HAPPY PRIDE MONTH!!!!!!!!!
- Thread starter Princess Coco
- Start date
-
- Tags
- gay lesbian pride transgender
I am? 
Shes a wench too
Nah, she is incredibly pro-black.
BrokePhiBroke
Superstar
He's just mad because he was negged for talking about killing people. I guess because he said white people I should have accepted his craze statement. So I've been a wench since early this morning when his thread was shut down.
You don't have to explain yourself to me. I know you're not a wench.
So Im sure you were involved in that somehow
My job went head first *pause* with Pride Month but 
Happy Pride Month y'all
Happy Pride Month y'all
They are what they hate
yardman
Afro-pessimist
CinnaSlim
Queen of Swords
Happy Pride Month!
How 'RuPaul’s Drag Race' Led a Gay Cultural Revolution — and Changed My Life
Ryan Houlihan
June 15, 2016 12:29 PM
TV
How RuPaul’s Drag Race Led a Gay Cultural Revolution — and Changed My Life
The show offered more than just catchphrases — it offered salvation.
Ryan Houlihan
June 15, 2016 12:29 PM
Photo: Getty Images
RuPaul’s Drag Race premiered in 2009, a year after I had my first experience in drag. When I look at the gay culture that surrounds me today and compare it to what I knew back then, I barely recognize it.
I came out at 12 years old, following years of dressing up as Ginger Spice and the Pink Ranger, cloaked in shame about my girlish interests. To survive middle school and high school, I pushed my entire queer psyche as far down as I could manage while still being openly gay. When I was just starting as a theater major in college, I got it into my head to make a big splash at the talent show the department was holding as a fundraiser. In order to make our dance performance really pop, some female friends and I decided to put me in drag as a gimmick for our routine. When the day came finally perform, we went all out: We had lighting effects, curtain cues, props, a smoke machine, and costumes for the “backup dancers.” Facing off against some plate spinners and monologists, we thought our spectacle couldn’t lose — and then we were eliminated in the first round.
When I later asked the judges and some audience members why we were knocked out so early on, they told me that they “didn’t get what [we] were doing” and that “lip-syncing isn’t a real talent” — completely disregarding that particular skill and ignoring the live dancing and spectacle we’d organized. I even had gay friends (in the various stages of coming out) tell me it was “too gay” and “over the top.” Most of these people had just begun coming out and coming to grips with their LGBTQ status; they’d only just started grappling with the internalized homophobia we all deal with every day. Even though they were queer actors, they had never seen femininity (let alone male femininity) praised.
But drag has long played a massive role in the LGBTQ community. Aside from being one of the only art forms we’ve invented independent of straight culture, it’s also got deep roots in our history: The first person to cast a stone in defense at the Stonewall Riots (often regarded as the birth of the LGBTQ rights movement) was a drag queen named Marsha P. Johnson. Yet for a long time many people in our community were quick to push drag’s boundary-pushing nature aside if it meant acceptance by straight friends.
This was the environment into which RuPaul’s Drag Race premiered on little-known LGBTQ television network Logo. By the time I’d been through my drag adventure, I was actively seeking queer media to consume but the show was so below the radar that I don’t even remember hearing about it during its first or second season.
But that didn’t last. By its third season, it began making waves with the kind of people who take television seriously. And by its fourth, winning queen Sharon Needles was starting to break through into the mainstream. Here was a show that epitomized and skewered reality TV competitions: Its contestants were some of the most talented people the medium had ever seen (in an art form still foreign to most viewers), who took the series and the pursuit of its prize money very seriously. Yet, each week’s challenge functioned as a parody of the traditional TV competition format. In essence, the show was drag itself, reflecting the reality of gender by highlighting all the ways it’s nothing but artifice.
Now, it’s been seven years that we’ve had dozens of queer performers from across the nation come into our homes once a week and be honored and celebrated for their work. Every season, a batch of former contestants burst from the show and tour the world on a sort of drag goodwill mission, preaching self-acceptance and dismantling the patriarchy one death drop at a time. And it’s impossible to look around and not see the effects of the show. Stars like Willam, Katya, Alaska, and Bianca Del Rio are visible examples to LGBTQ youth that it doesn’t just get better — it can get spectacular. The show has literally launched 100 smashing careers for people in the queer community and, in a world where LGBTQ people only represent 4% of regular characters on broadcast television, it has revitalized a marketplace and profession for us to entertain our own.
This hasn’t gone unnoticed or, as one might expect, been reacted to by the mainstream public with scorn. In fact, though it might be harder to quantify, it’s easy to see that the show has given the LGBTQ community some real capital in American culture. The proliferation of drag music, Drag Race GIFs, and lingo invented by queer people of color, such as “throwing shade,” “Come through!” or “Not today, Satan,” might step on some toes in queer circles, but the nature of having it appropriated is certainly proof that the larger culture at least sees us as having something valuable enough to appropriate. Certainly nobody approves of straight people picking and choosing what parts of LGBTQ culture are acceptable, but it’s undeniable progress that they admire any form of gender-bending or femininity.
If Will & Grace could change the nation's view on same-sex marriage (according to Vice President Biden), what kind of change can a hit show starring real life gay, transgender, and non-binary people have? How many lives might be changed or saved by the hearts and minds these queens have captured so far? How many more could be if other shows strived for this level of representation for LGBTQ people and people of color?
It’s a hard thing to quantify, but one thing’s for sure: I feel much more comfortable in my queerness than I ever have before, and so do many, many LGBTQ people I know personally. In fact, some of my old college friends — the ones who said doing drag was “too gay” — attended a drag revue headlined by some former contestants the other day. The show has pushed acceptance for drag culture — and all the queerness, femininity, and color that includes — at a time in our history when underrepresented voices needed a champion. RuPaul, shantay you stay.
All that' said, has Drag Race been given any credit for being the ring leader in the entire lip synch craze over the last few years??
Ryan Houlihan
June 15, 2016 12:29 PM
TV
How RuPaul’s Drag Race Led a Gay Cultural Revolution — and Changed My Life
The show offered more than just catchphrases — it offered salvation.
Ryan Houlihan
June 15, 2016 12:29 PM
Photo: Getty Images
RuPaul’s Drag Race premiered in 2009, a year after I had my first experience in drag. When I look at the gay culture that surrounds me today and compare it to what I knew back then, I barely recognize it.
I came out at 12 years old, following years of dressing up as Ginger Spice and the Pink Ranger, cloaked in shame about my girlish interests. To survive middle school and high school, I pushed my entire queer psyche as far down as I could manage while still being openly gay. When I was just starting as a theater major in college, I got it into my head to make a big splash at the talent show the department was holding as a fundraiser. In order to make our dance performance really pop, some female friends and I decided to put me in drag as a gimmick for our routine. When the day came finally perform, we went all out: We had lighting effects, curtain cues, props, a smoke machine, and costumes for the “backup dancers.” Facing off against some plate spinners and monologists, we thought our spectacle couldn’t lose — and then we were eliminated in the first round.
When I later asked the judges and some audience members why we were knocked out so early on, they told me that they “didn’t get what [we] were doing” and that “lip-syncing isn’t a real talent” — completely disregarding that particular skill and ignoring the live dancing and spectacle we’d organized. I even had gay friends (in the various stages of coming out) tell me it was “too gay” and “over the top.” Most of these people had just begun coming out and coming to grips with their LGBTQ status; they’d only just started grappling with the internalized homophobia we all deal with every day. Even though they were queer actors, they had never seen femininity (let alone male femininity) praised.
But drag has long played a massive role in the LGBTQ community. Aside from being one of the only art forms we’ve invented independent of straight culture, it’s also got deep roots in our history: The first person to cast a stone in defense at the Stonewall Riots (often regarded as the birth of the LGBTQ rights movement) was a drag queen named Marsha P. Johnson. Yet for a long time many people in our community were quick to push drag’s boundary-pushing nature aside if it meant acceptance by straight friends.
This was the environment into which RuPaul’s Drag Race premiered on little-known LGBTQ television network Logo. By the time I’d been through my drag adventure, I was actively seeking queer media to consume but the show was so below the radar that I don’t even remember hearing about it during its first or second season.
But that didn’t last. By its third season, it began making waves with the kind of people who take television seriously. And by its fourth, winning queen Sharon Needles was starting to break through into the mainstream. Here was a show that epitomized and skewered reality TV competitions: Its contestants were some of the most talented people the medium had ever seen (in an art form still foreign to most viewers), who took the series and the pursuit of its prize money very seriously. Yet, each week’s challenge functioned as a parody of the traditional TV competition format. In essence, the show was drag itself, reflecting the reality of gender by highlighting all the ways it’s nothing but artifice.
Now, it’s been seven years that we’ve had dozens of queer performers from across the nation come into our homes once a week and be honored and celebrated for their work. Every season, a batch of former contestants burst from the show and tour the world on a sort of drag goodwill mission, preaching self-acceptance and dismantling the patriarchy one death drop at a time. And it’s impossible to look around and not see the effects of the show. Stars like Willam, Katya, Alaska, and Bianca Del Rio are visible examples to LGBTQ youth that it doesn’t just get better — it can get spectacular. The show has literally launched 100 smashing careers for people in the queer community and, in a world where LGBTQ people only represent 4% of regular characters on broadcast television, it has revitalized a marketplace and profession for us to entertain our own.
This hasn’t gone unnoticed or, as one might expect, been reacted to by the mainstream public with scorn. In fact, though it might be harder to quantify, it’s easy to see that the show has given the LGBTQ community some real capital in American culture. The proliferation of drag music, Drag Race GIFs, and lingo invented by queer people of color, such as “throwing shade,” “Come through!” or “Not today, Satan,” might step on some toes in queer circles, but the nature of having it appropriated is certainly proof that the larger culture at least sees us as having something valuable enough to appropriate. Certainly nobody approves of straight people picking and choosing what parts of LGBTQ culture are acceptable, but it’s undeniable progress that they admire any form of gender-bending or femininity.
If Will & Grace could change the nation's view on same-sex marriage (according to Vice President Biden), what kind of change can a hit show starring real life gay, transgender, and non-binary people have? How many lives might be changed or saved by the hearts and minds these queens have captured so far? How many more could be if other shows strived for this level of representation for LGBTQ people and people of color?
It’s a hard thing to quantify, but one thing’s for sure: I feel much more comfortable in my queerness than I ever have before, and so do many, many LGBTQ people I know personally. In fact, some of my old college friends — the ones who said doing drag was “too gay” — attended a drag revue headlined by some former contestants the other day. The show has pushed acceptance for drag culture — and all the queerness, femininity, and color that includes — at a time in our history when underrepresented voices needed a champion. RuPaul, shantay you stay.
All that' said, has Drag Race been given any credit for being the ring leader in the entire lip synch craze over the last few years??
Tropical Fantasy
Superstar
shout out to the black LGBT community
yall get hated on a lot but yall are some of the most open and accepting people
yall get hated on a lot but yall are some of the most open and accepting people
My job went head first *pause* with Pride Month but
Happy Pride Month y'all
lol that gif