May december gay sex memes
I myself cash into this humor economy quite often. The cutting moral scandals of loneliness, violence, and other intimate matters at Davidson manifestly cannot excite our consideration.
Only when homosexuality became fit for a quip, a meme, and a halfhearted passing comment did people raise it to the level of serious discourse. Indeed, the most focused discussion of anything gay at Davidson this year has been the phenomenon of “Fagg Field,” the name announced for the new football field. Some straight people even go so far as to assume that talking about their queasiness at experiencing their parents’ homophobia allows them to toss the word “faggot” around as an object of shared disdain. Often, these gay jokes contain a sense of a socially viable contract of reassurance that we’re all making fun of homophobia these days. Within the last months, the number of jokes I’ve heard about gay people has far outnumbered the sum of spoken references to gay people who exist at this school. I’m not as concerned here with principles changing from one thing to another, but, rather, how our social patterns and cultural knowledges can help us turn sincerity of belief into vacuous laughter. Our principles at this school are just as flimsy as the historical artifice we call our heritage. Now, I realize just how naïve such a hope was. With new places to flock to, we thought, we might become new people, together. The solution was as patently obvious then as it is now: we must remake our institutional commitments. My friends and I would joke about homophobia and sexism among ourselves, and we had a common enemy: the institutions that harbor predatorial and prejudiced people and the people who perpetuate them. When I first got to Davidson, I readily perceived the crevices in our social landscape that would prove all too easy to fall into. In the most recent years, I’ve noticed a distinct change in how people at Davidson talk about gender, sexuality, and their attendant ethical projects of feminism and queer justice. I remember the days when we queers and women and dissenters would tell jokes among one other-about our furies, our lusts, our fears. Humor can, however, land with a force more devastating than more straightforward, serious language.
As anyone who knows me can attest, I love few things more than a biting bit of wit that leads to raucous cackling. Lately, though, the ubiquity of jokes about matters of life, death, and love has left me cold. Some of those lines stick with me even in my most distracted moments of cynicism and righteous anger: “I wish I had more sense of humor / Keeping the sadness at bay / Throwing the lightness on these things / Laughing it all away / Laughing it all away / Laughing it all away.” I, too, wish I had more sense of humor. In 1974, Joni Mitchell recorded the song “People’s Parties,” a classic example of her sometimes jaunty, sometimes moaning repertoire.