In 2020, the online news organization The Intercept revealed that HRW’s then-Executive Director, Ken Roth, accepted a $470,000 donation from a Saudi billionaire based on the condition that HRW would not use the money to protect the rights of the persecuted LGBTQ-plus community in the Middle East.
Roth was compelled to return the donation after The Intercept report.
I get it. I think you’ve probably seen me say before that Star Trek missed a huge opportunity in the 90s to represent the community when Berman refused to let Bashir and Garak be a couple. It’s so sad that it took until Ellen came out in 1997 to even hope for more positive LGBT representation on American television and there’s still precious little of it. I can’t remember which cereal brand it was, but a few years ago, within the past decade, an ad showed a kid eating cereal and they had two dads and people lost their shit. Even in 2023, much of America (and from what you’re saying Canada too) isn’t ready for characters like Stamets and it’s just wrong. Even the fact that Discovery is on Paramount+, which is still pretty niche, shows it. Heaven forbid a regular network have a couple like Stamets and Culber that have a deep and abiding love for each other. The only other example I can think of right now is the Harley Quinn cartoon and you have to have Max to see it. (But it’s really good, I highly recommend it.)
Look what happened with Dylan Mulaney and Bud Light. It wasn’t even a huge ad campaign. They were given a few cans of Bud Light and did a photo shoot with them and posted it online. That’s it. That’s all they did. And suddenly Kid Rock was shooting cans of Bud Light with his rifle. Fucking insanity.
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I just hope representation continues in media. My daughter came way after Ellen and I think she’s still too young to really get into Harley Quinn (I don’t mind the language or the violence, I just think a lot of the plot, especially the references, would go above her head), but I hope eventually she’ll find people on TV that represent her.
I’ve been showing her Daria. I keep thinking how much better a show it would have been if Daria and Jane’s friendship developed into love. The way it’s written, I kind of think the creators wanted it to go that way.
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I haven’t seen either version, but I’ve heard very good things. Britain has been more accepting than America (although there’s obviously still a lot of bigotry) because there have been some very famous gay actors and comedians in the country throughout the second half of the 20th century. There were two openly gay characters on a very popular 1960s radio sitcom (radio is still a very popular dramatic and comedic medium in the UK) called Hancock’s Half Hour. They spoke in Polari, which was well-known as a coded language in the British gay community. Kenneth Williams, who played one of them, was beloved by the British public and he made absolutely no secret of his sexual orientation.
And, of course, there’s been a long history of men and women in drag in the UK. Christmas pantos always involve men dressed in women’s clothing and women dressed in men’s clothing and it wouldn’t be Christmas in Britain without them.
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Have you watched Taskmaster? Not only is it incredibly funny, but last season they had a nonbinary comedian on the show and this season there are two gay people, a man and a woman. One of them is Julian Clary who is very frank (and very funny) about his homosexuality and has brought so much value to the season. For other reasons too, but that has always been a big part of his comedy and it’s a lot of fun.
More interesting to me was the situation in the show Never Mind the Buzzcocks whose host, Simon Amstell, came out between seasons. No one seemed bothered by it.
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Definitely check out Taskmaster. It’s become one of my favorite shows. A group of comedians are given very silly tasks to complete- for example, getting three yoga balls up a steep hill or making a meal where all the ingredients start with the same letter. The comedians on the show have all been top level talent from around the world. The nonbinary comedian was Canadian, so you might have heard of them- Mae Martin. Their deadpan delivery cracked me up.
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I don’t know if my daughter sees her that way, but she does often speak in a deadpan way and is sarcastic and misanthropic (she inherited it from me!), and was at the bottom of the pecking order in a school full of idiots and assholes, so she definitely identifies with Daria anyway.
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Just had an interesting bit of conversation with my daughter. I said that she’s not getting enough representation in the media and she said, “well you can always headcannon them.” I suppose that’s a somewhat healthy attitude, but I did say to her that it would be better if she didn’t have to do that and she agreed. I was just surprised by that initial response.
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Understood.