Right now queers are under especially virulent attack from viable presidential candidates. Although DADT is over, trans people are still not able to serve, largely because the DSM still lists us as having a pathological mental disorder; this shows no signs of changing any time soon, given the pedigree of the doctors in charge of the next edition of the DSM. Our queer kids are still killing themselves, still being bullied into desperate acts, because states like Tennessee are trying to pass laws that make it punishable to bully anyone unless they’re gay, because that’s totally fine. Trans women are still being hassled (and much, much worse) by police, employers, self-appointed dressing room and bathroom monitors, and Girl Scouts. People still think RuPaul is a useful spokesman for trans women (note: spokesMAN for trans WOMEN) (right. exactly). In most states, it’s still legal to fire someone for being GLB, and in even more, for being T. Elderly queers are almost completely invisible in the movement, and health care for queers is often shrouded in harassment, denial of care, homophobia, transphobia, and a total lack of cultural competency and medical understanding.

Do I need to go on? I could, you know. There are scores of other major issues facing the LGBTQetc community, and yet…

And yet everyone’s got their boxer briefs in a knot because a popular, out actress said she didn’t like the word bisexual.

Wow.

I don’t know Cynthia Nixon personally. I have no idea what her perspectives are on any agenda that matters to me. I don’t know anything about her except what I read in the press. I do know that she has made a point of coming out and remaining out and putting a face on LGBT. In her recent interview, she talked openly about being “in love and in lust” with both men and women. She said that for her, being gay is a choice.

Then she said that she didn’t like the term bisexual because “people don’t like bisexuals.”

The world exploded.

Here’s what I think:

I think that she probably does not mean that she chooses the people to whom she is attracted, the people whose ankles or arms or cheekbones excite her, the people who make her heart beat a little funny.  She does choose how she presents herself, as a sexual human who responds to a wide range of other sexual humans.  So for her, yes, presenting as gay is a choice. She says to herself, “Self, clearly we are not straight, so what are some other words?” This is a hard question, because she seems pretty assimilated, and in that world, there are not a lot of other words. In the interview, she said, “I don’t pull out the ‘bisexual’ word because nobody likes the bisexuals. Everybody likes to dump on the bisexuals.”

Apparently this has set the movement back 900 years.

Here’s what else I think.

In the straight world, bi women (and presumably men) don’t like coming out as bisexual because the response is ALWAYS something along the lines of a) Oh, so you’ll do it with anyone? b) Can I watch? and c) You just need to make up your mind.

One of the big ugly secrets of the mainstream LGBT world is that bisexual is erased and insulted and only grudgingly allowed into the acronym.  Bi women (and presumably men) get the same responses when they come out as bisexual, but instead of asking if they can watch, the naysayers say, Oh, she’s not a real lesbian, then dismiss the bi woman entirely. This was true when I was new in the LGBT community twenty-something years ago, and it’s still true now.

This is why I identify as queer. I also do not like the bisexual word. At the moment I am trying hard to present myself as gay, which is hard given that I’m in a long-term monogamous relationship with a woman, but I’m damn well trying. Queer opens it up a little and allows for the fact that I have been attracted to women in the past, am currently deeply attracted to the one who lives here with me, and get the vapors when I see certain types of men (really, almost all types, but that is another story).

Erasing bisexuals and queers (among many other groups) and maintaining the binary either/or system is how the assimilated gays and lesbians try to make us “presentable” as a community. They don’t want go-go boys or dykes on bikes or pansexual leatherqueers in their pride parades. They think RuPaul is a trans advocate. They are reasonably certain that being able to marry our gay boyfriend or lesbian girlfriend and then send them off to join the Army is our number one most important goal, the thing our community needs most.

Leave Cynthia Nixon alone, people. Go help the homeless queer kids. Stop trading “bathroom bills” for marriage legislation. Surely you can find something more productive to do than this.

In case you were sitting there reading The Book of Broken Hymns and “The Only Living Boy in New York” was on your mind, and you were thinking, Gosh, I wish there were pictures of what Denver was like back when our nameless narrator used to go out with Cal and drink, it transpires that a friend of mine from my own early 90s Denver period has a friend who has a photo show about that very topic. So. They are very lovely pictures, and they show a side of Denver that is pretty much gone now. You might want to go take a look at this website here. I am going to go watch them again for a moment myself.

The commercials, as you have probably know, talk up the enormous quantity of accolades that the film has earned.  Lots of critics have named it to their Best of 2011 lists, it’s nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Picture, and will probably be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar as well.

Plus, it’s about a horse! In the First World War! I figured I would love it, cry my brains out, love it more, find a hitherto unexpected hidden reserve of tears, cry again, and then leave the theater in a deep swoon, loving War Horse more than any movie ever.

This is not, in fact, what happened.

To be sure, there were a lot of things I loved about the movie. Days later, I am still reeling from some of the more perfect moments, of which there were an abundance (especially the scenes with just Albert and Joey, or just Joey and his horse pal Topthorn).  The cinematography (except for the last scene) was beautiful. The sweeping English countryside, the claustrophobic trenches…all of those things were amazingly well-filmed, and I heartily believe that any and all cinematography awards Janusz Kaminski wins for War Horse are truly well-earned. Most of the writing is also good, although I have not read the novel on which the film is based, and so can’t speak to it as an adaptation. I even liked the acting, mostly. The horses who play Joey do a fantastic job – the horse parts of the movie were the best parts by far – and most of the other characters ranged from sufficient to terrific. Jeremy Irvine, who plays Albert, the boy to whom Joey belongs, does drift into melodramatic sludge occasionally, but for the most part he’s good. The only really unfortunate acting in the movie belongs to Peter Mullan, who plays Albert’s dad. I would have been much happier with the whole movie if he had fallen down a well early on.

Now then. As I said, the parts of the film that I liked best were the parts with the horses. In some ways, this is most of the movie, obviously, but the beautiful cinematography is paired with a set of extraordinarily charismatic horses, and that makes the directorial failings with the human parts of the movie stand out a lot more.

Yes, I said directorial failings.

Here’s the thing about Steven Spielberg: He really IS a brilliant, visionary director.  He understands storytelling more than almost anyone else making movies these days.  Sometimes he wields his considerable narrative skill and directorial vision and you get things like Jaws, E.T., or Saving Private Ryan (although the framing device on that one is a giant fail).  But sometimes you get into the directorial soup with Spielberg, and he presents you with manipulative-and-not-in-a-good-way things like Always or A.I.

War Horse made me feel used, and I am not happy with that.  It was so beautiful, and Joey was so compelling…but I have some significant issues with it overall.

For one thing, the timeline of the war itself doesn’t make any sense. I suppose it’s possible that if you don’t know ANYTHING about WWI it helps, but I’m not convinced. When I saw it, for example, there were people in the theater who expressed considerable bafflement about the gas in the trenches; they had no idea what was going on, and the narrative didn’t help. Also, while many reviews have discussed the ways in which Spielberg shows the true horror of the trenches, that’s ridiculous.

The film is rated PG-13, and the battles show what an error that is. It should have gone with a straight PG, or even an R. There’s almost no gore in the movie, although there are terrible, endless vistas clotted with dead horses.  But a movie about WWI with no blood? I can’t quite manage that. Although there are a lot of dead horses, mostly they’re just lying down dead, not any of the scores of much more horrible kinds of dead that the War offered horses. The battle scenes are exactly like the battle scenes in a Narnia movie – a lot of dust and yelling, and then a lot of people and animals lying dead on the ground.  They are the opposite, in terms of realism, of the same kinds of scenes in Saving Private Ryan. Also, in terms of the the War and its timeline… Sigh.

THERE MAY BE SPOILERS COMING UP HERE, SO STOP IF YOU ARE CONCERNED ABOUT THAT

The film starts in, maybe 1911, ish, although that was never made clear.  In 1914 the war starts, and then Joey goes off to war with handsome and extremely decent Captain Nicholls. Bad things happen, on account of how it’s a war, and Joey ends up with some Germans, and then he ends up with a French girl and her grandfather, and THEN back with the Germans.  Suddenly a title appears on screen: SOMME – 1918.

SERIOUSLY. SPOILERS.

If you know a little about the First World War, you know that the Battle of the Somme, in 1916, was one of the most terrible things that happened, in a war full of terrible things. If you know a lot about the War, you know that there were two battles there, the terrible one in summer 1916, in which the British lost almost 60,000 men on a single morning (approximately one third killed, the rest wounded or otherwise lost), and the not quite as terrible two-part battle in 1918, which helped wrap up the war.  You also know that the second Somme was primarily Canadian and ANZAC forces, not nearly as many Brits.

So it’s confusing, to say the least, to suddenly have that title up on the screen, when previously the movie has had almost zero titles or any guide to where/when you are in the war. It’s confusing also because it’s presented as being a battle from which only a handful of men return, which would make it more like the 1916 Somme, not the 1918.

Midway through this bewildering scene, which cuts back and forth between Albert on the English side and Joey on the German side, Joey goes wild and charges through No Man’s Land, wrapping himself in yards and yards of barbed wire.  This is almost impossible to watch, because Joey is wonderful and the visceral punch of his fear and the wire… Yeah. It’s a lot, and it will hurt your brain and your heart and make you feel sick. But: THERE IS NO BLOOD. The horse is almost completely unscathed by being COMPLETELY wrapped in barbed wire that he has been dragging with him until it pulls him down. And yet his beautiful flanks and his white-starred forehead are completely unwounded. He gets one bad cut on his chest, and that’s it. And then the battle is over, and Albert is wounded – he’s been gassed, and is temporarily blinded (most men who had terrible facial scarring from gas to their eyes stayed blind, which also annoyed me about the movie). And then… Well, you know how it’s going to end, right? Right.

And don’t even get me started on the accents: apparently all English people sound just like Samwise Gamgee, all French people sound like Pepe le Pew, and all Germans sound like the guys on Hogan’s Heroes (not Col. Klink, but the slightly more dashing and less ridiculous senior officer whose name I can’t remember). #headdesk

Again. There were many, many things I loved about this movie. But Spielberg should have tried harder to decide what kind of movie he was trying to make, and then he should have stuck with it. He knows how to make a terrifying war movie that shows the true horror of war, and yet with War Horse he has made a movie fraught with peril and emotion – horses! children! trenches! – that, in my opinion, points out rather weakly that war is bad, and sometimes goes as far as actually glorifying the nightmare.

Did War Horse break my heart? It did, a little. I’m glad there’s a movie out that shows what it was like (more or less) for the millions of horses who served in the First World War, because that’s a topic that most people really don’t know anything about, and I think they need to. This article, from The Guardian, does much more than I can to talk about the horses in the actual movie, and because they were the best part of the film, I think you should read the article. Maybe if Spielberg had done more with the horses, and less with the humans (especially Albert’s dad), it would have made his message about waste and horror clearer.

The movie is gorgeous, and I want to say again that there were a lot of wonderful moments in it.  A LOT.  But I can’t get past the things that disappointed me, and the bizarre ideas that people will get from the movie about how World War I actually went and what it was like.  In War Horse, battle is bloodless, everyone is decent and kind (even the bad guys aren’t really all THAT bad), and the good guys always win.

I have some NEWS about it.

As you may recall, the print version of the book was available as a limited edition, most of which have now sold out. However, because there are still people who want a copy, I am introducing the eBook version this month.

At this moment, you can buy The Book of Broken Hymns from the iBookstore for your Apple Product. It should be available at Lulu.com as an eBook also, and is pending at the Nook store and on Google eBooks (which excites me, because once they’ve processed it, my collection will be available as an eBook from your favorite independent bookstores – I will provide links when they become available).

I hope you’ll go get it – it’s a nice little collection, and I think you might enjoy it.

Thank you for your support, you people.

1.

A long time ago, maybe I wrote about how I thought the Disney Channel should do something about bullying. After all, they are a Huge Force of Influence, and also, they had just launched their Friends for Change initiative, which has since then made a considerable difference to a lot of local environmental issues. I wrote to them about this, but they were all, <crickets>, shockingly.

More recently, the whole It Gets Better thing happened. As much as I usually wish Dan Savage would just stop talking, I had to reluctantly admit that THIS was a good program, although I prefer the Make It Better concept, in which adults actually try to help the better happen. The really amazing part about It Gets Better was the number of people who are not Dan Savage participating and making videos and trying to help. This included innumerable regular people (who were awesome to put themselves out there and do this), MANY celebrities of all genders and persuasions, and several professional sports teams.

Since then, I have had to wonder why the Disney Channel stars have not participated (maybe they have – maybe I missed it – but I watch A LOT of Disney Channel (more on that in a minute) and I probably would have noticed). Kermit the Frog, who is technically a Disney star, participated, but…

Surely there are kids participating in the Disney Entertainment Farm System who are somewhere in the mix of LGBTQ.  Also, what about the kids watching? The kids watching are boys, girls, straight, gay, bi, lesbian, trans, and every combination thereof. They often know people – friends, siblings, classmates, parents, coworkers – who are not plain vanilla straight cisgender people. It’s time for Disney to think about addressing that.

An anti-bullying message could run as one of their star-spoken PSAs that appear between shows or instead of normal commercials. A show with a slightly older target audience (So Random! or Wizards of Waverly Place) could feature a character who was casually queer. A new friend character could have two mommies or daddies offscreen.

Instead, though, Disney continues to pretend that queer kids don’t exist, which is unfortunate.  The network’s sphere of influence is enormous, and they could do a lot of good by acknowledging that, speaking out, and moving into the 21st century.

[Special side note to Wizards of Waverly Place: Remember when Justin and Alex turned Max into a girl, who kept saying, "I'm a boy trapped in a girl's body," and then Alex kept saying, "That's not a little girl, it's a little freak," and everyone laughed and laughed? Not cool, Wizards of Waverly Place. Not cool.] [full disclosure: WoWP is one of my favorite shows, so I was particularly saddened by that.]

2.

Princesses (see, here we go). Not long ago, Disney/Pixar got 900000 buckets of accolades because the protagonist of the upcoming movie Brave is (gasp) a girl. I know almost nothing about this movie, and so cannot address any of the pros or cons to it that I have seen on Twitter. I can, however, say “Hooray! A badass princess!”

So it is with some sorrow that I report that the Disney Channel, apparently unaware that princesses can have adventures, fight monsters, challenge stereotypes and traditions, and be otherwise awesome, has gone all hyper-girly with princesses this fall. The main culprit here is a segment that appears between shows, in which So Random‘s Tiffany Thornton shows up at a little girl’s house and they have a princess makeover. That is, the little girl screams a lot, Tiffany looks matronly (which is weird, she’s only 25), and they have a nice afternoon doing their hair and trying on dresses. I’m not opposed to girly princesses, or people getting to do their hair and try on dresses, but there are never any little girls (or little boys, he said rather pointedly) who are all “Let us go forth and have adventures!” to balance this out. Why does a princess makeover require chiffon and tulle, but never a sword?

Anyway. If you have some desire to address this, here is the contact information for the Disney Channel:

The Disney Channel
3800 W. Alameda Ave.
Burbank, CA 91505
(818) 569-7500

http://disney.go.com/disneychannel/

http://disney.go.com/guestservices/contact

or you can tweet them at @DisneyChannelPR (most of the stars have Twitter accounts too, some of which I have included as links from their names in this post).

In today’s episode of Friday, I was trying to read AND watch TV, which was not going very well. I used to be able to do both, but my attention span is getting shorter, although I don’t know how much of that is T and how much of that is Old. I was about to choose reading over watching (my usual choice), except that I noticed that Sixteen Candles was on.

Well.

I love the movies that came out when I was in high school, from Red Dawn and The Outsiders to Pretty in Pink and Say Anything.  I would go see them with friends – usually at the Mann theater next to the Safeway, but sometimes one of the several other theaters in Boulder – and since then, I have seen most of them many, many times.

I especially loved (and love) the Molly Ringwald movies. The girls she played were the kind of girl I would have wanted to be, if I had wanted to be a girl…except that I didn’t. I *was* a girl, and I hated it. At the same time, though, I didn’t want to be weird, high-strung artist (Demi Moore in St. Elmo’s Fire), or a weird, high-strung high school student (Ally Sheedy in Breakfast Club). I didn’t want to be a sweet, beautiful Soc, either (Diane Lane in The Outsiders), although that was probably the least likely possible incarnation.

What I wanted was to be Lloyd Dobler or Duckie, except that I wanted to be a little bit more of a princess, and I wanted to get the boy at the end. There is a common misperception about me that I always wanted to get the girl (and sometimes I did, which helped fuel that), but in fact, I almost always wanted the boy. This may come as a startlement to some of you, but others of you (including, perhaps, boys I dated in high school, or boys I’ve longed for since) will not find this quite so surprising.

Anyway.  More on that later, I guess.

She was often so lonely in those movies – surrounded by friends, much of the time, or talking about friends, but still oddly withdrawn and solitary.  There are whole stretches of Sixteen Candles that I don’t bother watching, because I think they’re inane, but I return all the time to the parts where Sam is trying to figure out a) how to be who she knows she is, and b) how to function in her family, and c) how to get Jake Ryan to like her.

And when I was watching this today, that scene where she comes out of the church and everyone has, again, managed to forget about her, and the cars part, and Jake is leaning over there across the street on his Porsche… Sigh.  For me, it’s not so much that he’s dreamy, or that he’s popular and cool and a senior, as it is that he’s just waiting.

Molly Ringwald always seemed so sad, and like she was always just trying to find her way.  She moves through the wackiness, but she’s usually separate from it. Anyway, in high school, I think a lot of us were sad and a little lost, and being trans in high school was hard.  For a girl who was supposed to be a boy AND kind of a princess, and who fell in love with boys… Well, you can guess.  I never meant to be a lesbian, because I never meant to be a woman, but also because I always yearned toward men.

Again: more on that later.

When I watched Sixteen Candles today, once I’d managed to get through the vague racism and the underlying menace of the creepy stalker boy Ted, I remembered (again) how much of an impact Molly Ringwald had on me back then, and still has.  I’m not articulating it very well, alas, but I think you get the point.  Hell, she even kept me watching Secret Life of an American Teenager well into the second season, by which time it had established itself as the most ludicrous show in the history of ever.

Later I’ll explain better about the boys, and about the problems (the glorious, sweet, sad problems) I had with Disney movies (Beast! <swoon>), but for now… Thanks, Molly Ringwald, for Sam Baker and the rest of those brave, sad, hopeful girls. Seeing you onscreen made things better for a teenage not-girl, a trans kid who, one day, would grow up to be a queer gay man. And, perhaps, a bit of a princess.

Today, though, I am feeling all restored in my affection for trashy tunic/toga/kilt/loincloth movies. Today I found, via my Twitter feed, the trailer for Taylor Kitsch’s forthcoming (okay, in March) film, John Carter of Mars. I think zomg pretty much sums up my feelings about this.

This movie looks AWFUL, in all the best possible ways. I can’t freakin’ wait.

This time, we are being blessed with IMMORTALS, which I want to love…but never will.

It looks flashy and pretty and exciting, and also there are Henry Cavill’s non-CGI abs to consider, but why did they write this movie? I understand wanting to make more shiny movies based on Greek mythology, in the vein of 300 and Clash of the Titans. I like those movies, and would happily go see this if it were the same ilk.

Alas, it is not. And it’s all because they have elected to name their main character Theseus, without actually making him the Theseus of legend. THIS Theseus is all about arguing with the gods, and appears to be a really hot blend of Job (not a Greek myth) and Prometheus (totally Greek).  It’s hard to tell, because the trailers are so chaotic, but as far as I can gather there is almost no overlap with the Theseus of actual Greek mythology.

Why would they do this? Why not just give him some random Greek hero -ish name (Coriander, for example, or Ajax) and let the film stand on its own?

I am impossibly cross about this, and I bet the gods of yore are not thrilled either.

Here’s all the Big Pertinent Info:

The Book of Broken Hymns is my MFA thesis collection, and I am printing it in a limited edition short run.

It will cost $10 plus shipping (it’s small enough to fit in a Priority Mail envelope, which is not quite $5 in shipping, or I can ship it media mail for less).

You can pay with PayPal or with good old fashioned Checks.  Email me (or message me on Twitter @ponyonabalcony or Facebook) for the right address.

The Book of Broken Hymns will be available starting May 6th (perhaps a little earlier) and will stay available as long as I still have copies (probably not very long).

If you have other questions, email me or Twitter me or FB me. I look forward to adding you to the list.

(this is mostly crossposted from ponyonabalcony)

So:

http://www.nbc.com/contact/general/

has a drop-down menu that is available to send messages about 30 Rock AND Saturday Night Live.

GLAAD’s site is www.glaad.org.

Additionally, when I went to the 30 Rock site to look for contact information, I discovered a slideshow of “transvestite tips” from the Jemma character’s boyfriend.  Thanks, 30 Rock. Keep it classy.