Lady Vlad It was a tiny victory amid a colossal human tragedy, and we may have run this image before, but it is priceless, and it resurfaced just as Vladimir Putin was entering Ukraine. It first appeared on a poster in 2013 as part of an unsuccessful effort to derail Putin’s “anti-gay propaganda” law—Russia’s version of “Don’t say gay”—and it did its job by really getting under his skin, so much so that in 2017 he banned the image for presenting “alleged nonstandard sexual orientation of the president of the Russian Federation.” In the recent incident, hackers took over Bulgarian media, targeting the largest broadcasters, which are allowed to stream content inside Russia. The hackers gained control of these sites for twenty minutes, during which they displayed the image and the words “make love, not war.” Our only purpose here is to reprint the send-up one more time, just because Putin hates it so much.
Best Little Boys Another study has found that gay students do significantly better academically than their straight peers and go on to greater educational attainment. Published in American Sociological Review, the study found that over fifty percent of gay men finish college compared to 35 percent of straight men, and gay men are fifty percent more likely to hold an advanced degree. The finding made it to NBC News, where commentators sought an explanation in the cultural stereotype that it’s “feminine” to be studious (while eschewing sports), a put-down that the gay guys tend to shrug off, presumably because they’ve already relinquished any BMOC aspirations. They even cite the “Best Little Boy in the World” role that many gay boys adopt as they strive to prove their worth with good grades. The phrase “toxic masculinity” crops up to help explain straight boys’ failures—though this seems a little harsh. So much of what (straight) teenage guys do is driven by the instinct to compete for teenage girls, who really are in the driver’s seat when it comes to defining what’s masculine. Once the gay guys have bowed out of that game, it frees up a whole lot of time and energy for other pursuits (not all of them academic).
Woke Up to Hedwig Actor-singer John Cameron Mitchell, the star of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, has come out as nonbinary! The announcement was treated as big news by Pride magazine, but anyone who’s seen the musical or the movie probably isn’t stunned. The shocker would have been Mitchell announcing that he’s not nonbinary, though we do appreciate the clarification. In the Pride interview, he revealed that he’s received some belated blowback for playing the part of Hedwig, a transwoman, while not being trans himself. His new status as nonbinary will presumably help to rectify that faux pas. And yet, is there not a possible risk to insisting that a nonbinary role can only be played by a nonbinary actor? Can we not imagine someone coming along and insisting that a cisgender role can only be played by a cisgender actor, a straight role by a straight actor, and so on? Accepting that logic would seem to restrict trans actors to playing exclusively trans roles, among other implications that Tucker Carlson will no doubt twist to maximal advantage.
Erroneous Zones Van Taylor, a Republican rep in the Texas House with a strong “family values” record who has a wife and three daughters, has ended his re-election campaign now that the public knows about a series of raunchy sexts he sent while having an extramarital affair with Tania Joya, the widow of an Islamic State fighter. So far it’s a garden-variety case of infidelity and hypocrisy—though the ISIS bit is odd—but the devil is always in the details where sex is concerned (remember Monica Lewinsky’s feather?). One of Taylor’s fondest requests was that Tania perform anilingus on him before performing oral sex. Anilingus? This of course is the Latinate coinage for “rimming,” and we’re pretty sure this practice originated in the gay community. Apparently it has spread, as it were, at least in fantasy, deep into the interior of this great land.
Amy, Congrats! We’ve yet to comment on the extraordinary winning streak of Amy Schneider on Jeopardy! this past winter. The fact that she was the first openly transgender contestant in the show’s history was newsworthy, but her forty-day winning streak was epic. Schneider was entirely gracious in victory and open about her gender status during the interview portion of the show—which didn’t stop some people from attacking her on social media on any pretext they could find. Of course, the real motive was simple bigotry, usually linked to a right-wing religious affiliation. So it must have really given these folks heartburn when the contestant who finally defeated Schneider, Rhone Talma, turned out to be a (very) openly gay man.
