#i am begging yall to learn your queer history
rocky horror is the worst and is also transmisogynistic can we please finally get over this shit movie
ok but like the writer is transgender nonbinary and the language used in the play was the preferred language by trans people of that time can we not deny parts of our history because we’ve evolved since then thanks
So fucking much this.
PS, youth of today: you’ll be saying the same damn thing about art from this time before too long, for good or for ill. Terminology will, in fact, change. Definitions will, in fact, shift. It always does, they always do.
PPS, it is pretty much impossible to overstate how life-alteringly important this movie was to kids who didn’t conform to standard expectations of gender and sexuality, back in the day. Especially when back in the day was the mid-to-late 1980s, when the only queers you saw on TV were neutered AIDS tragedies, Bowie was playing straight, and even Elton John was married to a woman, and midnight showing of RHPS were pretty much the only place that felt like home. It was mental life raft for a lot of people.
I was one of them.
#the queer youth of today has forgotten all its history and is spitting on its ancestors and i hate it (via@gaythreats)
beautifully phrased
RHPS kept a lot of us alive.
Mentally, yes, but also literally. We found community and passed resources, we found roommates and bought each other post-show food at diners. It was a way to network in places where there weren’t Queer Centers.
I’m not saying the show doesn’t have its issues. It does, and the things which are keeping you alive? They have issues, too. Nothing we make is perfect.
Someday the things you hold precious will show their age, and you can then rejoice in that, because that will mean we know more and we’re doing better.
I’d argue that RHPC is still important and absolutely boundary pushing to this day. We straight up do not have nearly enough of this energy anymore. RHPC said “You think I’m a villain? You think I’m a murder rapist transvestite? Well, honey, it’s fun when I do it.”
We straight up need this energy of celebrating queer villany and queer evil and making it fun, because that, too, is an important kind of reclamation. This is a story about a vanilla straight seeming couple being involved in filth and degeneracy and horror and coming out queer and vibrant (as much as the times allowed for that story). It’s “yes, you should be afraid that we’ll turn your children against you and you should believe that we are powerful and will not hesitate to fuck shit up.”
And that is an open defiance to everything pushing down on us. That is what makes RHCP important, not the fact that it had Tim Curry in sexy stockings. It exists to spit back at the people spitting in our mouths when we ask for water. And in a sea of good representation it’s important that we don’t forget to embrace reclamations of bad representation. And that we realize that a queer person embracing queerphobic stereotypes and making them an identity is in no way the same as a straight person using them to defame us.I think “Rocky horror picture show was a lifelinefor queer folk” and “it’s creator though nonbinary is still a transmysgonist peice of shit” are sentiments that should both exist.
Like unless he has apologised for this: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2016/03/08/rocky-horror-star-richard-obrien-trans-women-cant-be-women/
Our trans sisters have every right to be pissed off.
… sure. But no one’s saying they don’t have right to be. Like, at all.
The discussion on this pisses me off so much bc lets be real, barely anyone really gives a shit about what Richard O’ Brien thinks about trans women in 2022. It’s something that should be criticized, but realistically the only time it ever comes up is when discussing RHPC. It’s very blatant how criticisms against him are usually actually disguised attacks on all the things that are embodied in RHPC down to the point where Frank is accused of being bad transfemme representation when he’s literally a fucking crossdresser and had absolutely fuck all to do with trans women. And it’s used constantly to frame O’ Brien in a really weird way because it’s not supposed to be a criticism of things he said, it’s supposed to frame him as an irredeemable piece of shit so bad that anything he touches must be shitty and problematic by extension. It’s supposed to associate aggressive queerness and an embracing of queer villainy with transphobia. His own transness is so commonly erased, his queerness is so commonly erased, all the importance of him for queer history is being erased.
Let’s be real, if you’re my age (mid 20s) or below and you’re not a big fan of Rocky Horror already you’ll see the headlines about O’ Brien’s transphobia and go “whomst?” because the last time he was somebody the current generation of queers, aside from RH fans, actually commonly knew who he was was before our own birth. The only reason you’ll know his name if not by watching RH is by being warned of how problematic RH is by the new hatedom this movie aquired in recent years, pushed by people who don’t approve that it’s violently queer and completely disregards the idea of assimilation into normal society. This is what 99.9% of discussions on O’ Brien’s transmisogyny are actually about. They’re about RH being queer and loud and aggressive and refusing to be pallatable to cisstraight society.
As a huge fan of RH I am frankly ashamed of the things O’ Brien has said. I am angry at him and I am astounded at how somebody who is trans himself, who has been in this community for more than twice my own age would talk like this. But I also understand that he was literally born before the end of WW2 and it’s painfully obvious how changing language and sentiment in the queer community and a failure to adapt to them have led to him relating more to terfs than current day trans people in some regards and that is still shitty to see off him, but it’s not him hating trans women, or being malicious, or making a movie about how trans women are serial killers and rapists 44 years ago.Like, let’s reduce what he said down to the simplest version. He considers trans women to be a form of non binary who embody the idea of a woman but not what I assume is meant to be a female sex. He himself is nonbinary and thinks it’s a good thing to do this and to be happy with it. He also supports medical transition. He also assumes that terfs are coming from a similar place (which they are demonstraby not). If you wanna be mad and alarmed at any specific part of what he said, this imo would be the thing to be worried about.
Does the above sound very questionable and at points actively shitty?
Yes. Without a doubt.
Does it sound like someone who deserves to be framed the way he commonly is?
In my opinion not.
There will maybe come a point in time where he will either be radicalized into a more straight up terf mindset, start talking about how dangerous the current trans trend is, or how while he supports transition he thinks there is a trend to force it on kids, the usually stuff, or where he’ll realize the hatred and vitriol among terfs. The way he talks about them frankly sounds like he never actually engaged with their rhetoric and he doesn’t seem to think of his own opinion on that as something with a lot of importance. Depending on how things may develop he might either come to regret these things he said, or he might go mask off as a full blown transphobe. Or he might do neither and just shut up. Or a middle thing, continuously giving the wrong people the benefit of the doubt while he himself won’t understand why something he thinks is a supportive view is seen as an attack on trans people.
Probably the latter.But I don’t think it matters a particular amount. Most likely he’ll die of old age before the situation changes. And when he does all the queer news sites will talk about his death and how important he was and RH fans will shed a tear and the RH hatedom will keep hating RH and act like the ideas he expressed here have and actual relevance to the movie and the majority of queer teenagers will shrug their shoulders and go “well this is a thing that happened” and move on because they don’t know who Richard O’ Brien is or why he’s important and all they ever saw of Rocky Horror is screenshots of Tim Curry in makeup.
Not to beat a dead horse but if all of Tumblr is willing to read and a hundred year old book and think critically about the attitude and prejudices of the author while still enjoying it, there’s room to accept RHPS as important to queer history and to people as a work of queer art while recognizing the author’s bias as well.
