picked a handful of violets in my name

I linked to impertinence's essay this morning, but it's worth linking to again.

The world is changing; attitudes towards gay people are changing. I want to make it very clear that, regardless of what you think about the band members' sexualities, they helped to change things within their demographic. In the isolated environment of adolescence, they sparked discussion and controversy. I watched it happen.

And that kind of talk is worth a hell of a lot.

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kalpurna has a whole lot of awesome things to say. Here, let me quote extensively:

When members of a dominant culture appropriate aspects of an oppressed culture for entertainment, they characteristically do two things: first, they take stereotypical characteristics and exaggerate them for comedic effect, for people to laugh at, and secondly, they distance themselves personally from identifying with the group in question. They get the audience laughing at the characters, while making sure that offstage, they are not subjected to any of the hate or bigotry that goes along with that. They say "this is entertaining" and "this is not me" with the same breath. That is what blackface entails, and that is, to me, the most hateful thing about it.

When FOB and MCR began their flirtations with gender and sexuality, they were literally doing the exact opposite of what I have described above. They were deliberately taking on the degradation, the hatred, the inflammatory remarks. And they didn't use stereotypes to do so, they used behavior. They encouraged their audience to cheer for men physically expressing affection and sexual interest in each other – not for lisps and rainbow tuxedos.

...

It may well be the case that right now, the mainstream opinion among twelve-year-old girls is that boys kissing is hot. This was categorically not the case ten years ago. If there is a market for stagegay, it is not one that these bands could possibly have been expecting to tap into when they started out. Personally? I think that the fact that middle schoolers will look at a picture of two boys kissing and say "hot!" instead of "eww!" is fucking amazing. That is awesome. And MCR and FOB didn't come around to take advantage of that – they created that.

... Consistently, over and over again, My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy have responded to "fags!" with "hell yeah, motherfucker, now deal with it." They don't say, "No, but we're really straight!"

...

All of this means that no matter what's going on in their personal lives – no matter who they're sleeping with, or what their sexual identity may be – the members of these two bands have chosen to say, "Whether or not I'm gay, I want you to treat me like I am, and I'm going to push you to wonder if I am, and I'm not going to back away from that if I get shit for it. Queer people are my people." Because these bands exist, you can be a 14 year old gay kid growing up in some small town, and you can go to your first concert and watch your idols make out on stage while a thousand people cheer, and then one of them picks up the microphone and says, this is a song for anyone who has ever felt alone.

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ETA: I also have to include this essay in list format by belladonnalin.

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I'm seriously considering writing a semi-academic paper or something on these bands and how they're challenging heteronormativity and stuff. I wish I was taking "Gender and Society in Modern America" instead of "Gender and Society in Modern Europe" because I could write it for class. But I'll pitch the idea to Professor Frader after class on Monday and see what she thinks. It'll probably be short and not-academic enough that I'll just stick it on my lj when I'm done, but whatever.

Yeah, I'm in bandom. I love these bands. I love this music. I don't care if you're not into it. But I do care if you rain on my parade about it. Don't call me stupid or otherwise insult me just because my squee is different from yours.

Differing musical tastes do not need to end friendships. But if you really can't stand my music and you can't stop yourself from insulting me and mine, please defriend me, right the fuck now. Seriously, just GTFO.