Rainbows banned at Mississauga Catholic schoolposted by ericb at 11:35 AM on June 10, 2011 [4 favorites]
Despite a ban on any rainbows at the St Joseph Catholic Secondary School anti-homophobia event June 3, the student organizers found a creative way to get their message across: hiding rainbows inside the cupcakes.
Leanne Iskander, 16, who founded the school’s “unofficial” gay-straight alliance in March, tells Xtra the Dufferin-Peel Catholic School Board put the kibosh on displaying any rainbows at their information booth.
“We brought signs and posters with rainbows, and we were told that we can’t put them up,” says Iskander, who was recently named the 2011 honoured dyke and youth grand marshal. “They said rainbows are associated with Pride. There’s so many other things that a rainbow could be. It’s ridiculous.”
The teacher who delivered the news told Iskander the decision came from the board. “The board wasn’t there, but they knew about the event,” she says.
Since rainbows couldn’t be displayed openly and proudly, the students baked rainbows into the cupcakes by dying the batter in a rainbow of colours. The cupcakes were sold for 50 cents each, raising about $200 for charity.
But the students couldn’t donate the money to any gay, lesbian or trans charitable organization, such as the LGBT Youth Line. “We asked if we could donate to the money to the Youth Line and the board said no. We were told to donate to Covenant House, a Catholic homeless shelter.”
"We also feel it would be irresponsible to ignore the response. Amid the mud-slinging, we have received dozens of intelligent, diverse and worthy critical responses to our 'Beyond Gay' cover. We will devote a special section of the next issue of The Grid to publishing your reactions."I look forward to reading that section.
"Out in America is an uplifting, funny and highly respectful look at what it means to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender in America today. Above all, however, the film is a beautiful celebration of love and shared humanity. Featuring interviews with an extremely diverse group of couples and individuals interspersed with just the right amount of historical and political events, Out in America portrays LGBT Americans in one of the most real and honest ways I have ever seen on film."*Trailer || Excerpt.
Post-mos like me were breastfed on self-empowerment models like The Spice Girls and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and their mutant strain of feminism. We were all about Girl Power, and I designed a shirt in computer class to prove it. We learned important life lessons about how to be confident in our sexuality from Britney Spears.Um... hello? You're a male who is taking cues about liberation from Ginger Spice and Buffy and Britney, comparing finding power in who you are to feminism, and then talking about how you're a new breed of gay male who doesn't buy into gay culture? Just because you might have done all this by the time you were 15 doesn't mean you're special and new. It just means you're an early bloomer.
Things have moved outwards, and we have moved on. West Queen West, where I live and love and play, has been unofficially dubbed Queer West for some time now, with grimy party nights at The Beaver and Wrongbar and blackout parties at the Drake or on Ossington along with the new set of cool straight kids who are also flocking to be part of the action. Monthly parties have also begun to pop up east of Trinity Bellwoods, like dance-till-you’re-wet HER at La Perla, a Mexican restaurant by day on Queen near Bathurst. We’ve even got an east rising happening: Wayla Bar on Queen East is attracting mad business and giving us west-enders a new reason to venture past Yonge. The Village has all but become a dirty word in circles of the nouveau gay. We just let it die.Um... duh! There've always been the straight kids who want to be in on the gay party. And "the neighborhood" has always been moving and shifting.
The idea is littered throughout gay iconography: Guys with beards and tattoos are the new hot commodities. Hairless twinks, move along. Online, more and more, the words “straight acting and looking” or “masculine” have popped up in “Looking for” boxes.Um... wow. What was going on with all those Joe Gage films? Kansas City Trucking Company? El Paso Wrecking Corp? L.A. Tool & Die? There's nothing new under the sun, kids, and these movies were made before you were born and defined "gay porn" for many years before it was streaming into your computer for free. Here's a shocker for you: hairy chests, thick moustaches, flannel and jeans were the de facto uniform of the "clones" back before AIDS turned everything into the clean twink fantasy.
Recently, I ran into a fellow twentysomething gay who was on his way to a rare new party in the Village being spearheaded by some hairy-chested youngun’ like me who, unlike me, wants masculine men only. The “allure” of this party was broken down to me like this: “It’s where all the masculine guys and shit go now to avoid the fags. Hairy chests, facial hair—you can’t even get in without stubble. I mean it, real men.”Yeah, the Bear Movement started in 1987 when Richard Bulger started up a little 'zine for him and his friends depicting gay men who were into "Masculinity Without The Trappings". That itself was a reaction to the twink porn which was itself a reaction to the "dirty" era of rampant AIDS, before which the gay liberation movement was largely driven by gay urban hippies who were using the lessons they learned organizing against the Vietnam war to try to change society to make it more friendly for homosexuals.
Forty years after the Manifesto and the infamous Stonewall Riots in New York City, a new generation of twentysomething urban gays—my generation—has the freedom to live exactly the way we want.To me, this reads less like a reflection on his own life and more like a manifesto of his own. And while yes, he focuses on Toronto (apparently, a land of unparalleled equality that has nothing in common with any other first-world metropolitan area), it's pretty clear from the first paragraph that the author imagines that this applies to most of today's "twentysomething urban gays." I'm not contesting his lived experience; if anything, it seems a lot like he's contesting ours.
...
Post-mos don’t hang rainbow flags in their windows or plaster them on their bumpers. We don’t march in Pride and we probably never will. (After-parties only, please.) We don’t torture ourselves to fit in with other gays. In fact, most of us have come to resent the stereotypes and the ideals associated with preceding gay generations. It’s not that we hate gay culture; we just don’t have that much in common with it anymore.
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posted by k5.user at 10:15 AM on June 10, 2011 [5 favorites]