About 95% of the reason I am experiencing the urge to punch most of the people who run figure skating right now can be demonstrated by, inferred from, and summed up in this one sentence:
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Well, now I know why Johnny Weir made their little heads kerplode. It must be confusing to deal with a young man who both skates and girls at championship levels when you've just woken up from that coma you fell into in 1924. Although this now raises the question of how Weir kept himself from beating these people senseless with his skate bag whenever they came into whacking range.
Apparently a lot of the really terrible judges are women. This is even worse. I had an eensy little identity crisis a few years ago, about whether I was perhaps making a fool of myself in this one area where I actually do activism, and maybe should just shut up before I make things worse. A queer friend of mine reminded me that, historically, straight women have been some of the most reliable outside supporters of the gay community. Weir's having a hell of a time right now because his people have forced him into being the role model he explicitly didn't want to be and now are complaining that he's doing it wrong, and now I'm pissed off that my people have been failing him for decades.
I'm now tempted to Google up the nearest rink and go figure out how to be filthy on ice skates. Just because.
Slovakian pairs skater Milica Brozovic made skating news in 2004 by being the first to take advantage of recent rules changes that allowed ladies to wear pants in competition....
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Well, now I know why Johnny Weir made their little heads kerplode. It must be confusing to deal with a young man who both skates and girls at championship levels when you've just woken up from that coma you fell into in 1924. Although this now raises the question of how Weir kept himself from beating these people senseless with his skate bag whenever they came into whacking range.
Apparently a lot of the really terrible judges are women. This is even worse. I had an eensy little identity crisis a few years ago, about whether I was perhaps making a fool of myself in this one area where I actually do activism, and maybe should just shut up before I make things worse. A queer friend of mine reminded me that, historically, straight women have been some of the most reliable outside supporters of the gay community. Weir's having a hell of a time right now because his people have forced him into being the role model he explicitly didn't want to be and now are complaining that he's doing it wrong, and now I'm pissed off that my people have been failing him for decades.
I'm now tempted to Google up the nearest rink and go figure out how to be filthy on ice skates. Just because.
There's probably some sort of parallel to be drawn between straight-identified women being traditionally expected to do "care work" within their families and given communities, and straight-identified women being either strong allies or vicious attackers (usually verbal or emotional rather than the masculine-coded physical) of demonized minorities like queer and trans people. Basically, it's a strongly feminine-coded trait to nurture those weaker than oneself and if needed to go "mama grizzly" in the defense of the weak against perceived threats, so it's down to whether the individual care-worker perceives queer and trans folks as socially vulnerable people worthy of basic human rights and dignity, or as ravening perv-beast enemies at the gates of the pious family unit.
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