Cranky Lesbian

Look what the homosexuals have done to me!

Category: Outings

Perez Hilton and Selective Outing

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On June 6, 2008

In Outings

Bass originally approached People about coming out as Anne Murray.

In a vlog entry posted on his website yesterday, gossip guru Perez Hilton made some observations about the way the media treats the practice of outing queer celebrities that I thought bore repeating. If you want to watch the video yourself, the topic comes up around the 1:52 mark. If you’d rather read his remarks, I’ve transcribed them below:

The last thing I wanted to talk about today was something that I’ve really been thinking about recently. You know, a couple years ago I got so much crap, and I still get so much crap from people and the media for quote-unquote ‘outing’ celebrities.

Two years ago, I reported about Lance Bass’s secret relationship with his then-boyfriend, douchebag Reichen. I reported on the trips they would take together, I reported on the dates they would go on, I reported on the fights they would get into. All of this before Lance Bass officially came out of the closet — and helped his career by coming out, because he had no career before he came out.

Anywho, I got criticized so much for that, for reporting what I knew to be true. Well, I find it really interesting that the same thing is happening now, only it’s the mainstream media doing the outing. The mainstream media nowadays is reporting about Samantha Ronson’s alleged, reported lesbian relationship with Lindsay Lohan. And no one is calling them out on the outing. They’re not even using the word outing, they’re using the word reporting.

I don’t know if that makes me upset or it makes me happy, because I think actually it makes me happy that they’re treating them the same, and it’s to me a sign of equality. But also maybe it’s not.

Maybe it’s a sign of inequality. Maybe gay men and lesbians or bisexual women or Lindsay Lohan is held to different standards. Maybe it’s okay for Lindsay to be experimenting but for a guy, it could potentially be damaging to his career.

Like everybody still freaks out when I say Wentworth Miller is gay. Well, Wentworth Miller, star of Prison Break, is a homosexual. Yes, Wentworth Miller likes to suck cock. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Lindsay Lohan reportedly loves to eat pussy, and there’s nothing wrong with that, either.

What’s so interesting is even a ‘safe’ media outlet like People magazine who loves to play it safe reported in their most recent issue that Samantha Ronson and Lindsay Lohan are, quote, ‘definitely together.’ People magazine is saying that Lindsay and Samantha are ‘definitely together.’

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that ‘definitely together’ means they’re in a relationship, they’re dating. People magazine outed Lindsay Lohan. How come nobody is calling them out on it? I don’t know. Or should they, should they not? Is the fact that no one is calling them out on it a good thing? I don’t know.

I’m not going to write a treatise on the ethics of outing, or what constitutes an outing, or anything like that. For one thing, I need to conserve my energy since I have a long day of tennis-viewing ahead of me. (It really wears you out watching other people run around like that.) For another, I’m lazy even when not in energy conservation mode. But I will suggest that celebrities like Bass and Lohan effectively out themselves when they don’t attempt to hide their same-sex relationships, which is why I take exception to the argument favored by Hilton’s critics that his so-called outing campaigns are tantamount to some kind of a gay witch hunt.

And to briefly touch on Hilton’s question of whether there’s a gender-driven double standard at work in how the media goes about outing celebrities, I think he’s right to a certain (possibly large) extent. However, it’s reductive to simply call it a discomfort-with-male-sexuality issue. In reality, there are all kinds of gender politics at work, from the way society has a tendency to be utterly dismissive of lesbianism and female bisexuality to the way celebrity-obsessed magazines and tabloid TV shows so aggressively exploit women in general and young women like Lohan in particular.

Luke Macfarlane Comes Out; World Asks “Who is Luke Macfarlane?”

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On April 15, 2008

In Outings

“If you see a painted sign at the side of the road…”

Luke Macfarlane, a cute young actor who appears on ABC’s mawkish Brothers & Sisters, came out today in an interview with Canada’s Globe and Mail, in what can only be described as a crushing blow to every straight female fan of Prison Break who has ever posted the words “Wentworth Miller isn’t gay, he just hasn’t found the right girl yet” on an Internet message board. You see, Macfarlane, who was previously linked to Grey’s Anatomy star T.R. Knight, is known to spend time with Miller, and Perez Hilton raised eyebrows last summer by declaring them a romantic item.

Now, if you take the Miller-obsessed IMDb crazies at their word, the two of them are probably just partaking in aggressively heterosexual activities together, like watching Showgirls (for the naked women, not the delicious campiness) and lifting weights (for their health and the natural high they get from exercise, not the sweaty partial male nudity—yes, when I imagine these two lifting weights together, the shirts eventually come off). But me, I’m a romantic, so I prefer to think they’re making sweet, sweet love together and cuddling to Golden Girls reruns while drifting off to sleep.

You can read the interview in its entirety at the Globe and Mail website, but here’s the swoon-worthy part:

Though no secret to his family and close friends, Macfarlane has, until now, been guarded about his personal life as a gay man. Over lunch in Los Angeles, where he lives, he initially insists that he has no concerns about his public revelation—but a few seconds later he is shifting nervously in his chair, and concedes that he is “terrified.”

“I don’t know what will happen professionally … that is the fear, but I guess I can’t really be concerned about what will happen, because it’s my truth.”

Congratulations to Luke on coming out, and may a bit of his integrity rub off on all of those other actors and actresses who are currently “guarded” about their personal lives. You don’t have to tell us who you’re fucking, ladies and gentlemen, just get the hell out of the closet.

And in other news…

Cynthia Nixon was on Good Morning America earlier to talk about surviving breast cancer, and you can see why the Point Foundation saw fit to honor her last week when she talks about her family. During her sit-down interview with Cynthia McFadden, Nixon recalls her partner Christine Marinoni’s reaction to her diagnosis (“She was in a panic. She was just trying to calm herself down any way she could”) and talks about her children’s relationship with Marinoni, saying:

“They love her. They call her Mom. They call me Mommy. My son is very funny. Sometimes he says Mom, and it’s obvious he means both of us or either of us. He just says Mom and whoever answers is fine.”

You might note that McFadden mentions the last time she talked with Nixon about her personal life, things got a little “dicey.” Nixon opted not to reply, “If by ‘dicey’ you mean your line of questioning got a little patronizing,” but that’s just because she’s a class act.

If you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about (and people rarely do), here’s a refresher course: Two years ago, in her quest to overdramatize Nixon’s remarkably matter-of-fact coming out, McFadden conjured images of The Children’s Hour by actually uttering the words, “You know an old friend of mine says if you can live through the thing you think you can’t and survive…” McFadden, who has enjoyed high-profile friendships with the likes of Katharine Hepburn and Liz Smith, should have known better for obvious reasons.

Shelby Lynne: The Advocate Interview

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On January 24, 2008

In Outings

The January 29th issue of The Advocate.

Since posting this item about Shelby Lynne and her New York Times Magazine profile a couple weekends ago, I’ve been asked by several Googled-out lesbians for help locating the singer’s latest interview with The Advocate.

The article (written by Michele Kort, the Laura Nyro biographer and author of Dinah!: Three Decades of Sex, Golf, and Rock ‘N’ Roll, whose Portia de Rossi interview is one of the best I’ve read in The Advocate) isn’t online yet, so to read the whole thing you’ll have to go out and buy issue 1001 of the magazine, currently on newsstands. Out of the small amount of kindness that remains in my mostly-shriveled heart, I’ve assembled the gay-centric bits for you shameless gossips.

First, you must understand that this is no ordinary Advocate interview. Most Advocate interviews consist of a fawning reporter asking a Z-list celebrity what it’s like to be a gay icon. By the second paragraph of Kort’s three-page Lynne piece (five if you count all the photos), you know you’re in for something different:

Doing press is “kind of a nightmare” for Lynne, and when The Advocate ventured out to take some pictures and talk about her new CD, Just a Little Lovin’—on which she covers songs recorded by the timeless gay icon Dusty Springfield— Shelby self-medicated, shall we say. Throughout the long afternoon and into the evening her emotions ebbed and flowed, from insecurity to confidence, petulance to intimacy. One moment she was hugging me, the next walking off in a huff with my tape recorder. “Don’t worry,” said Lynne’s manager and friend, Elizabeth “Betty” Jordan, “she’ll bring it back.”

Cranky note: The nature of Lynne’s relationship with Jordan (then known as Betty Bottrell) was first questioned by a brave reporter in 2001, and it didn’t go over well with Shelby. Kort is more delicate in her approach to the subject:

In Elizabeth, Shelby found a manager, executive producer, and best friend. “It’s very important. Very personal,” Lynne says of their relationship. “I guess we were just there at the right time for each other. My life at that time was completely uprooted; all I had was that record that I was making. We’ve depended on each other now for eight years, for everything in life. And that’s all there is to that.”

I suggest that however Shelby describes it, the partnership seems primary. She agrees. “Primary is a good word, actually. Things that are that important you keep close as you can. You’re so lucky if you ever get something that important.”

Another Cranky note: So far, so good, right? Shelby hasn’t broken a bottle of Southern Comfort over a pool table and challenged Michele to a rumble yet. Unfortunately, trouble is brewing:

But talking about whom she loves, even in the most generic terms, turns out to be off-limits, despite The Advocate’s understanding going into the interview. In Palm Springs, Lynne got downright combative when I gingerly approached personal territory. “What’s the question?” she asked several times. But when I asked, “Are you in a relationship?” she immediately interrupted with “I don’t talk about my personal life.” It was confusing: Shelby seemed to be demanding that The Question be asked even as she fended it off.

So now, on the phone, I bring it up again. She still stonewalls, but more gently. “I just don’t think I want to ever be a part of a group of people who want to make announcements about their personal life,” she says. “Because, you know, that’s all you have.”

“Do you hate labels?” I ask, because I’m sensing what may underlie her reluctance.

“Tell me, do I? You already know the answer.”

When I call her a few days later for some follow-up questions, I ask one last time, in the gentlest way I can imagine, whether Shelby could subscribe to the sentiment Dusty famously expressed in a 1970 interview: “I know that I’m as perfectly capable of being swayed by a girl as by a boy.”

Shelby’s just not having any. “It’s fine that you keep wanting me to go there, but I just don’t believe I need to,” she says firmly. “I give away so much in the songs, man.”

“But did you not think The Advocate would ask such a question when you agreed to do the interview?” I finally ask.

“But it’s not anybody’s business who I sleep with or who I fuck!” she says, as frustrated as I am. “I don’t give a shit what the magazine is. People are going to come up with whatever they want to come up with on their own; I don’t have to make announcements. Come on!”

Cranky again: Oh, for fuck’s sake. The only thing I hate more than the closet-closet is the walk-in closet, that strange space that allows someone to acknowledge her “primary relationship” with another woman without using the word gay, while also giving her room to turn around and snap that she won’t “make announcements” about her personal life.

Lynne is right that it’s nobody’s business who she fucks (though asking whether someone is gay or straight or bisexual, or merely averse to labels, is hardly the same as asking for their partner’s name, date of birth, and social security number), but she didn’t have similar meltdowns when reporters assumed that person was male. And perhaps she’s making things a bit more complicated than necessary. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure her sister was able to acknowledge her relationship with Steve Earle without doing a “Yep, I’m Straight” TIME cover.

(Special thanks to H.M.C. for the magazine hookup.)

2/24/08 UPDATE: You can now read the complete article at Michele Kort’s website.

Gay American Gladiator Watch: “Ice” Comes Out

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On January 21, 2008

In Outings

“Touch my Melissa CD and I’ll break your neck, twerp.”

When former American Gladiator “Zap” told Maxim magazine earlier this month that “half the team was lesbians at one time,” the world replied with a resounding “Duh.” Okay, the world didn’t seem to react at all, but had it done so, you can safely assume the response would have been split between “Duh” and a puzzled “Only half?”

Last week, one of those lesbians announced herself on Access Hollywood, and it was none other than Lori “Ice” Fetrick, who once appeared on an episode of Ellen. Fetrick told the program that she has been gay since she was 18 years old, by which she probably meant she realized she was gay at 18.

To be fair, you never know with a gladiator: she might’ve graduated high school and decided to become a lesbian the way some people decide to become a mechanic. Gladiators are, after all, a special breed, and can become anything they want simply by setting their minds to it. (I once read that Hawk actually turned himself into a hawk.)

About her sexuality, Fetrick said, “It was something that when I was on the Gladiators I never talked about because I was in the height of my fame. You can’t talk about it, just like everybody says right now — you can’t talk about being gay when you are in the height of your glory.”

By which she probably meant — well, I have no clue what she meant. I’ve read that quote several times and am still lost. Words like “gladiators” and “height of your glory” simply don’t compute, although she’s obviously right that it was uncommon for public figures of that era to come out.

Despite that, the notion that Ice’s sexuality was unknown to her adoring public isn’t entirely true. I was a kid at the height of her fame (my brother and I spent our summers watching Gladiator reruns), oblivious to the concept of homosexuality, oblivious even to my own glaring homosexuality, and yet somehow I knew Ice was a lesbian of Gertrude Steinian proportions. She was my favorite gladiator because of it, and the reason I chose this photo to accompany a previous post.

Fetrick acknowledges as much in her Access Hollywood interview, coyly suggesting that some of her fans knew she was gay. Remembering the fun she had with fellow Gladiators, she said, “Nitro and myself used to have contests on the road.” Which means you weren’t imagining things when you thought they were both flirting with Ellen Morgan.

To catch up with Ice, you can visit her official website.

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