The Reading List for Feb 24, 2014

– Tonight is the premiere of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 6, and Ms Ru and her friends are all over the internet today.

First there is an interview with The Advocate, where Ru makes an interesting point, that “we live in a masculine-obsessed culture. Straight people are obsessed with masculinity; gay people are obsessed with masculinity — that’s our culture.”

Judge Michelle Visage was interviewed by BuzzFeed and asked to list her favourite moments from the past seasons. I have to say I agree with this one:

And to top it all off, there is already some fan art out there on the interwebs, thanks to Chad Sell.

– In more good news, Jason Collins, the first out player in the NBA, played his first game yesterday. Check out Jeremy Feist’s blog post about it and BuzzFeed’s list of every historic moment that happened during the game.

– In less than pleasing news, actor Alec Baldwin recently posted an open letter explaining that he is leaving public life and saying that he partially blames Rachel Maddow for his show on MSNBC being cancelled. The opening pargraph reads:

I flew to Hawaii recently to shoot a film, fresh on the heels of being labeled a homophobic bigot by Andrew Sullivan, Anderson Cooper, and others in the Gay Department of Justice. I wanted to speak with a gay-rights group that I had researched and admired, so I called its local Honolulu branch.

Okay, that’s good. But then he writes this doozy:

One young man, an F-to-M tranny, said, “Are you here to get dry-cleaned, like Brett Ratner?” Meaning I could do some mea culpa, write them a six-figure check, go to a dinner, sob at the table, give a heartfelt speech, beg for forgiveness. I thought to myself: Beg for forgiveness for something I didn’t do?

I said, “No. I don’t want to get dry-cleaned. I don’t want to be decontaminated by you, Karen Silkwood–wise, scrubbed down. I want to learn about what is hurtful speech in your community. I want to participate in some programs about that. Or underwrite one. And then, like you, I just want to be left alone.”

You want to understand what is hurtful speech and then you write the word tranny in an open letter? Okay then.

 

– Seems like lots of people are putting their feet in their mouths this weekend. Actor Adam Baldwin (no relation to Alec) compares gay marriage to incest.

Journalist, writer, blogger, producer.

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