Books, Media, & the Arts

Bill Maher Takes on the Gender Rads

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Bill Maher said:
“[I]t’s okay to ask questions about something that’s very new and involves children. The answer can’t always be that anyone from a marginalized community is automatically right, trump card, mic drop, end of discussion. Because we’re literally experimenting on children. Maybe that’s why Sweden and Finland have stopped giving puberty blockers to kids. Because we just don’t know much about the long-term effects, although common sense should tell you that when you reverse the course of raging hormones, there’s going to be problems. We do know it hinders the development of bone density — which is kind of important if you like having a skeleton — fertility and the ability to have an orgasm seem also to be affected. This isn’t just a lifestyle decision. It’s medical. Weighing trade-offs is not bigotry.”

A biased report by Raw Story.

A predictable response from GLAAD.

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The Authoritarian Impulse

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He adds:

More than any other value, the brave men and women who started the American gay rights movement in the middle part of the last century advocated freedom—the freedom of sexual expression, the freedom to hold a job, the freedom to publish, the freedom to associate (whether at a bar free from police harassment or in a political meeting free from FBI surveillance), the freedom to serve openly in the military, and the freedom to marry. Now that it has achieved those freedoms and a cultural influence once thought impossible, much of what passes for gay activism today is driven by an impulse which is the very opposite of freedom: control.

As I’ve written before, the pagans bloodily persecuted the Christians, and then the Christians came to power and bloodily persecuted the pagans. Communists began as a small, radical movement for workers’ rights, but everywhere they’ve attained power they’ve been ruthless, murderous totalitarians. Those who were formerly outlawed and subject to arrest and worse, once the tide turns and they have the power of government to force others to bend knee, are totally assured of their own moral superiority in doing so.

Along related lines, but about woke-ism generally:

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Further Lessons from Morally Superior Hollywood Progressives

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Dishonest and dissembling:

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Paglia and the SJWs

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Nice to see the university prez standing up to the social justice warriors.

More. Early American social justice warriors.

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P.C. vs. Art

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Bret Easton Ellis writes:
“Homosexuality and disease and the closet isn’t the point, suffering and victimhood is not at their center, and ideology is pushed back in favor of simple storytelling. These are films in which a character’s sexuality doesn’t become the whole pathetic reason for the movie to exist. This is, remarkably, in American movies, a new thing.”

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“Rent:Live,” or Where Have All the Drag Queens Gone?

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Last week’s live performance of the early ‘90s musical “Rent” on Fox TV made some changes to the original stage script by the late Jonathan Larson. Foremost among these, the character “Angel,” who Larson had written as a drag queen, was changed to a transwoman, which New York magazine’s Vulture site confirms.

In the original, Angel’s lover, Collins, referred to Angel as “he” in several pivotal scenes, including after Angel’s death, although in the original characters did use “she” when referring to Angel in drag.

As Vulture reports:

Again in an effort to fully establish Angel as a female-identifying character, Collins interrupted the bickering of “Goodbye Love” last night to express his sorrow: “I can’t believe she’s gone; I can’t believe you’re going,” he says, turning to Roger. In the original, he says of Angel, “I can’t believe he’s gone.”

There’s nothing wrong with having a transwoman as a character, but that’s not who Angel was. Collins, Angel’s lover, identifies himself a gay man who likes guys even if they like to cross dress.

A few years ago, a Fox TV version of “The Rocky Horror Show” cast a transwoman, Laverne Cox, as Dr. Frank-N-Furter, another character who was famously a drag queen transvestite and not, in fact, a transwoman. Which raises the issue of whether it is now too politically incorrect to allow presentations of gay men who are drag queens, even if that’s who they were originally meant to be.

As Andrew Sullivan wrote recently, “Contemporary transgender ideology is not a complement to gay rights; in some ways it is in active opposition to them.”

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‘Vice’ Distortions

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Matt Latimer writes:

At first, the film shows [Dick Cheney] lovingly accepting his daughter Mary as she tells him of her sexual orientation and even giving up his presidential aspirations to protect her. But later, in a scene that was clearly invented, the Mary accuses her parents of coldly throwing her under the bus on the issue of gay marriage when it suits their other daughter’s political purposes. The true backstory is this: Liz, running for office in Wyoming in 2013, was being attacked by fellow Republicans for supporting gay marriage, since she had a gay sister. Liz expressed opposition to same-sex marriage, putting her at odds with Mary’s view. While Dick Cheney himself had supported gay marriage since 2000, he issued a statement defending Liz’s differing stance. Same-sex marriage was a difficult topic for many people, so it wasn’t unusual for one daughter to have a different view of it than another and for a parent to still love them both. Not long before that, Barack Obama and the Democratic Party had opposed same-sex marriage, too. It was also perfectly understandable for a father to want to help his other daughter any way he could, and Liz was losing the race badly. This clearly painful, anguishing dilemma is not explained to viewers at all. Instead, we are shown Cheney, looking down absently, while a tearful Mary accuses him of betrayal.

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