Padma Danturty (she/her) I’m not the first person to notice common queer tropes in popular media, especially those that seem to only apply to the LQBTQ+ community. I’m going to break down one of the common tropes we see in TV media and if that representation has a negative impact on the community. For this article, I’ll be focusing on the hyper-promiscuity of queer characters within romantic relationships.
Spoiler warning: This article contains discussion about the plots of “Sex Education,” “Queer as Folk,” and “The L Word.”
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morena (she/her) A polling survey conducted by the Williams Institute School of Law at UCLA finds 3.5% of adults [9 million] in the United States identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual with over 1.8% of them identifying as bisexual. While this suggests over half of LGB Americans are bisexual, this group is often neglected both within and outside of its community. This phenomenon, called bisexual erasure, refers to the tendency to ignore, remove, or reject the presence of bisexuality in favor of sexualities that are attracted to a single gender; therefore those who engage in bisexual erasure prioritize their own sense of comfort despite the valid presence of bisexuality.
Catherine Sullivan (she/her) This summer, a pillar of queer culture on campus was tragically vandalized: the Sapphic Stall in the first-floor Mason Hall women's restroom.
Padma Danturty (she/her)Stereotypes are bad … right?
Our conversations regarding stereotypes, generalized beliefs about a group of people, are almost always if not exclusively about how bad they are. When thinking about a group you belong to, and its associated stereotypes, have you ever been happy they existed? 11/1/2022 0 Comments Disco Balls, Drop Squats, and Drag Visibility: A Review of "Gigi's Meets Aunt Charlie's: A Tale of Drag Scenes & Queens"Katie Watson (she/her) On September 29, the entrance to the Michigan Theater opens its doors to let in a crowd that will fill nearly every seat they have. The organ piano belts out pop songs in anticipation of the presenter for the evening, Ben Johnson, a former UM leader in the University Musical Society and now Director of the Performing Arts in LA. With ties both in Detroit and the west coast, Johnson brings together four drag queens from Gigi’s Cabaret in Detroit and Aunt Charlie’s in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, two interconnected institutions with rich and colorful histories. Inspired by James Hosking’s short film “Beautiful by Night,” this multimedia presentation explored the history and development of trans and queer culture in San Francisco and Detroit through the lens of the drag community.
Elessar Younglove (they/fae) Growing up, almost all televised romances I saw were cisgender, heterosexual relationships. According to the media, people like me didn’t exist. Queer people were not discussed in children’s media. They certainly didn’t appear as characters. According to the theory of invisibility, when a group is underrepresented in the media, individuals of that group are deprived of signals or tactics about how to be a person. I didn’t know I could like girls and boys as a child because I didn’t know such a person could exist. I certainly didn’t think that person was me.
5/3/2022 0 Comments My Coming Out StoryElessar Younglove (they/fae) My name is Elessar Younglove. I’m 23 years old. I’m a Taurus, I’m bisexual, and I’m nonbinary. My pronouns are they/fae. And I’m gonna give a trigger warning for internalized homophobia/biphobia, regular homophobia, bullying, suicide, and sexual assault.
Elessar Younglove (they/fae)March 8th is International Women’s Day. Women have overcome various obstacles, and continue the fight for equality today. One example of women’s fight for equality was the women’s suffrage movement. The women’s suffrage movement was an almost century long movement, credited to Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It was also a safe haven for queer women.
Grey Weinstein (he/they) If I’m being completely honest, I’ve never really liked men. I’d like to say that this isn’t my fault, but that’s not entirely true. It started when I was in early middle school, when I first started researching feminism online. (Yes, I know how that sounds, but bear with me; I promise this is not a rant about how feminism turns your daughters into angry, hairy man-haters.) Luckily for me, the online activists who first introduced me to the concept of feminist thought proudly proclaimed that their feminism was intersectional. I’ll be the first to admit that the rhetoric I encountered was far from radical or even actively anti-racist– it would be years before I started engaging critically with concepts like Marxism and abolitionism– but it introduced me to ideas like white privilege, intersectionality, and the importance of centering trans women and women of color in feminist action. My online feminist spaces were far from perfect, but while they probably don’t reflect my current political views, they were a useful stepping stone to getting me where I am today, ideologically speaking. (That is to say, a raging, foaming-at-the-mouth queer feminist leftist.)
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