"My hero was my father, a closeted bisexual Army major general who, in the 1990s, argued in favor of gays in the military by reminding people that they’ve always been there."

"Yes, the military vibe could be depressingly macho, but it’s also about having your buddies’ backs, no matter their gender, sexuality or race. I spoke about the subject of my new play, Claude Cahun, a French Jewish Surrealist who, with her partner, Marcel Moore, broke into a church at night during the Nazi occupation and put up a banner, reading: 'Jesus is great. But Hitler is greater. Because Jesus died for people — but people die for Hitler.' Voilà, punk!"

That's an excerpt from "Today’s Young People Need to Learn How to Be Punk" by John Cameron Mitchell, the filmmaker (notably of "Hedwig and the Angry Inch").

The expression of the French Jewish Surrealist is something you can work out on your own, no? Key words: "during the Nazi occupation."

I want to focus on "closeted bisexual." Mitchell's father was married to his mother, so how does he count as closeted if he just kept quiet about who else he's sexually attracted to? That's the general practice among married people, not to speak out about your interest in anyone other than your spouse and not to do anything about it. It might be a more poignant case if the man married a woman but only felt attracted to men, but this, we're told, was a bisexual. Presumably, he was attracted to his wife. Where's the closeting in restricting your sex relations to your spouse? It's not as if heterosexuals feel free to speak out and act out about their sexual attraction to others. No one admires these adulterers for "coming out of the closet."

Anyway,  John Cameron Mitchell is reporting on his speaking tour, interacting with students. He told them: "Your homework is to stop canceling each other, find out about punk, and get laid while you’re at it.... Punk isn’t a hairstyle; it’s getting your friends together to make useful stories outside approved systems. And it’s still happening right now, all over the world." He says, "MAGA has adopted an authoritarian style of punk that disdains what Elon Musk calls our 'greatest human weakness,' empathy. But O.G. punk, while equally free of trigger warnings, is constructive and caring."

"A new straight-studies course treats male-female partnerships as the real deviance."

Subheadline for a New York Magazine article titled, "If Hetero Relationships Are So Bad, Why Do Women Go Back for More?" The teaser title on the front page is "Do Straight Women Really Exist?" The author of the article is Jessica Bennett.

“In this class, we’re going to flip the script,” [said sociologist Jane Ward to her students on the first day of class]. “It’s going to be a place where we worry about straight people. Where we feel sympathy for straight people. We are going to be allies to straight people.”...

Flipping the script is a good approach to studying the topic, and the topic is worthy of study. However, I don't like being directed to "worry" or "feel sympathy" or "be allies." I'd look at the subject head on. But neutrality is cruel, and women want to present as empathetic. 

The online world seems to get weirder and more retrograde about heterosexuality every day. Idealized masculinity has become more aggressive, more jacked up, and also more high maintenance... while femininity gets ever “softer,” more nurturing and domestic, and somehow still more sexy....

"If she wins, the flood of reverse discrimination claims will be like nothing we’ve ever seen. Straight, White people everywhere could be filing."

Said Johnny C. Taylor Jr., chief executive of the human resources association SHRM.

Quoted in "Her claim of anti-straight bias could upend discrimination law/The Supreme Court will hear a case that could unleash a wave of workplace bias claims by Whites, men and people who are straight" (WaPo).

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Wednesday in [Marlean] Ames’s bid to revive her case, which was stymied in the lower courts because of past rulings that set a higher legal bar for men, straight people and Whites to prove bias in the workplace than for groups that have historically faced discrimination. That higher standard is unconstitutional, her suit says.... 

Some worry a ruling for Ames could chill workplace diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs at a moment when President Donald Trump has made it a priority to roll back such initiatives across the country and squash “anti-White feeling.”

I went to that internal link and didn't see the phrase "anti-White feeling." Why is that in quotes? I can only infer that Trump said it, but it's odd to put it in quotes — and odd to capitalize "White" and to use the verb "squash" here. You know, I stick closely to mainstream news reports, especially The NYT and The Washington Post, and I believe I'm seeing an abrupt decline in quality, and it feels like an effort to get Trump.

"In the wake of Mr. Kavanaugh’s confirmation, the gender and sexuality scholar Asa Seresin picked up on a feeling in the air..."

"... and put a name to it: 'heteropessimism.' ... Mr. Seresin argued that heteropessimism was defined by 'performative disaffiliations with heterosexuality, usually expressed in the form of regret, embarrassment, or hopelessness about straight experience.' By 'performative,' Mr. Seresin meant that though many women freely admitted that being attracted to men was at best a bummer and at worst a form of masochism, few acted on their beliefs. While expressing a sincere hopelessness, women’s disavowals seemed to be mostly gestural, like a sardonic Etsy mug."

Writes Marie Solis, in "Men? Maybe Not. The election made clear that America’s gender divide is stark. What’s a heterosexual woman to do?" (NYT).

That's a long article, but I chose that excerpt because I have a tag "performative (the word)." Here's the post — from June 11, 2022 — where I created the tag. Interestingly, it was about a David Axelrod piece asking "Should Biden Run in 2024?" Axelrod wrote, "Biden doesn’t get the credit he deserves... And part of the reason he doesn’t is performative." I said:

Coming out to your parents... as straight.

A TikTok video after the jump.

"I once believed that I would be more successful finding love as a woman than as a man, but in truth, few straight men are interested..."

"... in having a physical relationship with a person who was born the same sex as them. In high school, when I experienced crushes on my male classmates, I believed that the only way those feelings could be requited was if I altered my body. It turned out that several of those crushes were also gay. If I had confessed my interest, what might have developed? Alas, the rampant homophobia in my school during the AIDS crisis smothered any such notions. Today, I have resigned myself to never finding a partner.... From the day of my surgery, I became a medical patient and will remain one for the rest of my life.... I was still a virgin when I went in for surgery.... I chose an irreversible change before I’d even begun to understand my sexuality. The surgeon deemed my operation a good outcome, but intercourse never became pleasurable.... The prospect of sex can be intimidating. But sex is essential in healthy relationships. Give it a chance before permanently altering your body."

From "What I wish I’d known when I was 19 and had sex reassignment surgery" by Corinna Cohn, who is now 50. The article is — surprisingly — in The Washington Post.

ADDED: Cohn writes "It turned out that several of those crushes were also gay." Also gay? That would seem to need to mean that Cohn is/was a gay man and not transgender at all. The warning is: You'd better make absolutely sure you're not gay.

"Sarah had terrible clothes. When I met her she wore baggy army pants which hid her incredible figure and then would say, ‘I dress for comfort,’ which is no excuse."

Said Alexandra Leenen, quoted in "What happened when my banker husband became a woman: inside our trans marriage/When Sarah Simoni fell in love with Harold Leenen, he had a high-flying career in the macho world of corporate banking – and a secret. Eight years later, Harold is now Alexandra" (London Times).

"The eldest by a minute, she is the only heterosexual in our family; her twin is a lesbian and so are her two Moms...."

"... Because I grew up in an Irish-Catholic household where sexual feelings were at best contained, at worst annulled, I took particular pleasure in allowing hers to flourish. The boyfriend’s parents... had been raised in other faiths and had converted to Islam. They insisted on strict compliance with religious laws. Meaning: Their boy with the luxurious hair was not allowed to date.... I became complicit in their circumventing his parents’ prohibitions.... [M]y own family’s disapproval of my lesbian desire fueled this indecorous behavior on my part.... Of course, they got caught.... [My daughter's boyfriend's parents] proposed a temporary marriage between my 13-year-old and theirs, although I would not know about this until moments before the ceremony.... The ceremony took place in a local Mexican coffee house.... I thought I was simply coming along to meet the mother. My eldest whispered the relevant details in my ear as they walked through the door.... The boy’s mother was strikingly beautiful and at least a decade younger than me. After we had all gotten our hot chocolates, she took out her Quran and explained that temporary marriage was a way for our children to have some limited physical contact without jeopardizing her son’s soul.... I assented without calling home to consult my partner of 20-something years.... ...I didn’t want my daughter to be prevented from touching the boy she loved. I didn’t want what had been done to me to be done to her. So I assented, and the boy’s parents read the ritual phrases in Arabic, and the children nodded along and, without my understanding a word, they were married.... Their temporary marriage lasted until they broke up a year later...."

From "Why My Daughter Got (Temporarily) Married at 13/Having been shamed about my sexuality when I was young, I was determined, as a mother, to celebrate my child’s romantic wishes" by Stephanie Grant (NYT).

1. The parents — all 3 of them — were actively facilitating sexual intercourse between 13-year-olds. Is this not criminal behavior? 

2. Oh, but the boy and his mother were beautiful! Beauty privilege. Step back naysayers! Beautiful people are moving forward, claiming what they want.

3. Chocolate was had. That makes everything more palatable.

4. The mother does not concede that the 2 teenagers ever had sexual intercourse, and lets us know that her daughter regards your curiosity about this as "disturbingly invasive, and, indeed, exoticizing." That is, you are the creep, not these parents who got their kids "temporarily married."

5. Imagine taking a vow that was read to you in a language that you don't understand. Imagine sitting by sipping hot chocolate while your exuberant daughter nods assent to what sounds like gibberish to her but you know is deadly serious to the person who is reading the vows. 

6. Are the vows deeply meaningful or utterly meaningless? What is "temporary marriage" anyway? Maybe it's a debasement of marriage — if marriage means something deep to you. But it's a step up from the cheap vowless love the mother approved of before the boy's parents caught on to the relationship she was eagerly enabling. 

7. The mother sees herself in her daughter, and she's proud of this merged identity. The mother's grudges against her own mother and against society are reenacted through her daughter, whom she touts in the pages of the New York Times.

8. The author has a whole memoir coming out, so the daughter's story is, apparently, thoroughly appropriated by the mother. Talk about "disturbingly invasive."

"Underwood said he 'genuinely' wishes he hadn't dragged people into 'my own mess of figuring out who I was.'"

"In addition to saying sorry to those women, he would said thank you because, ultimately, they and the franchise helped him get to this place. When he was named the Bachelor, Underwood said he remembered 'praying to God' the morning he found out and 'thanking him for making me straight,' thinking this would lead to him finally getting the wife and them having kids. But Underwood said he had known the truth of his sexuality since a young age, knowing he 'just felt different' from the age of 6, when he couldn't process it. He knew he was 'more emotional' than the other boys in his class. It took until high school for him to realize he 'was more attracted to the boys and the men' than he was the opposite sex. Having grown up in the Catholic church, he remembered he 'learned in the Bible that gay is a sin' in Catholic grade school...."

"Former 'Bachelor' star Colton Underwood comes out as gay" (Good Morning America).

I don't watch "The Bachelor," and I know there's fakery — more or less — in TV reality shows, but I can't believe a show about a crowd of women competing for one man doesn't make absolutely sure the guy is straight. At the very least, the problem of his confusion about his sexual orientation ought to have become part of the show. 

I mean no disrespect to a gay man who goes through a struggle — particularly a religious struggle — to come to admit to himself that he is what he is, but he went on a show — a show about raging heterosexuality. Did he deceive the show people who vetted him? Do the show people not care about this problem or are they just inept? 

Did Robin Roberts ask him any of these tough questions? Or did Underwood choose Roberts as his mode of communication because she'd give him a comfortable forum? 

Buried deeply in the article: