Pursuant to an earlier chat, this is one of the people who leapt out of my early cinema experiences as a kindred spirit. Idgie from Fried Green Tomatoes. No labels, just vibes.
Today I was thinking about how many films of that era, like Steel Magnolias, normalized a stark gender binary that always felt more like SF than actual SF to me.
But there have always been liminal characters. *People* have been nuanced in every era. Current discourse sometimes forgets this & tries to reinvent the wheel.
Relatedly, this is also why I adore the film Carol. Director Todd Haynes is extremely thoughtful in his portrayal of queerness. There are no "coming out" scenes, because even in the historical era under exploration, the idea of queerness *was not new*. People have always known human experience to have a range. That's why the Hays Code existed - to try to suppress it. To write it out of media, when early cinema proved "too" open about human range. (Watch Marlene Dietrich in Morocco if in doubt!)
@MLClark Gender identity and preference is pretty much an artificial human imposition, in my opinion.
I once discussed this with a veterinarian friend. Most creatures rut with any and all. We're the only ones who fret about gender identity -- which, I suspect, was imposed by religions to keep procreating more faithful to keep the coffers full.
I feel the same about monogamy, but that opinion is not shared in this household ...
It's a fascinating topic! I feel *gendered*, but don't talk about it as much because the term "transgendered" fell out of vague when weaponized against trans folk - which is part and parcel of how the last 30 years of rights advocacy have struggled under the misguided idea that if we just get the language "right" people will stop being hateful. It's such a cute centrist-liberal approach to social reform. /x
Funnily enough, though, in nature there is tons of gender-role swapping... as a mating strategy! Males of marine species sometimes feign female appearance to get closer and mate between a female and dominant male. (Oh fishy threesomes!)
(No evo-psych junk conclusions being drawn here about human beings: just highlighting the fact that nature's IDIC is a lot of fun. We get so uptight in contrast!)
Relatedly, though, there's a real grief among many in the queer community that we spent so much time chasing "respectability" instead of pushing for an end to rigid traditional norms. The Stonewall riots were advanced by sex workers, incarcerated people, trans and drag folks, BIPOC... people representing huge intersectional marginalizations. But when the fight for queer rights reduced to marriage equality, it was a strongly WASP-y middle-class ideal we were chasing. /×
One final fun comment from Patton Oswalt here, on how it's dangerous to reduce our advocacy for human rights to the inclusion of specific labels because a lot of what he calls "evil motherfuckers" know how to play the language game of the day very well.
"Listen to their hearts"--and fight for laws and cultures that can't be gamified when it comes to everyone's right to safety and self-determination in this hard world.
Should be easy! But definitely isn't.
https://youtu.be/AkKo1_RP_0c
And... of course there's a typo in the first post in the thread. 😅 Vogue, not vague. Ah well. You get my point.
Back to work with me. Happy Sunday!
Actions speak louder than words.
@WordsmithFL
We could have blown to bits the legal requirement of marriage to be listed for insurance, visit hospitals, & gain tax benefits - which would've been better for everyone! But nope! The push was for acceptability within existing rights classes.
Advocacy without intersectionality can lead us into traps like a fixation on getting labels codified, but the law shouldn't be crafted so that very specific demographic language determines your right (or lack thereof) to safety and agency.