Comments on: Normalizing Lesbian Couples

By: Lunad

Lunad — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:03:00 +0000

This reminded me of the move a few years ago to accept same-sex couples in the NY Times wedding announcement section. Now there is usually one or two per week, probably because newspapers are out of fashion.

By: Normalising Lesbian Couples « BitchKitten

Normalising Lesbian Couples « BitchKitten — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 20:30:37 +0000

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By: md

md — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 03:30:16 +0000

On the screen where the user can choose which type of survey they would like to do

http://www.crediteducationweekcanada.com/financial_compatibility_quizzes.asp

it looks to me like the couple on the right are two gay men. The couple on the left are heterosexual of mixed race (white & asian).

There are only a limited number of pictures on the website and there seems to be a good mix to me. It is impossible to show every combination of people (old, young, het, gay men, gay women, different races, and shuffled up like a deck of cards).

By: Lori

Lori — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:06:58 +0000

I think if they’d done that then they’d be getting grief for only choosing young women because ‘they’re more attractive’, or choosing interracial couples as a tokenistic gesture to make themselves seem cool.

I’m not sure they can win really.

By: Scapino

Scapino — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:21:55 +0000

Two “butch” women would get accusations of stereotyping all lesbians that way, and two “femme” ones would probably be sexualized and hit with accusations of pandering, lipstick lesbians, etc. Believe it or not, some lesbians DO look like both of the people in the photograph. Does a “butch” women with a “femme” one not count as a legitimate relationship?

By: Jenn

Jenn — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:56:56 +0000

Sounds like Sweden to me. I visited Stockholm last summer, and I found that while there are still pockets of all sorts of bigotry, it’s generally not the official policy to “white-wash” all deviations from the norm away from visible pubic life. I almost found it bizarre and uncomfortable, being so acclimated to pretending I’m something I’m not.

By: Jenn

Jenn — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:54:23 +0000

I highly appreciate that they pictured lesbians in a non-sexualized fashion. Finding depictions of lesbians not being used as sexual objects for a heterosexual male gaze is downright rare.

I would have appreciated it more if they had included a picture of younger lesbians (while non-sexualized older lesbians are rare, non-sexualized younger lesbians are unheard of) or even an interracial or non-white couple.

I just can’t help but notice that ads like these typically pick one “risky” variable and show it, and never show intersecting demographics like a gay couple in which at least one is non-white. Kind of like how you go to some sort of political summit and having the only two prominent speakers be a rich white man and a poor white man is supposed to be “diverse”.

Well, I’m still more pleased than disappointed. But would still like to see the multivariable intersecting world we experience actually reflected in power and in images.

By: Quib9

Quib9 — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:07:11 +0000

It’s kind of hard to tell with the picture that small. At first glance, the short hair cut just looks like the kind I see older women wearing, and I mostly figured them for an older couple (both of them have kind of grey-ish hair). While styles that short are still considered pretty masculine, it seems to me like they’re getting more popular. I see women with them on my college campus at any rate, and while I’m not in the habit of polling women on their femme/butch-ness based on hairstyle, it does seem a tad dismissive to label it as inherently stereotypical.

Furthermore, while it’s definitely a calculated move on the part of the organization, it is part of the quiz results, not part of promotional material.

By: Grace

Grace — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:02:28 +0000

It’s always interesting to see “the other” in a way that is normalized. I went to Sweden and picked up a free guide to Stockholm – the official production of the tourism bureau – and the front cover was of the Stockholm pride festival. I had to double check to make sure that it wasn’t the “gay and lesbian guide” – which would be the only way that a cover like that would make it here in the US.

By: angie

angie — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:27:22 +0000

Well, to me is seems that in this picture the lesbian couple is kind of stereotypised as in the other one is more masculine short-haired “butch” and the other is the feminine “femme” type of character. Seems more like trivialisation to me, honestly. But is it new that all kinds of organisations and companies try to fish out for gay community? Hate to be so negative about it but this picture is like representing homosexual relationship in terms of 50s american heterosexual family ideal. No matter what they do homosexuality will be understood always in the context of heterosexual relationships by the majority of people and that is just sad.

By: Edie

Edie — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:43:45 +0000

I can’t help but notice that one has long, feminine hair while the other has a short cut (and that the one with the longer hair is in white and the other in black, which I think might be just a little loaded)- but they both look more or less feminine overall.

By: Thaddeus

Thaddeus — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:40:27 +0000

It reminds me of “Sugar Time” the controversial episode of the kid’s show “Postcards from Buster” that caused a stir a few years ago.
The show just treated the lesbian couple and their kids as a normal family.
Unfortunately, too many people are incapable of seeing homosexuals as normal and raise a fuss anytime they’re presented as such.

Anyone see the Colbert Report’s “Nailed Em” segment from earlier this week about two homosexual men who got charged with trespassing after having kissed in front of the LDS temple in Salt Lake City?

By: Beth

Beth — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:14:39 +0000

Yay! This is great, and also brings to mind Ikea commercials that also depict same sex, mixed race and other kinds of families other than traditional. Progress!

By: Scapino

Scapino — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:43:17 +0000

Glad to see an example of a group doing things right. Good for them.