yonmei

04:10 pm: Heinz means bigot
Nigel Dickie: "Heinz is a global company and we respect all universal rights. The advertisement was intended to be humorous, not designed to cause offence to anyone. Clearly it failed in its intent to amuse and that is why we took the decision to withdraw it."

You know what "respect all universal rights" means? It means not sexual orientation and not gender identity. Those aren't "universal" rights.

Last Monday, Heinz started running a new advertising campaign for Heinz Mayo. (A fat-filled, sugary product that it would take an ad this cute and funny to sell, truly.) The ad was supposed to run for five weeks.

The ad opens with a stereotype-family - a boy and a girl going to school, a father going to the office. The young boy and girl go to the kitchen to get their sandwiches, which are being prepared by a man with a New York accent, dressed in a deli serving outfit, who they refer to as "mum". When their father goes to get his sandwich he says to the man in the kitchen: "See you tonight love."

However, the man barks back "Hey, ain't you forgetting something?", at which point the two men share a kiss. The man then sends the father off with the words: "Love you. Straight home from work, sweet cheeks."

It isn't exactly a gay ad: it isn't exactly a straight ad. This isn't a same-sex couple bringing up kids together: it's a half-uneasy joke, "the concept behind the campaign is that the product tastes so good, 'It's as if you have your own New York deli man in your kitchen'."

But on Friday, Heinz pulled the ad. Apparently the advertising watchdog got over 200 "complaints" that the ad was offensive and that two men kissing were "inappropriate". (Bill O'Reilly apparently said on air on Friday "So why are they doing that? Why -- it was. It was obviously a gay thing. Now I don't know what the message is, other than gay people like mayonnaise. ... I'm confused. This whole gender blending thing. It's confusing to me. ... I just want mayonnaise. I don't want guys kissing.")

Nigel Dickie, Director of Corporate Affairs for Heinz UK, said the reason for pulling it was: “It is our policy to listen to consumers. We recognize that some consumers raised concerns over the content of the ad and this prompted our decision to withdraw it. The advertisement, part of a short-run campaign, was intended to be humorous and we apologize to anyone who felt offended.” Heinz.com

1. Sign the Re-instate the Heinz Deli Mayo TV ad.

2. Contact Nigel Dickie: 020 8848 2726, Nigel.Dickie@uk.hjheinz.com (from their press release) Tell Dickie you weren't offended. (You can view it here or here.)

3. Contact Heinz direct: www.heinz.com, click on the Contact Us link. Tell them you won't buy a Heinz product until the ad's being broadcast again.

4. If you normally buy Heinz, don't.

5. Pass it on!

I know, I know: it's just a TV ad. And however cute the ad, it's an appalling product. But Heinz's instant capitulation to homophobic bigots was so naked. Dress it up with a squirt of organic tomato ketchup and make your own baked beans.

Tags: ***** this fir a kerry oan, angry queer, food politics, i watch tv, writing complaining letters

11:36 am: "I can't talk about race because I'm white"
Responding to a post on my friends-list which was itself responding to a number of posts linked to from metafandom on race issues in fandom.

I think about it in terms of: As a woman, when a man says something sexist, I really like it when another man steps in and tells him to quit that: not because I'm not perfectly capable of speaking up, but because it establishes sexism as everybody's problem - and it's a lot harder for your average clueless sexist to say "Hey, no one but a feminist would mind" when it's a man telling him "No, that's not acceptable".

Likewise, as a queer person, I really like it when a straight person steps up to tell someone making heterosexist/homophobic comments that what they're saying is just not acceptable. It makes it a lot harder for that heterosexist/homophobic person to say "Oh, you're just being over-sensitive because you're gay yourself, REGULAR people don't mind that". Again, this is not because I can't do it, and it's not because straight people do it better, it's because it establishes heterosexism/homophobia as everyone's problem.

So, I'm white, and I figure that while I might say the wrong thing or miss stuff or just get it wrong because I've got 41 years of white privilege behind me, it is still probably better to speak up rather than shut up. Because racism is everyone's problem.

And "say the wrong thing" is a problem: because a man stepping in on sexism can look like an asshole (a well-meaning asshole, but still an asshole) when he really doesn't know what he's talking about. But, you know, on balance, I don't agree with everything Spider Robinson says, but he hits the mark on this one: We are all assholes. I had rather look like a well-meaning asshole then be thought to be in silent agreement with bigotry.

Tags: angry queer, feminism, rants

08:33 pm: Oh no. I refuse to believe it. The universe is not so badly designed.
Orson Scott Card was given the Margaret A. Edwards Award for his "outstanding lifetime contribution to writing for teens". The two books named are Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow, the novel and the paraquel about the infant Hitler who committed genocide of an entire species and then fled with his sister through thousands of years to a Brazil-type planet where he redeemed himself. (See: Heterosexism all right for teens! on feministsf blog and Farah at The Inter-Galactic Playground.)

Orson Scott Card is a bigot. He doesn't like Muslims. He doesn't like "homosexuals". He supports Romney for President, and Romney's connections to terror camps for teenagers are strong and direct. (Read about the lawsuit. Seriously: Orson Scott Card wants the next President to be a man whose two main fundraisers both made their millions running prison camps to which parents could send their adolescents who were being too gay or too uppity or too independent, to have them broken so they'd know not to be like that any more.)

But most of all... Orson Scott Card is a bigot. His bigotry isn't something away in the past, something he said or did when he was a teenager or a very young nan: he's written bigoted columns about LGBT people (and about Muslims, now) in the past twenty years.

The Margaret A. Edwards Award is sponsored by School Library Journal and administered by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of the ALA. Card will be honored at the YALSA Edwards Awards Luncheon and presented with a citation and cash prize of $2,000 during the 2008 ALA Annual Conference to be held in Anaheim, California, June 26-July 2. Believe me, if I could get there, I'd be picketing. If you can get there, picket for me. Giving Orson Scott Card a "lifetime achievement award" says something. It says that the people who decided he should get the award either did not know he is a homophobic bigot - which says they haven't informed themselves of much about him - or knew and didn't consider it important. Nor did they consider it important that he doesn't like Muslims.

Members of the 2008 Edwards Committee are:
Committee Chair Brenna Shanks, King County Library System, 960 Newport Way NW, Issaquah, WA 98027, USA;
Patty J. Campbell, Horn Book Magazine, 56 Roland Street, Suite 200, Boston MA 02129, USA (pcampbell@hbook.com);
Ruth Ellen Cox Clark, AA Library Education Tech & Distance Instructor, Joyner Library 1806, East Carolina University, East Fifth St, Greenville, NC 27858-4353, US (clarkr@ecu.edu);
Erin Downey Howerton, Johnson County Library, 9875 West 87th Street, Overland Park, Kansas, KS 66212, US;
Kimberly L. Paone, Elizabeth Public Library, 11 South Broad Street, Elizabeth, New Jersey, NJ 07202, USA.
(Where there are links, they go to "contact us" comment pages.)

Also, the American Library Association, 50 E. Huron Street, Chicago, IL 60611. YALSA's e-mail address is yalsa@ala.org.

What I have in mind to do is send them all copies of Dissecting Orson Scott Card. I'll format it all into one document and PDF it: if you'd like a copy too, comment here. If you don't feel someone who's written that "The argument by the hypocrites of homosexuality that homosexual tendencies are genetically ingrained in some individuals is almost laughably irrelevant. We are all genetically predisposed toward some sin or another; we are all expected to control those genetic predispositions when it is possible" is someone who should be given a lifetime achievement award for writing for teenagers, write to them, too.

---Update:
( The response I attempted to post at the Library Journal website )

---Second update

( I wondered what inspired that rotten screed on gay marriage )

---Third update

( YALSA responds )

Tags: angry queer, dissecting orson scott card

03:12 pm: Straight people are just so much more interesting than you, Mark
Gay playwright announces he's going straight.

Seriously. Mark Ravenhill, a boring man with a lot to be boring about, has announced that as writing about LGBT people makes him yawn, from now on all his characters are going to be 100% heterosexual.

This will be welcomed by critics who have been compelled to sit through his plays about gay characters, such as Mother Clap's Molly House.

The Mother Clap Trap by Rictor Norton in Gay Times, September, 2001, issue 276, pages 33-34.

"Frankly, I am glad that no permission was sought or granted, so that I am free to dissociate myself publicly from Ravenhill's play. It is dominated by themes of perversion, abnormality, unnaturalness, shame and self-hatred, all of which are absent from the real world of 18th-century gay men, or 'mollies' . Ravenhill has systematically distorted gay history."

"Good gay history is so rare, it is a great shame that once positive images have been unearthed, they should be deformed by homophobic stereotypes. The press release proclaims Ravenhill's play to be 'a fascinating insight into a hidden chapter of London's history'. On the contrary, it is a gross misrepresentation of gay history."

It's a sin by Mark Simpson in The Independent on Sunday: Etc, 26th. August, 2001, page 7.

"If Mother Clap's Molly House succeeds in showing the shockingly pleasurable side of buggery at the National Theatre perhaps it might prove as much a cultural watershed as The Romans in Britain. Since it was staged in 1980, using anal sex as a metaphor for imperialism, sodomy between men has been completely colonised by violent cliché - and not only in the theatre, but in films and even TV soaps."

"What's truly scandalous, however, is not just how often this meta-anal cliché has been deployed on stage and screen, or even the way that the audience just lies there and takes it, but the way in which every playwright/scriptwriter lazily reaching for it seems to think that they are being original, so fearless, so visceral."

(from The Knitting Circle)

Tags: angry queer

09:24 am: Actually, I’m kind of annoyed.
For two reasons: One, saying Dumbledore was gay after Book 7 was published and there aren’t going to be any more is kind of a cop-out. Would have taken a lot more guts (and been a lot more interesting) if she’d spelled it out in Book 7, rather than leaving it subtextual and admitting it only after Potterdammerung is well over.

The other: Lupin was gay. Tonks was a dyke. They got married off to each other as soon as possible after some fans pointed out to Rowling that Lupin “read” as gay, and they were both killed off - in fact, Tonks was never seen alive again after she married Lupin. Outing Lupin and Tonks would have been something I’d have welcomed, no matter when it happened.

And finally, though I admit this beyond what you can expect of any writer: Harry Potter is probably one of the most widely-read children’s books in the world, and certainly the most widely-read children’s book in recent publishing history. It would have been a fantastic thing to do for LGBT children at school if Neville (or any of the kids - but I had hopes for Neville) had turned out to be gay, living with (in a civil partnership with!) another man. But no. He gets married off heterosexually like the rest of the kids, and the only gay man Rowling will admit to in the Potterverse is Dumbledore, and she won’t admit that he ever had a relationship with anyone except unrequited love for an evil wizard.

(Oh yeah, this is the Dumbledore was gay revelation from J. K. Rowling. If you hadn't already heard.)

(This is based on a comment I made on feministsf - the blog!.)

---
Update: The best kind of fannish commentary: makes you weep and go squee at the same time. Gay-Albus Motivational Posters.

Tags: Pötterdämmerung, angry queer, books are what i read

01:29 pm: These things happen here
Do you understand where you are?

A blogpost about a family reunion in a small Southern town in 1993. You really need to read it, and the comment thread. It's about the Jena 6, who are being targetted in 2007 for being "uppity blacks" by outraged whites: but also about a Klan attack on a bunch of uppity black kids in 1993.

It reminds me of an offhand comment by a straight friend who went to see Brokeback Mountain and was shocked to realize that it was happening in her time - 1963 to 1983. I interpreted her reaction as shock: she expressed it as disbelief. Although she makes much of having "lots of gay friends", she's not much for LGBT activism: her reaction to Brokeback Mountain was the disbelief that this could happen now. I would imagine she's rationalised away as happening elsewhere - in the strange, primitive parts of the US, she thinks, gay men marry women and carry on covert relationships and find out that their partner died by a letter returned with "deceased" on the envelope... it doesn't happen in the here-and-now.

My first attempt at being out at work was 1995. The reaction from my senior manager scared me back into the closet again for another three years: when I came out again, a colleague used his knowledge of my sexual orientation to attack me in a work dispute. I never spoke about this to any of my straight friends: including, of course, the woman who didn't believe Brokeback Mountain could happen in the here-and-now. Trying to talk about it would have required too much explanation: whereas I don't know a single queer person who wouldn't have understood why the senior manager's reaction was scary, or how a straight male colleague can react to knowledge that someone who supervises his work is a lesbian.

Tags: angry queer, being queer, brokeback mountain, evil american politics

12:54 pm: Roz Kaveney: the Dead Thatcher meme
Roz Kaveney is reminded to say:

we must all make plans for when Thatcher dies to disrupt all the piety and hypocrisy she will get from the media and the political Establishment.

I plan to drink champagne in the streets with my friends, as we did when she fell.

Any thoughts?

I think a party would be splendid. A loud, gay party. This is the evil woman who declared that Section 28 was an excellent idea because otherwise teachers might tell children in school that they had a right to be gay. We'll send invites to Jill Knight, David Wilshire, Shaun Woodward, Janet Young, and Brian Souter.

Tags: angry queer

11:38 pm: What does the Daily Mail think "Christianity" is?
Judging by this headline: "How Britain is turning Christianity into a crime" they think that Christianity involves handing out leaflets with quotations from letters by Paul and carefully but maximally edited translations of Jewish purity laws. At LGBT festivals.

(What gives me the most unspeakable pleasure is that right now I can get nearly a whole page on Google News by googlenewsing on "Stephen Green" gay. It's even more fun than getting a pageful by googlenewsing on "Archbishop Conti" gay.)

Yes, this is about Stephen Green, director of Christian Voice, who was handing out poisonously religious homophobic leaflets at Cardiff's Mardi Gras last Saturday; who was asked by the police to stop, because the leaflets were upsetting some of the people who were being handed them. Green didn't stop handing out leaflets, and refused to accept a police "caution" - the last step prior to avoiding arrest. The police arrested him.

Green showed up at the magistrate's court on Wednesday full of glee, supported by eight Christian Voice devotees, and was told to come back on September 28th (remanded without bail) while the magistrates considered his case. He made a triumphant speech outside the court:

"I thank God for the honour of being locked up for sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ."

The leaflets sound like the usual homophobic quasi-religious crap. Despite Green's claim, they're not reported to contain any quotes from any of the gospels - unsurprisingly; Jesus was strikingly unhelpful to Christians who believe homophobia is the central tenet of Christianity. But there was the old standby from Leviticus, 18:22, which warns men off a man having sex with another man "as if he was a women", because that makes both men ritually impure to give offerings to YHWH, and the other old favourite from Romans 1:25-27 - though Stephen Green and the rest of the Christian Voice crew would profit from a study of Romans 1:21-24

21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. link

Apparently, Stephen Green is now claiming his rights to free speech have been challenged. This is the same Stephen Green who:

-Objected to the BBC screening Jerry Springer the Opera in January 2005

- Planned to use the Racial and Religious Hatred Act to prosecute bookshops selling the Qur’an for inciting religious hatred. (November 2005)

- Objected to Jim Jeffries appearing with him on Heaven and Earth, August 2006

This is not a guy who believes in free speech for anyone - except himself.

It is going to be an interesting question for the magistrates. There's no doubt that Stephen Green's intent was to discomfort and distress the people happily attending Mardi Gras: the whole point of being a Christian, for Christians like him, is that it's offensive to see people whom your beliefs say are sinning miserably, cheerfully enjoying themselves. And no doubt that he disobeyed a legitimate police order to stop it. On the other hand, Stephen Green is clearly just dripping with lust to be punished - ideally, really locked up, not just told to show up in court and sent away again. The worse they do to him, the better he'll like it.

But as far as Leviticus is concerned, Stephen Green would be better advised to hand out leaflets outside the McDonalds in Cardiff: if he's looking for abominations to demo against, they sell cheeseburgers (mixing dairy with meat), bacon (flesh of the swine), and probably the staff wear clothing that mixes two sorts of fabric together. Just disgusting, if you're trying to keep Wales up to the standard of the purity laws written to distinguish the Jewish people from all the other tribes in the Middle East, three thousand years ago.

But he won't, because when he knew God, he glorified him not as God, neither was he thankful; but became vain in his imagination, and his foolish heart was darkened. Professing himself to be wise, he became a fool. And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man.

Tags: angry queer

01:19 pm: How I fixed Brokeback Mountain
Over coffee with Ajay the other night, she said she was looking for fanfic that would fix Brokeback Mountain for her. I told her if she got a livejournal (which she's resisted so far) she could join communities for fanfic about Brokeback Mountain, and she looked tempted, but said no, she was looking for fanfic that would fix it, not for fanfic about it.

So I told her my mental fix-it: ( spoilers, kind of )

Tags: angry queer, brokeback mountain, fannishness

10:26 pm: Brokeback Mountain, a day later
I went to see Brokeback Mountain last night with hfnuala. It is easily the most depressing film I've seen in a long, long time.

( spoilers )

Tags: angry queer, brokeback mountain, evil religious politics, films

08:51 pm: Half a lifetime...
I am thirty-eight, nearly thirty-nine.

( when I was eighteen )

( ...and today )

Tags: angry queer, being queer, evil british politics, sometimes i love my job

12:22 pm: "What does it gain us to keep asking these questions?"
In response to a post on peake's livejournal about this article on Abraham Lincoln: "Was Lincoln Bisexual?" by Gore Vidal

To which my answer is: It helps to remove the imaginary concept many people have that gay people only began to exist in the 20th century.

Technically, of course, in Lincoln's lifetime, the concepts gay, straight, and bisexual hadn't been invented: so if writing about Lincoln's life by his contemporary standards, if he had sex with men when he was young and unmarried, and then married a woman and had children with her, he would not have been identified by his contemporaries as bisexual: that concept didn't exist. Nor did the concept of being gay, or being straight.

But there's a bogstandard meme in conventional history - so prevalent and so powerful that most people who haven't had occasion to think about it aren't even aware it exists, any more than your average oxygen-breather thinks about the composition of air - which is this: everyone is heterosexual until proven otherwise.

No one can prove Lincoln was exclusively heterosexual. What evidence there is, suggests he wasn't. The meme that everyone is heterosexual until proven otherwise is why peake didn't frame his question: "So was he straight? I don't know, and neither does anyone else."

Tags: angry queer, history

12:14 pm: Ginmar's lesbian meme
ginmar wrote: In view of the fact that 51% of the population is evidently either homophobic and/or ignorant, I think we should use the word Lesbian today as often as possible. It doesn't have to be in any logical way, which will piss off the homophobes even more. I'd reccomend using it every (lesbian) fifth word or so, so (lesbian) after awhile the surrealism will(lesbian) get to them and maybe (lesbian) they'll all have aneurisms and (lesbian) die.

So the meme is lesbian use the word lesbian every fifth word on lesbian your next livejournal entry lesbian.

Tags: angry queer

06:10 pm: Eep.
I got doorstepped by a kitchen salesman. (From Homestyle.)

( Read more... )

Tags: angry queer

04:17 pm: So we all know Orson Scott Card is a homophobe...
As Obsidian Wings point out, to be opposed to same-sex marriage you must be:

1. anti-Liberty
2. anti-Sanctity or
3. anti-Equality

Most opponents of same-sex marriage are frankly anti-Equality or anti-Liberty - they believe LGBT people shouldn't have the same rights as straights, or they believe that the government damn well ought to prescribe who you can get married to.

Interestingly enough, while Card is both anti-Liberty and anti-Equality, he's mostly anti-Sanctity - he believes that gays ought to make false marriages against their own inclinations. This isn't a new idea: Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson had a very successful marriage of exactly the kind Card proposes. It was a damned unusual success, however, and as Portrait of a Marriage records, it very nearly failed at the start. And though their marriage was a success, both of them (though Vita far more than Harold) left a trail of failed relationships with others in their wake. (Furthermore, it's clear that while the marriage would certainly have failed without their mutual affection for each other and their strong shared interests, it's also clear that another reason why the marriage never failed was that they could afford to lead very separate lives: they never shared a bedroom, and at Sisinghurst, they didn't even sleep in the same building.)

Card's bigotry makes me uncomfortable: this nastiness and false rhetoric (he's claiming that his civil rights are being trampled upon because, forsooth, judges are deciding issues of constitutional law and mayors are taking part in civil disobedience) makes me outraged. Card isn't stupid: he's intelligent enough to see how dumb his arguments are. He's being hateful, and I have already seen his most hateful and lying arguments quoted, unacknowledged, by other anti-marriage bigots.

Tags: angry queer, evil religious politics, orson scott card

09:33 pm: A response to Andrew: on slash
It's been 48 hours since I had a political argument with anyone (in fact, it's been 48 hours since I had an argument with anyone, even my mum) and I think I was suffering from withdrawal symptoms.

I originally wrote this as a response to a post on andrew_ducker's journal, and I do recommend you go there and read it before reading my effort.

-----
Well, I have to say, I'd be really impressed if you wrote an essay on the compulsive tendency in popculture to reduce all male/female relationships to the sexual.

( I mean, I agree with you - in a way.... &so on )

Tags: angry queer, slash

09:31 pm: On nostalgia
I understand the concept "I wish I could visit the past." I wish I could see the old Imperial Summer Palace near Beijing before the British army destroyed it. I wish I could visit Stonehenge before the National Trust put up barbed wire round all the stones. I wish I could see a living dodo.

I don't understand the kind of nostalgia that believes the past was better. ( anti-nostalgia links and rant )

Tags: angry queer, asimov, history, i am an angry feminist