Kaleidoscope of the Queer Experience

Afterellen.com is a website about LBT woman in the media. Usually this pertains to television media or movies, but it also applies to the written word. Afterellen provides the reader access to news that you could hear on E! or MTV such as a movie with a lesbian sex scene or a famous person coming out.

On the other hand it also highlights news that is not mainstream such as the a book review on a lesbian love story or an interview of an underground queer hip-hop artist. Afterellen celebrates woman from different backgrounds

The link below is too an article that is celebrating black lesbians in America. These people aren’t noted by mainstream but are highly visible in the LBT women community.

Angela Robinson and Jasika Nicole

Just for fun I’ve added a link to a Vlog about race on Afterellen. Read the comments

“Who will stand against Uganda’s brutal anti-gay law?”

This article is posted on the Washington post website. What interested me in this article is not that law, which is hugely unjust, but America’s involvement. “In a time of constant calamity and crisis fatigue, proposed legislation in Uganda to execute gays passes through the American consciousness with the impact of a weather report.” In a country that will talk about a cheating golfer for weeks, there is no mention, no awareness of this corrupt situation.

My final article on EW.com (Entertainment Weekly). It’s purpose is to re-cap the show Rupaul’s Drag Race (RDR). RDR is competition between Drag queen from different parts of the U.S. to become the next Drag super star. The show if filled with bitch fights and Drag slang (which I wholly support). The article, like the show, is very light-hearted and campy.

What I appreciated about the show and the article is the diversity and the drag history they like to slip in every now and then, using words I had not heard outside of Paris is Burning

I selected these particular news items simply because they interests me. I could have chosen 3 very serious articles about the struggle and strife that the queer minority goes through, but that’s not all there is to the queer experience. For me it was equally important to highlight serious world issues and light hearted entertainment.

Everyone one has a story and there is such diversity in the queer experience. These articles exemplify race-queer living now. They focus on issues of today’s world; a lesbian filmmaker trying to make it, how to be an out lesbian actress, the current criminalization of queer people (gay people) in Uganda, and Drag queens.

In the simplest sense discourse is conversation, or information; the exchanging of ideas. It is through discourse (through knowledge) that we are created. Discourse gains power and validity from the casual acceptance or apathy of the public at large of the “reality” with which we are presented. The public at large has deemed these issues unimportant and has brushed them aside. The article and my speaking of these articles are a counter-discourse to the mainstream.