{"id":20513,"date":"2013-06-02T00:01:56","date_gmt":"2013-06-02T05:01:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=20513"},"modified":"2013-05-31T12:17:07","modified_gmt":"2013-05-31T17:17:07","slug":"qotd-reign-of-the-gay-magical-elves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/06\/02\/qotd-reign-of-the-gay-magical-elves\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Reign of the Gay Magical Elves"},"content":{"rendered":"

Was I the only gay man of a certain demo who experienced a flicker of annoyance in the way the media treated Jason Collins as some kind of baby panda who needed to be honored and praised and consoled and \u2014 yes \u2014 infantilized by his coming out on the cover of Sports Illustrated<\/em>? Within the tyrannical homophobia of the sports world, that any man would come out as gay (let alone a black man) is not only an LGBT triumph but also a triumph for pranksters everywhere who thrilled to the idea that what should be considered just another neutral fact that is nobody\u2019s business was instead a shock heard around the world, one that added another jolt of transparency to an increasingly transparent planet. It was an undeniable moment and also extremely cool. Jason Collins is the future. But the subsequent fawning over Collins simply stating he is gay still seemed to me, as another gay man, like a new kind of victimization. (George Stephanopoulos interviewed him so tenderly, it was as if he was talking to a six-year-old boy.) In another five years hopefully this won\u2019t matter, but for now we\u2019re trapped in the times we live in. The reign of The Gay Man as Magical Elf, who whenever he comes out appears before us as some kind of saintly E.T. whose sole purpose is to be put in the position of reminding us only<\/em> about Tolerance and Our Own Prejudices and To Feel Good About Ourselves and to be a symbol instead of just being a gay dude<\/em>, is \u2014 lamentably \u2014 still in media play. <\/p>\n

The Gay Man as Magical Elf has been such a tricky part of gay self-patronization in the media that you would by now expect the chill members of the LGBT community to respond with cool indifference. The Sweet and Sexually Unthreatening and Super-Successful Gay is supposed to be destined to transform The Hets into noble gay-loving protectors \u2014 as long as the gay in question isn\u2019t messy or sexual or difficult. The straight and gay sanctimoniousness that says everyone gay needs to be canonized when coming out still makes some of us who are already out feel like we\u2019re on the sidelines. I\u2019m all for coming out on one\u2019s own terms, but heralding it as the most important news story of the week feels to me, as a gay man, well, kind of alienating. We are apart because of what we supposedly represent because of \u2026 our \u2026 boring \u2026 sexuality \u2014 oh man, do we have to go through this again<\/em>? And it\u2019s all about the upbeat press release, the kind of smiling mask assuring us everything is awesome. God help the gay man who comes out and doesn\u2019t want to represent, who doesn\u2019t want to teach, who doesn\u2019t feel like part of the homogenized gay culture and rejects it. Where\u2019s the gay dude who makes crude jokes about other gays in the media (as straight dudes do of each other constantly) or express their hopelessness in seeing Modern Family<\/em> being rewarded for its depiction of gays, a show where a heterosexual plays the most simpering ka-ween on TV and Wins. Emmys. For. It? Why isn\u2019t the gay dude I have always known and the gay dude I have always wanted to be not front and center in the media culture now? But being \u201creal\u201d and \u201chuman\u201d (i.e. flawed) is not necessarily what The Gay Gatekeepers want straight culture to see. <\/p>\n

Bret Easton Ellis, “In the Reign of the Gay Magical Elves”, Out Magazine<\/em><\/a>, 2013-05-13<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Was I the only gay man of a certain demo who experienced a flicker of annoyance in the way the media treated Jason Collins as some kind of baby panda who needed to be honored and praised and consoled and \u2014 yes \u2014 infantilized by his coming out on the cover of Sports Illustrated? Within […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,41],"tags":[196,477,122,101],"class_list":["post-20513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-quotations","tag-lgbt","tag-magazines","tag-movies","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5kR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20513"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20517,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20513\/revisions\/20517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}