LGBTQIA+, Queer in the misserving of Gays
When initialism fills your service with irrelevant items.
If you want to find a Gay film on Netflix you can’t search for it effectively using the term Gay. Netflix uses LGBTQ+ and that gives you a lot of non-Gay material. I have to then sort through and see online what is actually targeting Gays. I think it is fine that Netflix supplies Lesbian films and other sexual minorities, but I am looking for a film with a Gay story. I also think it is likely that Lesbians aren’t interested that much in Gay films. So it takes a while to sort through Netflix to find the Gay movies. After the third or fourth film where it isn’t really a Gay oriented film sometimes I give up.
YouTube seems to have the classification LGBTQ+ instead of Gayor Lesbian because in my feed the YouTube algorithm is constantly presenting Lesbian stuff I am not interested in. When it includes a Lesbian item, it isn’t including a potentially Gay item. It isn’t a major thing, but I am having to click a few items saying I am not interested.
I subscribe to GagaOOLala. They are better than Netflix, but in the front first web page along with “New Gay Releases,” there is also New Lesbian Releases. I am not interested. I doubt that the Lesbians are interested in the “New Gay Releaes.” There is also “Lesbian Top 10 in US.” There is their “Queer Up The Volume,” with both Gay and Lesbian content. There is “GagaOOLala Recommends,” with Gay and Lesbian and other content. There is “Coming Soon: Add to my List” with three out of five films being Lesbian films. You end up scrolling down and up some distance since the Gay stuff is spread out across the page. You put effort into sorting out films instead of considering what you might watch.
The thing is that the initial GagaOOLala page I come to involves me sorting out Lesbian and other content. This isn’t a huge inconvenience but it is an ongoing task of trying to find the Gay film in the LGBTQ+ mixed offering. However, sometimes a Gay film isn’t shown on the “Coming Soon: Add to my List” since it is bumped off by the Lesbian and other material.
Today, 3/30/2021, there are five items in “Coming Soon: Add to my List” and three are Lesbian films. There is a Gay button you can click on the top of the page which will just present Gay. When you choose it, you just get an unorganized list of materials. However, what is interesting is that two hidden Gay upcoming items appear.
There is an offering of Mandarin LGBTQ+ films. You can click on it and see what is available. However, it is a mixture of items of LGBTQ+ and you can’t really tell what is what always. In some cases you can. To use this listing you will have to go to the guide to Asian films, Mydramalist.com, and look up each item. I don’t have the hour to do this.
I am fairly sure that most of the revenue that GagaOOLala gets is from either Gay men or women interested in BL (type of East Asian same sex romance genre) material. Yet, GagaOOLala is making it tiresome for their primary customers to use their website.
When I am on Amazon, I did a search for Gay poetry. On the side is a filter to help narrow it down. It is “LGBTQ+ Books.” I am not LGBTQ+, I am a Gay person, I am looking for books of Gay interest. Yet I can’t filter for that. The offerings show on the first page of the search are mostly not Gay poetry. Partly because Amazon fills search page results with Sponsored Material which in this case is not Gay material. The point is that combined with the already poor Amazon search engine and the LGBTQ+ grouping, a person would find it difficult to find and compare Gay poetry anthologies.
One of the books offered is “Love Speaks Its Name: Gay and Lesbian Love Poems,” Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets series. Who actually wants this book? Lesbians likely want to purchase a book that is all about Lesbian poetry and Gays would like a book that is all about Gay poetry. It isn’t because of prejudice against the others, or a segregationist impulse. To make room for Lesbian poems there are Gay poems not being included, and to make room for Gay poems there aren’t Lesbian poems being included. Perhaps this is a text book or something.
Looking through the first two search page results, there were a couple Gay anthologies, but I had to really pick through a lot, I mean a lot, of irrelevant stuff. Since I know about Gay poetry I was able to deal with the chaff, but for a Gay person, for whom this is the start of their interest in poetry, it would be challenging.
Part of this is that service providers can’t be bothered to sort out stuff and perhaps are afraid of having to sort out LGBTQ+ into catagories. For example, if some movie about “Gay” transman isn’t included as Gay also they will be in trouble. Probably publishes just say the book is LGBTQ+ and the vendor would have to sort it out what it is.
Next time there is a queer film festival see how many films are actually oriented towards Gay men. Would the queer film festival even exist without Gays?
I think that there is another issue. Books for Gays are commericially viable and there is a Gay book market. Not so much for the other letters in the initialism. Similarly for art and video. Would a Trans movie festival be viable? Would a Queer festival made up about movies of GenderQueer, but not Lesbian or Gay, be viable? The fact is that inclusion is often another way of saying we want to ride on the coat tails of the Gay community. It might be strategically useful for an alliance of sexual minorities to do this, but when it becomes difficult for Gays to find Gay cultural productions it is a problem, or when it stops being a vehicle that meets the cultural needs of the Gay community it is a problem.
Art shows are often called “queer” or “LGBTQ+” also. This would be like instead of having a Latino art show, or African American art show, you had a People of Color art show. Also, since it is the Alphabet Soup curating this, you might find that the choice of art repressive. Maybe only obese nude guys since paintings of hot men are against body positivity.
In terms of traveling select sources of information geared to Gay men. You aren’t a LGBTQ+ traveler, you are a Gay traveler. Now some LGBTQ+ sites might have it organized so that you can easily find Gay information and sort things out and if that is the case, that is fine. However, if you are finding it hard to get the information you need then drop them. When it is LGBTQ+ it might also have a repressive attitude and knowing which bars are cruisy or what to expect at a club or where are the bath houses or sex clubs won’t be provided.
What can we do about this? I suggest the following items which I think offer some actions you can take, but I don’t think these actions will have much impact, but I do think it will help minimize some of intialism on the reader.
Review always before seeing something to make sure it is Gay and not a film in which there is this and that and the other thing, but only has one peripheral Gay character or is actually Gay.
For queer film festivals see if you can purchase tickets for the individual Gay films. Don’t buy a pass for the festival. Also, it maybe already available for puchase on Amazon or in some other streaming service and you don’t have to go at all. It might be on YouTube already.
Participate in Facebook pages which are Gay oriented. I have a page which is devoted to Gay art and has a lot of Facebook groups for persons interested in Gay art, and I hope to have other pages for other cultural topics. I will have a link at the end of this page.
Don’t go to “queer” or “LGBTQ+” events. You will be sitting through a lot of material that isn’t of interst and the Gay item might be a poem by a “Gay” transman titled, “Cis men are horrible and I can’t get laid.” The Gays that you will run into the event will mostly be those who are wanting to be the morally elect and art self-righteous and claim that they would have sex with a Gay transman if “it was the right person.”
Stop donating money to LGBTQ+ cultural institutions. Instead support institutions and art galleries that are focused on the Gay community. There are a lot of art Galleries which specifically target Gays. The link at the bottom of this page will take you to the Art Page which will have links to art galleries.
Organize something yourself or do something yourself. On your Facebook page publish a Gay bibliography. Get some friends together to read their favorite Gay poems. Have an art showing in your garage or in a space. Let others know about Gay oriented cultural resources. You don’t have to change the world, just letting a few people know about a resource is significant. You can post that picture of the pie or pasta you made later.
Restrict or drop subscriptions. I usually join Netflix for a month to see if there is a Kdrama I want to see. While there browsing on Netflix, I try to see what Gay films are there, and usually after 15 minutes I give up having to look them up on the Internet to see what they are about and realize they aren’t what I want. When I have seen the Kdrama, I cancel the membership.
As pointed out before, look at Gay travel oriented webpages and videos instead of LGBTQ+ pages.
Most of the above actions are means by which the reader can work around the LGBTQ+ chaff and find Gay stuff. However, if enough Gay people drop out of the LGBTQ+ and join Gay activities instead, the LGBTQ+ will wither away.