Beth Granter » Queer

Barack Obama declares June LGBT pride month, and whitehouse uses LGBTQ on blog

Beth Granter — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 20:41:05 +0000

“I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2011 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month”

Then noticed this whitehouse blog post which uses LBGTQ (defined as ‘lesbian, gay bisexual, transgender or queer/questioning’) which is quite interesting…never seen that definition before… (the ‘questioning’ definition of Q). Great that they’re using ‘queer’ properly, shame they define T as ‘transgender’ instead of simply ‘trans’, the latter being inclusive of transexuals and transvestites as well as transgendered people.

Also realised the UN reference “to sexual orientation in a resolution on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions has been restored.”, in December 2010, which I hadn’t realised. I.e. the UN is supposed to come to your aid if you’re gonna be killed for being LGBQ. (I’m not sure if they will help if it’s ‘cos you’re T).

PR #fail: FHM lists androgynous Marxist male model Andrej Pejic as 98th sexiest woman, refers to him as a ‘thing’, then deletes the article

Beth Granter — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 18:19:46 +0000

FHM have deleted the original page with this article on and it’s not even in Google’s cache, but here’s the screenshot (via mediaite). FHM have now apologised in a non-transparent way which doesn’t reference what the original article did wrong. What it did wrong, was call Andrej a ‘thing’, challenge his sexual identity, and refer to him as ‘troubling’, amongst other things. Generally being transphobic, sexist and homophobic all at once. In addition, by simply deleting the original offending article and producing a very vague and non-committal apology, this only provokes the blogosphere to seek out the original article and to shout louder about what FHM did wrong. A proper response which addresses people’s specific concerns about WHY the article is offensive, should have been forthcoming. If I was advising FHM on its PR policy, I’d get that written up pretty quick.

Full text reads:

“Did you spot it? The missing ‘s’ in the ‘he’? Or perhaps the Adam’s apple was a giveaway? Don’t worry if you weren’t quick enough at playing detective, you are not alone. Andrej has been confusing the male gender since he was 14, but also admits most men still buy him a drink, despite the shock. The professional crossdresser most likely fooled his modeling agency as well and admitted to not being sure whether the agent knew he was really a dude when he approached him.

Although his sexual identity is ambiguous, designers are hailing him as the next big thing. We think ‘thing’ is quite accurate. Tall, skinny and flat-chested. Andrej is considered in couture circles as the “perfect coat-hanger” for high fashion garments, moving the industry on from hot girls who look dangerously boyish to just boys who look like girls. Having managed to get away with it in campaigns for Marc Jacobs and Jean Paul Gaultier, the blonde gender-bender has jumped the gun in hoping he might one day be signed as a Victoria’s Secret Model (Pass the sick bucket). Well, he might have a hard time keeping it a secret then.

More troubling is the fact that Andrej is not the only one when it comes to supermodels that are not all they seem. The current face of Givenchy and “lady” locking lips with Kate Moss on the cover of Love magazine is transgender Lea T, who began life as Leandro. One fashion trend we won’t be following.”

Nice one FHM readers for voting Andrej in, and to be honest I’m not at all surprised at FHM’s transphobic, sexist, homophobic article.

I was pleased to read that Andrej is a Marxist though. Good work comrade.

Groupon and eHarmony identity politics FAIL

Beth Granter — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 21:14:07 +0000

Worst case of restrictive Title options I’ve seen so far. Shall I be male or married today?! Seen on www.groupon.co.uk

And THEN, trying to sign up to eHarmony and am confronted with the choice – do I want a relationship with a Man or a Woman? Because you can’t choose ‘either’! What am I supposed to do, sign up twice?! Massive fail eHarmony. Seriously – non-homosexual queer people don’t want a relationship?

eHarmony - don't make me choose!

It might be harder work on your algorithms, but if you’re gonna make a dating/relationship site or any site with a personal profile, you seriously need someone with a basic understanding of identity politics to give it the once over. Until they sort this out, I’m boycotting eHarmony on principle.

spock is rubbish at identity politics as well

Beth Granter — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 13:34:46 +0000

And here’s another example of a failed sign up dialogue in terms of identity politics and gender diversity:

Radio buttons? With only two options and I have to choose one? And the default is Male? So I’m forced to declare myself as one or the other. How rubbish. Here’s a couple of suggestions for improvement:

Or even better:

Or even don’t bother asking in the first place! At least not in the initial sign up. You could let people enter this information about themselves by choice later on. So far Pownce is winning the gender game. I know I keep reporting on all the sign-up dialogues being crap for promoting gender diversity, but when I’ve seen enough of these I think I’ll make a table of winners and losers in gender awareness in sign ups / personal profile sites’ UI.

_____________EDIT______________

Aha! on logging in, turns out you can un-define your gender in your profile settings. So that is a good thing, but you still shouldn’t have to choose one in the first place. It’s a bit weird that you can choose ‘nothing’ later on, but not initially. Also it’s still not perfect because you might want to define yourself as Transgendered or something else and because you can’t this is giving preferential treatment to males and females.

Plaxo loses for gender diversity

Beth Granter — Fri, 02 May 2008 08:46:28 +0000

Plaxo just put me off by forcing me to choose my gender:

The only options were male or female. C’mon Plaxo, get with the program! This is the modern day and you should know better than to only give us these limiting binary options with which to define ourselves (and must you force us to define ourselves in those terms at all?). What about everyone between or outside these options?

When you’re building a social networking site you should have advisors on identity politics, since you are getting your users to create identities on your site.

An example of gender being handled in a lighthearted and positive way is Pownce.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: plaxo, gender, social networking, queer, feminism

Sausages: Freestyle LDN art show in York

Beth Granter — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 08:15:11 +0000

I’m going to be exhibiting six of my illustrations at Freestyle LDN art show in York on 26th April 2008. Here’s my latest illustration of a man eating a sausage. It’s from a tinned sausage advert I saw in Prague last summer, and the image was apparently an original 1917 illustration. I’ve tweaked it a bit of course, and vectorised it. Another version of the ad has spit dribbing from his chin. Lovely. I also like how dainty his fingers are.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: 1917, prague, sausage, illustration, queer

Pownce wins on gender

Beth Granter — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 11:37:16 +0000

Just signed up to Pownce, which appears to be Twitter, with file sharing and without forcing incorrect grammar on the user. Also you can group your contacts into ‘sets’ which you choose yourself. At the moment it’s invitation only/join a waiting list. I set my facebook status to ‘Anyone on Pownce?’ and within half an hour, I’d been sent an invite code. Not bad.

The name is a bit dodgy in my opinion – too close to ‘ponce’, but maybe they were playing on gaming lingo’s ‘pwn’ (meaning ‘own’, as in, ‘you totally got pwned’), and mixing that in with pounce (like a cat?).

Anyway, in the sign-up process, they’d clearly been taking notice of gender debates and, taking a light-hearted approach to the complicated subject, came up with this:

Brilliant. This beats facebook’s tolerance of selecting neither gender by about a million. FYI, I chose ‘Lady’.

Beth’s pownce

Also, they only have 4 templates at the moment, but they’re very nice.

Gender and Second Life

Beth Granter — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 13:29:42 +0000

Signing up to Second Life today, and the sign up form forces you to choose your gender:

This is pretty normal for registration purposes. I’ve collected quite a few snapshots of similar ‘error’ messages (will add these to the post later), from places you really would think wouldn’t care what your gender is (weather sites?!). I guess it’s good for targeted advertising to know your market, but shouldn’t it be up to the user whether they want to give out that information (without being blocked from registering)? Still, Facebook wins as the only place I remember to allow me to leave my gender blank.

Fag enabler / cafepress

Beth Granter — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 20:36:18 +0000

So I started up my Cafepress store today. Apart from my illustration which I’d uploaded a while back, I put up the t-shirt slogan: FAG ENABLER. I don’t have a television but I’d heard people had seen a Louis Theroux (sp?) program last week about a family of Americans who think that anyone who is a friend of gay people is a ‘Fag Enabler‘ and is doomed to hell. And this is apparently why there are wars – because God Hates Fag Enablers just as much as he hates Fags, and America, because it doesn’t outlaw homosexuality, is a Fag Enabler.

My first reaction was – “I want a tshirt that says FAG ENABLER on it!”. So yeah, I made one. Stand by for further experiences with Christians and Cafe Press. I wonder if I’ll get hate mail…

Also, if you hadn’t noticed, I’m experimenting doing useful linking to try and get good google ranking!

‘Coming Out’ as an Identity Forming Process

Beth Granter — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 18:40:19 +0000

In order to come out as homosexual to oneself, associates and the public, there must be an understanding of the concept of homosexuality in that society and to that individual. Similarly, there must be such an understanding of possible sexual identities in order to find oneself ‘in the closet’. To be ‘in’ or ‘out’, there must be a notion of what is being hidden, or revealed. This is taking a social constructionist understanding of sexuality and sexual categorisation, in contrast to essentialist views that believe it possible to hold a lesbian or gay identity even if there is no social or individual understanding of what such terms may mean in that particular culture or time in history (Calhoun, 2000: 21). Before the late nineteenth century, ‘homosexual’ as a distinct identity concept did not exist. There were homosexual acts, but these were non-procreative sins anybody was seen to be capable of committing (Seidman, 2004: 15). Individuals who felt same-sex desire, but were able to keep such feelings or experiences hidden, might even not have felt any need to alter their public identity. There may also have been more scope for gender-bending behaviour patterns or appearances as at that time gender experimentation was not so heavily associated as being representative of sexual deviance. There would have been little suspicion or concerns in the public mind to drive a witch-hunt for that type of ‘sinner’ yet. Queer individuals probably did not think of themselves as having a deviant identity that needed to be dealt with, as sexual behaviour was not such a central factor in personal identity at the time. Such is still the case in a number of non-western cultures that have been less influenced by Freudian notions of sexual behaviour being the fundamental component of identity.

The whole essay is available here: Coming Out as an Identity Forming Process [PDF]