Ultra Classy

Time is currently featuring a story about the rise of LGBTQI-owned large-scale luxury hotels catering to LGBTQI customers. It's a decent enough story, with less-than-average fail ("ghettoize"? seriously? still?); pretty boring for anyone with a passing familiarity with pink/lavender travel, but a good enough piece to introduce the concept to a general audience.

Except the headline is: Not Just Gay-Friendly: Here Come the Ultra-Gay Hotels.

So much wrong with so few words.

Yes, these hotels are billed as "hetero-friendly" (hee), because they cater specifically to a gay clientele. By my calculations, that just makes them gay hotels.

But by Time's reckoning, by the reckoning of a culture steeped in heterocentrism, heteronormativity, and straight privilege, that makes them ULTRA-GAY!

Which, apart from conjuring the image of a beautifully-designed hotel dressed in pink superhero tights and matching cape, implicitly suggests that even LGBTQI-owned and -serving hotels must primarily cater to straight people, or else they'll enter some sort of realm of the supergay.

Sort of like how a gay man who is "straight-acting" (i.e. has a gender presentation that hews closely to the stereotypes of traditional masculinity) is just plain old gay, but a gay man who is "gay-acting" (i.e. has a gender presentation that includes discernible aspects of the feminine) is said to be really gay.

And the problem with all this gay-ranking (especially done from outside the queer community looking in) is that it necessarily continues to center heterosexuality as the norm and the desirable objective—and not just any heterosexuality, but a version steeped in retrofuck gender roles. (Which further marginalizes the "really gay.")

Which is basically a long way of saying: Time's headline is total garbage which effectively reframes a thing merely catering primarily (and not even exclusively) to a gay clientele from gay to ultra-gay, effectively suggesting that a gay-centered space is extreme.

I can't wait for their article on gay-only establishments: "Here Come the Super Duper Mega Max Über Xxxtreme Gay Hotels!"

Or perhaps just: "AHHHH! The Gays Are Coming!"

Meanwhile, CNN (of course) helpfully linked the article right on their front page, reiterating the obnoxious headline:


That's your liberal media—treating perfectly legitimate and business-savvy gay-centric spaces with all the finesse and subtlety of an Ed Wood script.