Sure, if you’re writing an interesting article about how you came to have a foot fetish. I don’t understand the idea of feet as sexy, so I might glance through it to cultivate an understanding. Now, if you were a TV celeb from my childhood who announced his foot fetish…let’s say Mark Paul Gossamer, for example. First childhood crush. There’s an added level connection to me, and you bet your ass I’m interested in flipping through the story of your foot fetish in the gossip rags.
Same thing here. Most people aren’t gay. Most people who grew up watching Family Ties didn’t know that Meredith Baxter is gay. Therefore, their perception of someone they’ve recognized since childhood has shifted. Why wouldn’t the public be interested in that?
This is easily the most level-headed post in all this thread and several other Pit threads if you care to include them. I just wanted to quote it and get it on the third page so more people can see it.
Sure, that’s a positive thing. It’s great that you’ve moved into post-gay rights America. Welcome! Try the brie, it’s fabulous.
Unfortunately, ~60% of Americans haven’t joined the party yet. They still care a whole lot about whether Meredith Baxter is gay, to the extent that they think it should be a factor in determining what she is and is not allowed to do in this country. That’s what makes this kind of an important thing. Not the most important thing. Not even the most important thing with regards to gay rights. But maybe the next time some suburban hausfrau walks into a voting booth and considers pulling a lever that’s going to restrict gay people’s rights, she’ll think about how her vote is going to effect that nice woman who was in all those Lifetime TV movies she used to watch, and decide to vote differently.
I will be ready for post-gay-rights America once I hear about some celebrity who discovered they were teh ghey only when they fell for someone else who had found out fairly late in the game.
Meredith, Carol Leifer, Anne Heche all “discovered” themselves with fairly stereotypical, out lesbians, which apparently is not always the rule IRL. How do we know they weren’t just reacting to being celebrities, or wanting to break with their former lives as symbolically as possible?
Ie, could it have been in part an identity move, with the celeb inwardly desiring a bold new self instead of just shacking up with Debbie Divorcée from yoga class?
Yeah, between this, the thread he linked to, and this post from another current Pit thread, I have to wonder why Beware of Doug seems to be personally invested in pooh-poohing late-in-life lesbians who end up in relationships with out lesbians. It certainly doesn’t seem malicious or anything, more like he’s got some sort of mental picture of two older, straight (as far as they know), women hooking up and discovering that they both like each other, you know, like that, and he really wants it to be true.
It strikes me, though, that things are rarely likely to work out that way. If one were to discover later in life that one is attracted to women, it seems rather unlikely that one would happen to be close friends with another woman going through the same thing at the same time. And having figured such a thing out, and wanting to act on it, and being unfamiliar with the intricacies of same-sex dating, one is likely to end up with women she’s damn sure are also lesbians.
The bee in my bonnet was that they’re media celebrities. As such, IMO, they should always be a little bit suspect of wanting to make a statement, be on the edge of a trend - get noticed. (Meredith was in the closet for a long time, but look at now.)
If female celebs almost always wind up with Kinsey 6’s instead of, say, bi’s (who might be just as out - right?), that might say, “I’m falling in love with a lifestyle, not a person.” That’s great if you’re trying to educate us about lifestyles, but not so great for sending messages to individuals about relationships with other individuals.
Yeah, she was in the closet and in a relationship with a woman for several (4 according to Wikipedia, but with no references at the moment) years, until the tabloids caught her on a gay cruise trip with her girlfriend, and she decided to go public. She’s not trying to “make a statement”, she’s just outing herself to the world at large, since she seems to have been out to those close to her for a while, and the Enquirer and Perez Hilton were going to tell the rest of us anyways.
I literally cannot figure out what the hell this means, other than that it seems to imply that Baxter has some sort of moral obligation to fall in love with someone who would meet your standards of setting an example to the rest of us. Really, I am baffled by your objections, or what benefits you see accruing from Baxter following your whims in her relationships, even without getting into the fact that it would be ridiculous to expect her to chose her relationships based on some benefit to society at large, rather than her heart.
Oh shit. I’m not making myself clear here, and I’m guessing it’s no longer worth trying.
I could care less about what individuals do with other individuals if they are following their hearts. More power to 'em. But people don’t always follow their hearts. Sometimes they follow some abstract notion of Identity that says, “I’m a member of Group X first and a individual second.”
I think I got it, at least. You think it’s odd that celebrities only come out as gay, and rarely if ever as bi.
Particularly, you think that, by the description that has been given of her life, Baxter would qualify as bi, not gay. And, if this is the case, you wonder why she, like many others, prefers to describe herself as gay.
I’ve often wondered if the reason we are so hung up on sexuality today is that people see their options as a dichotomy. It seems like, in the past, it was acceptable that a male might find another male attractive. Or that two women might have a really close friendship that had some sexual overtones. It was just something that happened, no big deal.
Edit: Ah. You also note that celebrities are often media whores, and wonder if that is part of the connection. As has been pointed out upthread, it’s now almost fashionable to come out. While Baxter may not be faking, you wonder if some other people are.
I think it’s more likely they found a same-sex person they want to be in a relationship with, and, because of that, they think they have to identify as gay. In fact, they probably do, to get the media to leave them alone.
Had a kinda similar story from my own Mom, talking about how she moved out of the dorm after her first year at U Tex. She told herself at the time that if she never, ever again saw another naked female body, it would be far, far too soon.