Because otherwise I’d have to lock up my wife.
So that’s what they meant when they said gay marriage was a threat to my marriage — only they got it backwards.
I do feel some concern for my gay friends, though. It must be hard to live up to that stereotype of being absolutely fabulous all the time, and what if you don’t like show tunes or obsessive depilation or spending a fortune on stylish clothes? I think the next step in tolerance has to be to accept people as they are, not as the cliches tell us they are.
Nice sharp satire here.
Touche! The bigots can consider themselves skewered.
Well, I think if I take all my gay guy friends and just pick and mix I could make up one of those in the video.
Funny, none of my lesbian friends would enjoy watching football or doing home repair…
“I do feel some concern for my gay friends, though. It must be hard to live up to that stereotype of being absolutely fabulous all the time, and what if you don’t like show tunes or obsessive depilation or spending a fortune on stylish clothes?”
That was answered, in fabulous music, back in the early 90s by the gay duo Romanovski and Phillips when they asked, What kind of self respecting … am I? (NSFW)
I agree — but don’t think this video is promoting the cliche as such. The exaggerated stereotype in this particular satire is there to make fun of homophobic fevered fantasies. Push it to the ludicrous extreme they make it and then turn it on them.
It’s a little like attacking racism by portraying Obama as throwing fried chicken and watermelon around the Oval Office while tap-dancing in spats on the desk. The liberal point of view is obvious because it’s so over the top. The humor doesn’t entail buying into a stereotype and thus perpetrating it, but mocking the stereotype and thus blowing it up.
jeebus those guys were adorable.
this also reminds me of my favorite new yorker cartoon
http://www.condenaststore.com/-sp/Male-Prostitute-Oh-yeah-baby-I-ll-listen-to-you-I-ll-listen-to-you-al-Prints_i8574996_.htm
Yup, that was FAAAAAABULOUS!
I’m pointing my husband at that. (He reads your blog anyway). Not because he doesn’t support gay marriage – we both do – but because there’s a few obvious ideas in there that perhaps he ought to take notice of.
Wanders off, humming in slow tango time
” I think the next step in tolerance has to be to accept people as they are, not as the cliches tell us they are.”
I think the first step in tolerance is to accept people as they are. As for the clichés, the video uses its satire to point out how pointless most clichés are.
Truly, my greatest fear as well. How could I ever hope to be awesome enough to keep my wife’s attention if I must also must compete with teh gheys fabulosity as well as every other heterosexual male on the planet.
@me Not to mention the lesbians! How am I going to compete with the lesbian!!??!!?? Damn it! Everybody know that the lesbians are after our wives and daughters and that regular women are helpless against their sexy charmed. Doooooomed! Doooooomed I say!
@#10:
That link leads to the most incoherent bunch of crap since Professor Irwin Corey’s last lecture.
“obsarxangels” seems to be spamming that all over the place. Wonder if he’s from Montreal…
Oh Madogoddess, a religious nut and wannabe revolutionary against the ‘socialist menace’. …and they’re 9/11 truthers.
Uo HO HO HO HO HO HO HO HO HO HO
Yeah, the now deleted #10 was Dennis Markuze, again.
Is there not a way to blank out a comment rather than deleting it, so that the numbering doesn’t change? For instance, disemvoweling could just to be expanded to include disenconsonanting as well.
It would avoid situations like the comment by peterh now apparently criticising himself.
“I think the next step in tolerance has to be to accept people as they are”
Accepting people as they are is the current step in tolerance not the next one. Broadening the in-groups would help a bunch too; this is the functional equivalent of dropping identity labels based on abstracts.
Hmm… support for gay marriage strangely decreasing. Do I have to be a girlfriend for one of these gents to steal me?
So we have sanity in MN, but then we get this reported on BBC. Uganda to pass anti-gay law as ‘Christmas gift’
WTF!
PZ:
Despite being gay, I must disagree with you.
Groupthink/echo chamber and all that (imagine that-people think it’s groupthink when a bunch of people agree with one another).
Wouldn’t want people out there to think that all commenters mindlessly agree with you.
Tony @ 18:
Tipping my hat to you for independence of thought.
Yes, there could be a lesbian version of this.
“Hey ladies, not very interested in the power tools, are you? Well, we are!”
It’s been said that every working woman needs a wife…..but a gay guy would work, too.
what about a working woman having a wife AND a gay guy?
Wasn’t that already a sitcom?
I think the “fabulous gay guy” stereotype is unusual. While it’s certainly confining and something to get rid of, it’s also partially the reason being gay has succeeded in going from unspeakably taboo to what it is today. I really can’t think of any other stereotype quite like it. If I were gay, I suspect I’d have somewhat mixed feelings.
I do not accept Dennis Markuze the way he is.
— — — — — — —
“a working woman having a wife AND a gay guy?”
I would marry her/them. I would bring in part of the bread, but refer to them whenever it is time to repair stuff.
I would volunteer to cook, but after a while of suffering fried sausages and boiled potatoes with ketchup they would ban me from going near kitchen. I would not provide ethnic food, since lutafisk and fermented herring is kind of an acquired taste.
@razzlefrog, 24: The “fabulous gay guy” stereotype is just a “positive” stereotype. It neuters gay men and definitely erases non-white, non-middle-/upper-class experiences of men who have sex with men, but it is “non-threatening” so makes gays more acceptable.
They’re seemingly rarer, but no less destructive in erasing experiences and humanity.
Another group that has a similar issue with “positive” stereotype is the population of persons assigned the identity “Asian” in the United States. The “model minority” stereotype erases the many country origins of Asians and helps people to avoid accusations of racial discrimination by Asians, though it has helped Asians to be ignored for their benefit from former “Asian” stereotypes, such as the mendacious Chinese or World War 2 depictions of the Japanese.
The UK has civil partnerships (soon, if the political winds continue the way they are, proper marriage) for gay people. This weekend, I’m going to experience an unintended consequence of this. Some gay friends of mine are getting hitched, and I’m off on a stag weekend. Since they didn’t want to exclude half of their friends from their pre-nuptual celebrations, we’re going to be having the vile heresy of women at a stag do. It’s a sign of the apocalypse, I tell you!
(Just to preempt any misinterpretation, since sarcasm doesn’t work well in print: I’m really totally fine with this!)