Hello Queerish I'm Back Again To Give You A Little Of My Thoughts On Media.

As I see it, the real problem with media is reality. There are those who would claim that media isn't responsible for being realistic unless the medium has to do with news and factual information. However, I would have to report that those persons would be sadly mistaken. A person who views a heavy amount of television, views various films, and reads many articles doesn't have the same reality as the person who generally doesn't consume the same amount of media. It is proven that the first person described will have a view of reality that fits more with that of the media he/she consumes. So when a person sees a fictional character on television and he/she doesn't have much interaction with the type of person that character represents, he/she puts that character with other characters like it and forms their opinions about the group that person is meant to represent in reality.

Generally,  a person doesn't form his/her opinions from one experience in life, and so is the case with media, stereotypes are not absorbed in one instance. It takes multiple characters on multiple shows, motion pictures, and in novels to piece together an over-generalization which in turn becomes a stereotype. While we have television shows and films, generally written by LGBT people, there are more shows and films which have gay characters in minuscule roles. If I think back to the tiny roles for gay men in movies, they have been waiters and secretaries, white, rather short, little presence except for their gigantic amount of rudeness and attitude. Luckily there are a great amount of shows that have better representations of gay men than this, there is still a long way to go. LGBT people of color are near invisible and honestly, there are many other attitude types being ignored.

My question is why are we left with male, white and masculine or effeminate? Seems to me that a great deal of people are being missed since a majority of you may not have fallen neatly into these three categories.

(Where did this post go last week? Let me know if anyone saw this same post a week ago, so that I know if it got deleted after I posted it, or if it never posted properly. Sorry guys, I promise I didn't forget, I just failed!)

Hello folks! It's eddie, here with your weekly post about queer on campus. I thought I should start at the beginning, with coming out on campus.

The first person I came out to was my high school boyfriend, in April of my senior year. At that point, I told all my good friends that I was pansexual and didn't make much of an effort to hide it from anyone besides my family (who were another issue all-together). Basically, I was semi-out n high school, but only for the last month of it! I've been out the whole time I've been in college, and I think it's great, even though my school is in a very conservative area.

I'm going to assume that you've already made the decision to be out at college or not. If you are not planning out coming out in college, I understand. It is intimidating. Wait until you're comfortable with your surroundings and your life to come out. But for those of you ready to be out on campus, here is my step-by-step guide!

1. Decide how Out you're going to be. So you want your friends at the campus GSA to know, but not your other friends? Or, you want your friends to know, but not your close-minded roommate? Or you want your friends and roommates to know, but not your profs? Or maybe just that one cool prof you've got SO101 with, but DEFINITELY that jerk who teaches your PS113? understandable. But you've got to decide how out you're going to be, and make sure that those you are out to know who you are not out to, or you might be accidentally outed.

2. Find others like yourself. I bet your campus has a GSA-type group. If not, look at all your student groups and join something like college dems, or a diversity group. Something that will be filled with people who will accept you no matter what. But remember, don't completely bubble yourself with these people, the real world is out there! Just make some like-minded friends as a safety net, and in order to involve yourself in the gay community (which is an awesome community to be a part of, by the way!).

3. Tell people! If you're a high school senior right now, this will be an easier process because you can just start from scratch and tell all the new people you meet your sexuality once you get to college. It's not as easy to tell your old friends about this new thing in your life, but keep in mind that they are your friend for a reason, and they aren't going to suddenly hate you! Note: This step doesn't include screaming it out over the academic mall or bursting into song in the cafeteria. You can just, you know, let it come up in conversation, or put a button on your backpack.

4. Be a safe person for others. Once you're out, think about all the other people having those same worrisome thoughts you had before you cam out. Put a "GLBT ally" logo on your door so that when people walk past they know that the person they see coming out of that room won't judge them, and you are a good person to befriend. If you're in your school's GSA, put that logo on your dorm door, too. My student group has buttons we've made to make sure everyone on campus knows we exist.

5. Be prepared to stand up for yourself! When a guy in my Color class called me a dyke (in a manner intending to insult me, not in a WOO! I'M A DYKE AND PROUD! way), I calmly said to him "I don't think I'm a dyke, really. I'm rather feminine most days, and I don't identify as a lesbian". It's hard to stay calm, but that is what is needed. Just remember that colleges are full of people with lots of opinions, and sometimes people are going to rub you the wrong way. Peacefully stand up for yourselves and your friends, because that is how we create change.

Are you out on your campus, or were you when you were in college? Why or why not? Are you happy about the decision you made? Why should others come out on campus?

Next week's post from me will be about creating events on your campus to increase visibility of your GLBTQA community!

Sorry I'm Late

Boy Culture

A successful male escort describes in a series of confessions his tangled romantic relationships with his two roommates and an older, enigmatic male client.

I strongly enjoyed this movie first and foremost for the eye candy, but then I started to look a little more closely to what each character was trying to get from the others.

The male escort is X, a very cold gay male who distances himself from everyone around him.
Joey is his 18 year old roommate who is a stereotypical twink.
Andrew is his other roommate and love interest.
Gregory is one of X's clients.

It is important to be able to enjoy something for what it is and then be critical afterward. I still enjoy this movie but the representation of Gregory and Joey is very stereotypical. Gregory is a gay man in his 60's or 70's who lives a lavish life and honestly fits many stereotypes I would have for a closeted gay man of that age. Joey is an 18 year old who plays little kid games and is constantly looking for his next lay. he's very childish and is continually trying to have sex with X.

However, why don't I have a problem with these two representations? because the writer of the script makes the viewer feel something more for both of them. Gregory tells X a story of his first and only love and how they gave themselves to each other. Joey wants someone to love him, whether he admits it or not; we sympathize with him because who doesn't want to be loved? he's constantly searching for someone who he can love and someone to love him back.

X and Andrew's story transcends LGBT in the fact that they both love each other but X guards his heart to much and doesn't want to show his feelings. Andrew is getting fed up with playing X's game and wants to know when he will let someone inside. Throw in the fact that X is a prostitute and you get a very interesting story which honestly could happen to any person, with some exceptions of course.

I think the reason I look past the stereotypes in this movie is because you can see that each character has a deeper meaning or problem. The issue with many gay characters is that there aren't enough moments to explore who they are and what they want, pieces that define humanity. The fact that this is a movie directed by a gay man also helps and its about all gay characters so all of the screen time allows each character to develop in some way. We need more movies to spend time to develop gay characters as much as every other character gets developed. We shouldn't have to go to "gay" movies for good representation, there should be representation in main stream movies that is acceptable.

AJ