A Message From Lee Brewster

While researching a new essay, I found this anecdote:

We died in 1973, the fourth anniversary of Stonewall. That’s when we were told we were a threat and an embarrassment to women because lesbians felt offended by our attire, us wearing makeup. It came down to a brutal battle on the stage that year at Washington Square Park, between me and people I considered my comrades and friends. This was at pride. 

It was the year Bette Midler came to sing “Happy Birthday” for us. It was happy for the mainstream community, but it was not happy for us. They tried to stop drag queen entertainers from performing. It was angry because I had been scheduled for many months to speak at that rally. So I’m stubborn, and I wasn’t going to have it. Because for four years we were the vanguard of the gay movement, and all of a sudden it was being taken away. 

We were being pushed out of something we helped create. I remember this man telling me, a straight man who was my boss at the time, when I was working in Jersey - he said, “Ray, the oppressed becomes the oppressor. Be careful. Watch it.” And I saw it. And I still see it. I literally had to fight my way up onto that stage. I was beat. I got to speak. I said my piece. And I basically left the movement for many years. I didn’t come back into view until the 20th anniversary. And that was with David Isay’s Remembering Stonewall. 

He found me where I was in Tarrytown. I was living and working there. And then along came Martin Duberman and Stonewall. But I was really hurt in 1974. I tried to kill myself. I had 60 stitches on this arm after that incident. And I wasn’t ever going to come back to the movement. But you know who held fast to her word was Lee Brewster. When she got up and spoke after I did, she took off her tiara, threw it into the crowd and said, “Fuck gay liberation!” 

What people fail to remember is, here’s another drag queen who has not been recognized as a hero in our community. She put a majority of the money up for the first march in 1970. Lee Brewster changed the drinking laws for gay men to be able to be served in public at a regular bar instead of an afterhours club. She did this. Lee Brewster, with her own money, changed the laws on the books in New York against criminal impersonation that was held over drag queens’ heads.

There's not much about Lee Brewster online, so I think I'm going to go on another hunt for citations once I've finished this essay.

I don't know about you, but I'm excited.

The Vocabulary of ASOUE

I have a theory that Lemony Snicket's adjectives slowly get more complicated. So, let's test this theory out:

1. The Bad Beginning (2)
2. The Reptile Room (8)
3. The Wide Window (1)
4. The Miserable Mill (4)
5. The Austere Academy (10)
6. The Ersatz Elevator (11)
7. The Vile Village (6)
8. The Hostile Hospital (3)
9. The Carnivorous Carnival (12)
10. The Slippery Slope (7)
11. The Grim Grotto (5)
12. The Pentultimate Peril (9)
13. The End

Data was based in how commonly a word was used in English, found through Google Ngram. I disagree with a few of these, but I haven't tampered. 

As the Bauldelaires' journey becomes more uncertain, so does the vocabulary Snicket uses. We are as mystified as the siblings.

Despite this, there are outliers. There's a brief rise in complexity at books 5 and 6. These two books are where the mystery of VFD kicks off, and are quite plot-heavy. This makes them very oblique (though fascinating). With The End, Snicket forgoes use of an adjective. This signifies that, like the Baudelaires, we have no hope of knowing what is happening.  

This Week in T-POP! News: 17/05/2015

Well, I said it was semi regular.

Tromeo and Juliet - Lloyd Kaufman

There's a scene early on in Tromeo & Juliet while Juliet dreams. For a few, fleeting seconds, it seems as if it could come out of a Swedish sauna porno. But this is a Troma production, and sex is never without meaning; in this case, Juliet's fear of heterosexual intercourse is the meaning. Juliet reaches to an anonymous man's penis, and pulls it out. Not content to be a regular penis, it must be about a foot--and worse, it has a mouth. This was the moment I knew I loved Tromeo & Juliet. (The moment I knew I liked it was earlier--at the reimagining of the "'Do you bite your thumb at me?' 'I bite my thumb, sir!'" scene. You know the one.)

In Another Galaxy...: "Marvel is for everyone*!"

I wrote something for Special Snowflake. It's called "Marvel is for everyone*!", and I like it. It's about how the MCU's lack of female characters is fucking up young girls. You should check it out.

The Thin Line Between Offence and Respect

This is an exchange between a native American woman and a white man in Adam Sandler's Ridiculous 6; see if you can guess which character is which. Recently, a group of native Americans-including the film's cultural advisor-walked of the set of Ridiculous 6. This does not bode well for the film. At all.

"Just the same Tip": Gender Fluidity in Baum's Oz

L. Frank Baum's mother-in-law was a radical feminist, and she influenced his work greatly (if you're interested more on this particular aspect, Sally Roesch Wagner has a book on this called The Wonderful Mother of Oz). This contributed to the gender fluidity of his work.