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This is well and good, but it also highlights why seasoned editors, pitching procedures, and formal editorial structures matter in the first place. The proliferation of user-friendly blogging platforms and digital-first journalism has empowered anyone and everyone to offer their “hot take” on the pop culture moment du jour. (Former Into EIC Zach Stafford issued a heartfelt apology for the piece, and black writer Clarkisha Kent offered up an insightful and eloquent rebuttal.) I love Into’s robust and ongoing coverage of LGBTQ migrants seeking asylum in the United States, but its now-infamous “Thank U, Next” analysis, which alleged blackface, homophobic bullying, and transphobia, was a poorly argued and horribly researched mess. As a writer and a journalist, I can also attest firsthand that cultural criticism is one of the most difficult genres of writing to do well. IRL dialogues, too, please!)Īs a consumer of media, critical analysis of queer (and queer-adjacent) pop culture is one of my very favorite things to read. In 2019, we owe it to ourselves to choose the battles we fight with thought and care (and, if we’re able, move them beyond the confines of Twitter’s character limit. And the nuances of labels and identity are important to discuss-but we can’t let semantics hold us all back from uniting against actual, material threats to our freedoms and protections. I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that Twitter and other online spaces like it ( RIP, Tumblr) are vital platforms for building community among LGBTQ people, especially those who might not be able to safely forge real-life connections with other queer folks.
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Digital dialogues are still dialogues and can still be used to unpack issues that affect marginalized people in tangible ways. Is every Twitter tirade this trivial when applied to the “real world”? Of course not. At Pride, nobody’s going to walk up to you and demand to know how you identify or why the person you’re holding hands with looks like a cis person of the “opposite sex.” When you walk into a gay bar-or a lesbian bar, for that matter-nobody’s checking at the door for your gay card. Hell, I’ve even waxed poetic about the complexities of language queer women use to describe ourselves on this very site.īut here’s the tea: Much of the discourse-y infighting LGBTQ folks engage in on social media doesn’t match up with the interactions we have with queer people in our day-to-day lives. (Yes, I know, insert the “weird flex, but okay” meme here.) Does the lesbian community inherently exclude trans women? Nope-and it never has! Is pansexuality by default more inclusive than bisexuality? Um, no, not exactly! These are fights I’ve had time and time again.
![um survey says your gay memes um survey says your gay memes](https://brill.com/cover/covers/9789004431218.jpg)
I will confess that this is somewhat hypocritical coming from me: Given the right circumstances or appropriate amount of after-work wine, I’ll gladly hop on the discourse train and flaunt my women’s studies minor from undergrad on Twitter.