Category: General & Random

The Gay Uncle recently read a research study examining the role and prevalence of heterosexual romantic love in Disney’s top-grossing G-rated movies from 1990-2005. (Here’s a synopsis of the article, the entire piece can be downloaded by clicking the link at the bottom of this post). And he has to say, he finds this an intriguing area of inquiry. The researchers carefully examine twenty-plus popular children’s films (all grossed over $100 million), and find that heterosexual sexual desire and longing are not only very frequently portrayed””giving lie to the idea that these kids” filcks are devoid of sexual content””but are presented in a way that is exceptional and transcendent, with the power to break spells, stop war, change laws, or even save Christmas.

Big deal, right? Straight people fall in love and it affects them””and by extension, the world””all the time. Well, not exactly. One of the points is that by privileging these male/female bonds as imbued with transformative power, the movies not only normalize heterosexuality, but enforce in children a notion of its magical capabilities. It”s not just normal; it”s special. And the bludgeoning flip side of this message is, if you don”t fit into this paradigm, you”re not normal and not special. Little gay and lesbian kids hear this message (trust Gunc, he was one) and take it to heart. Now the G.U. is not in any way advocating for the avoidance of depicting love in kids” media, but he does think it”s fair to examine what we”re saying on the opic. (And he doesn”t think things have changed much since 2005. Think about the love storylines in Cars or Wall-E.)

Beyond this, it was found that the films all avoid dealing with homosexual love in any similarly overt way. Gunc’s guessing that many people wouldn”t take issue with this, imagining that this is a topic beyond the comprehension of young kids. But he”d like to point out that homosexuality is no more or less complex a topic than heterosexuality, and if we”re conspicuously feeding young kids mega-doses of overblown messages on straight loving, why isn”t there room for some like “education”¯ on the queer side? Disney”s just now bringing out their first African American princess, so far be it from The Gay Uncle to dictate when they should introduce their first gay or lesbian princess! But the sooner we stop treating homosexuality as an “adult”¯ issue, the sooner we”ll be capable of finding ways to discuss and depict it rationally with our kids.

Gunc invites people to look at two of his recent Babble articles, The Gender Spectrum, and Beyond Heather Has Two Mommies, for additional and more in-depth insights on this topic.

This is a link that will allow you to download the whole study.
315.pdf

The Gay Uncle, while gay, does not love parades; they sadden him. Neither does he love the claustrophobic feeling of being pressed up against a bunch of defeated, suburban queens, walking up the vomit-stained sidewalks of his neighborhood in blazing hot summer sun (or torrential downpour) while said invaders take cell phone photos of plastic men in rainbow underpants. Neither does he enjoy parties at which he encounters belligerent drunks in tight tank tops who try to shame him for not being “in the spirit”. And he’s frankly kind of sick of the the Lady Bunny. So, no, he will not be attending the New York Pride “celebrations”. But he is pleased to be gay, in his own way. Which is why he would like to share this piece with you, the gayest ever of his gay car columns, all about the tragic and uplifting tale of FagBug. Check it out.

To memorialize the death of Farrah Fawcett, the Gay Uncle presents you with his homage to the transformative power of her image as read through the lens of 1970’s adolescent queer sexuality: his first published short story from back in 1996, “Farrah”. Check it out.

It’s a movie that’s at least peripherally for kids, which the Gay Uncle believes affords him the opportunity to cross-promote his humorous review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen at Vanity Fair.com. Check it out.

Some lesbian friends recently came to visit the Gay Uncle and his boyfriend at their house Upstate. And guess what? They’re trying to get pregnant! This is good news for Gunc, as it means at least one more guaranteed sale of his book. But instead of adopting an unwanted American child, or trying to steal one from the arms of its family in Malawi, they’re going the donor route. The G.U. is down with this too. But he has to admit that when they started talking about the specifics of why they chose a particular dude from the list of tens of thousands of cum shots that the Sperm Bank had in their deposit accounts, he got a little…creeped out. “He’s Italian like me, but he’s not one of those short Italians because his mother was from Denmark or Norway or something, so he’s tall. And everyone on both sides of his family has good teeth. And he has eyes like her [her partner]. And no history of heart disease or cancer. And I found out on line that they have an attractiveness scale that they use internally at the Sperm Bank to rate the donors when they come in. It ranges from two to eight point five, and when I asked the lady where he rated, she said, Eight. And when I asked how many eight point fives they’d ever seen, she said, One. So he’s our guy.” Now Gunc is down with giving your kid all the proper advantages. And he supposes when offered choices on stuff like this, he’d tend toward ticking off some of the same checkboxes. But there’s just something borderline…Eugenicist about the whole process: picking out a kid–like a handbag or sweater–who’ll match your skin and eyes, selecting a donor based on his similarity in appearance to an idealized version of yourself. It just seems like a set up for an even worse form of narcissism than the one normally derived from participating in what Gunc likes to call “The Ultimate Vanity Project”. Maybe straight people pick their partners for the same reasons: they’ll breed well? Or maybe the G.U. is the only one who finds it odd. Let him know what you think in COMMENTS below.

The Gay Uncle’s second favorite newspaper journalist, Heidi Stevens, is starting up a new feature in the Sunday Tribune newspapers. It’s a column where parents write in with questions, and then other parents chime in with advice. (And then an expert–like Gunc–comes in and provides two more cents.) To get the ball rolling, Heidi has some starter topics, but is looking for parents who are interested in dishing out tips. Here are the first few queries:

*Your preschooler wants to wear her princess nightgown everywhere””summer camp, grocery store, the airport. How do you get her to shed the pink uniform and don some real clothes?

*Your 5-year-old refuses to pick up his room. Time-outs don”t work and you”ve tried taking away everything he cherishes””toys, TV shows, dessert. What now?

*Your heretofore loving, sweet-natured 3-year-old has started saying “I hate you”¯ whenever she doesn”t get her way. How should you respond?

*Your 6-year-old pretends everything is a gun. How do you nip that in the bud?

If you’re interested in garnering fifteen lines of fame, and have practical ideas for remedying any of these, you can email your info and solutions directly to Heidi: hstevens@tribune.com

Stumped about what to get that special daddy in your life? Worried that a manscaping kit, three pairs of boxer briefs, and a gift certificate for a facial might give him the wrong impression? Wishing that he was just a little…smarter about the whole fathering thing? Well, there’s only one present that will solve for all of these issues: a copy of The Gay Uncle’s Guide to Parenting. And it’s available at all the best stores, chain or independent (link-listed below)–you pick based on your own silly little arcane rules. But order today to make sure it gets there in time, or you’ll reap no rewards for your thoughtfulness; everyone knows daddy hates it when you’re fucking late.

Powell’s
Barnes & Noble
Amazon
St. Marks Books

The Gay Uncle read a report the other day about how some holdout school districts are giving up their strict tracking systems–in which children are graded and then grouped by ability throughout their tenure in a school–and all he can say is, Finally. While he sees some value in programs at the upper grade levels that give high achieving students the opportunity to push themselves further, he has always been a firm believer in mixed-ability grouping for younger kids. Why? Well, for a few core reasons. First, in these environments, kids learn from one another–and this learning isn’t just one-sided with the Eagles teaching the Pigeons (though this is part of it). Think about how much more deeply a concept has to make sense for you in order to explain it to someone who doesn’t get it. Think about how much more excited you get about a topic you understand when you share that understanding with someone who connects to it as well, especially someone who connects for the first time. Think about how good and smart you feel when someone else lights up with the comprehension of something you’ve described for them. Second, think how much more readily able you are to take in information when it comes informally from a peer or colleague than from a supervisor. Kids feel this as well. Sometimes content that falls flat when presented by the teacher becomes enlivened, or a part of a social exchange, when delivered or moderated by another kid. Third, kids have all sorts of different forms of intelligence, and segregating kids based solely on one kind limits their exposure to, and potential to build skills in, others. Thinking skills, even higher order thinking skills, are only one of the things we hope kids derive from attending school. We also want them to be well rounded people, to learn to engage with the arts, to become adequate social beings, to gain empathy and sympathy and other emotional knowledge, to appreciate and embrace difference, to gain a sense of humor, to learn the value of physical activity. A mixed “ability” grouping is much more likely to contain kids with strengths in all of these areas than one tracked by a sole variable.

Finally–and most importantly–think how much more successful this country could be at fulfilling its promise if everyone was given the opportunity to achieve, not just the people who already had a leg up. Isn’t this the whole point of “America”? Gunc has said it over and again, in a country like ours where the individual is king, schools are anathema. Schools are about the collective good: about working together to balance the needs of the individual with the larger goals of the good of the group and of society. A quality school will make sure that each child is attended to within this context, bet even the best schools by necessity and design will ask parents, kids, and teachers to sacrifice some of their individual desires for the benefit of the whole. Parents often see this solely as a deficit. But education exists not simply to serve (your child’s) individual needs, but also to help foster group achievement, as well as to develop practices that are key to the smooth functioning of civil society.

The Gay Uncle hasn’t seen the new movie, “Up”, but apparently an old woman dies in it. Obviously, this is not the first Disney film in which a female character buys the farm. In fact, Gunc is having a hard time remembering a Mickey-flick in which one doesn’t bite it. But in “Up”, the depiction is a bit more straightforward and unobscured than usual, and the bereaved is not a mermaid, a princess, or an adorable baby deer, but an increasingly embittered old man. So when the G.U.’s second-favorite newspaper columnist, Heidi Stevens, heard all this, who do you think she turned to for advice about how to discuss Grim Reaping with kids without scaring the shit out of them? That’s right: everyone’s second-favorite Gay Uncle parenting guru. The results of their conversation are in this Sunday’s Chicago Tribune.

Check it out.

In yet another story that combines the Gay Uncle’s dual interests in children and automobiles (remember, he’s also the author of Stick Shift, Vanity Fair’s weekly online car column), Gunc has recently discovered that the best-selling car this past year was not one produced by the Big 3 (a.k.a. the Big 1 + Big Bankrupt 2). Neither was it a Japanese model, or one from some upstart automotive country like Korea. Nope. Rather the top selling car was this awesome, sporty, red two-door, the Little Tykes Cozy Coupe. It’s been a rough year for the auto industry, but this must be some devastating news, even for them. No less so because as they try to innovate and match the changing tastes of the fickle American consumer, the Cozy Coupe has been virtually unchanged since it was brought out over thirty years ago. No airbags. No side-impact beams. No emission controls. No brakes. (Unless you count junior’s footsies, which power and stop the car, Flintstone-style.) Moreover, guess what? The dumpy little piece of plastic is manufactured right here in the United States, employing our local laborers and poisoning our local streams with its effluents, instead of killing some poor Chinese kids. Go America! We’re still tops in something. Gunc is uncertain if the Obama administrations new “Cash for Clunkers” law will pertain to this vehicle, so he’s not certain you can get some incentive to purchase a new one. And it might not work out so well for your commuter duties, unless you’ve recently been laid off and don’t have anywhere to be. But he feels that you could do worse than stimulate the economy by running out and buying one for the kids. So long as your house is not at the top of a steep hill.