News, culture and comment with a queer edge
Alejandra González was the first openly-trans* candidate ever elected to public office in Chile, becoming a councillor in her home district of Lampa. A big step forward.
Sadly, the Mayor, Graciela Ortúzar, didn’t see it that way, and in a blatantly transphobic way insisted on using Alejandra’s former name and male pronouns and questioning her gender identity in council meetings. Continue reading “Chile:- Supreme Court Says No To Anti-LGBTQI Discrimination”
In a rather stylish video voiced by Laverne Cox, the ACLU and TIME have teamed up to present an animated history of the ongoing fight for transgender rights in the USA. It’s released at a time when President Trump has announced his ban on transgender people serving in the military and trans rights are facing new threats from state legislatures. Continue reading “Laverne Cox voices the story of the fight for transgender rights”
Be careful what you wish for when you demand equal treatment, certainly when it comes to reality television. US cable viewers are about to get two new series focusing on gay men in lurve and trans models looking glam, both of which live up/down to the quality of their more mainstream ancestors, and which have their fair share of queens and divas behaving badly, as befits the genre.
Oxygen is soon to premiere Strut, a fly-on-the-wall series about Slay Model Management, the first exclusively transgender modelling agency. Happily it appears less bowel-clenchingly earnest than I Am Cait (phew), but still looks to leave no cliche un-revisited even if some viewers will find it…er…educational. As with RuPaul’s Drag Race, the entertainment value partly consists of waiting for someone to fall off their stilettos and lose it. But it’s produced by Whoopi Goldberg and features the highly-articulate trans model and activist Laith Ashley, so may turn out to be less of a further round of transploitation than one might fear.
On Logo, a tried and tested format gets a gay twist with the arrival of Finding Prince Charming, which has everything thrown at it, including Lance Bass as host (who can give you dating tips if you need them). IMHO, this looks about as far from the reality of gay dating as you could possibly imagine, and underneath its greeting card commercial facade looks suspiciously like 80s softcore porn. Nonetheless, the team say serious issues affecting the lives of today’s gay men will be touched on throughout the series.
Some of the soft-focus gloss has been wiped away by seriously NSFW reports that the bachelor looking for love, Robert Sepulveda Jr, is a former rent boy, allegations which he hasn’t denied. Although that frisson of excitement may increase audience figures, it’s unlikely that we’ll see all his equipment in action. Oh, and one contestant will reveal they are HIV positive. Have a box of tissues handy.
Kudos goes to the breezy MTV pro-feminist YouTube channel Braless for commissioning this (which is a good watch), though cynics might argue that the target audience this really needs to reach won’t be watching this and other Laci Green hosted videos anytime soon. MTV Braless was rightly lauded at the 2015 Webby Awards, but unless something amazing happens and this goes viral, cat videos probably still rule.