Why is Vegeboop so unique?

Janaina Medeiros

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@alltingfinns
Why is Vegeboop so unique?
have I heard recent fandom stuff? interesting question. the answer is I did my fucking time and now I universally unilaterally refuse to learn anything ever again. thank you
Unless!! it’s VERY funny
My memory of The Birdcage (1996) is always that it's more dated and more difficult to watch than it actually is. You hear "drag-themed comedy from the 90s based on a musical from the 80s based on a play from the 70s" and you brace yourself just a little, right? But the film has a strong gay perspective, so the fruity fag jokes mostly come off as warmly affectionate. There is a surprising amount of poignancy in Robin Williams' portrayal of Armand, grudgingly agreeing to his beloved son's request that he go back into the closet for an evening ("do me a favor and don't talk to me for a while"). The drag club's staff attempting to redecorate the apartment with stuff straight people might like (a taxidermy moose head, an enormous crucifix, and Playboy magazine) is extremely funny. Albert's histrionics are a point of tension because he does often come off as a stereotypically pathetic/comic figure, but towards the end of the movie he makes it very clear that he's aware of how people see him, and asserts that trying to copy a stoic masculinity he doesn't possess for the sake of social approval would be more pathetic. In the 1983 musical adaptation, they give "Albert" (Albin) the only good song in the whole show, "I Am What I Am", which Gloria Gaynor covered to the delight of gays everywhere. Apparently Nathan Lane wasn't (publicly) out yet in 1996, which is amazing because it means that at one point in this movie you're watching a gay man playing a straight man playing a gay man playing a straight man, in a movie about how it's important to be yourself, an absurdity that does seem to encapsulate the state of gay America in the 90s.
I'm seeing a couple of posts circulating about the gay 90s and this movie. The above is a very good summary, and I think it's worth adding a few other points.
This movie got made because Robin Williams said yes to it (and it's important that Gene Hackman did as well). Williams in the 90s was a mega-star of a type that's not present in the current media environment (maybe Tom Cruise, but I personally think that's echo from his salad days). Even his flops made money on the back end in the video rental market, which also doesn't exist anymore (streaming is different). Hackman was on the other side of his A-list career but still Hollywood nobility if not full royalty.
Playing gay was considered career suicide in the 90s. There had been a number of actors who put lie to that belief stretching back decades, but this was Williams and Hackman (yes, being on screen next to a gay character was enough to get you blacklisted) saying "screw that" and doing it anyway.
Being gay and out was career suicide in the 90s.
Nathan Lane had a really nice gig going for himself. The Lion King put him into the Disney rep company with people like Williams, Bette Midler, and Whoopie Goldberg (check their IMBD list from the 90s--they were making bank at Disney).
Lane didn't come out until several years later (nice summary: https://deadline.com/2024/06/nathan-lane-robin-williams-advice-coming-out-birdcage-1235975010/).
I don't want to imply that this was a Sorkinized moment where everything changed because of one thing, but this was a very important movie that caused real movement in the needle on queer acceptance.
It also proved that there was a market for films with gay characters, which had the knock-on effect of gay filmmakers being able to find distributors of their gay-themed films. Which meant that more people than ever (queer and non-queer) got to see representation on-screen.
Am I a crazy person or is it a normal nonbinary experience to see people making guesses about historical trans people, see only binary ideas, and then get sad? And then get angry at myself for being sad because why am I not happy there’s more trans people than I thought. Is it because I feel so alone??
Oh absolutely. Its always "they were either a trans man/trans woman or a binary cis man/cis woman!" and even when nonbinary language is thrown around, I feel its often with a vibe of like... "well maybe they were a cis person who was kind of funky about it!" as opposed to genuinely trying to connect modern experiences covered under the "nonbinary" label to the experiences of people from the past. & then you have people who want to claim that any example of third-gender people in various cultures throughout history are just binary trans people who were forced to identify that way.
Because nonbinary erasure means people today aren't interested in discussing, or do not know/think much about, nonbinary experiences beyond the surface level understanding of "not a man or a woman" (which is NOT a complete definition in the first place, but acknowledging the validity of androgyne's wo/manhood is Too Scary!)
You do not need to be angry at yourself for being sad. You deserve to see yourself in history. It IS frustrating and upsetting that nonbinary history is so extremely erased, even in trans spaces. You are right to feel how you feel and you are not alone in those feelings.
from @glados125:
Ok so as a genderqueer person, I hate this sentiment. Modern identities did not exist in the past and are NOT a basic, natural part of human experience and history. I really think that identity politics and the focus on the essence/identity has been harmful to the discourse. People in the past weren't nonbinary because that identity didn't exist, just like there weren't homosexuals. Actions are separate from identities, and people certainly have been having same-sex relationships and have been breaking gender norms. We might say that these behaviors are evidence for the existence of the will to live outside the binary norms of society, but we cannot say that these people are gay/bi/trans or whatever. In the same way, we shouldn't try to claim that third gender categories and such are binary trans people, since those didn't exist in the context of that society.
To be clear: I am not saying anything remotely to the effect of "people in history were actually, specifically, nonbinary, because nonbinary is an objective Thing that people can be separate from our modern Western sociocultural context." At the same time, I think its unhelpful to act as though, because we cannot act like our socially constructed identities are objective, it means we aren't allowed to ever use our words to relate to people throughout history.
I think @rq1nzorr said it best in this reply:
the historically common "i dont really have a sense of gender" that genderqueer-esque folks have said over the years is neither necessarily a feminist nOR binary trans statement on its own and i dont think we think about that enough at all. focusing more on the queer side of things im afraid we need to understand queerness as the social phenomenon it is and start discussing our history as "this is very similar or relatable to the [x type of contemporary queer] experience" rather than "this guy secretly was literally Biologically [x type of contemporary queer] in the year 1500" to even begin contending with historical enby genders
There are people throughout history who had experiences that were/are similar to experiences people who identify as nonbinary have today. That doesn't mean they Were Nonbinary (tm) (cr), because to get real abstract about it, no one Is Nonbinary (tm) (cr). People have experiences and some people use the concept of "nonbinary" to make sense of their experiences and connect to others with generally similar experiences.
Cisgender, binary women and men get to freely relate to any random person throughout history they want on a gender level. There is no "well the experience of being a woman/man in this culture was radically different from your own, so you should be really careful about claiming them for women's/men's history since that concept is heavily defined by modern Western constructs of gender!" despite the fact that the Victorian era, the Cult of True Womanhood, the Industrial Revolution, the construction of race and white supremacy, etc. radically changed how "womanhood" was conceived and what being a woman meant. Hell, even leaving gender: there are a million books for kids that talk about history and encourage them to relate to children and adolescents in different time periods throughout history. No one is concerned about the fact that "childhood" is also heavily constructed and what it means to be a "child," and even more a "teenager," has changed radically over time and place.
This is getting more outside of the realm of gender, but like. Did y'all know that no one during the period we call "the Enlightenment" used that term? It was the Victorians who retroactively delineated the eras of "the Dark Ages" and "the Enlightenment," turning a general intellectual movement that happened across Europe (& was also greatly influenced by interactions with the political & social philosophy of Indigenous Americans) into a Thing that did not exist during the era we are actually talking about when we talk about the Enlightenment.
Yet, I do still think there is some use in talking about "the [European] Enlightenment" as a Thing. It's helpful for us to be able to look back at history and make connections that were not obvious or could not have been made by people living at that time. I just think we need to be self-aware and responsible that we aren't "discovering" something objective, we are making a subjective choice to engage with and interpret objective information in a certain way for certain purposes.
I have the same approach to queer / trans history. Was the Public Universal Friend nonbinary? Well, on one level, no: not only did they not even have the term, their gender also cannot be understood outside of the very specific context of being born into a 18th century Quaker family in colonial America, and it cannot be divorced from how profoundly religiously rooted their rejection of gender was, how it was born from what was likely a near-death experience. We cannot know what was going on in their mind at all when it comes to what they "really" thought about their gender and their soul. Hell, technically, should I even be using "they/them" to refer to PUF? Historically, his followers used he/him to refer to him, since masculine pronouns were also used as gender-neutral pronouns when needed.
But on the other hand: we are actively making up what "nonbinary," means, and we are constructing nonbinary history, and there are good reasons to consider PUF as part of that history instead of starting it only when "nonbinary" started being used in the modern gender identity sense. They rejected binary gender identity, dressed androgynously to reflect this, changed their name, and rejected their old identity as a mortal woman. They understood this shift in gender through explicitly religious terms, yes, but many nonbinary people today also view their gender through explicitly religious/spiritual terms. "Nonbinary" is already an umbrella term that covers a range of experiences, and is meant to be used both as a term for individual identification and to describe a community of shared experiences and issues who are affected by things like exorsexism (and PUF was certainly affected by exorsexism, given how their rejection of binary gender made people at the time very uncomfortable). It is not that PUF Was Nonbinary in a strong, definitive sense, but rather that it is useful and meaningful for us in this present moment to see PUF as part of a lineage of experiences that people today express through the construction of "nonbinary."
Nonbinary people were only able to organize and define ourselves on the level we currently do recently. I don't think it helps anyone to try to retroactively assert that nonbinary identity is some timeless socially-unbound objective trait that has always existed. But what has always existed is people who, for a variety of reasons, do not see themselves as solely and entirely a woman or solely and entirely a man, who experience feeling outside of or beyond that strict divide, who were sometimes culturally supported in that and sometimes culturally suppressed. There are times where I think it makes sense and is even helpful to consider certain people as part of "nonbinary history" and refer to them casually as "nonbinary," & I think we can even do that without deluding ourselves into thinking that's an objective statement and not an active subjective choice on our part.
After all, it is true that people throughout history did not have the concept of "homosexual" or "gay" as an identity in the way people do right now (again, particularly in the West). But people have been having what we would consider "gay sex" for ever, and people have been expressing what we would consider "transness" for ever, and there are real benefits to pointing out that history and CHOOSING to connect those historical experiences to our modern experiences.
And there are times / cases where I think that wouldn't be helpful, and many cases were various different interpretations can be helpful, and we don't have to choose just one to be The Truth! There are areas of life where we simply cannot avoid that we are just making shit up, and I am a strong believer that we should navigate social construction by making shit up consciously, self-reflectively, and with a sense of responsibility. I think we can create a sense of harmony and unity between "people throughout history have had radically different perspectives and experiences than us, and we cannot just project our current thoughts and social constructs back onto them and assume its accurate" AND "people have, in many ways, not fundamentally changed over the history of the human race, and it is good to feel connected to the past and realize that history is full of experience we can relate to and even learn from."
When someone tries to tell me Sherlock Holmes isn’t gay so I pull up this picture.
Happy pride month to Johnlock and this illustration.
Good morning
This whole series is so goddamn funny
I've been writing a lot about love vs tragedy for Lit class recently, and itstruck me just now just how beautifully constructed Arthur and Merlin's relationship is through that lens.
I'm sorry but I can't stop thinking about the fact that Merlin and Arthur's story is, by definition a tragedy. It conforms to every archetype: the tragic hero, fatal flaws, hamartia. Even structurally, it has key elements of tragedy in its most ancient sense: fast paced dialogue (stichomythia), unresolved debates (agôns) and a bittersweet reveal of key plot points (agnoresis). But despite all of this, there is one key thing that differentiates this narrative from the Aristotelian shackles of classical principle. Because even after the world has crumbled to dust and life has moved on, perhaps even without him, Merlin is still there.
In the midst of impossibly, and beyond the face of adversity, there is still a kindle of hope.
It is often said that any love story is doomed to become a tragedy, and broadly speaking, that is true. It is a fact of life that everything ends, one way or another. It's something we all have to acknowledge, if only because of we didn't, we would never see any point in being alive in the first place. Yet Merlin and Arthur are in a unique position in which they are not privy to the whims of time in the same way others are. Their relationship knows not the pressure of a clock ticking away every second for the presice reason everybody else's is: they are waiting for an end. But while others dread the day one of them will have to leave, Merlin is waiting for Arthur to come back.
And narratively speaking, this is so beautifully reflective of everything their relationship has encompassed across everything that has led up to this point: in the early days, it was about Arthur waiting for someone who could see him for who he could be, not just who he was; it was about Merlin searching for somehwere- or someone- he finally felt he could belong. After that, it was Arthur slowly suffocating under the impending weight of his destiny and Merlin's helplessness as he waited for the right time to tell his friend that it was the same for him too. And in their final hours, it was the agonising realisation of a shared identity that had been so fractured by society that neither had dared to look too closely for it's brilliance. About the painful acknowledgement of something that never could have been but, against all the odds, has existed nonetheless. All that potential, hopelessly acknowledged, always waiting for a moment that would never come on time.
And that, I think, is why Merlin keeps hope until the end. Because their relationship has always moved in retrograde- they knew the nuances of each other's character before they taught themselves the secrets of their own hearts. Because no matter how final death can be, they are yet to have their beginning. And even when it seems like the ancients have sung their final song, the echoes still preserve as long as there is even a chance of tomorrow.
It's not a tragedy, because it was never written to be. Fate is the guiding light of the narrative and it ultimately determines the lives of the characters regardless of what they do. Yet while fate can be brutal, tragedies often forget about the times when it can be kind. Nothing is forever, including cruel purgatory of stasis Merlin endures over all those years. Because fate is kind, and kindness leads to Love. It's never been a ghost story- it's a love story.
Watched the movies for the first time ever last week, I'm obsessed
Would I still be transgender if society or gender roles were different? I don't know; maybe not. I tend to believe that nothing about an individual's personality exists independently of their social context. But the question is also completely irrelevant to me, because society and gender roles are *not* different; I'm not living someone else's life, I'm living my own. And that, in fact, is the entire point of being transgender.
do you remember Angel Maxine, the artist behind this song?
Angel opened a gofundme about a month ago, so if possible please consider donating to help fund her future projects :)
I’m Angel Maxine, a trans woman, artist, musician, and activist using my voice, music, and vis… Maxine Angel Opoku needs your support for P
if you aren't able to donate, please share! as of writing this, Angel has only raised €433 out of her €7k goal
Level 1: The author's unintended implication.
Level 2: The author's unexamined assumption.
Level 3: The author's ill-informed opinion.
Level 4: The author's misleading conclusion.
Level 5: The author's mendacious justification.
Level 6: The author's We Don't Talk About That.