I think this stuff about homophobia in Sex and the City 2 is ridiculous. Minorities will always exist as stereotypes in the mind of the majority, so people should just be happy that the stereotypes that are used in the movie are positive instead of negative. Liking Liza Minelli is not that offensive actually.

There is almost nothing as transparent as people who are addicted to being displeased by things.

I really enjoyed a few of the "middle years" of the show--after the early episodes that focused on the Carrie character's (dreadful) writing, but before it turned all mawkish after 2001. The movies? I got hives just from watching the trailers. This latest one especially--the girls go to the desert! All they can come up with now is to do a Hope and Crosby "Road" movie? Maybe they can go into outer space for the next movie.

I guess the ultimate fate of any franchise that sticks around too long is to end up writing its own fanfic. "Fawlty Towers" made twelve episodes and called it a day. Nothing like ending at the top of your game.

A group of (conservative, hetero (is this stereotyping now?)) girls I know went to see the film with one guy, who I'm pretty sure went cos he was new (office thing) and really eager to please and very polite. Anyway, after they were asking whether he was gay (he wasn't there any more) because '[they'd] been saying how much [they'd] really like a gay friend'. Yuck, right? Like 'ooo, I want one of those!'

So on top of the stereotyping and commodifying of HUMAN BEINGS, FRICKING PEOPLE YEAH?, we have a more subtle thing: why do they think this guy is gay? Well, he's never expressed any sexual preference or discussed his behaviour, they only know him from the office, so it can only be from his behaviour. Now, as I said, the guy is polite, eager to please, he also dresses well yada yada, so he's socially feminine (he doesn't belch and grunt and talk about girls as if they were meat). This must mean he's gay, right? No. Screw that. He's probably socially feminine because a) he works in an office almost entirely staffed by conservative, hetero women (yup, that stereotype again), and he's actually just polite and tidy and wants to make friends. Similarly, I was recently 'warned' that my 'feminine' posture might 'give people the wrong idea' (the phrase 'hello sailor' was actually spoken...). There is NO REASON to correlate anyone's behaviour with their sexual preference.

This touches on something I've been thinking about a fair bit without really crystallising... that homosexuals were only allowed into the patriarchy by assigning them new genders: so gay women were biologically feminine and socially masculine and gay men were the reverse: that way there was no confusion. Notice how gay stereotypes, for example, are largely paraded through a patriarchal, heteronormative media, as a shallow attempt at inclusion. Of the gay men I know, some choose to embrace the stereotype, acting decidedly camp (and I don't think it's a coincidence that how camp they are acting is relative to how many hot men are around/how long it's been...) while others take no part in it and you would have no idea they're gay from their behaviour. Equally I know plenty of straight guys who will act feminine (and interestingly tend to receive a lot of affection all round but are not taken at all sexually seriously by my hyper feminist straight female friends... which shows how ingrained these social roles are).

Essentially, you can't accurately map masculine/feminine behaviour onto someone's sexuality, because it's in the most part a construct (the division); sometimes people play up to it, sometimes they don't. It is an incredibly poor guide, wildly unscientific, and ultimately stupid. I for one am sick to death of Big Gay Al as the sole representation of homosexual men in the heteronormative sphere. Gay men are not an accessory (also, just because there isn't a penis involved, doesn't make female homosexual sex 'not sex' or 'innocent (as opposed to penetrative sex, which is always a form of rape in the patriarchy...)'. Girls don't just kiss girls to turn on boys...

Well, that just descended into a rant. If only I were gay, then people wouldn't always be offended by me cos I'd only ever have opinions about shoes!