Los Angeles has only one “LGBT-focused coffee shop.” This is surprising news to me, but then I believe pumpkin spiced latte is Big Coffee’s fiendish plot to turn America into a nation of jittery, fem Pajama Boys.
But The Los Angeles Times says that East L.A.’s Cuties Coffee “has quickly become the daytime darling of L.A.’s queer social ecosystem.” (Much to the chagrin of the former daytime darling of L.A.’s queer social ecosystem, a makeup artist and part-time yoga instructor named Rudolfo. Reached for comment, Rudolfo said bitterly, “Queens are so fickle!”)
“In most cities,” explains The Times, “the lion’s share of LGBTQ-centered establishments are bars and clubs that primarily cater to gay men.” (Hey, The Times said it, not me.) But those gay dudes are “cisgender, meaning their gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth.” Scissors or scalpels don’t sit well with cises.
Cuties isn’t nearly so homogeneous as those cis-terns of gay machismo. It’s “a casual hangout that’s welcoming to all members of the LGBTQ community, regardless of age or gender identity.” Apparently, it’s very important for men who pretend to be women not to be “misgendered” -- recognized as men. It hurts their “sense of self” or something. So they head to the biology-free embrace of Cuties, a magical dimension in which one sip of that rich, dark roast gender fluid erases 5-o’clock shadow and melts Adam's apples to nothing.
Cuties sports a “rainbow awning, doorway disco ball and hot pink-and-teal interior … The owners say they regularly receive emails from gender nonconforming customers who say that when they finally mustered enough courage to wear makeup or a dress, they chose to come to Cuties.”
Sounds like a solid business plan: create a space so welcoming to .4 percent of the population as to alienate the other 99.6 percent. Yet somehow Cuties is failing! “‘We knew that this experiment had to be self-sustaining,” [co-owner Virginia] Bauman wrote in a blog post on Medium in late August. ‘So far, it isn’t.’”
Oh well. Easy come easy go. Survival of the fittest and all that. Um, no:
The importance of casual gathering spaces for LGBTQ people should not be underestimated, even in a largely progressive city such as L.A., said Petra Doan, a professor of urban planning at Florida State University who studies the development and demise of LGBTQ neighborhoods.[Now that's some kinda gig!]
‘If you’re trans or a butch lesbian or a femme gay man, you’re going to have experiences of discrimination no matter how accepting in general California is,’ said Doan, who is a transgender woman. As a tall person with a deep voice, she said she gets misgendered by every third or fourth person she meets.
So the self-sustaining experiment has become another internet subscription charity case. “Bauman and [co-owner] Bainum-Houle launched a Patreon fundraiser to keep the business afloat amid a summertime slump. So far more than 400 people have committed to donating a combined $4,200 each month. That’s enough to keep Cuties open through September, said Bauman, who is a transgender woman. But the owners say they need to raise $12,000 a month to keep sponsoring events and paying their six employees.”
Here’s a thought: maybe don’t be so gender-incontinent. Put the disco ball in the back. Lose the teal (keep the leather: you never know when some of those cis-gay guys might drop in. “As if!” sneered Rudolfo.) Maybe accept you might be misgendered by, say, every second person in order to make the joint a going concern. Look outside and see who other potential customers may be.
But solipsism, like deep voices and hairy legs, is brewed into this crowd.
And now, more bilge from the S.S. Progressive.
Deaf and Dumber -- Would someone please remind Hollywood that jokes are no longer funny. Comic scenes, witty dialogue, slapstick -- it’s all offensive to someone. Imagine the hurt Abbott and Costello's "Who's On First" routine would cause in today Interrogative Pronoun community? 
And that’s the case with the new Netflix series Sierra Burgess Is a Loser.
According to Yahoo News, the show, whose debut features “scenes viewers have called transphobic, fat shaming, homophobic and more,” has gotten off on the wrong foot with just about every fashionable grievance group.
Worst of all, the show has offended what Yahoo calls “the deaf community.” A scene that ironically (if such a thing is possible any more) includes a deaf actor named Cochise Zornoza, plays fake deafness for laughs. It’s too convoluted to explain in detail, but the heroine meets a guy who she fears will recognize her voice, so she plays deaf. But the guy introduces her to his little brother (Zornoza) using sign language, which she doesn’t know. Another friend covers for her, but takes the opportunity -- since she supposedly can’t hear him -- to call her a hermaphrodite who’s been “slutting it up lately.”
Pretty tame. No deaf people were harmed in the making of this joke. Only non-deaf characters look silly. Unless you’re a “Deaf advocate,” as Yahoo calls Nyle DiMarco, who’s also a model. DiMarco is deaf and, tragically, laughing impaired. He tweeted:
Yahoo relates that DiMarco asserted Zornoza’s character was “‘written and used for a terrible joke,’ meaning Ty was only in this scene to make it funny when Sierra was nearly caught in a lie.”
Again, nobody made fun of a deaf person. Yes, they used a deaf person for a gag. If the girl had pretended to be a nun, they would have written in a Carmelite. If she’d pretended to be French, the little brother would have been an exchange student from Nice. Is that disrespectful to nuns or Frenchmen? And Di Marco wasn’t alone:
A deaf actor got a small role in a series. That’s good, right? But not good enough. Apparently, deafness -- or should we say “political deafness” -- is now part of “woke” culture, with its hair-trigger outrage, archaic rules and constant goalpost moving.
“Went to see Gay Mohammed last night. Very transgressive.” -- Canada can be forgiven for a lot. After all, Canadian soldiers (many inexplicably saddled with bicycles) covered themselves in glory during WWII. Our neighbors to the north have given us John Candy, Leslie Neilsen and four-fifths of The Band. At the very least, that should buy them a little tolerance for their delusions about what constitutes “bacon.”
On the other hand, there are Justin Trudeau, Jim Carrey and Lover Boy. But, as a great nation, America can rise above those insults to civilization for the sake of continental harmony. What we should not -- cannot -- forgive is Toronto’s Gay Jesus.
That’s the stage name of “drag artist Heath V. Salazar.” All tarted up for the show, “the Latinx, trans non-binary creator dawns a thick beard and puts together a signature blend of theatre, drag, and getting naked,” according to Vice. But don’t get the wrong idea. This is highbrow stuff, Vice assures us. “The performer utilizes Gay Jesus to explore concepts of politics, identity, and religion.”
[Author’s note: in quotes that follow from the Vice article, you may notice forms of the word “they” substituted for what would normally be variations of the word “he.” These are not typos. They are symptomatic of our descent into pronoun hell.]
“For Salazar the character comes from a place of love, it’s a reclamation of the Jesus from their religious upbringing,” says Vice. “A Jesus that embraced misfits and preached equal treatment.”
“‘In terms of the name Gay Jesus being controversial, if the name itself from the get-go gets you, then there are other things that are actually present,’ explains Salazar.”
So if you’ve got a problem with a naked bearded drag queen calling himself Gay Jesus, you’re the freak, not him.
And the stripping? Gay Jesus does it to save lives. He first dropped trou (or whatever) after “the American government announced that it was looking to pass laws that forced kids in school to use the washrooms that corresponded with their assigned sex at birth,” as they had since the advent of indoor plumbing. Gay Jesus swung into action!
“I knew that I had access to a stage and an audience but there were kids whose lives were at stake, so I needed a guarantee that my audience, who was just expecting to have a fun time, was going to listen. So I took off my clothes, and it worked.”
Funny, the real Jesus got naked to save those very same kids.; the Romans stripped Him for His torture and execution. Maybe those kids will hear Gay Jesus. They sure don’t hear the real one anymore.
