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Published at 1:09pm
Published at 12:53pm
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MEET THE PANELISTS (below)
Why do we all seem to end up in our own little niches in the city—the leather queens over here, the gay Asians over there, the lesbians on the other side, etc.?
Ariel Schrag: It all has to do with location. Like the Williamsburg-Bushwick scene: They all look alike. They have the same jobs. They do the same sort of art on the weekend. There’s no need to venture off to other places when everything you want is right where you live.
Douglas Carter Beane: You create the world you want. And dating is so much about types, isn’t it? I remember when there only used to be Asian bars on the Upper East Side, and you’d go to the Townhouse if you wanted, say, a guy in a jacket. Now you go to the Townhouse if you want a guy that you want to pay for.
Glenn Maria: It’s not like that in other cities, and certainly not in smaller towns, where the queers all party together and it’s so beautiful. I guess New Yorkers don’t want to move through a sea of people they don’t want to fuck to get to the people they do want to fuck.
Kai Wright: I’ve been to smaller cities and towns where there’s only one bar and everybody’s got to go to the same place, and it’s a blast. But that’s only going there for, like, one night. After that, I imagine I’d be really over it. The beauty about being in New York is that you get what you want. If you’re a bear, there’s a bar full of bears. And who’s stopping you from checking out something new? Being compartmentalized isn’t terrible, unless it’s so rigid that people aren’t welcome.
Staceyann Chin: The gay scene is only a microcosm of the larger world, and the larger world has always been a segregated place. People like to think of New York as a melting pot. Even though it’s compartmentalized, it is still the place to be if you’re gay. If you’re a Greek or Turkish or Muslim and gay, I’m sure there’s a society somewhere. The community’s there if you know where to look and how to get in.
Douglas Carter Beane, 48
Tony-nominated playwright (The Little Dog Laughed and Xanadu) and screenwriter (To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar)
Staceyann Chin, 35
Activist, poet, spoken-word performer and self-proclaimed “lesbian Jamaican immigrant”
Glenn Marla, 25
Outré plus-size trannie performer
Ariel Schrag, 28
Author of the autobiographical graphic novel Awkward, and former writer for The L Word
Christian Siriano, 21
Project Runway winner, hot trannie mess popularizer
Kai Wright, 34
Author, Drifting Toward Love: Black, Brown, Gay,and Coming of Age on the Streets of New York
Josh Stevenson
Wed, May 28, at 11:27pm
There is SO much wrong with the last comment made by Christian Siriano. He's being racist, classist, and transphobic. First, he's implying that all heterosexuals are white. Then he equates gender variant people with the class-biased stereotype of "white trash".
Josh Stevenson
Wed, May 28, at 09:10pm
There is SO much wrong with the last comment made by Christian Siriano:
