What World is The Advocate living in?

When was in high school I loved reading my parent’s copy of the advocate. When I first started working as a queer activist on campus, it was great to see issues of The Advocate hanging around the queer offices. That’s why I’m so dissapointed with the direction it’s been going. While there are still some great stories in it, the focus seems to be slipping.

The January, Year in Review, issue of The Advocate named the biggest queer event of 2007. No, it wasn’t the non-discrimination and relationship recognition rights that passed in several states. It wasn’t the tens of thousands of activists who rushed to defend a trans-inclusive ENDA. It wasn’t even the half dozen right-wing conservatives caught having gay sex. The biggest queer event of 2007 was Lance Bass.

Lance who? Well, you might better know him as ‘that guy from ‘N Sync.’ I didn’t actually know his name until after he was outed. And I had forgotten it by the time the Advocate ran this article on him. But that isn’t even the worst of it. The article wasn’t so much about the great impact that Lance Bass has had on the queer community, but complaining about all the whining queers who think there’s something more important going on.

Despite the article’s premise, I hold no scorn for Lance Bass, only indifference. My scorn is for The Advocate’s choice to relegate all the more significant events of the year to lesser stories or off their pages entirely. And as if this article wasn’t enough to convince us that The Advocate has given up fighting homophobia and strives only to be a queer version of People, they also ran a listing of “The Sissy Awards.”

After seeing the title I was excitedly wondering if my favorite radical political drag troop, the Sissy Boys, were included. Unfortunately they were not recognizing and appreciating the contributions of femme members of our community, nor were they addressing the intense sissy-phobia that many have to deal with. Instead, they were legitimizing this slur by uncritically slinging it against political opponents. Who were the top sissies of the year? Larry Craig, Dick Cheney, and Pope Benedict XVI. Yes, because the best way to remove homophobia and gender oppression from our society is by claiming that homophobes aren’t manly enough throwing homophobic slurs at them.

Perhaps the editors of The Advocate might be straight-acting enough to not have to worry about being called sissies too often, but what about the real sissies in all this? Those who will never be able to, or want to, claim that Dick Cheney is more of a sissy then they are. By empowering the term as something negative that you don’t want to be called, The Advocate is only giving more power to those who would like to attack our community.

Since they’re unquestioningly using anti-gay epithets against our political opponents, I can’t wait to see them do an article on how the war is “so gay” or how the democrats unwillingness to fight for our rights makes them “pansy-assed faggots.” They might even fall back on the “Anne Coulter’s a tranny” line.

I don’t know who The Advocate is advocating for anymore, but it doesn’t seem to be anyone I know.