“You need capital investment and sustained ad revenue” that target “more affluent readers” – which usually means that publications end up catering to mostly white gay male readers. But too often the most visible image in LGBT media is that gay equals rich and white.Īndrés Duque, a Latino LGBT rights advocate and blogger, concurred. Sometimes that sale funds other kinds of important coverage – such as the work of two gay journalists for the Advocate and Out magazine who also stayed at the Parliament House last week. In a nutshell: selling those covers often means selling whiteness. Covers, he said, are “primarily designed to sell magazines”. He defended his magazine, saying “there are people of color, there are trans people, in every issue of Out, and I do not think these are simply crumbs but often substantive articles.” (Disclosure: I wrote for them in the past.)īut while he added it is “absolutely right that this painful moment for our community makes our obligation to be as inclusive as possible starker than ever”, he’s “never believed a cover is representative of what’s inside”. He told me he watched #GayMediaSoWhite unfold but kept his distance “because I understood that it was not a time that someone wanted to hear from a white guy”. I asked Aaron Hicklin, the editor-in-chief of Out magazine, about this disparity. And in April, the hashtag #GayMediaSoWhite began trending on Twitter.įusion interviewed the mixed-race performer Mykki Blanco shortly after, who wondered if “Gay Media” in 2016 are at all embarrassed when you go to their websites/content and it’s only shirtless white guys?” The largest LGBT rights organization in the US, the Human Rights Campaign, has been called a “white men’s club” by its own internal report. Roland Emmerich, the gay film director who made the widely panned film Stonewall, was accused of whitewashing the roles of Puerto Ricans and transgender women of color in the riots. But even LGBT film-makers, organizations and publications reinforce the idea that gayness equals whiteness But even LGBT film-makers, organizations and publications reinforce the idea that gayness equals whiteness gay people in power often choose to make their front men be white men. A lot of them are not affluent, nor white.
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And earlier this week, Stonewall Democrats invited singer Nick Jonas to address a vigil at the Stonewall Inn – as if a straight, white singer plugging an album was an appropriate choice to speak out an attack on queer Latino community.Ĭontrary to what the TV show Will and Grace might have shown, most LGBT Americans are working class or poor and at least half are women. On Tuesday, Pete Sessions, a member of the house of representatives from Texas, reportedly said Pulse was “a young person’s nightclub” with “some there, but it was mostly Latinos” – as if Latino LGBT people don’t exist. The list goes on.Īnd yet, Latino organizations had to hold a press conference to get the media to acknowledge that the shooting happened not just inside of a LGBT club, but on a Latin Night too.Ī lot mutual support & shoulder leaning going on /z28KiKZvLl- Steven Thrasher June 13, 2016 Or you can simply read their names out loud: Leroy Valentin Fernandez. S imply scroll through the images of the faces of the Pulse shooting’s victims, and you’re going to see a lot of tan, black and brown skin. I put my arm around him and held him through the rest of the song. It was one of the most beautiful, most gay, and most black things I had ever seen.Īnd as I watched her give the performance of her life – a performance birthed shortly after she faced death just days ago, as so many of her loved ones were gone – a beautiful brown young man sat down next to me, took my hand in his, kissed me on the cheek, and laid his head down on my shoulder. The performance, despite the flashing lights and pounding music, had a stillness to it. And with a blackness that could have been divined from RuPaul, Bessie Smith, Nina Simone, or Audre Lorde, she gave face, and spun and dipped to the song Survivor.
Sanchez had survived the horrors of the Pulse just a few nights before. The Hip-Hop night’s drag show began well after 1am, and drag queen Angelica Sanchez took the stage around 2am. While some reporters turned up at Parliament House midday, the place only really came alive late at night.
Staff who had have lost multiple friends during the attack were bussing tables at The Parliament House the next day Staff who lost multiple friends during the attack were bussing tables the next day because, like many of those who died, they have service jobs. The Parliament House community is used to being left alone, but the community is large, and working class.
Parliament House hip hop drag night welcome staff from Pulse to the stage /mlyE3ToSek- Steven Thrasher June 15, 2016