She is too so representative
The BBC reports a startling new development:
Jameela Jamil has announced she is “queer” after receiving criticism for being cast in a new LGBT-interest show.
US broadcaster HBO announced on Tuesday that the actress and model would be a judge on its new unscripted voguing contest Legendary.
The news prompted an online backlash from people who said The Good Place star was not representative of the black LGBT community.
That prompted her to issue a statement addressing her sexuality.
But this identity “queer” is not at all a label of convenience for when people think you’re just another boring cis straight woman who as a cis straight woman is obviously not marginalized or oppressed in any way.
Opening with “Twitter is brutal”, she explained that she identified “as queer” and had previously struggled to discuss the topic because “it’s not easy within the south Asian community to be accepted”.
She mentioned that nobody in her family was “openly out” and that “it’s also scary as an actor to openly admit your sexuality, especially when you’re already a brown female in your thirties”.
I’m not getting the “in your thirties” part. Why does that make it especially scary?
But more to the point, what is “queer” even supposed to mean? What does she mean by it? What does she expect the world to understand her to mean by it? Just…special? Hip? Woke? Honorary lesbian? A trans man?
The term queer is both embraced and frowned upon. Having been seen as derogatory, it is being reclaimed by some non-heterosexual people who say they don’t identify with more traditional categories of gender identity and sexual orientation.
But what does that mean? Here’s a news flash: those horrible feminist women that everyone hates also don’t “identify with” more traditional categories of gender identity, which is what “feminist” means. Is Jamil just saying she’s a feminist? Probably not, since she isn’t.
With Jamil trending on Twitter, reactions to her statement appeared to be more negative than positive, with many criticising her for coming out as queer while being in a relationship with musician James Blake.
But “queer” doesn’t mean “not in a relationship with James Blake,” it means…special, interesting, sparkly.
This I do understand. In entertainment, a woman in her thirties is like a woman in her early sixties somewhere else – ready to be retired because no good to anyone. They only want them young in that business (with a few exceptions, because they do need the Meryl Streeps and Helen Mirrens for those older roles that don’t require continued HB10 status).
Also, this is an interesting look into the total hypocrisy, chaos, and just plain annoyingness of wokeness. Someone can identify as anything they want. But when someone takes that literally, and identifies as something like “queer” (which has no specific meaning, except not boring like women are), then the LGBT community suddenly wants standards on it – who can and can’t identify as what.
It’s also an interesting parallel with what “cis-scum TERFs” are saying. “Hey, you can’t just call yourself something and instantly become a member of our community, entitled to all the things reserved for us to overcome all the millennia of oppression”. Now they want to reserve this spot for only LGBTQ+++++ people, and someone wants to identify into that community, and they cry foul.
Even though I doubt it is dangerous to the LGBTQ to have Jameela Jamil enter their spaces, they recognize the risks of allowing just anyone to say “hey, yeah, I’m cool. I’m one of you, even though I don’t actually fit the criteria usually established for your category. Just accept me, okay?”.
How does anyone know if anyone else is “queer?” How do they know she’s not? Maybe it’s an every other day thing. Talk to Pippa/Philip Bunce. Seems “s/he’s” also a “father and husband” . Did that result in disqualification?
Jamil’s word isn’t enough? Self-ID is insufficient? Maybe she’s “expanding the bandwidth” of what it means to be queer. Talk to Alex Drummond.
Maybe she’s taking the place of somebody who’s really queer? Say hello to Laurel Hubbard.
Maybe if she’d been a guy in a dress….or if James Blake had said he was “queer.” Clearly “identitification” is a one way street.
Is anyone else reminded of this special, unique couple? No reason I’m sure.
Yep. Thought of them right away, though my memory of the image for that post put the person in the red dress on the left rather than the right. I’m sure that says something awful and exclusionary about my habits of thought.