I am not a dancer, but I grew up with dance. For my own part, I Scottish Country danced every Friday with my family, so I understand the sheer pleasure of movement to music on an instinctual level, though I am not talented at it.

Moreso, my sister danced growing up. She followed the city's top dance school's professional ballet track to the end of it at age sixteen. At her peak, she was taking fourteen separate classes a week - on top of regular high school at a school on the other side of the city. Not just ballet, of course, but modern, jazz, spanish, and surely others I am forgetting.

The result of this is for a non-dancer, I have seen a lot of dance. From her school's recitals with students at all skill levels, to ballet after ballet (I can't count how many versions of the Nutcracker I've seen! Let alone Giselle and Onegin and Cinderella and Swan Lake and Beauty and the Beast and Romeo and Juliet...) at the NAC, to modern performances by professionals and students in their school's full-time dance track, to world-class highland dancers (I grew up at the same church as the... 2006? world Highland Dance champion, and had the pleasure of seeing her dance many, many times), I've seen it.

Enough that I understand the medium on a deeper level than a casual viewer, enough to know when a dancer is incredibly technically skilled, and when a dancer has something more than just the technique and has the gift of dance. Enough to understand what kind of themes contemporary ballet and modern dance play with, and what those formats look like in the real world, outside of a reality show such as So You Think You Can Dance.

I don't know if it's the part of dance I don't know - ballroom dancing - that seem to be both Nigel and Mary's backgrounds that makes for the difference, but I am saddened and bewildered by the narrowness in the modern, jazz, and contemporary routines. Not necessarily in the choreographers - say what you will about Mia, she's for real. Sonya, I adore to pieces, and Stacy Tookey from SYTYCD Canada. No, it's the judges who reinforce it, week after week, who pound it into the viewers -

It's the heterosexuality of it all. Look, the real dance world? Not very heterosexual. Forget all the gay male dancers that Nigel seems to be afraid people will group him with, the dancing itself, not the classical tales but the new stuff, the contemporary and modern stuff, is often all about breaking gender boundaries. The last piece of dance I saw, by the Paris Opera Ballet, easily one of the best dance corps in the world, was a three part piece. The first was all women - strong, brutal, sharp, exhilarating. The second was men and women together, playing on classical partnerships but clearly subversive, and the third was a blatantly homo-erotic piece involving only men. It was physically powerful, yes, but it played with ideas of strength and masculinity and the marginalization of men who do not pick up on those roles. The men not only - gasp - touched each other intimately, there was even an extended scene where one man bathed the other. It was beautiful. It was uncomfortable. It was profound.

And that's not at all unusual in the dance world. But on SYTYCD? The men had better be masculine, and the women feminine, or Nigel will come down on you. The wonderful jazz piece by Sonya - clearly a fierce, alpha female - got criticized because Jeanine was in charge? Are you kidding me? And Evan was thrown around by her too much? Nigel's main problem with Evan seems to be that he's too soft for a leading man. His praise of Brandon, especially in the Paso Doble, was littered with machoisms and sexual overtones to a frankly disgusting degree.

And all the men-only choreography on the show, what is with that shit? The girls get something of a variety, and get to work together to create beautiful pieces of art. The boys, heaven forbid they touch unless it's to throw each other around, my goodness. That final dance between the top two boys had better be a battle, had better be about male posturing and machoism and sexual dominance. They'd better be trying to outdo each other. They'd better be "nasty" and dirty and sexualized men, or they weren't as good.

I love a lot of things about SYTYCD. I think bringing dance to a wider audience is a wonderful thing. But this? This is a parody of the real dance culture, sexist and dated and full of that "American" undertone that fills so much US media: fear of sexualities that are different, alternative, don't fit the perfect "male/female" duality.

It makes me so, so sad.

bbm_got_me_good pointed me towards photobucket's contact page, so I figured instead of whining I might as well send them a message. Who knows, maybe somebody will actually read it and pass it up? Feel free to snag and adapt if you feel similarly inspired to complain.

Hello,

I was recently collecting images from Prop 8 rallies in California, and in the process, searched the term "gay rights" on your site.

I was more than a little surprised when instead of seeing the results of my search, I got a page telling me I was probably searching for adult content, and that "Photobucket does NOT host sexually explicit content."

I hope you can understand my shock and upset at this. As a queer woman, moments like that remind me how much of society believes we are dirty, simply because of our sexual orientation. Perhaps whomever made that decision did so in good faith without realizing the impact it can have, so I'm writing to point out that classifying "gay" as something adult, explicit, and inappropriate is not a decision that hurts no one. I was pleased - and also confused - to see that lesbian, queer, and homosexual do not give the same warning, but that doesn't negate the initial disappointment. Please reconsider this policy, particularly in light of the recent negative press companies like Amazon have received for their homophobic search policies.

Thanks for you time,
(insert real name here)

Since when was "gay rights" a term that probably relates to adult content and requires a reminder that Photobucket "does NOT host sexually explicit content"?



Click for larger, or search it yourself.

NOTE TO PHOTOBUCKET: "GAY" IS NOT RATED NC-17. Shall we send you over to Amazon so you can learn why?

Yes yes, the Miss California Debacle is old news, but I just stumbled across this dude (don'taskhowplease) and his hilarious youtube vids, and this one made me crack up awesomely:

( it's just the way she was raised! )

ETA. Oh google. Why do I love you? Because you think of little random details. Like, changing the hrule in google search to a rainbow for searches with the word "gay" in them.

I had a moment of absolute, gut-wrenching despair last night. While doing the dishes, as these things are wont to happen, and fortunately B was in the living room or I might have taken out my frustration on said poor, blameless dishes.

( Read more... )

What He Should Have Been, by littlenotebook.

The prompt they're responding to was: When Ianto was a little girl all he wanted was to be able to wear his father's suits. Now he does, but his family doesn't want anything to do with him. And damn, does it ever do it justice. Why? Because I really believe that yeah, this could be my Ianto, without a question.

You've probably already seen that ad, and you've probably already been linked to bodlon's post on the topic of the backlash against gay marriage. smirnoffmule also linked me to a breakdown of the lies in the video.

Last night, I was watching the latest episode of Project Runway Canada, the second-last episode where the mentor goes back to the contestants homes to see their collections and meet their friends and families. The front-runner, Sunny Fong, who we already know lost his father to cancer, talks a bit about how he hopes his mum will be proud of him if he wins, because even though he knows she is, she's never said it out loud. He tears up - it's very moving, and very clear there's some difficulty between them. 

And then we go meet his friends, who are "more his family than his actual family", including... his husband. 

You know, gay marriage has been legal here for a few years now, and I still get startled and excited when I hear a man introduce his husband, or a woman introduce her wife. Because it's true. Because they get to say it. Because they don't have to help anyone hide their bigotry behind vague terms like "partner", or juvenile terms like "boyfriend/girlfriend".

Because they've been together for nine years, and how dare anyone tell Sunny he doesn't have a right to make a new, legal family with this man whom he so clearly adores? 

Take heart, my American friends. You'll get there. It'll suck, it might take the overturning of a generation, but I believe with all my heart you will get there. Because it's about freedom. Because it's about love. Because it's the only right thing to do, and though sometimes getting it right takes time, you're pretty damn good at getting there eventually.