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.