actions. I keep hearing Boomers saying it’s “like the 60’s” again and they have faith in youth again and, like, young have been leading the way forward since forever and definitely many times on a national scale between the 1960’s and now.
Anyway, though, millennials in the 2018 elections will officially surpass baby boomers in the number of eligible voters, so, like…get ready for it. Change is coming soon and us millennials are liberal AF! Happy Sunday, America!
Mike Pence Trolled By His Own Family Bunny
Skip to 18:00 for a preview of the actually ADORABLE book
Unique and impactful ways to troll Mike Pence is something that’s just never going to get old, TBH. John Oliver’s team released a book about a sweet gay bow-tie-wearing bunny that just happens to be very similar to a book Pence was releasing the next day. Proceeds from Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Presents a Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo, a story about a gay bunny falling in love and getting married, go to the Trevor Project and AIDS United. The Pence family’s actual book, Marlon Bundo’s Day in the Life of the Vice President by Charlotte Pence and illustrated by Karen Pence, with proceeds donated to A21 and Tracey’s Kids.
Interestingly, Charlotte Pence, Mike Pence’s daughter, seems to support the parody book. I don’t know! So far, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Presents a Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo is topping the Amazon charts and has vastly outsold the Pence book. Honestly, it looks really cute?
Here, Queer & Trans, Etc.
Finland’s Eurovision Contestant Is A Proud Lesbian—And Her Video Is Queer As Hell
Legal Marijuana and Gay Marriage Have Been Good for U.S. Innovation. Ok!
LGBTQ curriculum can turn schools into kinder and safer spaces. Also, water is wet. But, like, yes please this would be good.
A Celebration of LGBTQ Movies and Shows with Happy Endings
Eat Your Pancakes and Get Some History at Compton’s Cafeteria
Three years before the Stonewall Riot, the Compton Cafeteria Riots shook the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. The Compton Cafeteria Riots were a moment of resistance against police profiling and misconduct by trans women, drag queens, sex workers, and gay youth that frequented the diner and were fed up with discrimination and violence perpetrated against them. Mark Nassar and Katie Conry have recreated that 1 a.m. night for theatergoers in an immersive, interactive show in the Tenderloin district at The New Village Cafe called The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot. Attendees get a real diner breakfast of bacon, eggs, and pancakes, and get to bear witness and maybe even participate in the events of that night.
Katie Conry, who is also the director of the Tenderloin museum, said in an interview with Eater SF “We wanted to give the audience a suggestion of really being there, in hopes it would help create empathy for the characters and help audience members identify with the queer liberation movement.” The director, AeJay Mitchell said, “I want San Francisco to really see the importance of trans folks, and trans women in particular, in the queer narrative. Trans women have paved the way for queer resilience.” The cast is mostly transgender actors and it was recently extended into May!
I Don’t Know Maybe Though
This feels relevant to our interests, maybe. Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon are starring in a comedy summer movie thing directed by Susanna Fogel, the woman behind the indie lesbian-ish female-lead buddy comedy Life Partners. I have no intel or feelings about The Spy Who Dumped Me, but I really hope it passes the Bechdel test with flying colors and honestly, I’ll probably watch it because I like low-brow comedy movies that also aren’t rooted in misogyny. High hopes!
Although the main premise of The Spy Who Dumped me is not something I would go for, Kate McKinnon wearing suspenders and a tank top is VERY MUCH APPEALING.
KAELYN HOW CAN YOU SAY ‘I Don’t Know Maybe Though’ ABOUT KATE MCKINNON WEARING THAT OUTFIT
ALL OF KATE’S OUTFITS IN THE TRAILER THOUGH.
YES AND ALSO HOW ON EARTH DID I MISS THE SUIT AT 0:02?? I THOUGHT I WAS GAYER THAN THAT????
The fact that the trailer isn’t just Kate in a suit for 2 minutes is a travesty.
Sorry, sorry, I know. I mean…but is her character gay or just coded gay? Good lord I hope she’s gay, but either way I’m gonna’ watch it. The suspenders kill me.
Does that movie look kind of terrible and corny? Yes. Am I still going to see it?
Fuck yes.
Between this and Ocean’s 8, summer 2018 is going to be so gay.
Oh wow, I hadn’t thought about Ocean’s 8 in at least 34 minutes. Thank you for remedying this.
Unless there are actual confirmed lesbians or queer women in those movies let’s not call them gay. We’ve got to stop being satisfied with queerbaiting and straight women coded gay.
Though the characters might not be gay, having queer actors star in these big summer movies is still pretty important. And let’s face it, I’d watch Kate McKinnon read the phone book, playing it gay or straight.
I ordered a copy of John Oliver’s picture book as soon as I saw his piece about Mike Pence. Fuck you, Mike Pence. Also, gay bunnies are cute.
I think this is the movie Gillian Anderson was referencing when she talked about working with Kate McKinnon and the mutual crushes they had/have on each other.
So to see my two swoon-faves together? I’ll watch near anything.
(Also it looks like my phone knows to autofill Anderson after I write Gillian)
My phone does the same thing with Kate McKinnon :D
When I first heard that Kate McKinnon was starring in a film called “The Spy Who Dumped Me”, I immediately expected her to play a deadpan lesbian spy who just got dumped by her more emotionally mature lesbian spy girlfriend and now they run into each other on a Very Important Mission™ and hate it but end up reluctantly having to work together.
Everything about this film is going to disappoint me.
I’ll still watch it.
Finland’s Eurovision entry clip is awesome.
It bears mentioning that Eurovision as an entire concept has always been super gay.
Hmmm …I hesitated because I did not wish to spoil your Funday, but I simply cannot let the praise of the Finnish contribution to Eurovison stand. This will become an angry posting, I cannnot help that.
I see the Eurovision contest as a punch in the face of every trans woman living in Europe, accompanied by jeering and ridicule. Why? Here is why.
In 1998, Dana International, a trans woman, won the Eurovision contest. Now, twenty years later, only a very few European countries do not have psychiatric- medical gatekeeping any more. Gatekeeping – and I spare you any description – is of course only the tip of the iceberg. Currently there is a massive TERF offensive underway in the UK, Sheila Jefffreys was invited to speak in the House of Commons, and, unsurprisingly, anything on the horizon for trans women, like the abolishment of the remnants of gatekeeping in the UK, was ‘ postponed’. Until Kingdom Come. The usual alliance between TERFs, right- wingers, shrinks and bigots is – again, unsurprisingly – given the usual free rein as cis feminists and cis queers have other things to do. In 2014, when Jeffrey’ s book appeared – not as a pamphlet but as a work of scholarship, mind you – it was the very same picture, so why should it be any different now?
Only a few weeks ago the German Federal Constitutional Court affirmed that, yes, trans women still have to undergo gatekeeping procedures that take several years and, in most cases, include mandatory therapy. In spite of human rights complaints by the European Commmissioner for Human Rights and the CEDAW commission under the United Nations, several years ago. Protests? Nope. I remember reading that in Berlin there was some public discussion which interested less than thirty people, out of four million. If I gave the tamest description of trans misogyny here, including queer, cis lesbian and gay transmisogyny, you would not believe me, so I spare you this.
Perhaps those among you who went along that far understand why Eurovision makes me so furious. The European liberal establishment including those gays who made their comfortable home therein – gay marriage, hooray! – wave colossal pink and rainbow flags celebrating their progressive achievements. Well, there are actual achievements, for them. I very much doubt that I will ever see the day when they eventually cease throwing trans women under the bus they ride to their holiday estates. Or an actual passport with my actual name. Or an appointment for surgery. Do not get me wrong, I do not complain, I am alive, I have a home, friends, a sister … but while I write this maybe a trans girl comes out to her mother, and I can only hope that Mom does not drag her to a shrink for him to ‘ make it go away’. I invite you to look at that clip with that thought in mind. Perhaps you will experience a bit of my anger.
Yeah. It’s the same conundrum as the Olympics- a nationalist display can’t really be queer, because nations are gatekeepers by definition and queerness is about smashing boundaries. So then what does it mean to celebrate gayness within nationalism. On the other hand it’s true that widening the state-sanctioned boundaries to include gayness does make room for more people…