‘Uncle Poodle’ needs to speak up

[xchrom]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/uncle-poodle-needs-to-speak-up/2012/10/08/d35d43ba-10d2-11e2-be82-c3411b7680a9_blog.html?hpid=z3

Karen Cox meant well. Her op-ed piece in the New York Times last Thursday — “We’re here, we’re queer, y’all” — was supposed to be a celebration of openly gay people in the rural South. Instead, the author and University of North Carolina at Charlotte professor presented a rather dispiriting view of Southern gay life that isn’t much better than the closeted days Cox would have you think are largely gone.

Cox builds her argument around “Uncle Poodle,” the beloved gay uncle of the improbable reality TV star Honey Boo Boo. The 7-year-old beauty queen affectionately calls gay men “poodles.” But because “Uncle Poodle,” a.k.a. Lee Thompson, is openly gay to the family, that’s taken as a sign of progress.

“[H]is appearance on the show has opened people’s eyes to something many have never considered: that you can be openly gay and accepted in the rural South,” wrote Cox. She cited other examples of rural Southern gay living that left me scratching my head.

***SNIP

My friend and MSNBC colleague Jimmy Williams penned a powerful piece last week on “The art of dog whistling” for the Grio. In it, he wrote about the racial dog whistles and code words he learned growing up as a white child in South Carolina. But he also recounted how he endured anti-gay code words in silence.

I waltzed into my teenage years and figured out two things very quickly: that the woman who was raising me to be a gentleman with a firm moral code was, in fact, a black woman named Bertha. I also figured out that I was very different from most of my white male friends, that I was a young gay man growing up in that conservative South. And I hid it from the people that mattered most to me. I “butched it up,” so to speak, so no one would know who I really was. There were code words for me: “sissy,” “queer,” “f*g,” “gay” to name a few. I’d hear things like “he’s a little light in his loafers” or “I know which side his bread is buttered on.” It felt terrible to hear them and to cope, I transferred my hurt towards the only group of people I could find more vulnerable than me: southern blacks.

[William769]

1. I stuck up for Honey Boo Boo about a week 1/2 ago in a Lounge thread

That had some very vile posts in it.

On this issue, I don't forgive and I damn sure don't forget.

I guess being a southerner, I can relate to Honey Boo Boo and understood perfectly.

[xchrom]

2. i missed the lounge thread.

in the midwest -- growing up -- we were never, ever referred to.

and -- outside of LGBTIQ issues aside -- no one would ever ask if you had been molested.

it was just a void.