I’ve been watching several of these videos and they sum up not just what’s wrong in Florida and Disney with the Don’t Say Gay bill they helped fund (as did many other corporations including the new owners of Sky and Dreamworks) but also wider problems – with class, representation, and exploitation.
The latter point is really important; I don’t think people realise that the Mouse Wheel they are running – of energy prices, wars, Brexit and whatever – is so to keep people busy while corrupt politicians asset strip the nation and the lawbooks. They want to be left alone, so throw dead cats and smokescreens, stupid drama and silly antics (see Trump/Boris) while trying to do the more scary stuff on the quiet.
The Don’t Say Gay bill is the latter btw, with it’s ‘it’s only about small kids and sexuality, and why do you want to talk anal sex to 7 year olds you paedo?’ undertone, Even in the fucking gay community that prize chestnut has popped up – our particular version of blood libel, thanks – and it’s complete bullshit. If you can talk about kids getting ‘married later’, having kiss chase and having ‘girlfriends’ and ‘boyfriends’ (heterosexually of course) then you can do the same with other sexualities. It’s not about the act, it’s about the attraction (and indeed some kids have same-sex parents so normalising that is a good one).
Also the idea that teachers and others have to mandatorily out kids – even if it endangers them – is a really strange thing to put into law. There’s a movement towards trans and queer people at the moment that reminds me of Stalin or Hitler; people keep saying ‘oh no it won’t get that bad’ but they said that about Trump – and I was right about him winning. They said something like the Capitol assault, Ukraine and Brexit would never happen cos people are smarter than that.
Nope. Sorry. They aren’t. People react to emotion-led and fear-based things highly unpredictably – or like Putin seem to have totally lost the plot and wanting to get into Russia’s version of Vietnam, but you do you Vladdy boy, I guess? Or maybe it’s all master plan, but who knows these days (I am very much pro Ukraine not getting invaded if that isn’t clear from my social media)
And indeed QUEER KIDS EXIST. I was one, I should know. If queer things made kids queer then I’d be fucking straight, given I was a child at the time of Section 28, a very similar law, and it made my childhood hell. No support, no representation, no sex ed – teens and young adults died after contracting HIV as a result, as it was during the AIDS Crisis too – and that blood is on those politicians hands btw, and the voters.
Same stupid arguments were made then by adults, us queer kids were just left to struggle. I hate to think how many we lost to suicide. In fact I know that fact personally – at least one. They leave politics with money and a knighthood, leaving coffins in their wake and never a conscience. Shame they probably can sleep at night, I hope the ghosts haunt them.
Anyway frightened and scared people are easier to control; that is an important fact to remind people of – as is the startling fact that 70% of Romans were slaves. We are their slaves, or they expect us to be, for the rich 1%. And rather than chains they use propaganda and lies.
But the appropriation thing is also key, this weird coding/queerbaiting, that goes beyond Disney. Can we just stop praising these corporations for doing the absolute minimum? And expect better? Especially if they are funding the very bills that take away our rights – but as the first video says – that’s win/win for Disney – better tax breaks and an impoverished oppressed underclass to work their theme parks.
If that’s struck a chord with you, I really recommend checking out /r/antiwork – it goes way beyond having a gay Disney princess or superhero, and more into how they think throwing scraps at us while having a whole banquet to themselves is somehow keeping us happy. It isn’t; and they are about to find out that they’re just fattening the meat we’re going to eat – them.
The Disney CEO might have very recently said some nice words and finally acted – sorta, after nearly two weeks – but given the censorship that on the same day Pixar employees talked about I personally don’t hold out much here. Although I do think the Governor slagging off one of your biggest employers as a ‘woke corporation’ – one who could up-sticks and move, is a stupid move.
But hey, they know Disney is their lapdog – unless Disney decides to actually get some teeth and follow up it’s empty inclusivity statements with some action – and all the corporates with their bloody rainbow logos at Pride but not giving a shit the rest of the year.
I see you. And I’m really not impressed.
I want the queer youth to have better than I had, which was shit – and I mean the 1980’s drama It’s A Sin was great but it was if anything watered down, actually .And in those podcasts I just linked, you will notice the name and music of Howard Ashman, a gay man, who died of AIDS, and worked on some of the biggest Disney movies and songs of the late 80’s and early 90’s. Disney has a MASSIVE queer heritage behind the scenes. Stuff like this makes me despair for the memory of those people, this pisses on their graves.
With all that profit us LGBTQ+ has made for them, behind the scenes and for customers – they still seemingly can’t see us as people? You’d think Disney and other corporations who depend on the attention of kids and their families would actually care for them, rather than use them as some collateral damage in getting reduced taxes. No, apparently.
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