Every time I watch The Lion In Winter I spend the first twenty minutes thinking that this movie isn’t as good as I remembered; that this movie is old and slow and drags. The first twenty minutes feel like they take two hours.
But the final two hours? Damn. I swear they only take twenty minutes.
Katharine Hepburn as Amazon warrior princess Antiope & Colin Keith-Johnston as Theseus in stage production of The Warrior’s Husband (1932) (Corbis)
ok. ok
all right I’ll allow it
Okay so some fun and interesting tidbits of info that @queer-taako gave me a while back regarding Katherine Hepburn: she may have possibly been either nonbinary or transmasc. She had a male persona, and gay men (as in exclusively gay men, men who only had sex with and were attracted to other men) had sex with her. They viewed her as just as much a man as any of them. In fact, the only reason I’m still using “her” and not “him”/“them” is because it was never confirmed (and let’s be real, it could have been very dangerous for her back then). But that information is out there.
This is a pretty good article going into detail about Hepburn’s identity as well as how the era sort of impacted her experience. She described herself later in life as “the missing link between genders” and even as a child, had a secret name for herself which she preferred to be called among friends (Jimmy) and the information she gave about her childhood like not getting why everyone seemed to treat her like a girl, not wanting anything to do with feminine things, having a secret name, at the very least resonates with gnc and butch women, trans men and nonbinary people.
We have no way of knowing what she really was, and we cant really ascribe an identity to her, but she had relationships with men and women and wanted pretty much nothing to do with womanhood in her private life. Being non straight and/or not cis in Hollywood, especially back then, was such a minefield to navigate, and there was virtually no language to express yourself if your identity was anything other than gay or straight cis person, and even the term ‘lesbian’ wasnt used as often as youd think.
Perhaps because my life hasn’t followed a conventional gender script, I am fond of images that challenge stereotypes–and Katherine Hepburn was so formidable she doesn’t seem out of place at all.
Hepburn’s breakout performance came in a 1932 revival of The Warrior’s Husband (a riff on Lysistrata) when she played Antiope, sister of the queen and commander of the all-female armed forces in the Amazonian state of Pontus. For her stage entrance, Hepburn jumped down a flight of stairs while carrying the carcass of large stag on her shoulders.
An RKO scout in the audience one night, Leland Hayward, was so impressed with Hepburn’s physicality that he arranged a screen test. She made her Hollywood debut in George Cukor’s A Bill of Divorcement and by 1933 had earned her first Academy Award for Morning Glory, where she portrayed a young actress who sacrifices romance for the sake of her career.
Perhaps Hepburn had her early successes in mind when she said, “I never realized until lately that women were supposed to be the inferior sex.”
I hate that people keep insisting that Kristen Stewart is a lesbian even though she’s flat out said she’s bisexual, that she sees sexuality as grey and fluid, that she’s not strictly homosexual or heterosexual, and that she would definitely date a guy again; like the list goes on. I think it’s the fact that she’s also so visibly gnc and people still can’t concieve that bisexuality isn’t just gay lite? Like as much as she may “look” like a lesbian, she’s a gnc bi woman and I think it’s cool that there’s that kind of rep bc a lot of the bi women the media puts in the spot light are mostly high fem. That doesn’t mean that rep is meaningless but I can count on one hand the amount of andro/masc leaning bi women that are in the public eye.
I also know the other reason why a lot of people keep labeling her as a lesbian is because she’s visibly only been dating women recently, but you don’t have to switch the gender of your s/o every other month to prove you’re still bi like. That’s elementary basics of bisexuality. Especially if said person in question, again, has stated several times that they’re not a lesbian or straight…
It’s almost like there’s a history (Freddie Mercury) of people (David Bowie) ignoring when people (Megan Fox) say they’re bisexual (Katharine Hepburn), and talking about them (Chuck Tingle) as if they’re definitely gay (Cynthia Nixon) or definitely (Lady Gaga) straight.
MEGAN FOX IS BI? I have never heard this before but good. Incredible.
What the actual hell, y’all? Nothing to see here, except Katherine Hepburn giving us all the look that makes our collective gay insides instantly clench up then immediately liquefy.
What is that gut incinerating reaction? I can’t say for sure, but I have been thinking about it a lot, and I’m going to offer 3 possible suggestions:
Attraction(obviously).
But there are many levels to attraction. There’s like a woman walks by and turns your head attraction, or A-list celebrity beautiful-person attraction, and then there’s THIS. This feeling I’m talking about goes so far beyond the “you’re attractive” sort of attraction to like “laws of physics” sort of attraction. The kind of attraction that registers not just inside your core but also psyche.
It messes with my head in ways that have turned me around ever since I was old enough to be aware of such things, and I’ve come to sum it up as “The great queer question.”
Do I want to be with you, or do I want to beyou?
It’s hard when you’re young (or even not so young) and you’re hungry for role models, but also thirsty for something else. And the whole issue gets complicated by the way those two feelings register in similar places of your body. The first time you see a woman step into full ownership of her God-given gift of giving zero fucks for conformity it lights a fire in the deepest regions of your gut. And as the warmth spreads outward from that low guttural place it can cause things to heat up in areas right below your core, too. You know the ones I mean, right? Those body parts are very close together, sometimes it’s hard to separate the two types of attraction.
And I’ve made peace with that, the not always knowing which came first, or which takes precedent, because ultimately it doesn’t matter. As fun as it can be (and by fun, I clearly mean disorienting) to try to figure out if I want to be with someone or be like someone, I am non-binary enough to realize the answer can be, and often is:
Attraction and aspiration are both cool, they’re both fluid, and they totally intersect. I’m comfortable with that. I’m more than comfortable with it. I dig it.
So if there’s no great conflict around attraction, why should that photo of ole K. Hep and her butchly furrowed brow still make my tummy so. damn. squimbly? Could it be something deeper than attraction? Something more complex? Something more elemental? Something like…
Recognition.
You see, over the last few years I’ve gotten into the concept of ancestral echoes, or the idea that memories and the knowledge that comes from them can be passed down through our DNA. That you can, on some level, know about things you’ve never experienced for yourself, and you can recognize the same sort of knowledge in other people.
Example: Folks way back up my family tree were sea-faring explorers. It’s been like 15 generations and I am super susceptible to sea sickness, but I am still so drawn to boats and the ocean. Not just like I find them pretty, but like I’m freaking Moana or something. There’s a pull there that goes beyond all reason and logic. I know that if I get on a sailboat there’s decent chance I am going to lose my lunch, but I can’t stay away. Even as I go green in the gills and my stomach does summersaults a part of me is still like:
I feel the same inexplicable connection when I look at that picture of Katherine Hepburn. There is a gay DNA level kind of recognition. A big queer ancestral echo. Whatever part of me that makes me gay senses its mirror in her.
Now I don’t know what part of me that is, nor what part of her trips that recognition trigger for me. The insolent stare? The turn of the mouth? Those gay AF eyebrows?
I’m not sure, but I feel certain it would exist even if I didn’t know the words gay or DNA. Something queer in me honors something queer in her. It’s inborn, liike gaydar on steroids boiled down to its most primal level. It runs through the generations on double helix rainbows. It vibrates across my chromosomes humming through the lowest, most animal regions of my brain.
Iknowyou.
We are the same. Whatever this thing is, it builds an unbreakable bond. A shared ..something. Brotherhood is too gendered. Personhood too vague. A queersterhood. A … wait for it … Listerhood?
You didn’t really think I’d make it through this gay ass therapy session without her did you?
Well I didn’t, because I can’t. I am physically incapable of looking away from this paragon of queer top perfection. And while I get that this is exactly the point where I should be able to tie this post up neatly on some note about our foremothers of the past living on through our legacy, that’s not going to happen.
As much as I would like to have some spiritual or academic conclusion for the things I feel when I see this, I don’t.
Nothing about my reaction is academic, or hypothetical or high minded.
I’ve looked these photos it so many times, trying to figure out what is bigger than attraction and deeper than recognition, and there’s only one word that comes close to capturing the experience for me:
Reckoning.
Reckoning involves looking something in the eye and taking stock of it and you at the same time. It involves taking weight and measures, taking inventory of your totality, and checking receipts on the things both utterly unquantifiable and yet indisputable.
And when I look at those women, I am forced to reckon with a fundamental truth:
They are better tops than me.
Katherine Hepburn is a better top than me. Ann Lister (as played by Suranne Jones) is a better top than me. There’s no way around it.
No matter how much I like to think I have some natural predication for topness, they have more. Clearly.
Sometimes you look at someone and you just know they know things. Things you are desperate to know. They possess a command and understanding you do not possess. They have skills you can only, and probably only ever will, aspire to.
I am not ashamed to admit it. It’s just the natural order of things. Did Joe DiMaggio feel shame at not being Babe Ruth? Or for you non-sportsball people, does Lizzo feel ashamed for not being Aretha Franklin? I hope not. There’s no shame in having your greatness fall just below that of divine master. Not everyone can be the GOAT. I’m okay with that. It’s not a competition. I don’t need to best anyone.
But I do need to make peace with that reckoning in other ways. Like a wolf who just met the new pack leader, or pirate captain whose ship just got overrun, there’s a new world older that must be acknowledged in those moments. There is a hierarchy of tops and topness, and it’s just been indisputably altered.
I am not the top top, not even in my own mind. I can’t ignore it, I am the one who acknowledged it in the first place. I could run from it. At least in theory. I could look away, close my eyes, or banish those understandings to vast reaches of the unfollowed internet, but I am not a coward.
As fluid as I am, and as secure as I am in who I am, I can feel gratitude at the the opportunity to look upon greatness. To indulge my awe. To relish my vast appreciation of the most transcendent of beings.
And then, of course, as is only right, I feel compelled to roll over. Honestly, I don’t know how anyone could feel compelled to do anything other than roll over when they look at that picture. That is the great tremble in my gut: it is all the scripts being flipped.
Does that make me a lesser top? Maybe. Does that make me a bottom? Perhaps sometimes. Does that bother me?
Not at all.
Cause really, what’s the use of recognizing a hierarchy to tops, if you don’t intend to enjoy every possible aspect of your own position on that spectrum?
