Rather than going off on a rant :-) I will confine myself to doing two things.įirst, I'll share this bit from the end of TFA:Īs Obama said after the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, they are “a safe haven, a place to sing and dance, and most importantly, to be who you truly are.” “We go out,” Lin writes, “to be gay.”Īt the same time, they are also places that inform us that to be gay is to like a specific kind of music, that enforce certain norms of beauty, that all too often exclude those not masculine enough, wealthy enough, or white enough. There's a heck of a lot to digest in this-and I haven't even read the book he's reviewing-but I feel very passionately about this (especially as fired off by the, I feel intentionally-provocative framing).
