GayCities is “the place where gays and lesbians connect with each other and share what’s great about the cities where they live and travel.” See:
BUT NOW GayCities is “the company that bought Queerty!” If you thought Queerty was dead for good, you were wrong! It’s not dead, it’s alive! But with new writers and a new office and a new owner and a new boss and less “predictable snark.” David Hauslib has written a farewell letter, this is some of it. I’ve highlighted a portion that I’m going to discuss with you later:
There is a reason I decided to launch Queerty back in 2006: I saw a void in queer media, with far too many outlets unwilling to challenge institutions, lawmakers, and positions, which were accepted as truth-tellers and hard, unchangeable facts. But I also wanted to see more stories told about LGBT people, from our heroes to our villains, our teens to our seniors, our celebrities to our everyday gays. Queerty accomplished so much it set out to do, but like the news cycle we covered, its mission is never-ending. There is more work to be done. More posts to be published. More fundamental rights to be secured. More kids to celebrate, and more souls to mourn. More songs to scour. More trash to talk, and more sex to scandalize. More acceptance to be had, and more minds to change. And most of all, more gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people to remind and reassure that we’re all in this together…
For a moment it appeared Queerty would fall to the wayside, after a disagreement in strategy with the site’s contracted operators, who decided to change their business focus. The outpouring of support following that announcement showed just how much Queerty’s readers wanted the site to continue, and how it became an irreplaceable resource for so many.
I trust GayCities to carry on Queerty’s mission, which was always to inform and entertain. And the GayCities team recognizes as much as we did that Queerty is nothing without its readers.
… and the new owners have written a hello letter. Here’s some of it:
Bringing GayCities and Queerty together is for me, as co-founder of this company, a kind of content dream come to life, a rare chance to be both politically provocative and entertaining in a way that few media companies have achieved this side of Comedy Central and Gawker.
While we are committed to maintaining the best of Queerty, we also recognize that you have demanded change. In recent months the Queerty patented wit devolved into predictable snark, eviscerating everyone and everything in its path. Some of the comments simply piled on. We will maintain the independent voice at all cost, going after with a vengeance the powerful, the hypocritical and the just plain foolish. But now we’ll also strive for a better sense of journalistic balance and fairness.
In other words we’re going to keep afflicting the comfortable; only now we’ll take care to comfort the afflicted as well.
We’ve been talking a lot about “sustainable business models” and this, ultimately, is usually the chosen path. You give something up — like nearly your entire staff, it seems, in this case — in exchange for sustainability and security. In the tricky world of online media, that’s a trade-off many other sites are quick to make, because what’s the use of autonomy if you end up not existing at all?
the new queerty
So who is this big Kahuna rescuing Queerty? What is Gaycities, this “number one destination for gay and lesbian travel”? Well, Gaycities, which brings in traffic levels similar to this website, describes itself as “a gay yelp” and its media kit defines its demographic as 84% gay men with 76% of users described as “affluent gay men (no children) with the majority earning over the average annual income.” The travel events listed are either events for all queer people or events for just gay men —
Okay.
I’m sorry.
I have to rant for a minute here, if you’ll bear with me. First, a picture of some very nice looking men:
Team Queerty
So, I try to stay away from any less-than-positive endorsements of other websites or publications — it’s just too easy, and when people do it to us it hurts my feelings and then I start crying and throwing things and then I ruin my girlfriend’s evening. I’m not gonna say anything negative about the editorial content at either of these sites.
But honestly this is sort of an overarching situation that happens all the time in the whole wide world. Dudes! COME ON. Can you imagine Autostraddle claiming to cover gay male media in our masthead? That would be ridiculous. Can you imagine me waxing poetic about wanting to tell YOUR stories? But because women and trans people are already disenfranchised, we sort of let ourselves get tacked on to everything, from the boards of major LGBTQ activist groups to television channels.
But listen: I subscribe to OUT, I read Queerty frequently, I’ve seen many of your movies and your TV shows, I over-analyze some of your people. We cover stories which include gay men sometimes and you cover stories which include gay women sometimes because those stories are relevant to the entire community — but that doesn’t make us a gay male website. We talk about Adam Lambert like it’s our job when it’s clearly not our job, but that doesn’t make us a gay male website; that makes us a lesbian website who really loves Adam Lambert. The word “gay” is also used to describe lesbians or all homos, so indeed we use it all the time — but the word “lesbian” is never used to describe gay men. Yet YOU use it pretty freely.
We have plenty of gay male readers and we love them (HELLO GAY MALE READERS WE LOVE YOU) but we wouldn’t throw your gender on our masthead and expect to get away with it. You know what kind of site we are, and you’re here because we all like each other anyhow.
At this stage in the game — and this applies to every aspect of queer life — we’re fine with being excluded. Seriously, I am! I get it! The gay female market is as shafted as the gay male market is revered. And I understand that adding the illusion of lesbians to a gay brand ultimately pleases advertisers who, despite not knowing the market very well, abstractly feel that they’d also like to enchant some women to use Orbitz for their traveling needs. Basically: if there was a genuine financial benefit to including us, you WOULD include us, instead of just pretending to.
I don’t need you to pretend that your Boy’s Night is Everyone’s Night — if I like the music, I’m gonna show up and dance, and I’m gonna do it knowing and accepting that I’m a queer girl at your gay dance club. I’m gonna read OUT magazine’s Power 100 as a queer girl reading a list catered towards gay men. You don’t need to claim to “include” me to get me to like your shit — if anything, the quasi-pandering turns me off from gay male stuff I’d otherwise happily enjoy.
I don’t watch Queer as Folk for Mel & Lindsay, I watch it for Bryan Fucking Kinney and Emmet Honeycutt. And I don’t watch Logo because I wanna curl up with my Amy’s Organics Burrito and watch Better Than Chocolate at 2AM, I watch it because Jeffery & Cole Casserole is really fucking funny. I love so much of gay male culture because it’s outsider culture, which I obviously relate to, and because it’s cool. Gay men make stuff I like, like Rickie Vasquez. You made him, I like that.
But! If your gay bookstore is gonna be 75% gay male porn PLEASE I beg of you, warn me — a task easily accomplished by not claiming to be an ‘LGBT bookstore.’
Our community has had this problem from the get-go: lesbian exclusion from gay activist groups, and the continued exclusion of trans* people from all activist groups. That’s a whole entire article on its own, so I won’t get into how that’s gotten better in many ways and also where it still needs improvement.
But when it comes to media? If you think you can “include” lesbians without even employing one, then that’s just insulting. And it got really boring to keep whining about this lack of representation or quality, targeted content, so we just started doin’ it for ourselves. It’s hard, but we’re doing it, and we’re proud of it, and it’s different than how you do it, and we like it. Like I talked about last week with how journalists toss the “T” into a study of LGBs when reporting on it: just don’t take credit for something you didn’t do!
On that note, I hope that the one writer who stayed at Queerty was the Julie & Brandy in Your Box Office fan — it’s good to know that you like our shit as much as we hope to like your makeover.
Preach!
Thank you for putting into words what’s been confusing me.
Love your honesty.
Keep it up! Oh reminds me, it’s May, time to donate. ;P
I remember getting the GayCities app for iphone and thinking it would be a super rad tool for meeting other homo girls / finding lezzie things to do. It was not. :/
This. Such a let down.
Does anyone know of an iPhone app that is??
okcupid app. haha jk. or maybe not…
lt. dan choi got kicked off of grindr multiple times because they thought he wasn’t him, because he was using his real name as his tag. i think.
but anyway the female corollary to this is qrushr girls if i’m not mistaken. worth a google if you’ve got an iphone perhaps.
Yes, this. Thank you. I’ve been fooled into several different websites claiming to be “LGBT” focused only to find that they are very much gay male focused. #itgetsold
My wife says “Doesn’t matter if you’re a gay or straight MALE, you’re still trying to oppress the woman”. In THIS case they are doing it by CLAIMING that they are there for ALL of us queers – but are, in fact, not!!
I <3 my wife! :)
your wife is abso-fucking-lutely 100% right.
In the words of SomethingClever: tell it like it is!
A slightly unrelated sidenote: this whole thing about “gay” meaning gay men and “lesbian” meaning gay women. Isn’t that part of how women are constantly being othered by making male what is normal/neutral and female the marked category? Or have I just been spending too long study my markedness notes for my Spanish exam tomorrow?
You haven’t been spending too long studying, that is EXACTLY what it is.
no, totally, i have a lot of feelings about the linguistics of sexuality and back formation
You’re not just on the mark, you hit the center of the bullseye
Annnnd this is one of the big reasons I have a problem with referring to myself as a “lesbian”… Gay? Yep. Queer? Very! Lesbian? Not sold on that one.
+1
THIS.
the phrase “gays and lesbians” makes me extremely stabby
I could hug you for using stabby, but I’m maintaining a stab-free perimeter
This is exactly the thing I haven’t been able to articulate properly about why the word lesbian bugs me.
The other thing about it is that ‘gay’ is primarily an adjective. It’s used as a noun way less often making it a descriptor rather than a definer, whereas lesbian has a noun-dominant usage. I am a gay *person*, not a whole separate other noun segregating me like I’m something abnormal.
This is great. I was thinking about it and trying to figure out exactly why it bothers me so, and then you just said it. Awesome, thanks for posting that!
Wow, yes. I just had a *click* brain moment, when it all makes sense all at once. And the noun vs adjective laid out by jd – YES.
That’s EXACTLY why I’ve always been averse to the word lesbian. I’ve gotten used to it, yes, but it doesn’t feel right. Queer feels the most right, gay a close second. Lesbian is a very specific and limiting word.
all of the above, very well put
in dutch it’s even worse
i prefer gay, or homogay, if i’m really over it
thanks to AS, homogay has become my favorite.
keepin’ it real.
Is that a Salvation Army ad? Bahahahahahahahahaha!
I know, right? This is the second time in as many days I’ve seen a queer website with a Sallies ad. I thought they did not approve of teh gays?
It is! Well, they don’t employ (out) homos, but I guess they probably don’t have a problem with taking their money.
Also yay awesome post!
From the Salvation Army’s website: “Scripture forbids sexual intimacy between members of the same sex. The Salvation Army believes, therefore, that Christians whose sexual orientation is primarily or exclusively same-sex are called upon to embrace celibacy as a way of life. There is no scriptural support for same-sex unions as equal to, or as an alternative to, heterosexual marriage.”
http://www.salvationarmyusa.org/usn/www_usn_2.nsf/vw-dynamic-index/B6F3F4DF3150F5B585257434004C177D?Opendocument
No way in hell will I ever donate to them or shop with them. Total advertising fail, on both ends!
Thank you, Riese, for writing about the L/B-who-are-ladies/T exclusion issue.
I noticed that too. Basically, fuck that. Groups who oppress our community shouldn’t be getting our money regardless of how much other good they may do. Am I the only one who has this feeling?
Noooope.
No, I would never donate to them but I have to admit I do shop at their thrift stores because I am poor. My favourite one happens to be run by a lesbian though so maybe where I live they are less discriminatory.
Yeah, my best friend worked at a Salvation Army youth shelter and she said nobody she worked with had any problems with the queers. I think it’s kind of like a case-by-case thing. The overarching organization is explicitly anti-gay because the people who write the rules are homophobes, but the people who do the actual work largely don’t give a fuck. Much like the boy scouts and the armed services, although I think those two tend to be a little more overtly homophobic on the ground than SA.
preach, riese!!!!!! as a queer woman with a trans bf i am always being confronted with this hypocritical nonsense–so many things that claim to be LGBT are really just G, or at their most inclusive G and sort of L and B. agh agh agh. thanks for being awesome and telling it like it is, autostraddle!
I once accidentally subscribed to OUT. Then, it ironically showed up at my door wrapped in a dark brown wrapper so it wouldn’t OUT me to the mail carrier. Then, it was filled with pretty boys. Pretty boys are awesome but I don’t need a whole magazine of them. So, every month, I took the magazine to work for my gay co-worker. The End.
The gay female market is as shafted as the gay male market is revered.
Shafted! HA!
<3
This is something that has been lingering in my head but couldn’t quite get it into words. thank you! great,great,great post!
THIS! This right here (and much more) is why I subsribed to this f-ing beautiful website. Thank you for your words.
I’ve noticed that with a lot of the free “queer” magazines here in Calgary… They claim to be LGBT-friendly, but most of the ads features men and the articles are also largely written by males. I’ll still read them for the event listings and such, but… there’s definitely a vibe you get that gay = male.
fantabulous as always!
Oohhh. Noun vs. adjective. jd has just explained ~90% of my problem with the word “lesbian”. (the rest is because it’s just an ugly word. something so awesome deserves better.)
“I don’t watch Queer as Folk for Mel & Lindsay, I watch it for Bryan Fucking Kinney and Emmet Honeycutt.”
Exactly.
The word “lesbian” definitely has issues, but then again (and call me a nerd), I kind of like it for the ancient Greek poetical reference…
Our community has had this problem from the get-go: lesbian exclusion from gay activist groups, and the continued exclusion of trans* people from all activist groups. That’s a whole entire article on its own, so I won’t get into how that’s gotten better in many ways and also where it still needs improvement.
lol @ the exclusion of bisexuals from this paragraph
Not just media; events too. Sydney Mardi Gras was chockful of stuff for gay males and the ones for everyone else seemed like an add-on rather than an integration. Ditto other parties and gettogethers and Aussie websites.
And yet I’ve had gay male (also white middleclass) folk try and tell me, a female queer migrant minority, that THEY are the most oppressed people in Australia. yeah come on.
I keep coming back to this article because it is so well written and so true, and I am commenting to thank you for it.
thank you for this post. this perfectly articulates how i feel about gay men being disproportionately represented in the queer community. also, self-identifying as a ‘lesbian’ has always irked me. i refuse to use that word to describe myself.
I love this post.
How does it matter who owns it, as long as the content is what people want to read? I’d still g there and read it.
Jeet,
http://www.otjourneys.com
Srry its http://www.outjourneys.com.