Feature on Baldwin shirt uproar on out.com

"Morrissey already subverted the meaning of “gay” so as to enrich it."

How did he do that, exactly - by hiding in the closet and calling himself a 'humasexual', while making his long-term boyfriend play out the role of hired servant in public?
 
"Morrissey already subverted the meaning of “gay” so as to enrich it."

How did he do that, exactly - by hiding in the closet and calling himself a 'humasexual', while making his long-term boyfriend play out the role of hired servant in public?

VERY INFORMATIVE :thumbsup:

BtBB :greatbritain::knife:
 
"Morrissey already subverted the meaning of “gay” so as to enrich it."

How did he do that, exactly - by hiding in the closet and calling himself a 'humasexual', while making his long-term boyfriend play out the role of hired servant in public?

Could be by publicly attaching a more masculine quality to the idea of being gay or gay identity instead of the idea of effemnette dress and fopishness that seemed from my own experience as a child in the eighties to be the preeminent examples of gay representaion in pop culture and pushing it more towards the front of pop culture consciousness. A lot of very public gay performers in pop music seemed to mostly be associated with mixing traditional female characteristics of gender and mixing them with male. Bowies in a dress, prince is wearing a blouse, they're wearing makeup etc. morrissey always seemed to promote gay men as hyper masculine which was a change from what I'd experienced. Also the idea of taking sex out of the gay identity is an interesting one to. A gay man, or at least one who is perceived to be attracted to men which is at the same thing to a lot of people, who also says he's celibate seemed like a new wrinkle. Taking sex, not sexual attraction, from the gay identity kinda makes you think about other aspects of it which people don't always do. Makes people acknowledge that other aspects actually exist. I don't know but i think there's a case to be made
 
"Morrissey already subverted the meaning of “gay” so as to enrich it."

How did he do that, exactly - by hiding in the closet and calling himself a 'humasexual', while making his long-term boyfriend play out the role of hired servant in public?

I think it was by enticing certain of his fans to make up little soap operas about his private life and then believe in them.
 
I find the article rather pompous.

"Iconic lives matter." Yuck.
 
Morrissey's image got more masculine the more gay his work became peaking around the Vauxhall era. Now he dresses unusually on stage at least and coveys something intangible again. It's not effeminate but it is strangely unmasculine. He's not a man remember which is great by me.
 
Morrissey's image got more masculine the more gay his work became peaking around the Vauxhall era. Now he dresses unusually on stage at least and coveys something intangible again. It's not effeminate but it is strangely unmasculine. He's not a man remember which is great by me.

he is a man. Just another kind of man, a man who plays by his own rules, as we all should.
 
Could be by publicly attaching a more masculine quality to the idea of being gay or gay identity instead of the idea of effemnette dress and fopishness that seemed from my own experience as a child in the eighties to be the preeminent examples of gay representaion in pop culture and pushing it more towards the front of pop culture consciousness. A lot of very public gay performers in pop music seemed to mostly be associated with mixing traditional female characteristics of gender and mixing them with male. Bowies in a dress, prince is wearing a blouse, they're wearing makeup etc. morrissey always seemed to promote gay men as hyper masculine which was a change from what I'd experienced. Also the idea of taking sex out of the gay identity is an interesting one to. A gay man, or at least one who is perceived to be attracted to men which is at the same thing to a lot of people, who also says he's celibate seemed like a new wrinkle. Taking sex, not sexual attraction, from the gay identity kinda makes you think about other aspects of it which people don't always do. Makes people acknowledge that other aspects actually exist. I don't know but i think there's a case to be made
This is bullshit. Gay people are either told that they are in the closet, hiding who they are, tragic figures, or that they are flaunting it in everyone's face. And in pop culture there are all these stupid gay characters who usually get murdered if they have sex, or are never shown with another gay character but instead make witty bitchy comments, and have good taste in fashion and home decor.
Let's remove the sex from heterosexuality and see what's left. That sounds interesting.
I don't mean to sound hostile though. You have some terrible, ignorant, and offensive ideas but you also say a couple of interesting things. I'm sort of confused when you talk about very publicly gay performers and then mention "Bowies" and "prince." Neither of them was gay, but the way they dressed sometimes is somehow associated with "gay" in your mind. That's interesting and I don't fault you for it. You're just uninformed. Morrissey on the other hand, you see as both masculine, and as a promoter of gay men.
Morrissey does promote masculinity in a sense - boxers, skinheads, rent boys, violent criminals, killers, gang members... Calling Dr Freud! These don't really seem like very positive images overall do they? A bit tabloid, shocking, twisted, and demented. And are there any love songs about men? Yes, there are a lot. All unrequited and usually with Morrissey playing the role of a tragic figure who loves the boy who can't love him back until the mentality catches up with the biology. But then he can always meet someone in the alley behind the railway station. I'm not going to tell you what "it's written all over my face" really means but it's a bit wink wink, or is that wank wank? Either way, no, sorry. Morrissey has really done nothing to promote gay people, but he has provided a lot of material for gay, bi, etc fans to examine and possibly see themselves in, hopefully to one day outgrow it and be happy.
That's not to say it's not great work. Lots of gay/bi etc lives do have some really tragic aspects and he does, or did once, write about this in a very powerful way. But he certainly does not promote masculine gay men. Most of his masculine characters seem to be straight or conflicted, and most of his gay/bi characters are tragically left loving the one they can't have.
And I was just having fun calling you ignorant. You just don't know better.
 
Morrissey's image got more masculine the more gay his work became peaking around the Vauxhall era. Now he dresses unusually on stage at least and coveys something intangible again. It's not effeminate but it is strangely unmasculine. He's not a man remember which is great by me.

It did get more masculine and the work may have been more gay oriented or referentia around vauxhall but the image was at least never camp in the way most mainstream people viewed gay performers in the eighties or early nineties even with the smiths cover art when a person selected was gay themselves or just homoerotic to his own image onstage and off. For a lot of mainstream teenagers gay was still easily associated with gender bending and being effeminate that a lot of the successful pop stars reflected and not with muscular tough looking men without there shirt. No Rufus wainwright camp and Judy garland cross dressing, I love his albums, no make up or whams effeminate image. I think this was knew to gay popstars at the time or at least ones so popular and with songs so open in many ways about the subject
 
Pet shop boys would be the only real competition in that category and outside of please they've not had a bunch of popularity in America where I'm from despite being huge stars everywhere else. Now you can say that about the smiths to at the time but theyve had a lasting resurgent popularity here for a while now and morrissey as well. Sadly if I asked only people really into music would likely know Neil tennent. Less for those who came of age after the eighties. I've never heard of Bronski beat except maybe in a book. Soft cell is a one hit wonder at least in america. Same with erasure except they weren't even as popular as soft cell. Soft cell mostly gets remembered as a sort of goth band with that tainted love song
 
Morrissey and The Smiths are not and were not "gay" bands or icons. Morrissey may or may not be a homosexual. "Tina" may or may not be a figment of his imagination. But the idea that he promoted an ideal of masculine homosexuality is ludicrous. Morrissey's most gay song, in my opinion, is "I Want The One I Can't Have" and I don't think the subject of the song, the "tough kid" who "killed a policeman when he was 13" is the gay one. Conflicted maybe.
This is not about gay masculinity. It's about a fetish for rough trade.
Someday I'll tell you about my friend who was a teenage rent boy and the types of clients he had, mostly married bankers wearing nice suits.
 
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