Darkside Rainbow

DR - is that anything like T&A? Gods, I hope not.

Anyway, welcome to the DR Weekend Edition, where I don’t have to blog but I’m gonna anyway because my novel needs editing, my apartment needs cleaning, and I’m looking for anything and everything else to do but that. Weekend Edition is just a quick-shot look at a variety of topics that got skipped over during the week because they didn’t merit their own full post, or because something else time-sensitive took their place.

First, in a backtrack to this post, though: Look who’s trying to cover her bum, and this time with something other than a banner that reads “wide load”. Queerty’s blog just goes through excerpts of it, but Roseanne herself starts here in her own blog and keeps going. And going. And going, for entry after entry.

Defensive much, honey? After reading through all of that, I don’t know if I should smile and shake my head at how hard she’s trying to pull her foot out of her mouth, or roll my eyes at how quickly she’s managing to stick it deeper. Considering that I’ve got a bit of a temper myself and sometimes I say some rather sharp things off the cuff, I’m going to give Roseanne the benefit of the doubt - even if this means I pass up on so much good snarking material - and just acknowledge that she has the good grace to publicly apologize for her skidding trainwreck into tactlessness.

Moving on: why is this news and why do we care? Seriously, the NY Times must be having a slow news day when they can do that much coverage on social perceptions of cars as gay. (Neel over at HealthyBPM.com has a few thoughts on this, too.) Frankly I believe something like this deserves to be nationally publicized more - not to make that poor boy’s life even harder with a media spectacle, but to draw more attention to the sort of needless violence inflicted on people just for their sexual orientation. We’re raising our children to be hateful, and I think this incident highlights something that many people need to think about before they indoctrinate their children in a stance of bigotry: every person that you persecute, every person that you point a finger at, is someone else’s child. Every time that you hurt someone for being gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered….you’re hurting someone’s son, daughter, brother, sister, friend. These aren’t just nameless objects, targets for your hatred towards a specific label. They’re people with families, friends, lives filled with loves and losses as deep and intricate as your own. How would you feel if someone targeted your family and friends that way?

Well. I wandered off on a philosophical tangent there, didn’t I? Let’s veer elsewhere for a bit. In other news, I’m not at all surprised that gay men are prone to eating disorders. Hell, I’m borderline anorexic, though in my case it’s less a disorder and more the fact that I keep myself so busy that I forget to eat. In most cases, though…eating disorders either come from psychological distress or from pressure about one’s body image. We’ve got more than enough of both in the gay community. Being gay itself in today’s culture is enough psychological stress to cause an eating disorder - whether it’s binge-eating for comfort (mmm, cheesecake) or nearly starving oneself in depressive fits where one just doesn’t think about eating. Body-consciousness just contributes to that stress; I don’t think there’s any other social niche where people are so hard on each other about their physical image save for the modeling industry. Your face could look like tire treads, but you’d better have a perfectly toned body or you ain’t gettin’ a date, honey.

Of course, that’s just a generalization; not everyone feels that way. I don’t feel that way. (Then again, I have strange tastes in what I think is cute in a man.) But there’s a vocal percentage who can be rather nasty towards anyone who doesn’t keep themselves in perfect shape, and it adds a lot of pressure and leads to starvation and overworking oneself to the point of collapse in the gym in order to keep up with the standards of being attractively gay. I won’t lie; I’m victim to it myself. I enjoy working out, but not enough to do it every day - and yet every morning I haul myself out of bed well before I really want to and drag myself off for an hour in the gym. Why? Not really for my health, and not really to attract anyone - yes, I’m recently single, but not really looking. I just feel compelled to, because there’s this voice in the back of my head that tells me that if I don’t, other gay men are going to look down their noses at me. I know I’m not the only one who gets that feeling, but I respond to it by working out rather than developing an eating disorder. It’s very similar to the sort of body-conscious and fashion-conscious competitiveness that takes place between social groups of women.

And moving on to other things: I still don’t understand how people supposedly so strongly in favor of peace and the love of their god can be so violent, and think that it’s somehow acceptable just because the victim is gay. Do they live in some kind of fantasy world where gay people aren’t real people? It’s like watching Frailty; gay people and GBLTQ supporters are actually demons in disguise, and I’m sure they think they’re doing their god’s work by attacking us. Sheesh. It makes about as much sense as any other explanation that I can think of. Seriously, would someone please explain to me how tackling a non-violent counter-protester is acceptable and reasonable? Maybe this guy can, since he’s Christian…but he’s got his own battles to fight. It’s got to take a lot of courage to walk back into that church after that.

Regarding yesterday’s post: I was surprised at the number of responses to the first Ask Adri column, both in comments (most I’ve had on any article so far without participating in the discussion myself), and in the number of people who sent in questions. If I do a new one M-W-F, I’m set for weeks on questions. I’m glad it seemed to be favorably received thus far, and we’ll see how it continues to go. If you’ve got a question, you know how to get in touch with me.

Now that I’ve wandered all over the news and other topics like an ADHD five-year-old - in other words my nephew, someone please sedate the adorable little spaz - it’s time for me to run away, strap on the rubber gloves (for cleaning, you perverts!), and tackle that weird…foamy film that builds up on the tile in the shower. ~squints at the bathroom wall~ What is that crap, anyway?

Anyone want a job as an underpaid housekeeper?

roseanne, roseanne barr, roseanne arnold, eating disorders, gay eating disorders, gay christians, anorexia, bulimia, binge eating, gay cars