By Arturo R. García

The only surprise was how long it took CNN to suspend contributor Roland S. Martin after the uproar he instigated during the Super Bowl this past Sunday. What’s not surprising is who hasn’t gotten the same punishment for similar offenses.

Which is not to excuse Martin for any of the poorly thought-out joke he threw out on Twitter during the game about this (NSFWish) underwear ad.

Martin would later defend the joke against charges of homophobia by saying he and CNN colleague Piers Morgan joke with each other about soccer, which might have been easier for him to do had it not been preceded by this tweet:

The backlash began almost immediately, and Martin did himself no favors later by telling author Kola Boof “reading is fundamental,” or responding to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance against Defamation by calling them “out of touch and clueless.”

This must also be noted: some of those who accused Martin of homophobia did so while calling him “an ape” or tossing the vilest of slurs at him:

It happened again Wednesday night after a college basketball game. And it was encouraging to read that GLAAD condemned those attacks while agreeing to meet with Martin in the near future.

Hopefully, such a meeting will also help Martin recognize that, even if he was joking, these were horrible jokes. Saying “Americans are into football, not soccer” is about as insightful as 1980s sports-talk radio. It’s one thing to argue that soccer will never be as big as the NFL or Major League Baseball; it’s another when your first defense is saying you sort-of meant soccer fans should be “smacked.”

And talking about “real bruhs” when you’re also making jokes about people to “smack the ish out” of somebody over a pair of underwear and ”about men being “defective” if they don’t like sports and hashtagging cracks about a guy in a pink suit “teamwhipthatass” paints a picture of a disturbing brand of humor. Especially when the guy making the jokes has compared homosexuality to alcoholism. “Just joking” doesn’t represent a just cause – Martin can ask Tracy Morgan about that.

In short, it’s not too much to hope that Martin makes some updates to “Roland’s Rules” soon. But it’s also not too much to ask that CNN show some consistency in enforcing its own.

A call to CNN Wednesday seeking content was not returned. Until then, it’s unclear why the network would suspend him and issue a somber press release mentioning “values and culture” while dismissing fellow contributor Dana Loesch’s telling a radio audience she would “drop trou” and urinate on enemy combatants less than a month ago. When Loesch’s remarks became public, all the network saw fit to tell Mediaite was, “CNN contributors are commentators who express a wide range of viewpoints — on and off of CNN — that often provoke strong agreement or disagreement. Their viewpoints are their own.”

Or maybe the difference is clear; Think Progress’ Alyssa Rosenberg rightly points out that Martin’s remarks were caught by an organized group with a history of tracking and responding to such instances. But the result of such selective policing is ultimately detrimental to CNN:

Taken together, the way CNN handled Martin’s and Loesch’s comments makes it look like CNN has no consistent internal values, and no internal standard for how to respond when it commenters express sentiments that are an anathema to those values. I’m glad to know, per CNN’s statement, that “Language that demeans is inconsistent with the values and culture of our organization, and is not tolerated.” But why should it take several days of consideration for CNN to arrive at that conclusion? If the network’s truly committed to the proposition that violence against gay people is no joking matter, that’s something it should know in advance, and CNN should have a personnel policy in place to determine what the appropriate penalty is when someone violates their standards.

Without an explanation of such a policy, it also becomes harder to reconcile CNN’s relatively quick action against Martin with not only Loesch’s comments, but the wide berth given to Lou Dobbs’ “birther” notions and anti-immigrant rhetoric before he finally resigned in 2009. Even then, network president Jonathan Klein practically sent him off with a serenade, saying a man who referred to critics as “limp-minded, lily-livered lefty lemmings” was carrying “the banner of advocacy journalism.”

Martin has publicly apologized and stated his willingness to talk to members of the community he offended. Hopefully that dialogue will lead to something truly constructive. In the meantime, maybe it’s now time for CNN to better explain why it hasn’t been as vigilant when it comes to some of his co-workers.

By Arturo R. García

The fight for marriage equality isn’t over yet. But Tuesday brought with it a huge win for opponents of California’s Proposition 8, as a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the law was unconstitutional, possibly sending the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Prop 8, which had banned same-sex marriages, was approved by California voters in 2008, overturning a California State Supreme Court ruling. In 2010, U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker ruled it was unconstitutional, a decision the panel upheld in a 2-1 vote. The panel also ruled Walker, now retired from the bench, did not have to vacate his decision for not revealing his own same-sex relationship at the time of his ruling. Walker’s decision to keep his ruling under a court seal was also upheld.

Despite the panel’s ruling, however, LGBT couples still cannot get married; the law will remain in place during a two-week period the law’s supporters have to determine whether they will appeal to a larger 9th Circuit panel, or go directly to the Supreme Court. Some legal experts have suggested the higher court might leave the case alone.

“The court applies general principles that apply across the United States,” CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin wrote. “Because this case only deals with the unique circumstances in California, I think the Supreme Court is less likely to review it. So the good news for same-sex marriage supporters is this decision may mean that a conservative Supreme Court will decide not to take the case.”

In the majority opinion, Judge Stephen Reinhardt said Prop 8 “serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples.” Revoking same-sex marriage rights, he said, yielded no identifiable good, and represented an “impermissible preference” against same-sex couples.

“The People may not employ the initiative power to single out a disfavored group for unequal treatment and strip them, without a legitimate justification, of a right as important as the right to marry,” Reinhardt wrote. The panel’s decision can be read in its entirety in PDF form here.

The panel’s decision touched off celebrations by opponents of the law–including the Stonewall Inn and Manhattan Supreme Court building in New York City, and in San Francisco:

The celebration began at the corner of Seventh and Mission streets in front of the federal courthouse, where the ruling was handed down. Led by a phalanx of ministers singing “We Shall Overcome,” rainbow stoles brightening their black robes, the party proceeded toward City Hall, where the fight for marriage equality began eight years ago, almost to the day.

That’s where then-Mayor Gavin Newsom began marrying same-sex couples in defiance of the law — until he was stopped by the California Supreme Court. That body later moved to dissolve every marriage that took place in the graceful Beaux Arts building here.

On Tuesday, city officials spoke glowingly of the latest ruling beside a heart-shaped sculpture inscribed with the names of the couples who were joined in matrimony one day, only to see their unions negated the next.

“I want to express gratitude to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for its ruling today, which strikes a devastating blow to the legal defense of Proposition 8,” said an emotional Dennis Herrera, who as city attorney has been involved in the fight for marriage equality since 2004.

“Their thorough and well-reasoned decision revealed marriage discrimination for what it is, discrimination,” Herrera said. “And it powerfully affirms the U.S. Constitution’s promise of equal protection under the law.”

By Guest Contributor Anurag Lahiri

During my four months of funemployment after grad school I became hooked on a list of TV shows. A couple of my queer desi friends had been raving about The Chicago Code a while back and when I finally watched it I enjoyed it. So of course when the same friends started tweeting about The Good Wife, and specifically about one character, Kalinda Sharma, I decided to take the hint and marathon it.

The same things drew me to both shows: aside from the suspense and drama, they’re both set in Chicago. As a girl from the Midwest, I enjoy watching a show whose city politics I can relate to.

There is a difference between the two shows though: Chicago Code was mostly special for me because Jennifer Beals was in it and, for an L Word fan, she will always be Bette Porter. Yes, even if she is playing a superintendent of a police department. On the other hand, I will gladly embrace Archie Panjabi as Sharma, a queer, desi, private investigator on The Good Wife.

When there are so few reasonable representations of South Asians in the mainstream media, my first reaction was pure excitement to see Panjabi playing a queer character. I am still extremely impressed that a TV network as mainstream as CBS came up with this character when many more underground producers haven’t been successful, in my opinion. Furthermore, the show hints at the complexity of South Asians with only one desi character/actress, which is more than shows like Outsourced have done even with a whole cast.

On the show, Kalinda’s personality is presented as being multifaceted; she is tough and opinionated. While these attributes are not often paired with Asian women on TV, they are often the reality for women who grow up being underestimated and under-appreciated.

Kalinda’s position–the very opinionated, privately queer, guarded desi girl–resonates very loudly with me:  when I was interning as a social worker in a criminal justice setting, much like her, I tried to stay private while others shared stories about their personal lives. Staff at my internship made heteronormative assumptions about me. The show challenges such assumptions about brown women, and people in general, while offering reasons for why women, regardless of sexual orientation, are often private in the workplace.

While I don’t necessarily believe that Kalinda’s work–digging up dirt for her boss’ law firm, Lockhart/Gardner–was ever underestimated, I would argue she was still under-appreciated. She regularly goes above and beyond to help the firm, yet she struggles to ask for a raise. I know that it takes a lot of thick skin and hard work to prove oneself in that type of environment.

I admire Kalinda for discussing race at work and her immigrant family background, yet refusing to be tokenized. She uses her knowledge and experience to enhance her work and her job, yet she remains in control of her identity. It’s very easy to be turned into a token when you speak up as a minority, so I have looked at Kalinda to see how she does it.

In real life, this balance is very difficult and tiring to maintain. In the U.S. it is especially difficult because South Asian women struggle to find appropriate mentors in the workplace. There are some peer support systems for women in professions like engineering, medicine and law, but it is a struggle if you feel you have no one to turn to for advice and a mentor. Being able to visually relate to a brown woman on TV is helpful for me and, I assume, other desi women who are trying to establish themselves in a workplace.

Aside from her professional character, I am also impressed with the treatment of Kalinda as a personal and sexual character. Kalinda’s sex life is exhibited as much as the other characters and, while the manner of it tip-toes around exoticism at times, it is impressive considering the frequent shaming of brown women’s sexuality on TV. The show speaks to me by creating a South Asian character in the media that does not feel the responsibility to prove her sexuality and womanhood to people. While Kalinda confidently told one interested woman that she “follows through” when she flirts, she pulled away from another as soon as she found out she is married.

I’m still struggling with this unnecessary need to validate my sexuality, since queer desis’ existence has so often been denied and mistreated. Healthy and realistic media representation, like in The Good Wife, can certainly help queer women like me. I now have a character on TV who is reminding me, each episode, to just be. These types of reminders help us come into our smoother, more natural identities. They also remind others that there is more than just tragic queer desis living double lives, and triumphant queer desis marching in Mumbai Pride.

With Kalinda, the show gives the U.S. public a chance to see how an adult desi can be confidently queer whilst handling her imperfections. Her personal vulnerability is not portrayed in a way to make her seem like the “weak Asian girl” archetype, but rather, it is acknowledged as a major part of her complex history. Her vulnerability is always bubbling under her surface, in her extremely rare smiles and tense stature. Her strength is also evident, and it took an extremely dramatic plot twist – which I won’t spoil here – for Kalinda to cry even once. Her mysterious past serves to complicate her character beyond her appearance and challenge the audience. Just like any woman of color, I hope people realize that while Kalinda’s strength is admirable, it may not have been gained out of choice.

From death row to deportation, the show takes on some difficult issues in a way that is accessible. I appreciate watching the characters challenge each other personally and politically, because they each add something meaningful, but I am clearly partial to Kalinda. I’m so accustomed to the media being an exaggeratedly unhealthy version of reality, especially for queer and minority people, so Kalinda makes me really happy. Panjabi has come a long way from playing “standard” desi roles to opening doors for much more.

By Arturo R. García

Over the past month, this video, “It Did Not Start With Stonewall,” has been picking up steam online – we first saw it on Elixher – which is curious, given that it was originally uploaded in 2007. In the clip, a group of black women offers perspectives on life in the LGBT community in New York City in the era surrounding the seminal Stonewall Rebellion of 1969.

But it cuts off just after the three-minute mark, leaving people wondering where it came from – and whether there are more interviews like these out there. Racialicious contacted the person who uploaded the video Wednesday night, so we hope to have an update soon. In the meantime, the transcript to the video is under the cut.

We paid an awful lot of dues so that the younger people of today can feel the freedom to walk along holding hands. It did not start with Stonewall.

They used to have something in Harlem called Funmaker’s Ball, and they would do that every Thanksgiving. And we would go to the Funmaker’s Ball, and that’s really when the cops would be nasty,’cause the gay guys would come and dress up like women, and people would come in and enjoy themselves, and they’d stand outside and get the guys as they came out,
and the women sometimes, and arrest them.

When we were younger, uh, because we did not have any role models, uh, roles were defined, people were into playing roles,
and people dressed and acted out whatever role that they, found, that they were suited for. And it was a law at that time
that you had to wear 3 pieces of female clothing, or else they would uh take you to jail for impersonation.

During this time of Stonewall, I was not living in New York at the time. And, so I missed that. But I had been involved in many raids and harassment by the police in my own community. We had a very viable black lesbian and gay community
in different, not only in Harlem, but in Brooklyn, and in The Bronx, and I can’t say too much for Queens and Staten Island
because they’re a foreign country.

And what happened was, that the bars downtown weren’t making money. And someone discovered that there was a lot of money being spent in Harlem. And in other black communities. And they systematically either burnt them down, closed them down or they started having a lot of problems with police, for different violations and stuff and things like that.
And as bar after bar and club after club closed down, clubs in The Village that years prior did not welcome the citizens of these neighborhoods – Bed-Stuy, and South Bronx, and Jamaica and Harlem – they let you in and took your money, but they still did not treat you any better. Until the current lesbian and gay community acknowledges that there were contributions made by other lesbians and gay men of all colors, to the freedom of lesbians and gays prior to Stonewall, there will always be some…[cuts off]

By Arturo R. García

It’s not hard to imagine that, on some level, actor Amaury Nolasco knew his new show, Work It, would catch flack after his character, Angel, told his friend and fellow job-seeker Lee , “But I’m Puerto Rican. I’ll be great at selling drugs.”

If that was the case – and in the wake of the show’s disastrous premiere, Nolasco isn’t saying – then those instincts were right, and then some. Nolasco’s “drug dealers” joke is only the latest problem series creators Ted Cohen and Andrew Reich have brought upon themselves, and now their actors.

As Latino Rebels’ Jose Martí reported, the show, which follows Angel and Lee (Ben Koldyke) as they seek employment by dressing as women, has inspired a protest in Chicago by the Puerto Rican Alliance for Awareness, founded in part by actress Darlene Vazquetelles, who posted:

Right now I am in Chicago filming a movie. The director of the movie is also Puerto Rican and after discussing what happened [this week on ABC] we decided to do something about it.

This weekend we have off from filming so we have decided to do a mini-documentary in protest of what happened. The way we are doing it is by putting every Puerto Rican we know and come across here in Chicago in front of the camera stating their names, occupation and stating that they do not sell drugs.

This will be airing on You Tube. We already have the support of the Puerto Rican Parade Committee of Chicago. We are also receiving videos from all over the USA and Puerto Rico through email which will be included in the video.

Vazquetelles also reached out directly to Nolasco on Twitter:

In her tweet, Vazquetelles asks Nolasco to contact her – if he can – to take part in the PRAA’s project, calling it “sweet and positive.” And the truth is, such a move would be the first positive thing associated with Work It. Before the show even aired, its’ premise – an updated take on Bosom Buddies, with Nolasco’s character, Angel, and another man dressing as women – had set off warning flags for both the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and the Human Rights Coalition, who collaborated on a full-page ad in Variety asking ABC to not air the show:

At the very least, “Work It” is offensive and insulting. At worst, the show is downright dangerous and sends a message that transgender people are to be laughed at, or are somehow less-than. This show would be a setback for transgender Americans, and for everyone who believes that all people deserve to be treated with respect and dignity.

The ad ended up gaining traction with media outlets, creating the kind of backlash that could only be counteracted with a premiere that wowed critics.

That, to put it mildly, did not happen; the show was vilified for being “poorly written, broadly acted and apparently produced without any shame,” and “an early front-runner for the worst show of 2012.” And one of the stars of Work It’s obvious inspiration, Bosom Buddies‘ Peter Scolari, while calling Nolasco’s performance  “wholesome and funny” in Entertainment Weekly, observed that “nuance and subtlety are locked in the trunk of the head writer’s car, some of the bits predate the written word.”

Even sportswriters are getting into the fray: Latino Sports’ Cesar Díaz posted a column Sunday saying point-blank he “could care less if ABC issues an apology or not”:

I just want to inform the Creators of ABC’s Show “Work It” that I wouldn’t be good at selling drugs. And neither would the people I associate myself with and the communities we’ve volunteered our time serving over the years. And when I say people, I mean the diverse pool of friends and family who are Latinos and non-Latinos.

Hey, I cover soccer and it’s definitely the one of the most diverse sports in the world today. Of course, I’m realistic enough to know that negative portrayals of our culture will continue to happen but I don’t have to stay silent about it.

One thing we can agree on is that we’re sick of tired of seeing how our culture is time after time distorted by these shows. From the over-exaggerated accents to the menial roles created because our characters appear unintelligent is simply absurd.

Martí also noted that, after tweeting steadily going into the show’s premiere, has kept quiet while the anger surrounding Angel’s problematic remark has grown, a strategy Martí suggests he discard:

A social media blitz is as devastating as any bad reviews, and “Work It” has gotten its sizeable share of such negativity. It is perplexing to us that Amaury won’t even respond to all this. It is a mistake, and we hope he reconsiders, because if there is anything that is true about social media, no one person or profile or brand is better than any other person, profile or brand. Celebrity is no longer elevated. Amaury is now one of us and we want to know.

At this point, Work It‘s days appear to be numbered, and rightly so. The least ABC can do is take note of the anger the show has brought on and cancel it – if nothing else, it would allow Nolasco the chance to take on projects that won’t infuriate multiple communities, and get himself out of the social media morass Cohen and Reich have instigated.

If you’ve seen the latest episode of The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl (ABG), you probably caught J’s best friend Cece refer to White Jay’s ex as a “tr***y bitch in heels.” Or J’s co-worker Patty ask her if she’s “gay” because J cut her hair to a tweeny-weeny afro (TWA). Or J’s nemesis, Nina, asking her when did she “catch cancer” due to the new ‘do.

Some fans responded to the overt transphobic insult with an open letter on Crunk Feminist Collective Tumblr:

Dear Awkward Black Girl,

We love the show! We also love your continuous engagement with fans and your commitment to staying on the Web to maintain your vision. What we don’t love is the transmisogyny and misogyny in episode 11.

In episode 11, CeCe calls White Jay’s ex a “tra**y bitch in heels.” The word tra**y perpetuates violence and divisiveness amongst women by relying on the idea that trans women are not “real” women; it suggests that White Jay’s ex is somehow less than the main character J.

The word “tra**y” has a very real history of violence and discrimination, often targeting trans women. It has been used as a slur, as a way to objectify women, and as a way of denying the personhood of trans women on the basis of appearance.

We have seen your responsiveness to the fans of ABG and we hope that by raising this concern you will respond accordingly by not using such language in future episodes. There are so many awkward queer, trans, and disabled folks who love the show and it hurts to see and hear our lives used as punchlines. For those of us, the awkward black, queer folks who have lived at the intersections of our awkwardness, our blackness, and our transness, words like “tra**y” erase our lives, and our humanity. Phrases like “No lesbo” and the use of affected speech to imitate hard of hearing people detract from the vision of creating representations for the rest of us who are all too often maligned in mainstream media.

We look forward to many more episodes of The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl that are hilarious without the use of marginalized groups as a punchline. We have confidence that you have the creativity to continue to push comedic boundaries in new ways and educate your audience in the process.

With fierce love,
alicia sanchez gill
Claire Nemorin
Moya Bailey
Kimberley Shults
Anonymous Awkward Others

Another tumblrer reblogged a tweet regarding the creators’ response to the Open Letter.

The initial Tumbl’d responses to this:

“This does not look promising.”

“hoping the response letter does not cause more pain.”

“well, shit. so much for finding a non-problematic show to love.”

Here’s the reply from ABG‘s co-creators Issa Rae and Tracy Oliver, found at Clutch Magazine:

Some of our viewers may have been offended by some of the language in our recent episode. We take this matter especially to heart, considering the CFC and members of the LGBT community were among the first to embrace ‘The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl.’

Since our first episode debuted in February this year, ‘Awkward Black Girl’ has received an incredible outpouring of support from hundreds of thousands of fans. We love and appreciate each and every one of our fans! In return, we strive to provide a show that uses irreverent comedy and humor to address the oftentimes uncomfortable situations that many people have experienced at some point or another in their lives.

In creating a series of this nature, we are willing to accept the praise when the jokes work and the feedback when they may not.

Sincerely,

Issa & Tracy

Whereas a few Clutch Magazine commenters thought Rae’s and Oliver’s letter was”respectful” and “very well said,” quite a few commenters applauded Rae for “not apologizing” because that “would change the nature of the show.” Even Crunk Feminist Collective’s Brittney Cooper agreed  that it’s an “excellent” response. And the post and the comments at Very Smart Brothers applaud the response, some of the commenters going so far as telling trans people (and the gay, lesbian, and bisexual people who are cisgender–oh yeah, and a few of us cis, trans, and gender non-conforming folks who love bell hooks) to “get over themselves” and “stop being so sensitive” because ABG “offends everyone,” especially with the liberal use of “bitch” and “n***a.” In fact, one commenter states that ABG using the “tr***y bitch in heels” line as a sign of acceptability for trans folks.

Dare I say it? Yes…

What the hell kind of no-pology is this?!?

Racialicious guest contributor Erika Nicole Kendall tweeted exactly why I felt this qualifies as a no-pology:

See, here’s my thing: if you’re saying that folks in LBGT communities are some of the first fans of your show, wouldn’t you go out of your way to not turn off that fan base  by simply saying something like, “I/We deeply apologize for saying the word “tr***y” on the ep. I could’ve used another word to talk about J’s discomfort instead of making trans people–and, by extension, our transgender fans–the butt of a joke,” instead of essentially stating you stand by a transphobic slur that is used in conjunction to do much more damage than just create “oftentimes uncomfortable situations that many people have experienced at some point or another in their lives?”

Because the word “tr***y” isn’t bantered about just to make trans people “uncomfortable.” As @graceishuman pointed out on Twitter:

 It’s only hilarious if you accept that trans women are by definition a joke. There’s no inherent humor to it beyond that.

The history of the word is that a lot of trans people, especially trans women of color, have had it used against them in the context of violence, sometimes as they were being murdered.

This post at the Tumblr a bell and a pomegranate further explains why the fans who wrote the letter–and the rest of us–found the  ”joke” unamusing:

Well, and naturally, what “may have offended” some people is language—as though that’s the important thing, that a nasty word (a word, to be fair, I cringe at) was used.  But of course it wasn’t—the meaningful portion of the trouble is that the use of “tranny” as an insult to cis women is about participating in the cultural notion that trans women are fake/grotesque/doing womanhood wrong/unworthy of respect and that it is shameful/disgusting for a cis woman to be similar to one.  It’s about functioning as a placeholder for certain policing discourses about the comportment and appearance of women in general by deploying the extreme danger of trans oppression as a veiled threat while subtly shoring up that oppression.(*)  That’s why people are troubled by the word in the first place, and why the first critiques of it were brought up—not because it is an inherently evil word, but because it participates in negative, damaging stereotypes about trans women.  It could have been any word.  The problem is that “tranny” is deployed as a shorthand for that cultural idea.  If they’d substituted in a nicer, less-charged word as shorthand to suggest that a given woman was like a trans woman and therefore fake/grotesque/doing womanhood wrong/unworthy of respect, it would still be transphobic.

When we focus over-much on contaminated words, we sometimes miss—and allow the people who use them to sidestep—the larger problem of what those words represent and why they’re hurtful in the first place.

(*) You know, in the same way that young straight men calling each other “faggot” don’t literally mean “I think you are attracted to other men,” but “you are not behaving as I think a man should and if you don’t get in line I am suggesting you be treated as is appropriate for the disgusting people indicated by this word, who also don’t get in line and who you know are visibly punished for it.”  In the same way that “whore” and “bitch” are deployed—they suggest that there is a category of people who you are culturally aware have fewer rights/more vulnerabilities to violence/etc. and that if you do not behave as expected you might be relegated to that category and treated accordingly.  Capitalism does it by threatening people who have money with the constant specter of poverty and homelessness—and then uses that to enforce cultural norms of behavior.  Sexism does it by threatening that men might be treated like “bitches” and “pussies.”  And cissexism/transmisogyny does it by threatening cis women with worlds like “tranny” and “shemale.

As for ABG‘s use of the words “bitch” and “n***a” as a reason why it should be OK for the creators to, therefore, use the words “tr***y,” I’ll say here what I said on a radio interview about those white feminists who defended the sign “Woman Is the N****r of the World” at SlutWalk NYC’s march: unless Rae and/or other people on ABG‘s creative team is a trans person, the word isn’t for them to use because they are outside of those communities. And, even at that, if there is a trans person on the crew, that person’s presence still doesn’t give permission or license for ABG‘s cisgender cast and crew to use it because the other trans folks didn’t vote on that person to give that imprimatur to use the slur.

Even Patti’s comment about J being “gay” because of J’s short cut pivots on both homophobia and transphobia, namely that Black lesbians are stereotyped as “looking” a certain way that is “outside” of the hetero male gaze (and, by extension, hetero male sexual/romantic consideration), namely having a short afro, which is construed as “trying to be manly,” thus policing J’s femininity. Of course, Nina’s comment comment about “catching cancer” is simply ableist.

But I also feel like this is the part in the post where I need to repeat what we say quite a few times around the R: just because a person belongs to one or more marginalized group(s) doesn’t mean that person has an innate empathy for people in other marginalized groups. And “doing it for the art”–or to not be “politically correct”–adds insult to injury. Again, to quote Erika, in response to another tweeter:

…the non-responsive response they wrote, the onslaught of people defending them and saying “you didn’t do anything wrong” as if Black people forgot what it feels like to have you[r] very existence turned into something undesirable and slur-worthy…let’s just say it’s DUMB disturbing.

So, as much as I love J’s misadventures, I can’t quite walk down this transphobic, homophobic, and ableist path with her and her crew in this ep.

Image credit: Get on the Sofa

By Guest Contributor Spectra

Wait a minute, not all lesbians in movies are white, rich or middle-class with no bills to pay? You mean “life” doesn’t get put on pause so that all gay people can experience the thrill of coming out at summer camp? And, there are other LGBT issues worth talking about besides marriage? Gasp! And Hallelujah for Spike Lee protégé Dee Rees’ Pariah, a film women of color (and other marginalized groups) can truly relate to.

On the surface, Pariah is a coming of age story about an African-American lesbian, Alike (pronounced “Ah-LEE-kay”) in Brooklyn. But dig deeper, and you’ll see a smart and layered tackling of gender, sexuality, religion, and even class — an essential layer of complexity needed to accurately portray the diverse experiences of queer people of color, long been absent from mainstream LGBT films. Rather than depicting homophobia as the only kind of oppression experienced by the LGBT community, Pariah’s world is a varied socio-cultural landscape in motion featuring an all-POC cast, led by Nigerian actress Adepero Oduye’s performance as 17-year old Alike.

Pariah’s urban setting almost eliminates the need to discuss race at all (or, as in popular case of experiencing race through white characters, explain it). The audience is plopped, un-apologetically, right in the middle of a story filled with black characters, making way for intersectional observations about class and gender roles within the story’s cultural context.

SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT

The film opens with an unfocused, low-level street shots of baggy jeans, dangling belt chains, hard-soled shoes, and the dirty streets of Brooklyn. We hear the sound of women socializing, and then some unexpected song lyrics: All you ladies pop your p-ssy like this. We’re immediately placed in the scene of a nightclub, in front of a stripper who is somehow managing to slide up the pole, and slapped in the face by Rees’ over-the-top interpretation of coming of age as a young lesbian of color: loud club music, a hyper-sexualized social environment, a group of tomboys (“studs”, “butches”, “aggressives”) throwing money at a stripper in a bothersome (yet, admittedly, amusing) re-enactment of heterosexual masculinity, while a small voice in our heads may be wondering if we’re supposed to be down with all of this.

But just as we are beginning to question what we’re doing in the theater, we meet Alike and see that her world is upside down, too, literally. The frame is rotated upright to reveal a slender Alike, dressed awkwardly in a wide-striped, oversized polo, black do-rag, and fitted lid, staring at the pulsating pelvis of the stripper, and doing so with a confused, yet curious expression on her face.

Her discomfort is made even more apparent when we meet her best friend, Laura (Pernell Walker), a huskier and much more aggressive tomboy (who claims to “get more p-ssy than yo’ daddy”), acting as Alike’s enthusiastic chaperone in this bizarre rite of passage. Clad in a dressed in a red lid and popped-collar track jacket, Laura embodies masculinity more confidently; after she finally gives up trying to get Alike to talk to “get that punani“, she proceeds to grind with a heteronormatively feminine (“high femme”) black lesbian in a gender-polarized mating dance.

For her part, as Alike heads home on the bus alone, we see her vulnerability exposed under fluorescent lights: she begins to slowly strip herself of the masculine lesbian identity she’s hiding from her family. She pulls back the lid and do-rag to put her natural hair (twisties) in a ponytail, takes off the over-sized polo to reveal a fitted tank top hidden underneath, and finally, puts a pair of earrings back in a heart-breaking act of gender conformity.

Despite the nuanced depiction of gender and class, Pariah doesn’t hit us over the head with analysis: the characters don’t explain why they each dress differently (urban streetwear to preppy to chic, and more), why they are of different financial circumstances, or why their accents are different; they just are. Alike, for instance, is evidently a “softer” tomboy as described by some girls at her high school. She’s also an aspiring writer, and (most likely due to the part of the city in which she was raised) has very different diction from Laura, whose vernacular is filled with slang, curse words, and the N-word as a term of endearment. In turn, Laura’s friends behave in a manner that’s very similar to cisgendered masculinity: they wear all men’s clothing, drink beer, play poker, and (of course) have beautiful girls sit on their laps as trophies. Yes, lesbians can be sexist too, but Dee Rees’ thoughtful character development steers the screenplay away from the danger of telling a single story.

In the past, the dominant movie narrative that existed for lesbians on screen presented, for many, depicted an unrealistic social context: all lesbians are white and heteronormatively feminine (AKA “lipstick lesbians” like Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly in Bound), they have sex by making a performance of moaning the same way the women in straight porno films do (too many to name, but the most annoying sex scene for me comes from indie flick Chloe — an extended makeout session, really?). Meanwhile, no one seems to have any money problems as they can throw huge weddings they don’t even show up to (Imagine Me and You, the infamous L Word non-wedding) and 2-dimensional side characters with no real lives of their own, exist simply to react (whether negatively or positively) to the “lesbian” issue (a la the saintly and unfortunate husband archetype in The Hours).

In many of these films, homophobia (besides the expected relationship drama) was often presented as the singular obstacle to the main characters’ happiness. Thus, the combination of the aforementioned archetypal elements and the perpetuation of single-issue hurdles for LGBT characters, for me, wove together a series of feel-good lezzie flicks that all said the same thing: “Please leave these two pretty and privileged white girls who just want to fall in love and live happily ever after in their color-blind world (which, by the way, contains no people of color) alone, okay?”

Considering what the film industry was like even just a decade ago, most people would concede that in the face of Hollywood’s focus on hegemonic straight relationships, movies that featured gay or lesbian characters at all were pushing the envelope. Indeed, many of us queer women were thrilled when The L Word came out. After all, it was on Showtime — widely accessible to our straight friends, who we eagerly organized viewing parties with so we could watch them experience what our lives as lesbians were like, sort of.

We didn’t all wear high heels and runway dresses; the lesbians at the clubs I went to certainly didn’t sport that level of Hollywood glam. Many of us were puzzled by the main characters’ financial means to spend lavish amounts of money eating out at fancy restaurants, throwing parties in LA mansions, and getting married, but we tuned in every week to follow the lives of a group of rich white feminine lesbians, because there weren’t any other alternatives, and sitting through a film with gay characters was a sure way to test a reaction from your friends before you came out. The false sense of reality gave us hope that if we were to come out to our friends, decided to live our lives openly as gay people, life would remain relatively normal. We’d have girlfriends, get married (that’s what all gay people want to do, right?), adopt children, experience the occasional awkward family dinner, but ultimately, live happily ever after.

This is what sets Pariah apart from (white) singular-narrative LGBT films; it debunks the myth that life begins and ends between the point of self-acceptance, and a wedding.

The movie’s skillful orchestration of empathic story-telling and strong performances enables us to move beyond the scope of Gay and Lesbian 101 to tackle other kinds of oppression, including the further marginalization of LGBT people of color. Alike’s family lives comfortably, allowing her to spend most of her time socializing and pursuing her interest in the arts. But Laura, who is the same age as Alike, was forced to drop out of high school when her mother kicked her out, and works overtime to help her sister (who she lives with) pay the bills while studying for her GED. Through Laura’s narrative, the audience is given a glimpse into the experience of many LGBT youths, who are forced to seek refuge and community outside of their families, who risk being homeless for being themselves, yet, must keep on.

It’s a sad observation, but then again isn’t it high time that gay films which grab major distributor attention do more than just perpetuate extremely tragic or fairytale conclusions to a now-engaged and curious public, and present LGBT stories in all their diverse manifestations, which does include the narratives of people of color, working class people, homeless youth, and sometimes, people who are all of the above? It’s not wonder that Pariah — along with peer releases Circumstance and Gunhill Road — has received critical acclaim for its much-needed exploration of LGBT people of color living life at the intersection of many types of oppression.

But don’t get it twisted. Pariah is definitely not a sob story. In fact, the movie is filled with timely and endearing moments of humor and awkwardness that make the hold-no-punches backdrop easier to swallow; the familiar sibling banter that ensues when Alike’s younger (and brattier) sister threatens to tell on her for having a “gross” flesh-colored dildo, a cringe-ful dinner table scene during which her parents describe how they “hung out on prom night”, and Alike’s frequent and ill-timed giggles spells whenever she’s around the girl she likes. The film’s strong undercurrent of family and relationships guarantees that there is something in it for everyone (no need to fear the discomfort of watching a lesbian sex scene with your parents either — she keeps it PG).

Dee Rees has created a motion picture that the larger LGBT community can be proud of, and in which people of color can see themselves carefully and sensitively projected. She may be the black lesbian Tyler Perry (in a good way). Let’s hope we see more of her.

By Arturo R. García

Basketball fans are well-acquainted with stories about a local star who never got to show their skills outside the neighborhood courts.

And make no mistake, Tayshana Murphy was on her way to bigger things. As Grantland’s Jonathan Abrams wrote:

Mention a court in New York City — West 4th, Rucker, Orchard Beach — they don’t just know of Tayshana “Chicken” Murphy. They know her. She possessed that killer crossover and played “man strong,” as Taylonn, her father, likes to say. Tayshana loved contact. “Babies,” she called the girls who helplessly bounced off of her when she drove to the rim. She played taller than her 5-foot-7 and with a fierceness that contrasted against her gentle, hazel eyes.

Those eyes sized up Shannon Bobbitt of the WNBA’s Indiana Fever this summer.

Bobbitt conducts a clinic every year outside the Harlem projects where she grew up. The clinic is a way for children to see the footsteps she laid for them to follow. Bobbitt had heard of Tayshana and that she could ball. She probably had no idea that the high schooler was itching to test her skills against the professional.

“She’s fast as hell, Pops,” Tayshana told her father of Bobbitt. “But she’s so little. She can’t handle me. I’m too big for her.”

Murphy’s story came to a premature and violent end on Sept. 11, when she was shot and killed in the Grant Houses project where she lived. Initial reports said the shooting was a case of mistaken identity stemming from a feud between residents of the Grant Houses and the nearby Manhattanville Houses – a story her family refuted.

Three men have been arrested and charged in connection with Murphy’s murder: Tyshawn Brockington and Robert Cartagena, who allegedly shot her, and Terique Collins, accused of delivering the murder weapon. But since her death, details have emerged adding more layers to the tragedy.

Less than a month after Murphy was killed, WABC-TV reported that homophobic graphitti had been written and drawn on the wall near the stairwell where it happened. Yet, as Mecca Jamilah Sullivan observed in The Feminist Wire, Murphy’s sexuality and how that may have factored into her death was not being talked about:

The D.A.’s indictment press release doesn’t mention the homophobic comments or the possibility that anti-gay hate played a role in the crime. Even the New York Times article on the Grant-Manhattanville feud, which quotes another 18-year-old woman as Murphy’s “girlfriend” leaves the issue of homophobic hate silent, focusing instead on Murphy’s foreshortened basketball career. One exuberantly homophobic blog even goes so far as to say that the love of basketball turned Murphy gay. The message of all these sources is clear: Murphy wasn’t really a black lesbian; she was an athlete. And her loss should be mourned accordingly.

According to Bridgette P. LaVictoire at LezGetIt, the hate speech on the wall opens up another possibility.

“Even if Tayshana was not lesbian,” LaVictoire wrote after the graphitti was found, “there is always the possibility that she was murdered for just appearing to be lesbian, and because of a view of women that puts such an athletic woman into danger because of a patriarchal view that women should be far more submissive an far less athletic.”

It’s important to note that Murphy’s family hasn’t commented on her sexuality. But Sullivan’s point stands: coverage of the case has not mentioned whether authorities intend to prosecute her murder as a hate crime. (All three defendants have pled not guilty.) And stories reflecting on her life, whether at her wake or at an event named after her, have kept the focus primarily on the court.

Though the family’s right to privacy is unimpeachable, it may have opened the door for another, more problematic narrative to emerge: the New York Post reported this week that Murphy was part of a female gang, pointing to it as an example of “good girls recruited by neighborhood gangs into lives of violence, where carrying weapons and committing crimes is as commonplace as shooting a free throw.” There’s no source mentioned other than some mysterious “cops,” and the bulk of the article focuses on a whole other case.

But the story is already getting posted verbatim on other sites.  If it gets enough momentum, it’s not hard to imagine that in a trial it could be used as a way to paint Murphy as an Angry Lesbian Gangbanger – to define her life by hate, and put her sexuality, however she defined it, on trial as much as the men accused of killing her.

By Guest Contributor Mattie Brice, cross-posted from Kotaku

Tamagotchi. Remember those?

They became popular when I was in 4th grade. Sometimes my mother took me to a nearby Target to pick a toy- she told me it was for good grades, but I knew it was because I got bullied often at school. One of these times, I raced to find a Tamagotchi, as all of my friends were getting them. I liked the idea of something with me at all times, to take care of it and make me feel like something needed me.

And there it was, a whole wall of glittering purple eggs. I remember that exact, uncreative display panel to this day, and my mother stopping me. She told me to wait, that my aunt wanted to get that for my birthday when she visited. I protested, but the answer was the same: be patient, you’ll get it soon enough. We went a week later and all of them were gone, sold out from every toy store in our area. For some reason that memory is lodged in my brain. I brought it up to my mother recently, but she’s forgotten.

The stray times I visit Kotaku, it’s like I’m seeing an empty panel that the reward for my sitting, smiling, and internalizing should be. I was supposed to find somewhere to escape to, maybe even a place that needed me a little. You told me to wait, and I did. Where’s my Tamagotchi?

There is only a wrong way to go about this. So let’s just get to why I’m here:

Me too.

I’m part of the gaming community, but Kotaku doesn’t see me as a gamer. No, instead I’m a multi-racial transgender who-knows-sexual possibly-feminist woman gamer. A boogie monster. Someone who uses too many –isms and –ists in their daily tweets to actually enjoy anything. I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone ask what it’s like to be me in this pocket of society.

You know that invisible ink in detective movies? If you could get an internet lighter, you’d find “This site is for heterosexual white American men gamers.” Kotaku will never include me until it’s figured out that “gamers” is skewed to one identity and asks me to deal with that. No. Me too.

Gamer culture isn’t Kotaku’s fault. That skewing Japan as a land of weirdoes is humorous. That gamers like to look at galleries made up of T&A shots of women in cosplay. So what if someone like me doesn’t fit in with typical gamers? The editors are just providing what gamers want, how is that a bad thing? Are you using that lighter?

When I wasn’t bullied as a child, I was creating games. My favorite thing to do was to give my friends superpowers based on their personalities. When we played, they were empowered to be themselves. It was always fun because each one of us mattered. I mattered. Ever since, I knew I wanted to be involved with games, maybe even make them. I contemplate what I would say to kid-me now that I figured out what a gamer is. What kind of treatment I would receive if I ever got into the industry. Would it be more humane to convince my past self I didn’t actually matter?

I’ve turned away from Kotaku because it doesn’t like my answers. There’s a reason I can’t find you bountiful resources of sexually liberated cosplayers not posing for straight guys. [I had asked Mattie to help me find some sources of cosplay images more in line with what she would like to see on the site. — Kotaku Editorial Director Joel Johnson] Why there’s a scant amount of criticism of manchild culture. How the LGBT community is still the elephant in the room. We haven’t thought of what a gamer community that assumes diversity instead of homophobic adolescent dudes looks like. There are plenty of stats of who the “average” gamer is, what the actual demographics are. However, the image in our mind hasn’t changed in decades.

There’s a taboo against saying that. Me too. It’s radical liberal talk, an attempt to kill everyone’s fun. The common denominator response is “Why won’t you just go somewhere else?” I usually do. This attitude polarizes the community between large, mean-spirited marches of “the old guard” and a few impenetrable bastions of rigid but progressive niche philosophies. I’ve run to places like The Border House because “me too” isn’t deliberated upon, it’s the law. I turn away because Kotaku doesn’t ask me “Why are you leaving?”

Me too.

I’ve stared at those two words and deleted them often enough that I forget what they mean. I can’t say those words here without preparing myself for the sling-fest, and some days I just can’t summon the strength. This is after I go through my life dealing with crap society presents me just because I exist. And you know what sucks? That many times, my words are shrugged off, or given the fatal “I’ll think about it.” That isn’t inclusivity. Being benign doesn’t help. Letting commenters spew toxic isn’t inviting. Looking to defend yourselves doesn’t solve anything when it’s so obvious there’s a problem. I’m not looking to shame you, I just want to set things right.

Must I be a martyr? Must you be a machine? Are our only choices to become symbols and lose our humanity? Do you understand what you’re asking of me when you tell me to be patient? Do you know how long I’ve been waiting?

The games I play now won’t let me be myself. No game dares to feature a transgender character that isn’t on the wrong end of a joke. Sometimes I pretend that my party members know, but are too scared to ask. God, I don’t even know if most actual people know what it means to be transgender. Or multi-racial. Or anything other than what they are. I don’t know if they know it’s okay to ask. Then maybe we could figure out what a gamer really is. Halfway isn’t enough, but I will accompany you on the journey.

I wish Kotaku would tell me “We don’t want you to go away.” You’ll have to scroll down a bit to see if that comes true.

Me too.

There are plenty of other things I should be doing right now: finishing a book review which has already been extended, preparing for classes that start in a week, finishing another post I’ve been working on on gentrification, starting and finishing two other book proposal/chapter reviews that are due, and the list goes on and on. But, I just had to stop for a moment and briefly reflect on a recent trip home I made with my partner/girlfriend–we had a wedding ceremony so I’m trying to say partner now, but I really love saying girlfriend, something about it.

Anyway, we made a long, three week road trip from California to the Midwest to visit with and, in some cases, meet for the first time family and friends. It was a sweet trip: we saw lots of beautiful things, like the Badlands and Black Hills in South Dakota, canyons upon canyons in Southern Utah, and just the regular, lush greenery of Michigan and Missouri, where we’re from. The road makes us both happy.

And, it’s always a bit of hard trip to make, for both of us. We both love our families so much and, as two queer women, often leave a lot of things out about our lives when we go home. Literally, there were points in the trip where it was hard for us to even reach each other, we were so checked out.

It’s something we’ve practiced for quite a while, for various reasons. Some of it is based on people not always asking about the specifics. Remembering to ask about the boys in our lives (son and godson) that we see at least once, if not twice a week. Nor would they ever remember or think to ask what it’s like to suspend holding hands with your partner in public, something we do everyday at home. Not to mention never getting into a serious debate about gay marriage and whether or not that is something we’re interested in. And, in many ways, that’s fine. I understand, sometimes people don’t know how to ask. And, quite frankly, there is so little that I share about my life that I think it may just be difficult to talk to me,”Ani” (my childhood nickname), and/or I’m not there enough (once or twice a year) for those kinds of conversations to be developed. Plus, there is a nice big helping of internalized homophobia on both of our parts that structure these trips home.

So it was within this setting, this history, that Joan and I made the trip from her parent’s house in Michigan to mine in Missouri, where she was going to meet my extended family–my father’s side–for the first time. Just to give you a little history and more context for how I share, I took her home last summer for the first time, where she met my grandmother (Dad’s mom) and my mom’s side of the family, many of her seven brothers and sisters and their children. Also, for the purposes of history/reminder, my mother is white and my father is Black. And, this is only the second time in my adult relationship history that I’ve ever brought anyone home. I dated my white, college ex-boyfriend (who Joan also met on this trip), home twice in the 6 1/2 years that we dated. And we lived three hours away from my hometown. So, the fact that I’ve traveled over 1600 miles and have brought Joan home twice in 3 1/2 years is, like, a really big deal. Plus, you know, I’m 40 so I’m kinda grown, which means I should be doing this kind of thing anyway…

Still, I was nervous to take her home. How are people going to feel about her? How are my aunts (my dad has six sisters) going to respond to her? To us? What about my male cousins? All people I see every year, but have not mentioned her, the woman I love so much, directly once. Now, if asked, I wouldn’t lie, but I was never asked, so…But I couldn’t keep up my charade any longer, my grandmother was invited and my dad came out for our ceremony in May, so I had to come clean. My dad picked us up and we headed over. I brought my mom along who is still close with my dad and his siblings/my grandmother, just in case Joan didn’t have anyone to talk to. That was my plan.

We walked in and everyone was there, and I mean everyone, my four aunts, an uncle, my cousin and his wife, my grandmother, my other cousin and his girlfriend. I was greeted, but almost immediately pushed aside so that one by one everyone came up, introduced themselves to her (I’m aunt______), hugged her, and welcomed her to the family. No joke. Some even said the words, welcome to the family.

I was taken aback.

Not by the sweetness of my family: they are some of the most incredibly sweet, laid back, witty, funny, sarcastic, sh*t talking, and sincere people I know. They are my people. No, in the moment, I was taken aback by how they welcomed her, us, my life that I never talk about, into the family. Almost immediately, my aunt began correcting Joan when she said, “I don’t want to sit in your uncle’s chair.” “That’s your uncle, Joan.” It was great and, once I got over my fear, nothing short of what I would expect from my people. Since we’ve been home, three of them have become her “friends” on Facebook.

But that’s not the way we understand the relationship between the Black and LGBTQ communities. The overall assumption is that the Black community is homophobic (at the same time that the same sex marriage movement equates this struggle with the Black civil rights movement).  The Black community was blamed for Proposition 8‘s failure in California, anti-gay leaders exist and are well publicized, and there is an ongoing discussion of homophobia in hip-hop. Often, it looks like straight Black folks are more homophobic than any other group, especially white people. But, that has rarely been my experience. Inquisitive? Yes. Inappropriate questions at times? Of course. A “girl you nasty,” once or twice? Sure. But I don’t think that constitutes a more homophobic community, which is what I take issue with.  The assumption that Black people are the culprit in the ongoing fight against homophobia and gay oppression. And, I don’t write this to deny other Black folks’ experience, but rather, to put out there a time when this was not the case. I think we need to highlight these experiences more often to remember and think about the Black community as a community, who looks out for, loves, and trusts one another. It doesn’t negate the Eddie Longs or Tracy Morgans, but is intended to open up and broaden the conversation a bit more. I am eager to engage in them.

Peace, family.

By Arturo R. García

DC Comics has added to the buzz surrounding its’ relaunch with the announcement that Teen Titans will feature a gay POC character starting with the series’ third issue.

On one hand, this is something to be happy for, and Titans artist Brett Booth has already expressed his support for gay marriage and gay rights in discussing the new character, Miguel Jose Barragan, a.k.a. Bunker. But, as Booth wrote on his blog, he’s aware that he and series writer Scott Lobdell are wading into a complicated issue.

We wanted to show an interesting character who’s [sic] homosexuality is part of him, not something that’s hidden. Sure they are gay people who you wouldn’t know are gay right off the bat, but there are others who are a more flamboyant, and we thought it would be nice to actually see them portrayed in comics. Did we go over the top, I don’t think so. I wanted you to know he might be gay as soon as you see him. Our TT is partly about diversity of ANY kind, its about all kinds of teens getting together to help each other. It is a very difficult line to walk, will he be as I’ve read in some of the comments ‘fruity’? Not that I’m aware of. Will he be more effeminate than what we’ve seen before, the ‘typical’ gay male comic character, yes. Does it scare the shit out of me that I might inadvertently piss off the group I want to reflect in a positive way, you’re damn straight (pun intended!)

Booth also described other gay superheroes as looking and acting “like regular heterosexuals … they just happen to have sex with people of their own gender, under the covers and in the dark.” He did not specify which characters he was observing, but Booth’s view of what constitutes “regular” behavior is problematic, as The Mary Sue’s Christopher Holden points out:

Booth starts out his quote by implying that out “gay people who you wouldn’t know are gay right off the bat” are “hiding” their sexuality, without acknowledging that we live in a society that assumes straight until proven gay, where the attempts of gay men and women to only bring up their sexuality when it is actually relevant to a conversation, as when talking about significant others, and not when it isn’t, as when buying a shirt (a luxury enjoyed by all straight people), is interpreted as “hiding” by those they interact with. Perhaps Booth is self-consciously as worried as he needs to be.

Booth is also not accounting for one of comics’ big limitations as a medium: everything is rendered in still frames, so, while we can see heroes like Obsidian, Batwoman, Renee Montoya, Apollo and The Midnighter, we don’t get their voices and body language. So there’s nothing marking their sexuality other than what the creative team chooses to show us. It’s far trickier to use different kind of characterization techniques – vocal inflection, gestures, etc. – in a comic than in, say, a cartoon or a live-action setting.

Bunker will not be DC’s first “out” gay hero. In 1988, the company introduced Extraño, a character who would refer to himself as “auntie” and was played for laughs more often than not. The character was even infected with HIV by an “AIDS vampire” before his series, The New Guardians, was canceled.

It will also be interesting to see how Bunker’s backstory is addressed. On his blog, Booth mentioned this description from Lobdell:

He was raised in a very small Mexican village called El Chilar. He was very loved by his family and the village as well — and they were as accepting of his homosexuality as they were to his super powers when they first manifested. To that end he grew up in an angst-free environment. He was born out of the closet and so he has a very refreshing outlook on life.

Given that description, it’s possible that Bunker’s powers – as yet unnamed, but which seem to involve Miguel being able to create protective, brick-like shells not unlike Marvel Comics’ Armor – might factor into his acceptance in the kind of community that, as several commenters at sites like Bleeding Cool have mentioned, is usually highly religious and homophobic.

That kind of intolerance was highlighted in a study released last year by Mexico’s National Council to Prevent Discrimination, which was created in 2003 to enforce a national anti-discrimination law passed by the National Congress that same year.

According to the report, which is accessible as a PDF in both English and Spanish, 52 percent of all lesbian, gay or bisexual respondents reported discrimination as the main problem for their community. Spread across the socio-economic spectrum, more than half of respondents who identified their status as “low” or “very low” – no income levels were provided – said discrimination was still their primary obstacle. The police was cited as the primary source of that discrimination, followed by members of respondents’ church or congregations, which underscores concerns that, even for a comic-book character, Miguel’s background might be too fantastical.

But on the other hand, as blogger Son of Baldwin said in an e-mail interview with Racialicious Monday, such a portrayal could also be a nice change of pace for readers.

“As a gay person of color, I actually don’t have a problem with the backstory,” he wrote. “The aspect that would seem cliche to me is if he was the typical gay teen who endured homophobia in his home and community. Besides, it would function as a nice bit of wish fulfillment for all of those gay teens out there. And it opens up a LOT of story potential for the character to encounter homophobia in his new community as a gay teen who never imagined he should feel shame about who he is.”

Titans writer Scott Lobdell was the creator who outed Marvel Comics’ Jean-Paul Baubier, aka Northstar in Alpha Flight (Vol. 1) #106, published in 1992. Writer/artist John Byrne, who created Alpha Flight, has said that he had always conceived of the character as a gay male, but was not allowed to mention it openly by both the Comics Code Authority and the company’s Editor-in-Chief, Jim Shooter.

In July 2007, Lobdell told Comic Book Resources that he linked the revelation of Northstar’s sexuality to his characterization up to that point – an arrogant speedster with a short fuse:

While I certainly don’t think all closeted gay men are angry, I’m speaking specifically about Jean Paul. He used his anger to keep people away from him, from getting close, from discovering who he was. If you disliked him for being an arrogant prick, then you were not going to be able to get close enough to learn who he really was. If you didn’t like him for who he pretended to be, then you wouldn’t be able to judge him for who he was.

However, while praising Northstar’s coming out, AfterElton said Lobdell’s story – where Jean-Paul defends his adopted daughter, who is infected with HIV, from the bereaved superhuman father of an AIDS victim – “falls into so-bad-it’s-good territory.” It also pointed out that Lobdell left Alpha Flight before the story was even published. Lobdell told CBR Northstar’s sexuality was not behind his departure, instead citing “distinctly different views” between himself and incoming editor Rob Tokar.

At this point, editorial support doesn’t seem to be an issue for Bunker. DC co-publisher Dan DiDio had told The Advocate in July that the company planned to introduce a new LGBT character; of all the changes involved in DC’s revamped continuity, the sexualities of Batwoman, Apollo and The Midnighter have been left untouched; and at least one more upcoming series, Voodoo, will feature a bisexual creole protagonist, though there’s already concerns in the blogging community about how her career as a stripper will be presented.

On his blog, Booth does at least offer one positive sign for Miguel’s development: he won’t be the comic relief. But what he does become, and if he sticks around if/when DC reorganizes its’ continuity again in the figure, are still very much up in the air.

DC Comics’ Deadman brought to television by the folks behind Supernatural? Makes sense, if the story holds up.

Much like SPN’s Winchester brothers, Deadman (aka ghostly acrobat Boston Brand) would give showrunner Eric Kripke another outlet for his horror/comedy stylings. Since Boston has to possess people to do anything in the physical realm, one can only hope a Deadman TV show, if it actually gets past the pilot stage, would actually feature more people who aren’t white.

But we wouldn’t bet on it.

Still, the biggest problem with Deadman is, before recent miniseries like Blackest Night and Brightest Day revived interest in him, DC played Boston as more of a “professional” guest-star, to be called upon for stories involving demons, posession and whatnot, crack wise with the core characters, then shuffle off back to the afterlife. And with DC’s “New 52″ relaunch starting tomorrow, it’s a good time to highlight characters who have come into greater prominence than Deadman over the course of the past decade, only to get passed up for bigger media opportunities.

1. Blue Beetle

Jaime Reyes is ready for prime-time right now. He’s been promoted on media platforms besides his own critically-acclaimed comic, and the test footage above, which made the viral rounds last year, showed us his extraterrestrial battlesuit can be done for the small screen – in fact it already was, even if it was for Smallville.

Besides that, DC’s animation division has already provided a blueprint for how to handle Reyes’ story arc, after featuring him on Batman: The Brave and The Bold.

In fact, there’s not that much separating Jaime from the Clark Kent we saw in Smallville: Midwestern setting? Check. Friday Night Lights proved that people will follow a series set in Texas – Jaime lives in El Paso – if the story’s up to snuff. Young hero dealing with his legacy? Check. In fact, you could do what BATB did and bring in Wil Wheaton as Jaime’s predecessor, Ted Kord, for flashback sequences or a time-travel arc. And Jaime’s trajectory is still malleable enough to open the door to the kinds of Guest Superhero appearances Smallville gorged itself on in its’ final season.

2. Static Shock
Before there was Jaime, there was Virgil Hawkins, who has gone from being the most-popular character from the dearly-departed Milestone Universe to his own eponymous solo series in the DC relaunch. And in between, he was exposed to a whole other fanbase in a critically-acclaimed animated series, where he was written to stand alongside – and stand up to – some of DC Animated’s bigger guns:

Virgil’s best friend Richie – aka Gear, the kid in the glasses in the clip above – could add another dimension to a Static show. Static’s creator, the late Dwayne McDuffie, said he considered Richie to be gay, even if he couldn’t acknowledge it on a kids’ show. But that relationship could be explored on a show skewing toward the crowd that’s grown up in the years since the cartoon aired.

3. The Question
The unlikely success and subsequent renewal of Nikita should make DC take notice: there is still a market for female-driven action stories outside of basic cable. A series following Renee Montoya’s adventures could provide The CW with a good complement to Maggie Q’s show.

Not only can Renee explore the seamier side of Gotham police procedural-style (or anywhere, really,if you must get her away from the Bat-brand), working with or against former police colleagues, but DC elements like Intergang and the Religion of Crime open the door for creators to do stories that won’t encroach on Nikita’s spy-vs-spy setting.

4. Mister Terrific

Leverage showrunner John Rogers has coined the phrase Competence Porn to describe his show. You could also apply the label to programs like Burn Notice and White Collar, where it’s generally accepted that the leads are 1) good at what they do; 2) not prone to doing something dumb for the sake of “conflict.” And a character like Michael Holt – in DC canon, the third-smartest man in the world – fits that description to a tee, according to Eric Wallace, who will be writing Holt’s solo adventures in the upcoming series Mister Terrific.

“He’s a brilliant scientist with a whole bunch of degrees,” Wallace told Buddy TV. “He spreads his science knowledge all over the world, and at the same time his job is insuring our future. His job is keeping an eye on science gone mad, so that we still have a future. That’s what he does as a superhero, so you have a setup — it’s very clear — but then it’s off to the races.”

Wallace already has experience writing brainy do-gooders from his work on Eureka, which gives him a leg up on charting Holt’s course. Hopefully, if the new series takes off in the midst of the hype, it could give Mister T some consideration for greener media pastures.

5. Vixen

The ranking “veteran” of this group, Mari McCabe was introduced in the comics way back in 1981, and has gone on to be written into various incarnations of the Justice League of America. But as with Static and Blue Beetle, it was her inclusion in DC’s animated universe that enabled creators to give her a bigger showcase.

As she was written on Justice League Unlimited, Vixen was able to reconcile her glamorous side with her superheroics, and entered a relationship with Green Lantern without being scripted to be The Other Woman. Beyond that, though, the hook should be a gimme: she’s a model who saves the world. As lead-ins go, America’s Next Top Model could do far, far worse.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Characters like Ryan Choi, Cassandra Cain, Swift and The Engineer, Orpheus and Onyx, to name just a few, are, at this point, sitting around unused. If DC’s Chief Creative Officer, Geoff Johns, is serious about changing the game for his company, he needs to accept that characters from the Silver Age are not the only valuable properties he can steer outside of comics into other media. In fact, he would do well to remember that it wasn’t Spider-Man or the X-Men or even Iron Man that made Marvel Comics properties palatable for the movies – it was Blade. Is Johns willing to believe in nostalgia that might not necessarily be his own? Let’s hope so.

But we’re not betting on it.

If you saw Part I yesterday, you saw that the Black Panel, traditionally held on Saturdays, had made its’ way to the Friday morning line-up. Luckily, more panels have stepped up to fill the POC void on Saturday, and Sunday looks to be book-ended by some interesting stuff. Not that we’re too biased. The line-up is under the cut.

SATURDAY

11:00 a.m. – Noon: Spotlight on Ernie Chan. A celebration of the nearly 30-year career of Chan, who broke into the industry with DC Comics, where he got to work on various Batman comics before moving to Marvel, where he worked on characters ranging from Dr. Strange to Luke Cage to Conan. Room 4.

11:00 a.m. – Noon: Avatar: The Last Airbender Fan Gathering. Enjoy the company of fellow fans and discuss the original series, upcoming Dark Horse comics, and the future Legend of Korra. Moderator Avatar_Mom chats with MC Victor Sgroi (Cabbage Merchant), Michael Kirkpatrick (Props), Kevin Coppa(Puppetbenders), fan artist Kim Miranda (Isaia), writer John O’Bryan (Avatar the Last Airbender), and storyboard artist Ian B. Graham (Avatar the Last Airbender). Come for the conversation and stay for the cosplay contest. Santa Rosa Room, Marriott Marquis & Marina

12:30-1:30 p.m.: Diversity in Young Adult Works. Cindy Pon (Fury of the Phoenix) and Gene Luen Yang (Level Up) will be among the panelists looking at genres and characters in YA fiction that are, thankfully, not sparkly vampires or the werewolves they’re feuding against. Malinda Lo (Huntress) will serve as the moderator. Room 8.

Celeb Sightings: Donald Glover, Yvette Nicole Brown, Danny Pudi and Ken Jeong bring the lulz at the Community panel in the Hilton San Diego Bayfront’s Indigo Ballroom, starting at 1 p.m. At 2:15 p.m., though, Pudi is slated to be at Hall H for the Knights of Badassdom panel. Bonus points to anybody who can film Pudi’s mad dash from one room to the other.

1:30 – 2:30 p.m.: Spotlight on Tsuneo Goda.
So what the heck is Domo-kun? Goda probably won’t spill the beans, but he probably will share some of the origin of his signature creation, as well as talk about new projects. Room 5AB.

2:00 – 3:00 p.m.: Spotlight on Jamal Igle. Igle and actor/writer/moderator Keith Dallas will discuss Igle’s rise from an internship at DC Comics to his current status as one of the company’s Executive Artists. Room 4.

2:00-3:30 p.m. Comics Arts Conference Session #12 — Poster Session. Want to go in depth with a comics scholar? Or a whole room of comics scholars? Rather than presenting from the stage, the Poster Session scholars will be ranged around the room to discuss their presentations in small-group and one-on-one discussions. Real-World Consequences Poster Group: Kalani Largusa (School of the Art Institute of Chicago) explores the significance of Kato in his role as the Green Hornet’s sidekick and the shaping of Asian identity; Nathan Wilson(The Comics Journal) looks at the real-world consequences of the representation of Native Americans in comics. Room 26AB.

Queer Poster Group: Courtney Schneider (School of the Art Institute of Chicago) compares the treatment of homosexuality in mainstream and non-mainstream serialized media; Ashley Pitcock (Henderson State University) asks whether Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s movement into bisexuality was a sign of the times or a gimmick to sell Season Eight comics;Michael Harrison (Monmouth College) investigates how Spanish comics authors La Penya in Mondo Lirondo and Ivan Garcia in Capitan Eclipse use fantasy in distinct ways to communicate a 21st century queer Spanish identity. Room 26AB.

2:30 – 5:00 p.m.: Comic-Con How-To — Mixing Color with Felipe Echevarria. Artists looking for a more in-depth workshop should give this a shot, as Echevarria, a registered teacher at the Michael Wilcox School of Color, demonstrates the school’s Wilcox Bias Color Wheel system, recommended for artists of any skill level with any pigmented media (watercolors, oils, acrylics, printer’s inks, gouache, etc). Room 28DE.

4:00 – 5:00 p.m.: Bent Comix — The Next Wave of Gay Cartooning. A year after expanding their creative community into Bent Con, the world’s first queer comics show, the people behind the Bent movement (note: link contains NSFW cartoons) discuss where their distribution network goes from here. Room 4.

4:00 – 5:00 p.m. Finally! Nickelodeon: The Last Airbender: Legend of Korra — Exclusive First Look. The team behind Avatar reconvenes to discuss the next chapter in the saga, which Ay-leen the Peacemaker first alerted us to back in January. Room 6BC.

Creator Alert: At 4:30 p.m., DC Entertainment co-publisher Jim Lee gets a solo spotlight in his own “DC Focus” session, where he’ll no doubt dish on the company’s September relaunch and his work on the DC Universe MMO game. Room 6DE.

5:30 – 7:00 p.m.: Gays in Comics: Year 24! Prism Comics hosts its’ annual celebration of LGBT characters in the comics realm, with this year’s guest-list including Dan Parent, who created Archie Comics’ first gay character, Kevin Keller, Prism Queer Press grant recipient Jon Macy, writer Greg Pak (Incredible Hulks, Herc, Alpha Flight) and a video appearance from Batwoman artist/co-writer J.H. Williams III. After the panel, Prism will hold a mixer and silent auction. Room 6A.

Celeb Sighting: Maggie Q’s Nikita is still around? Well go fig. Get the scoop on the show’s second season at 6 p.m. in Room 6BCF.

8:00 – 9:00 p.m.: Mushroom Clouds and Mushroom Men — Ishiro Honda. If you ever saw the original Japanese version of Godzilla, you know that it’s a genuinely scary piece of work, and Honda was the man who made that vision come to the screen. In this session, Peter H. Brothers, author of the Honda biography Mushroom Clouds and Mushroom Men: The Fantastic Cinema of Ishiro Honda, revisits the director’s career. Room 9.

SUNDAY

10:00-11:00 a.m.: Diversity and Fandom 102: How You Can Make a Difference. We talked about this Monday morning – Racebending and The R come together to discuss what we can do as fans and consumers to make our voices matter in an increasingly fragmented geek media spectrum. Racebending’s Mike Le will serve as moderator, with the panel featuring actor Dante Basco (Hook, Avatar: The Last Airbender); showrunner/writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach (The Middleman); author Malinda Lo; blogger and event promoter Phil Yu (AngryAsianMan.com); USC Professor Henry Jenkins and yours truly. Room 24ABC.

10 -11 a.m.: Teen Comics Workshop. Gene Luen Yang and Thien Pham, the team behind Level Up, will be among the panelists in this workshop for teenagers looking to tell their stories in a comic-book format. Room 30CDE.

Creator Alerts: At 11:15 a.m., writer Marjorie Liu will be part of Marvel Comics’ “Women of Marvel” panel in Room 5AB; you can catch her Marvel colleagues Greg Pak and Axel Alonso discussing the company’s Fear Itself crossover at 12:30 p.m. in Room 6DE. That afternoon at 2 p.m., Buffy the Vampire Slayer cover artist Jo Chen joins Chan in Room 25ABC for “Cover Story: The Art of the Cover;” and DC’s Jim Lee hosts a How-To panel for fans of his artwork in Room 28DE, starting at 3 p.m.

12:00 – 1:00 p.m.: The Philippine Invasion. A look at the Filipino artists who broke into the American comic-book scene in the 1970s, including Ernie Chan, Tony DeZuniga, and Alex Niño, as well as one of their successors, Gerry Alanguilan, hosted by writer/editor Mark Waid. Room 4.

12:00 – 1:30 p.m.: Comics Arts Conference Session #14 — Manga Censorship. What sets Japanese comic-books apart from their American cousins, from a regulatory standpoint? How do these differences play out in the legal arena? And what role did the 1960s magazine Garo play in developing manga as a vehicle for social criticism? Room 26AB.

1:30 – 2:30 p.m.: Comics Arts Conference Session #15: The Comic Book Project — Creativity, Comics, and Academic Success in the Imperial Valley. Over the past three years, students in grades K-12 from Imperial County, California, have been creating comics in their social studies, science, English, and math classrooms as part of a U.S. Department of Education grant. They are using the Comic Book Project to boost academic skills, test scores, and individual success. This presentation features the work of participating students alongside demos from students, teachers, and coordinators. Lori Campos (Imperial County Office of Education), Anthony Arevalo (Imperial County Office of Education), Imperial County student Hallie Campos, and Shaila Mulholland (San Diego State University) will introduce the process and products of this unique educational model and provide tools and strategies for replication in any other school. Michael Bitz (Center for Educational Pathways), founder of the Comic Book Project, will be present to introduce the program and describe the successes and challenges of comics in school classrooms. Room 26AB.

3:45 – 4:45 p.m.: The Holocaust Through the Eyes of a Child, Animated by a Child. Bill Plympton (two-time Oscar-nominated animator, Idiots and Angels), 11-year-old prodigy animator and child film critic Perry Chen, his mother Dr. Zhu Shen (producer), Karina Bessoudo (Toon Boom Animation, vice president of marketing and communications), and Kevin Sean Michaels (director) share insight and a sneak preview of the film “Ingrid Pitt: Beyond The Forest” and the cross-generational collaboration that was formed to create it. The short animated film illustrates the miraculous true story of the late actress Ingrid Pitt (Where Eagles Dare) who, in 1945, escaped at age 8 from a Nazi concentration camp in Poland to later become one of the UK’s biggest movie stars. Also screening will be a trailer for the new documentary on animator Bill Plympton, “Adventures in Plymptoons!” Moderated by Pat Swinney Kaufman (executive director for the New York State Governor’s Office for Motion Picture & Television Development) and Lloyd Kaufman (president/co-founder of Troma Entertainment, author of Sell Your Own Damn Movie). Room 5AB

The San Diego Comic-Con’s growth shows no signs of slowing down, even before its’ host venue, the San Diego Convention Center, begins its’ own expansion. As things stand, however, you can expect virtually all of downtown San Diego to be awash in SDCC-related events of their own. With that in mind, this year’s guide will run in two installments, while also covering some of the extracurricular festivities and celeb sightings.

Case in point: if you’re a Whedonista getting into town before Preview Night on July 20, you should go see singer Jane Lui in a stage adaptation of TEH JOSS’ Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. The show premieres July 17 and runs thru July 30 at the Tenth Avenue Theatre. Tickets are available here, and you can see Lui talk about her transition to acting here:

With that in mind, click under the cut for a look at the POC-centric stuff going on and around SDCC. Highlighted panels will include the full description from the SDCC program.

THURSDAY

12:00-1:00 p.m.: Spotlight on Jo Chen. Speaking of TEH JOSS, no matter how you feel about the Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 8 comic, you can’t knock Chen’s covers for that series, as well as Serenity adaptations like “Better Days,” and her other works. Dark Horse editor Scott Allie, who also worked on the Buffy book, will serve as moderator. Room 7AB

12:00-1:00 Comics Arts Conference Session #2: Graphic Representations of Otherness
Authors such as Scott McCloud and W. J. T. Mitchell have argued for the ways in which graphic narratives manipulate ideas through both image and language, highlighting the way that these elements may work cooperatively or in disjunction to present robust depictions of subjectivity. Anne Cong-Huyen (University of California, Santa Barbara),Caroline Kyungah Hong (Queens College), Kim Knight (University of Texas at Dallas),Amanda Phillips (University of California, Santa Barbara), Melissa Stevenson (Stanford University), Elizabeth Swanstrom (Florida Atlantic University), and Candace West(University of California, Santa Cruz) examine representations of Otherness in graphic media, including comics, television, and video games, focusing on the ways in which representations of otherness in graphic narratives and other media can either solidify stereotypes or undermine cultural assumptions — or both. The roundtable will consider a variety of forms of “Otherness” including gender, race, and sexuality, as well as metaphors of Otherness, including the animal, the monstrous, and the heroic. Room 26AB

1:00-2:00 p.m.: Stan Lee, Yoshiki, and Todd McFarlane. Four years after reuniting with metal legends X Japan, singer Yoshiki goes for a really freaky team-up: the guy who bought Barry Bonds’ balls and the Father Christmas of geekdom. The trio will come together to discuss their joint creation, Blood Red Dragon. Indigo Ballroom, Hilton San Diego Bayfront.

2:00-3:00 p.m.: Love and Rockets. The Hernandez brothers discuss their seminal series, recently reprinted in its’ entirety by Fantagraphics Comics. Room 9.

Celeb Sightings: Psych’s James Roday and Dulé Hill will anchor the show’s panel from 12:30 – 1:30 p.m. in Ballroom 20. Jason Momoa discusses the politics of Khal Drogo, and possibly the hair care, at the Game of Thrones panel, moderated by writer George R.R. Martin from 3-4 p.m. in Ballroom 20; Aisha Tyler will be part of the Archer panel at the Indigo Ballroom in the Hilton San Diego Bayfront Hotel, 4:15-5:15 p.m.

4:00-5:00 p.m.: Kodansha Comics. Japan’s biggest manga publisher discusses its’ upcoming publishing schedule, including Love Hina, Bloody Sunday and – remember her? – Sailor Moon. Room 23ABC.

Creator Alert: Greg Pak (Incredible Hulks) will be part of Marvel Comics’ “Next Big Thing” panel in Room 6DE, 4:30-5:30 p.m. At the same time, a href=”http://geneyang.com”>Gene Luen Yang (Level Up, American Born Chinese) will be on the Comics for Teens panel in Room 26AB.

4:45-5:45 p.m.: Robert Rodriguez’s Quick Draw Productions. What’s next for the man behind Machete? Probably not a sensitive period drama. But find out for yourself at this sneak-peek. Hall H.

5:00-6:00 p.m.: Buffy The Vampire Slayer and LGBT Comics Fandom. LGBT fans hailed the revelation in the long-running television hit that one of its main characters, Willow, had fallen in love with another female character, Tara. This groundbreaking depiction of queer love in the TV show has been built upon in the Buffy comic books published by Dark Horse Comics, and Buffy remains one of the most queer-friendly properties in pop culture. Moderator Charles “Zan” Christensen (Prism Comics president) discusses the special relationship between the Buffyverse and LGBT comic book fans with Buffy creators and actors, including Scott Allie,Andrew Chambliss, Jane Espenson, Drew Greenberg, Tom Lenk, and a special guest! Room 32AB.

6:00-7:00 p.m.: LGBTX — The X-Men’s Queer Characters, Themes, and Fans. The X-Men and their universe have always been popular with LGBT comics fans. The idea of mutants is seen as an allegory for the reality of difference and persecution, as well as community and power, experienced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. The X-Men have also included compelling queer characters in their roster, including the first gay superhero, Northstar. How have these themes and characters been handled? What are the plans for the future? Moderator Chance Whitmire (Fanboys of the Universe) tries to make sense of it all with panelists Peter David (X-Factor), Phil Jimenez (Astonishing X-Men), Chuck Kim (Age of X),Marjorie Liu (Daken: Dark Wolverine), Scott Lobdell (Uncanny X-Men), and Zack Stentz (X-Men First Class). Room 32AB.

6:30-7:30 p.m.: Manga: Lost in Translation. A look at how the industry has weathered the recession, how companies are focusing on both digital and print releases, and what these things mean for freelancers looking to break into the business. Room 26AB.

FRIDAY

10:00-11:30 a.m.: The Black Panel.
This year’s panel will be a bitter yet sweet departure from the past. Help celebrate the life and work of Dwayne McDuffie, with Peter David (writer of stuff), Keith Knight (The K Chronicles, The Knight Life), Reggie Hudlin (House Party, Boomerang, Black Panther), and the reunion of the original Milestone partners, Derrick Dingle, Denys Cowan, and Michael Davis, who have not done a panel together in over an decade. It will be a joyous celebration with a surprise guest or two and some big announcements. Room 5AB.

11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.: JManga — Manga!? Hear it Straight from Japan! Members of the Japanese manga industry discuss where the business is going, and preview jmanga.com, a manga portal supported by the country’s Digital Comic Association, an alliance of 39 publishers. Room 25ABC.

Creator Alert: At 12 p.m., Love & Rockets co-creator Jaime Hernandez holds court in a Master Session at Room 30CDE on visual storytelling presented by the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, with the artwork created to be put up for grabs in the CBLDF Benefit Auction on Saturday; novelist and comics writer Marjorie Liu will be in Marvel’s “Year of the X-Men” panel in Room 6DE starting at 12:30 p.m.

1:00-2:00 p.m. Publishing Queer: Producing LGBT Comics and Graphic Novels. As gay characters and comics make their way into the mainstream, this panel will look at how that material, as well as LGBT creators, can be promoted outside the LGBT community. Room 9.

2:00-3:00 p.m.: Nappy Hour. The infamous cooking timer returns as Keith Knight (The Knight Life, the K Chronicles, (th)ink, MAD) brings together another lightning-fast roundtable discussion of all things nerdist, with a stellar lineup of panelists including writer/producer/illustrator Michael Davis (Milestone Media, The Black Panel), writer/performer Pam Noles (And We Shall March, Death 40 Feet Tall), and writer/director/critic David Walker (Bad Azz Mofo)! Room 23ABC.

2:30-3:15 p.m.: Adult Swim — Black Dynamite. Ready or not, Michael Jai White’s blaxploitation spoof is making the jump to the animated arena. Indigo Ballroom, Hilton San Diego Bayfront.

3:00-4:00 p.m.: Shonen Jump Panel. Editor-in-chief Hisashi Sasaki will be on hand to let you know what it takes to get a shot at Japan’s top manga magazine. Room 9.

Creator Alert: writer Eric Wallace (Mister Terrific) and artists Francis Manapul (The Flash), and Philip Tan (The Savage Hawkman) will be part of DC Comics’ “Justice League” panel in Room 6DE starting at 4:15 p.m. At 6 p.m., Marjorie Liu will be in Room 25ABC as part of the “Girls Gone Genre” panel.

5:30-6:30 p.m.: True Blood Panel and Q&A session. The cast of “Everybody Loves SOOKEH” reunites to discuss something that’ll surely give the Roundtable more to scrutinize over the next few weeks. Ballroom 20.

6:30-7:30 p.m.: The Best and Worst Manga of the Year. Bloggers David Brothers and Deb Aoki will be among the experts sharing their cheers and jeers from the manga marketplace over the past couple of years. Room 26AB.

Celeb Sightings: At 7 p.m., you can choose from seeing LL Cool J talk tech from NCIS: LA in Room 6BCF, or Tony Todd (Candyman) and Sonny Chiba (Kill Bill) discuss their latest film, Sushi Girl, in Room 25ABC.

8:30-9:30 p.m.: Showcasing the Best in Korean Comics. writer Hyun Se Lee (Armageddon) and media scholar Professor Chang Wan Han share the latest trends and best books from Korea’s manhwa scene. Room 8.

It wouldn’t be SDCC without parties, of course, and Friday night, Angry Asian Man will be co-sponsoring the Endless Summer Party on the rooftop of the 10th Avenue Theater, 930 10th Ave. It’s 18 to enter, 21 to drink, with $10 tickets for presale/guest list types, and $15 if you’re buying them at the door.

Meanwhile, yours truly will be bringing the music once again for the Geek Girls Network party, to be held at Vin de Syrah, 901 5th Avenue, starting at 7 p.m. Alas, tickets for the GGN party have already sold out. Stay tuned tomorrow for Part II, where we cover Saturday and Sunday’s events!

By Guest Contributor Jorge Antonio Vallejos, cross-posted from Black Coffee Poet

Near the end of my video interview with Daniel Heath Justice (above) for this special week Celebrating Queer Indigenous Voices I asked, “… anything we’ve left out?”

“There’s a lot we’ve left out,” said Justice.

True!

Although we had a table full of books we failed to mention Queer Indigenous writers from around the world. And I’m embarrassed to say that I did not mention an Indigenous, brown, queer woman who helped pave the way for a brown boy like me: Gloria Anzaldua. She was a Mestiza, Xicana who made an impact on the literature world and changed the way Indigeneity is seen, thought, read, written, and lived.

R.I.P Gloria.

Justice and I focused on Indigenous writers such as Chrystos, Paula Gunn Allen, Gregory Scofield, Beth Brant, all amazing writers who are Indigenous to Canada and the United States.  A great interview (it’s always a pleasure chatting with Daniel) and resource for people, Justice was absolutely right: we left a lot out.

In comes Yellow Medicine Review: International Queer Voices to expose readers to a more broad canon of queer Indigenous writing.

Edited by Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhran, the cover alone lets you know you will be reading writers from Turtle Island (the Americas) and abroad. Three beautiful Polynesian women grace the cover, smiling, welcoming you to open the pages of one of the few literature journals celebrating Indigenous queerness on the page. Three shells float above their heads. I can hear the ocean just by looking at them. I feel calm, and a reassurance that this journal will teach me many things in a loving way.

The introduction is one unlike many: poetic, warm, welcoming, leaving you wanting more. Bodhran writes in English and Spanish (the two biggest colonial languages on Mother Earth) and he acknowledges his ancestors and relations and new family in the text.  Included in the intro is the actual call for submissions followed by his response:

“Our kinfolk from around the world respond, offer me fabric, offer me fiber.  Say: Weave with this.  Weave with me.  And we weave.”

The basket woven for the special issue holds stories from Canada, United States, Hawaii, Guam, Tonga, Australia, Palestine, New Zealand, Samoa, and the continent of Africa. (Yes, Africa is a continent, made up of 53 countries, inhabited by different peoples who live different cultures and speak different languages. It’s not a country with one group of people the way everyone describes it).

There are poems, short stories, plays, essays, letters, songs, and blog entries.  It’s a mix that keeps you engaged through variety and good writing.

The art of letter writing is one that is dying and one that I appreciated being featured in the journal.  Sadly, emails, texts and tweets have become the preferred way of communication.  A snail-mail letter writer myself (I’m looking for new pen pals!  Don’t be shy.), I feel there is still nothing like holding paper in your hand and reading someone’s carefully thought out words.

Aborigine Elder Noel Tovey of the land now known as Australia writes a letter to the Prime Minister: An open letter to the PM, (p. 202).  Written January 14 2009, Tovey was born in 1933 and is one of the Stolen Generations in Australia.  Wrongfully incarcerated for “The Abominable Crime of Buggery”, essentially being queer and having relations with folks, Tovey survived many hardships and wants to see those hardships end for others:

As an older Indigenous man is who is also gay, I am deeply concerned at the suffering of gay elderly people, who, like me, have experienced severe trauma in the past due to the ignorance of those around us.

I have grave concerns about the “same sex equal treatment” reforms and the way in which these compound the suffering of elderly gay, Including Indigenous people. Elderly gay people are from a generation that preceded civil rights and they were subjected to shock treatment, lobotomy, and other horrors.  They hid from view and remain mostly hidden today.  Nevertheless, they are elders of our gay community who deserve protection.

While reading the letter I was again reminded why our Elders are so important to us. The bravery, humility, and love in Tovey’s words come through with every paragraph.  A short letter, you learn something with every sentence.  Tovey shares who he is, where he is from, what he has lived, and his desires for a better future for his people.  And he is not barking like so many activists tend to do.  Tovey writes clear, calm, and with confidence.  His letter is one to be referenced, studied, and used as a spark for future letters to many so called leaders around the globe.

Tonga writer Loa Niumeitolu’s Prison Notes, an essay followed a letter to a friend in prison, gets you thinking about incarceration and those who are incarcerated.  With so many peoples who have colonial histories behind bars it’s an important piece.  For example, in Canada 25% of the prison population is made up of First Nations Peoples who are 2% of the overall population.  Some Canadian provinces see 70% of the prison population made up of First Nations, Aboriginal, and Metis peoples.

Do you see a problem here?

In My First Visit to San Quentin Prison, Niumeitolu writes of Samoans, Tongans, and Cambodians doing time in the famous prison often written about and featured in films.  She lets the reader know that it’s not only Latinos and African Americans who are incarcerated.  There are many different faces of colour with colonial histories living in these neo-colonial extensions of slavery.

It’s Niumeitolu’s questions and insights that really make an impact:

The issue of incarceration does not begin only when you’re in lockdown or, as the brothers at San Quentin know so well, it doesn’t end after you’re let out.

Where do our prisons begin?  What leads to the making of a prison?  How am I contributing to the creation of a prison and the criminalization of people—women, men, and children?

We each have to stop contributing to the building of prisons, the making of something to be so different and separate from something else, that one can be said to be good and the other bad.

Niumeitolu offers a different way of thinking.  She is out of the black and white box, no wehere near it, actually.  Her questions are important.  What is missing are suggestions for alternatives.

In many cultures names are important.  Whether it’s the name of a person, place, story, there is meaning behind a name.  Jennifer Lisa Vest (Seminole, African American, and German) takes you back in history through many names and leaves you knowing why she has the name she does.  A four page poem is all Vest needs to take you on a ride spanning hundreds of years.  Her poem Names (p. 28) is a call to action, a lesson in history, and reason for recognition.  Vest sings to you.  From start to finish you are with her; eyes opening, breath pattern changing, smiles formed, mouth open leaving you in awe.

Reading Names reminds me of why I am a poet and why poetry matters.

Although there is much more to be written of in this 300 page journal I feel it fitting to sign off with some of Vests words.  She writes of a North American experience but it is one that Indigenous peoples around the globe can identify with.  Read the knowledge in Vest’s verse, hear the power in Vest’s voice, and remember that International Queer Voices are here to stay and be read as well as heard:

But they could not defeat us

so they called us savages

Could not baptize us

so they called us heathens

Could not find us

so they called us wiped out

Could not understand us

so they called us mysterious

Could not educate us

so they called us backwards

Could not convince us

to learn their language

so they called us

hostile, shy, afraid

Vest continues her history lesson:

When they got tired of fighting us

we became a legend

They spent hundreds of years

Trying to find the

Last Unconquered Indians

Sent in the army

Government surveyors

Sports fisherman

Anthropologists

Missionaries

But we were untrackable

And intractable

When found

We cost the government

and embarrassment of riches

and white men

Vest ends with a verbal punch to the colonial throat:

We say

Before you left Spain in Search

of your splintered self

We were here

Before you realized England

Was cramped and dirty

We were here

Before you left France

For your piece of the pie

We were here

Before you tried to carve a nation

out of your expatriation

Before you defined your red-blooded

American selves

In terms of our absence

We were here

I have experienced a general ignorance about racial and Indigenous issue in queer and femme communities, and an expectation that anti-racist activism be considered secondary to feminist, anti-homophobic and anti-femmephobic activism, when queer femmes of colour often experience our identities to be one holistic piece. It is an impossible request for a femme of colour to separate her experiences as a person of colour from her experiences as a femme or her experiences as a queer, and it is unreasonable to ask us to prioritise racism last simply because it is not something that affects white femmes. Significantly, this attitude promotes the idea that femme is an identity that cannot co-exist with an identity of colour, that one must choose between being a person of colour and being a femme, or that being femme is a “white thing”. This drives femmes of colour away from femme community, from femme organisations, and possibly away from femme itself as an identity and a self-label. If femme communities and organisations are to acknowledge and embrace the diversity that exists amongst femmes, we must make an effort to be deliberately inclusive, to work to have femme viewed as something other than a white identity, and to acknowledge that working against racism should be something done by everyone.

As a femme of colour who is read as white, I’ve experienced a lot of white queers simply misracialising me. Queers who know quite well that I’m Indigenous will ignore this fact, either through their own white privilege, through refusal to correct their ignorance of Indigenous issues, or through a kind of blindness where they cannot see past my skin. While recent years have seen an attempt by many Australian queer communities to address issues of internalised racism and become more inclusive of racially diverse members, they often still remain white centric and exclusionary to people of colour. The only answer to this is for every member of these communities to actively address inclusivity as a priority, to work at addressing their own internalised prejudices and biases, and to aim for a diverse community as an ultimate goal. I strongly encourage everyone here to take the time to read a little of the awareness-raising work being written by some of the amazing femmes of colour and other queer women of colour, even if most of it is coming out of the US, where there is a far more established femme of colour community than there is here. Hopefully we’ll start to see some homegrown voices soon.

- From Feministe, June 15

Racializen and playwright Shawn Harris will premiere her play, Tulpa, or Anne and Me, this Thursday, June 2, at NYC’s Robert Moss Theater, the eco-friendly performance space located at 440 Lafayette Street in Manhattan. The show starts at 6PM.

Tulpa, or Anne&Me explores a strange friendship that begins with an artist whose lonely world gets turned upside down when Anne Hathaway crawls out of her television. As their friendship blossoms, they begin to examine how race impacts their lives as women, as friends, and as human beings.

The 90-minute show will also run on these dates:

• Friday, June 3rd @ 4:00PM
• Thursday, June 16 at 8:00PM
• Sunday, June 19th @ 8:15PM

The play’s proceeds will benefit the anti-racism organization People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. While anticipating the show, you can follow behind-the-scenes convos about it, check out the show’s musical inspirations, and much more here and here!

By Guest Contributor Simba Rousseau, cross-posted from Her Blueprint

Threatening emails, phone calls, constant surveillance by secret police and eventually prison couldn’t dissuade Randa, an Algerian transsexual and pioneer in the Arab world’s gay and transsexual movement, from going public with her life story.

“I returned home to Algeria from my last trip and that’s when the threats to imprison me started,” says Randa, who received initial threats via email and phone. “As a method of intimidating me, they started sending articles about me to my family, and they would show up at my workplace. Once, while being stopped at a checkpoint, one of the officers grabbed me in the car and told me that he could arrest and rape me and no one would know about it.”

Convinced by influential members of Algerian society, two of Randa’s friends were forced to present her with an ultimatum. Leave the country in ten days or things will get worse.

Ten days is not a long time, but as luck would have it, a feminist organization in Lebanon found out about Randa’s situation and offered to assist.

“I don’t regret speaking out because in the end I realized that the reason they were doing all of this was because they were scared. I managed to shake up their system and this is why they were lashing out at me,” she said in an interview with Her Blueprint. “Of course it was driving me crazy, and I knew that if I didn’t leave the country they would kill me. I decided to continue addressing the situation of LGBT in Algeria outside the country and accepted the offer to go to Lebanon.”

However, Randa’s troubles were far from over.

Once in Lebanon, Randa caught the attention of the Lebanese secret intelligence. One day while going to the General Security (Lebanese immigration), she was informed that she was under investigation because she shared a birth name with a man who had skipped out on military service. It seemed to be an unfortunate case of mistaken identity, though Randa believes the Algerian embassy in Lebanon was responsible for having her detained.

Randa, who had been living as a woman for years, was forced to dress in men’s clothes and confined to a cell alone in the men’s section of Adlieh prison.

Adlieh, a former underground parking lot turned detention center, houses thousands of migrants and refugees and is infamous as a harsh and inhuman detention center.  Human rights advocates have long called for the closure of Adlieh due to its inhumane treatment of inmates. Most detainees languish underground for years until they’re deported or until rights groups are informed of their whereabouts.

Randa was one of the lucky ones. She was able to send a text message to friends letting them know that she had been arrested. “It was a miracle that I got the call that I was going to be released. Almost 99% of the prisoners are deported. They kept me in the prison for over 60 days because they were trying to figure out any way to deport me,” says Randa.

Once Randa was released, she decided she had to take the opportunity to share her life story. By publishing a memoir, Randa hoped to gain closure around her experiences in Algeria and humanize the Trans experience, which remains a taboo topic in most Arab countries. Her biography, Memoirs of Randa the Trans, which is based on a series of interviews with her, was written by Lebanese journalist Hazem Saghyieh and is likely the first book of its kind to be published in Arabic.

Speaking to Her Blueprint, Randa says, “I wanted to say to the world that Trans people exist. We have dreams, feelings, pain–just like everyone else. Our suffering is that we’re treated like monsters and people think that we are just looking for sex.”

So how did Randa become the voice of the Algerian Trans community to begin with? Like the recent political revolution in Egypt, it began with the Internet. In a conservative Muslim country like Algeria, where the penal code and society severely condemns the LGBT community, Randa faced severe difficulties. Oppressed by her family, bullied at school and abused whenever she would tell her mom that she was a girl trapped in a male body, Randa decided at the age of fifteen that someone needed to address the issue of LGBT in Algeria.

“When the Internet arrived to Algeria it gave me an outlet to speak, so I started a personal blog writing about different issues I was facing. Then it started to take on a life of it’s own,” says Randa. “People around the world started coming to my blog and it became a reference for individuals to learn about issues concerning the LGBT community in Algeria.”

Although living in Lebanon as a transwoman has been easier than it was for her living in Algeria, discrimination and harassment still exists. As a certified nurse, finding work in her profession or landing any kind of respectable job has been a daunting task.

However, for Randa the bulk of the discrimination she faces in Lebanon is within the LGBT community. “Within the community you have this hierarchy of the gay male, then the feminine male, then the lesbians and then the lesbians are categorized according to their look and then there are the bisexuals and then the trans,” she said. “Of course there is also the class issue that also plays a role in dividing the community.”

By Guest Contributor Eric Zhang

“I am the beautiful Asian who’s taller than 5-foot-2,” Manila Luzon (né Karl Westerberg) says in her introduction video. She is one of 13 contestants competing on the third season of RuPaul’s Drag Race to win $75,000, a lifetime supply of makeup, a headlining drag tour, and the title of America’s Next Drag Superstar.* She is also one of four Asian American contestants to have been featured on the series – the others include Ongina from Season 1, Jujubee from Season 2, and fellow Season 3 contestant Raja.

While drag performance has historically been tied to working class communities of color – the documentary Paris Is Burning in particular follows the tradition of drag balls in 1980s Harlem, and the significance of drag subculture in the lives of queer African American and Latino men – Asian American queens have not been very well represented in the drag circuit. The prominence of Asian American contestants on RuPaul’s Drag Race, thus, caught my eye. As a queer Asian American man who has dabbled in drag (inspired in no small part by Drag Race), I became interested in the ways in which these queens were represented – and chose to represent themselves – on television. While these queens are, of course, not necessarily defined by their race, two of the contestants use a rhetoric of race in their performance: Jujubee and Manila Luzon. Because Manila is competing on the current season, because her drag persona centralizes a racial discourse to a heavier extent than Jujubee’s, and because the racial politics of her performance has actively been challenged on the show itself, I will narrow my focus on her.

Manila Luzon’s persona makes heavy use of a kind of pan-Asian motif: a quick glance through her website reveals images like sushi, chrysanthemums, and Japanese katakana; costuming choices that include a cherry petal dress with an obi, a cheongsam, and a Thai headdress and brass fingernail extensions; and a tongue-in-cheek reference to Chinatown. On the other hand, her drag name explicitly marks her as Filipino – Manila, the capital of the Philippines, and Luzon, the island on which Manila is located. The discrepancy between Manila’s pan-Asian character and her identity as Filipino American, in fact, provides a key source of tension in her performance: is she relying on Orientalist stereotypes and tropes to build her character, or is she using drag to perform her Pinoy pride?

This tension comes to a fore in two episodes of Drag Race. In the fifth episode of the season, “QNN News,” the queens are challenged to perform a newscast. Manila interviews celebrity guest Kristin Cavallari. Though she normally speaks unaccented, standard American English, Manila chooses to adopt an exaggerated, stereotypical “Ching Chong” accent, speaking in broken English and switching her l’s and r’s. Although questions are raised about the appropriateness of the performance – particularly by fellow contestant Shangela – she wins the challenge. “It was so wrong that it was so right,” says guest judge Debbie Matenopoulos:

For the challenge in Episode 6, “The Snatch Game,” the contestants must impersonate celebrities in a version of The Match Game. While most of the contestants pick pop cultural queer icons, such as Cher and Tina Turner, Manila decides to impersonate Imelda Marcos, former First Lady of the Philippines. (In a snide talking head, Shangela says, “At least this time she picked a Filipino.”) She speaks in an identifiably Filipino accent, although it is still exaggerated and reminiscent of the “Ching Chong” speech used in the previous challenge, and peppers Tagalog throughout her performance. Although most of the jokes kept in the aired episode center around shoes, referencing Marcos’s infamous shoe collection, one joke in the deleted scenes mentions chicken adobo.

Many blogs have already written in response to these performances, including Hyphen Magazine, The New Gay, and Yellow Peril. Although these writers are certainly in their right to be offended – indeed, what Asian American has not been mocked by this same exact kind of ignorant speech on the playground? – I found it hilarious. I thought to myself, though: Why do I find this funny? Why am I laughing when, if she did not identify as Asian, I would be fuming? Is it because she’s Asian that it’s “okay”? No, certainly not. But there was something very particular about this performance that I laughed at; was I wrong for doing so?

In the introduction to Alien Encounters: Popular Culture in Asian America, the book’s editors, Mimi Thi Nguyen and Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu ruminate on their love of the character Data in The Goonies, whom they now recognize as a product of racist caricatures in an anti-Asian political era. In doing so, they raise questions concerning the politics of guilty pleasure, media representation, and identification:

Audiences now often ask of representations: Does it look like me? Does it feel like me? What can it do for or to me? Underlying these questions is an implicit desire to “look good” or to be “well represented” at a time when they know that the whole world is watching. […] indeed, the decades-long desire to generate “positive images” or more “authentic representations” has done little to undermine the power of stereotypes or ultimately to free Asian Americans from them. (16-17)

It is easy to condemn Manila’s act as reinforcing stereotypes and perpetuating racist representations. In fact, I am not here to argue that she doesn’t; as I mentioned above, I readily admit that she does, to whatever extent, rely on Orientalist tropes in crafting her character. However, I am more interested in complicating my own pleasure in watching her perform. Why is it that I identify with this performer who does not conform to ideas of “good” or “authentic” representations, one who borrows heavily from imagery that I would in many other contexts decry?

While Asian American scholarship has long discussed the history and politics of Orientalism, the representation and appropriation of Asian icons in Western cultures, relatively little has been written about the use of Orientalist tropes by Asians and Asian Americans themselves. In the early to mid-20th century, as Asians gained more exposure in the United States – first through immigration and, later, through war – the use of Orientalism marked Asians as foreign and exotic, ultimately working to deny them as rightful citizens of the Western world. As these generations grew and, because of strict immigration restrictions like the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, new immigrants ceased entering the nation, American-born Asians were met with a unique dilemma: they did not “belong” to the country where they were born and raised.

During the 1930s-40s, a group of Asian American performers gained popularity in what was known as the Chop Suey Circuit. Mostly, but not entirely, composed of second-generation Chinese Americans, who grew up with an acute awareness of their “foreignness” in the United States, these performers built a name for themselves by performing a variety of vaudeville, comedy, and dance routines. In her essay “Performing a Geography of Asian America: The Chop Suey Circuit,” SanSan Kwan writes:

On the one hand, the Chop Suey Circuit entertainers succeeded at “playing Oriental,” performing acts like the “Fan Dance,” the “Chinese Sleeve Dance,” and the “Coolie Dance,” in order to give Americans a look at exactly what they expected the “Asiatic” to be. On the other hand, the Chop Suey Circuit was also about performing Americanness, as equated with  whiteness. Dressed in bunny costumes and tap dancing to “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top,”  the mostly second-generation Asian American dancers and singers strove towards cultural assimilation. Presenting their Asian American bodies onstage, performing popular American numbers (which, incidentally, were largely black and Latin American forms appropriated and whitewashed), these entertainers simultaneously reproduced and blurred the boundaries of racial otherness. (122)

In utilizing these images, were they embracing their heritage, critiquing racist beliefs about Asian people, or perpetuating their own marginalization? In many ways, they could only present themselves as Orientalist stereotypes – in order to book shows and make money in a time when such images were the only exposure to Asian people (whether real or imagined) available to Americans. But was it merely a marketing ploy?

Whether consciously or not, by mixing Orientalist imagery with nationalistic, all-American references, these performers raise questions about the precarious nature of their own citizenship in America, about who belongs and who does not. In a time in which race relations and racial segregation relied on a black-white axis, making no room for Asian Americans, these performers could only measure their identities in terms of foreign (Asian) and citizen (American). As neither “colored” nor “white,” Asian Americans were simultaneously permitted to spaces barred to African Americans and barred from places permitted to white Americans.

In much the same way, Manila inhabits a hybrid space. Of mixed race (her mother is Filipino and her father is white), she can “pass” as either Asian or white; she chooses to identify and present herself and her persona as Asian, and in Asian costuming. On the other hand, in other challenges she adopts a particularly American persona – she has dressed like Big Bird, carrot cake, a flapper, and patriotic “white trash” with a blonde wig. (Granted, all of these examples except for the Big Bird costume were challenge-specific, but my point is that she does not limit herself to these Asian stereotypes; many of her costumes are actually devoid of any specific racial or national overtones.) This vacillation between Asian and American and between white and non-white harkens back to the Chop Suey Circuit.

Of course, the circumstances are very different – the Chop Suey Circuit performers were popular in a time when Orientalist tropes were abundant in popular culture, long before Asian Americans began to gain respect as people in their own right and before their own personal stories became acclaimed literature, while Manila is acting in a time when multiculturalism is celebrated, being “politically correct” is expected, and racial stereotyping is a major faux pas. Whereas Chop Suey Circuit performers, to some extent, utilized these personas because they had to, Manila actively chooses to participate in this rhetoric of race in ways that other Asian contestants (particularly Ongina and Raja) have not. (Jujubee did also incorporate Orientalism into her character, most visibly in a challenge in which she dressed in a red cheongsam-like dress for a fake autobiography she titled Memoirs of a Gay! sha, but she did not employ these images to the same extent that Manila does, nor was she ever challenged on the show for doing so.)

Stereotypes of Asians as foreign also remain a prominent motif in Asian American stand-up comedy. Though not necessarily Orientalist in the traditional sense, these routines borrow from certain ways of thinking about Asians specifically and people of color more generally that have contributed to their oppression in America. Comedy, however, works on a markedly different level. While the vaudeville actors used these tropes in an arguably subversive manner, their primary goal was to entertain; they presented themselves as foreign and exotic because that was what their audiences expected of them. Comedians, on the other hand, explicitly challenge these ideas by turning them into jokes. Think of Margaret Cho, whose comedy routine often includes jokes about people’s expectations of her, as an Asian American woman, and impersonations of her mother.

In fact, Manila Luzon cites Margaret Cho as an inspiration for her own use of exaggerated Asian stereotypes. Although she is not a stand-up comedian, Manila does, as a drag queen, incorporate comedy and humor into her performance. Both the “QNN News” segment and the Imelda Marcos impersonation are meant to be comedic performances.

Furthermore, as Tom and Lorenzo point out: “drag is often about being outrageous and politically incorrect.” That’s a little simplistic: rather, drag is explicitly about parodying and challenging sociopolitical binaries – between male and female, straight and queer, upper class and working class, and, in some cases, white and non-white. Drag queens mirror existing hierarchies in order to reveal the true fluidity of these divisions. This is most obvious with the male-female binary: in itself, drag is inherently about the performance of gender and destroying the idea of masculinity. (The parody of women is in itself a completely different question worthy of discussion but not ultimately relevant to the scope of my particular interests here.) As I mentioned above, Paris Is Burning brings questions of race and class into the picture: by performing “upper class” as equated to rich, fashionable white women, the drag houses of the 1980s sought to fight against their disempowerment.

In many ways, I view Manila’s performance as parody – parody of herself, parody of Asians, and most importantly parody of caricatures of Asians. However, as I also mentioned above, she intercuts these exaggerated performances with moments of her own nationalistic pride in being Filipino. She wore a pineapple dress as a reference to former Miss Philippines Lara Quigaman:

She appeared at the premiere party in a terno gown:

And she donned this (very chic) Filipino flag dress:

The tension between Manila’s pan-Asian character and her sincere Pinoy pride and identity becomes central to her controversial performances on the show. Shangela, in criticizing Manila for using offensive stereotypes, says, “She was making fun of a culture that she looks to be a part of, but she’s not.” She implies a dichotomy between the “right” kind of Asian and the “wrong” kind of Asian; ironically, she ignores the fact that the “Ching Chong” accent has been used historically to erase differences among different ethnicities and to group all Asians as an undifferentiated mass of people. As I mentioned above, Shangela comments that, “At least this time she picked a Filipino,” when Manila does her Imelda Marcos impersonation, suggesting that Manila must limit herself to mocking Filipinos. (Also ironically, Shangela’s own performance also heavily relies on racialized stereotypes of the “black southern lady,” and created a pimp/whore character for one challenge.)

There’s a strong disconnect here: Shangela creates a paradigm in which being generically Asian and specifically Filipino are mutually exclusive, while Manila finds it necessary to embrace and perform both identities. And, ultimately, she does use two modes of expression that have long histories in Asian American performance and cultural production in order to challenge Asian marginalization. In parodying racist stereotypes of Asians, she attempts to poke fun at herself and at these representations; by boldly transforming herself into a stereotype, she forces us to confront these images (of course, whether she is successful is highly arguable). In performing Pinoy pride, she promotes ideas of multiculturalism and celebrating diversity (indeed, for a challenge in which the girls must create PSAs about why America is wonderful, she extolls the diversity – of American food).

The discomfort that Shangela, some of the other queens, and even RuPaul herself feel while watching Manila’s performance, along with Manila’s own hesitation to “make this into a race thing,” signifies what Professor Tricia Rose would call “racial illiteracy,” or the avoidance of discussions about race for fear of being deemed racist. Although Manila is clearly aware of her racialized body and of the media invisibility of people who look like her – “I don’t think we have enough Asian people in pop culture” – she is reluctant to discuss the racist/anti-racist implications of her performance.

In the end, do I think Manila is successful in critiquing representations and stereotypes of Asians in popular media? No, not necessarily. She has a definite understanding of her place in the United States as an Asian American, a group of people historically ignored in American racial politics, and uses her identity to carefully craft a sometimes well-defined, sometimes more unsure drag character. However, I think where she fails (when entertainers like Margaret Cho succeed using similar stereotypes) is in her understanding of nuance. While drag characters are, admittedly, not generally known for their subtlety, I believe successful ones do understand how to build a character in the context of their own identity, whether as queer, non-white, working class, etc. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say Manila does end up merely perpetuating stereotypes, because I do think there is a complexity to the choices she makes, I don’t think she has yet figured out how to use those choices to the best of her ability.

I realize I also have not properly addressed my original question, which was how it matters that I am entertained by Manila, and I also realize now that I do not have a concise answer for that. I think my pleasure in watching Manila perform this caricature of my own identity comes from my own interest in these kinds of stereotypes, and the ways in which they have affected my and other Asian Americans’ life experiences. It is encouraging to see her begin to pave the way for others – even perhaps myself – to continue challenging these stereotypes, even though she may or may not have been successful herself in doing so.

As Manila herself says, “Magtrabaho ka,” or, You better work!

–
*Editor’s Note: This piece was submitted a few weeks ago – the third season of Drag Race has ended, and Luzon came in 2nd place.