I’m not really into The Gossip and do wish that as a “radical queer” band they’d writehit anthems about something other than gay marriage. That said, I was pretty annoyed by this reactionary post, which weighs in on Beth Ditto’s recent interview with The Advocate, and blasts her response to questions regarding some controversy I’d totally missed that I guess erupted after her NME cover and accompanying interview. I can’t seem to locate the NME interview itself online, but many bloggers got very upset over her inclusion of some gay men working in the fashion in a list of people who police women into aspiring to be size zero. Or something. It’s unclear to me exactly what the point was, and Ditto claims her comments were hacked up and taken out of context to make it appear that she glamed “gay men” specifically or exclusively or whatever for the pressures on women to be unhealthfully skinny.

In any case, any of the possibilities don’t really seem very gay-man-hating or homophobic to me. I actually found her comments to The Advocate to be pretty on point:

That being said, it was a list of things, and half of the list was left out. I mean, one of the things I said which was a very specific thing was gay men in the fashion industry are responsible, not gay men as a whole. But I think it was good, at least, because it got people talking about shit. I don't blame any one thing, and I would never say “Gay men are to blame for the size zero.” That's absolute bullshit, there's lots of things to blame.

Where did that idea come from?
What I think is so funny about it is that I didn't even get the idea in my head until my stylist brought it up to me. The problem is that you're supposed to feel this kinship because we're all queers and we're all in this together, and then you go to this styling shoot or something and it's gay men treating women like shit. I think that's what it's about, and it was actually one tiny, minuscule part of the conversation that got printed as this huge thing like we'd been talking about it for hours. I think that when you're trying to explain radical politics to a straight white boy, of course they're going to take the heat off the straight white boy, which is what we talked about the most during the interview. Mind you, I haven't read the interview, I've only heard about it from other people, but I think it's interesting how the one thing they'll do is turn it right back on gay people. They'll pit gay people against each other, which is exactly what they did.

I don’t like the wayThe Idolator tears into/makes fun of her politics in a totally annoying, off point way and then questions whether or not she’s just an “attention whore”.

Really? A rock band’s front person might like attention? No way!

And this negates her politics how exactly?

Oh yeah, because Perez Hilton likes her.


Kinda speaking of which, do you thinkthis report is true? It claims that Pete Doherty’s pets are on coke, too. For the love of god.