Steven Crowder, the right-wing “comedian”, was previously banned from YouTube for hate speech. They’ve lifted his ban, though, and he’s back in action. He’s been mocking pride week in his inimitably repulsive way.
Now, if we just look at it — look, with kids, you’re going to say, “OK, you’re born gay. You’re born straight.” Fine, let’s just go with that. But you overwhelmingly celebrate gay. If it’s just something that’s a part of you, it either shouldn’t be celebrated or certainly you wouldn’t celebrate the one of the two versions that results in HIV, more likely; AIDS, more likely; promiscuity, more likely; mental health issues, more likely, but lower domestic abuse with gay people, higher with lesbians.
My point is if you’re just going to celebrate, hey, the preference of friction, why wouldn’t you celebrate the one that makes for the most productive environment for children and has worked for perpetuating the human species since ever. That’s all I’m saying. I just don’t think you need — you’re like — you’re just like telling kids, “Hey, hey, isn’t it great? They’re gay.” What does that mean? It means they have sex in a way that doesn’t work.
…
Honestly, let’s look at all major historical gay figures. You look at Milk.
…
You look at Harvey Milk. You look at people, you look at [UNINTELLIGIBLE] — these are people with AIDS.
How dare those gay people, who all have AIDS and don’t make babies when they have sex and are unproductive, celebrate their survival in a culture full of asses like Steven Crowder?
Also, though, I have to ask…how is that funny? Why are they wearing stupid costumes? Does Crowder need a sycophantic claque to laugh at his jokes, because no one with half a brain will?
Wise up, YouTube. Make this guy gone. He’s not a comedian at all, he’s just a mouthpiece for hate.
It rather says something about the homobphobic nature of the mainstream culture that the only gay people who are “major historical figures” that this clown can think of are a murdered local councillor who had a film made about him and the victims of a disease. I was planning on setting the record straight with an off-the-top-of -the-head list, but I’m not here to make up for idiots’ chronic inability to google.
It’s almost like there have been decades of media manipulation to downplay the gayness (or bi-ness, or trans-ness or whatever) of important historical figures and associate us with illness and dysfunction, isn’t it? Perhaps some kind of month of celebration is needed to set the record anything other than straight? Something of that sort would be good.
Admittedly, I myself do have sex in a way that doesn’t work. But that’s because I’m an all-round rubbish gay. The rest of them seem to get along fine.
You can only say that if you think the sole purpose of sex is reproduction. I myself have sex that “doesn’t work” in those terms.
Why did YouTube let him back on? In the immortal words of Laurence Olivier, “The answer is simple: Money, dear boy.”
Oh no, reproduction is the last thing on my mind with the old sex business. Gays generally don’t have sex for that purpose. Sadly none of the other purposes we do have it for work for me either. With the possible exception of increasing the net total of disappointment in the world.
Alexander the Great. Oscar Wilde. Alan Turing. Took me a whole thirty seconds to come up with that list.
Wait… is he saying Harvey Milk had AIDS?….. or is he just being incomprehensible.
(Adds another example to the list of why free speech, press, and religion is a bad idea and that responsible governments censor and punish racists, sexists, anti-LGBTQ bigots, fascists, capitalists, theists, etc..)
Man, that list is getting long.
Funny, I actually had ‘The Imitation Game’ playing in the background here while being introduced to the fact that this guy can’t name any gay history-makers who aren’t Harvey Milk.
@#1, cartomancer:
In current media, gay people are nowhere near as erased as bi people and asexuals. “Bisexual” in popular media is almost always a code word for “promiscuous” (if it isn’t just a non-illustrated character attribute tossed in, à la Disney*, to diversify the cast), and “asexual” usually translates to either “uptight” or “villain”, with a healthy side of “sexually repressed and lying about it” thrown in.
*Challenge: how many characters can you name in 60 seconds who were cited as “the first gay character in a Disney movie”?
The media narrative for real-life bi people is:
Person: I am bisexual. I am 100% certain of this. I am sexually attracted to both masculinity and femininity, and find [list containing multiple men and multiple women] attractive. I have dated both men and women and intend to continue doing so.
Media Reaction 1: [Person] hints that they might be gay!
Media Reaction 2: [Person] says they’re bi, but are they really? Obviously we know better than they do!
(Literally, you can find images of genuine headlines just like that last one.)
(And gay people are bad about this, too — it’s something of an affront to reason how often you will find gay people identifying a monogamous publicly and historically bi person as either gay or straight based on their current relationship and sometimes projecting hatred on the latter because they can’t possibly actually be sincere, the only reason why they would ever be in such a relationship is to pass as straight. There are gay people who want bi people in heterosexual relationships to be excluded from LGBT spaces.)
But aces have it worse — as far as I can tell, the only canonically asexual figure in popular media where their asexuality is presented positively is Sherlock Holmes, and every adaptation of Holmes either has him as really being straight and repressed or else gay and closeted. Every. Single. One. Even back to radio dramatizations from the 40s. Straight people get obsessed with Irene Adler, despite the story explicitly saying Holmes isn’t sexually attracted to her, and gay people just can’t stop insisting that Holmes must have been lusting after (or more) Watson (or others). And the medical profession often treats aces the way it used to treat gay people: “they must have something wrong with them (probably a side effect of antidepressents, even if they aren’t on any) so let’s put them through coercive therapy or a libido-boosting drug regimen!” while the media follows suit: “they just haven’t met the right person yet, like we used to say about gay people before that became an unpopular viewpoint”.
I am also spluttering with rage at the omission of Frederick the Great, Edward II of England, and Leonardo. Oscar Wilde, William Burroughs, Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Loras Tyrell, and Renly Baratheon.
@5 and @10:
And if you called Crowder out on that, his response would be “hey man, it was just a joke!”
There are few people whom I would relish seeing crushed in a trash compactor more than Steven Crowder. Benny Shapiro, perhaps.
#10 garnetstar
A couple of years ago, a friend and I took a LGBT tour of the Houses of Parliament in the UK. It’s fascinating how many old royals were either well known to be, or rumoured to be gay, bi, or some form of gender non-conforming. It’s apparently really difficult to pick out the legitimate historical fact from slander from their oppositions.