To all the people who keep worrying about gays throwing circuit parties in foxholes: does that happen at Starbucks? Or Kinko’s? Or McDonald’s? Or any of the thousands of other places where gays and lesbians are currently employed? When it comes to work, we’re just like everyone else: we do the job we’re paid to do. We don’t have a secret agenda to turn every hardware store into a bath house or womyn’s music fest.

Just because Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is on the way out doesn’t mean that lesbian and gay soldiers will be. I mean, I’ve labored in some very open and accepting workplaces, but I’ve never barged in on the first day and started gabbing about my fondness for poppers and anal beads. Do McCain & Friends really believe that queer servicemen and women are going to come bounding out of the closet now? The repeal may get rid of the policy, but it doesn’t get rid of the prejudice.

And another thing: just because the military can’t fire anyone because of sexual orientation doesn’t mean that they can’t discriminate because of sexual orientation. There’s nothing (at least now) that says gays and lesbians have to be treated equally in the military workplace. That’s a whole different ball of wax — one that may get addressed as the DADT repeal rolls out, but it ain’t there yet.

The problem with me is that I don’t like saying “I told you so”. I don’t like rubbing it in people’s faces. I don’t like kicking people while they’re down.

I want need to get past that. Because if Saturday’s vote on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell had gone the other way, you can bet your bottom dollar that dumbass conservatives like David Vitter would be crowing about it to their constituents (including me). So IMHO, we need to crow a little more. Or to make naysayers eat a little crow. Pick your metaphor.

Of course, I don’t want to become like the people I loathe. If I adopt their terrible qualities, then I’m no better than they are. (Well, not by much.) But someone needs to bitchslap them — not me, someone close to them, someone they’ll listen to. I don’t know who they listen to besides themselves, but surely, there’s a viable candidate somewhere.

Really, all I want is for John McCain to answer one question: How does it feel to be on the wrong side of history, asshole?

“I watch straight porn all the time. If I go on my computer, there’s a button that can connect me to all the sites I look at most often, and they’re all porn — and 1stdibs.com. Porn and antiques!”

[HarpersBazaar]

“There’s a button.” It’s like, magic and shit.

And something I hadn’t thought of: was Ford compelled to mack on Terry Richardson because of their shared taste in eyeglasses? Maybe it was like looking in a mirror.

Can someone tell me what’s going on in the first two seconds of this commercial? Is that a disclaimer that these are stock images rather than real images of clients? Or is it a grand screw up, on par with something you’d find on Cake Wrecks: “Yeah, we’d like to start  the ad with stock images.” Doh.

Summer’s Eve feminine hygiene products has embarked on a multi-market “listening tour” to gain insight into women’s understanding of the role hygiene plays in their lives, both practically and emotionally.

The effort, which involves conducting focus groups and holding conversations with women nationwide, comes on the heels of a proprietary quantitative study of how women think and feel about their bodies. The results, it says, show that more than 40% of women misidentify the vagina on an anatomical diagram….

“We found that while many women feel they are more than ready for the word ‘vagina’ to become culturally acceptable, the majority of women struggle with unresolved feelings that render the term itself difficult to use,” Hall says.

[MediaPost, emphasis totes mine]

I don’t really know how to process all that information except to say (a) even this very gay dude can find a vagina on a map, and (b) ladies, if you don’t feel comfortable saying “vagina”, please, let me say it for you — it’s one of my favorite words. In fact, it’s the first word in the phrase “vagina handbag montessori”, for which I’m pretty well known.

Also: I had no idea that Summer’s Eve was owned by Fleet, but obviously, it makes perfect sense.

Last week, I said that the car wreck in Mahogany was the gayest on record. (By “gayest”, obviously I meant “fabulous”.) But I have reconsidered: I think it’s actually the second gayest. And you can tell Miss Ross I said so.

In BUtterfield 8, when Elizabeth Taylor’s Sunbeam Alpine sprints across the Tappan Zee Bridge, through a roadblock, and off a cliff, the result is very short, very weird, and completely fascinating.

Bonus: if you loved the vocal effects worked on Taylor’s confession in Suddenly Last Summer, you’ll probably enjoy these, too. Behold:

Unfortunately, in a failed
screen test for Rebecca,

Vivien Leigh wore no makeup and revealed
melancholy ordinariness-

uncast Mrs. De Winter,
vulnerable on Waterloo Bridge.

[Yes, there’s more. And still more.]

We queers of Revelation Hill, tucking our skirts about us so as not to touch our Mormon neighbors, died of the greed of power, because we were expendable.  If you mean to visit any of us, it had better be to make you strong to fight that power. Take your languor and easy tears somewhere else. Above all, don’t pretty us up. Tell yourself: None of this had to happen. And then go make it stop with whatever breath you have left. Grief is a sword, or it is nothing.

Paul Monette, “3275” [via Kevin Sessums]

* * * * *

That which does not kill us is enough to make us very, very angry.

Me

The gayest, most awesome car crash scene ever, courtesy of Diana Ross, Tony Perkins, and a little film called Mahogany (the fun begins early, right around the one-minute mark):