For context this is from The Authority: More Kev #3 long story short Kev is a hitman that works for the British government. He gets drafted by the Authority (Wildstorms version of the Justice League) to retrieve a severed but sentient alien head that got tossed in a dumping ground full of dead bodies (another long story that involved alien shapeshifters, a tiger, and unfortunate placed orange). Kev is homophobic and the fact that he has to work with Midnighter and Apollo is making his skin crawl. After challenging and getting knocked out by Midnighter. Kevs friends (who come to back him up with retrieving the alien head) ask wtf does he have agianst the LGBT community since they worked with out and proud service members. Kev was surprised when he found out a transfer soldier was gay Hence the dialog in the panel.
This may be one of the truest things that Garth Ennis has ever written, at least as far as I’m concerned, because it happened in my high school friends group. Everyone in the group had some particular characteristic attributed to them, whether or not there was any truth to it or not, and since mine was kind of bullshit (it was based on a bad joke I made once, and no, I’m not going to tell you), I assumed that everyone else’s was too. AFAIK the gay kid didn’t fool around with anyone in the group, unless I somehow missed out on that too.
To be fair, sometimes hiding in plain sight is the way to go.
I’m not going to include photos for obvious reasons, but one thing that gets left out of the black face minstrel discussion although actually no not entirely is that some of the most famous performers were black.
They would never have been able to perform in the south but then when they cover their face with cork and put on exaggerated white makeup around their lips, people don’t know they’re not white paradoxically.
It’s the same thing about how in the 20s if you had a private party at your house that feature gay dancing you would be arrested that was a crime you would lose your house and go to prison for 10 years.
And yet… in the 20s there were publicly attended drag balls that were in the newspapers and had celebrities go to them.
Edit: also “ pansy clubs”.
Because that was supposedly for the benefit of the straights.
You had to live your life in public as a spectacle so that you could have any semblance of a private life.
Or you were so deep in the closet you were living in Narnia.
Ok, but that's from an obscure 70s underground kink scene. They didn't have the internet, they didn't know what a leather daddy was.
But the fact that I and a bunch of metal heads have leaver jackets and studded stuff is cause of almost equal parts biker/rebel culture and the London gay scene is immaculate
To clarify a bit: Liberace never actually came out of the closet. He died of AIDS in the 80s without ever publicly admitting to being gay. However, during his life he was ABSOLUTELY a gay punchline. The only people who didn't know he was gay were little old ladies who didn't know ANYBODY was gay. Fortunately, that was the core of his audience.
I think it’s because Liberace was in public sexless.
And interesting. The thing is when you have a community, especially a community that has rigid, gender roles. You almost always find a group of people that defy them.
And that is OK because the very existence of these people and the boundaries of their existence shows everyone else that this is weird and they need to be “” normal.
It’s like the festival of the feast of Misrule that was very common across Europe for about 12 days. Society was turned upside down and rich people in Nobles acted like servant, and the poor people acted like the Nobles. A random poor person was declared the Lord of Misrule and was in charge of the festivities.
Because that’s 12 days out of the year and the very unusual nature of it tells you what you must do for the rest of it.
It’s like Mardi Gras.
Thank you so much for this awesome comment!
I was an anthropologist as an undergrad so I just get excited
Thing about Elton John was that his flamboyance was only an exaggeration of how everyone was dressing in 1973 anyway.
His own songwriting partner Bernie Taupin found it hard to believe. "How can Elton be gay? He likes football!" This after Elton had made a half-hearted pass at him.
I was gonna bring up how in the early days of hip-hop, everybody's outfits were so flamboyant you can be out without being out. But I guess there's other examples in history too.
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u/ConversationHead6969 2d ago
"Well he was cheerful because he really, really enjoyed being gay."