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.
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.
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.
a lot of people who loved Mercedes Lackey’s Vanyel trilogy as teens, including a fair few who attribute their survival as young queers to having those books as a lifeline, are actively anti-recommending the Vanyel trilogy to everyone else. stated reasons include but are not limited to how Tragic Gays it is, how much Lackey did not know about trauma recovery, and the list of content warnings, which looks about like—and why is the only version of this gif I can find one that has the text “let me explain why I want superwholock”?—
[gif: late in Supernatural season 7, Crowley takes a scroll out of his jacket to show Dick Roman. he then lets it fall open: the free end of the comically long document hits the floor and rolls several feet farther.]
—but I think the real reason is, when you’re thirsty in the desert and all the water there is is in an oasis and will make you sick if you drink it, you drink the water and live. maybe you even get enough of a taste for the flavor to come back on purpose. but if you bring anyone with you, you bring bottled water.
