Olivia Colman: “I’ve always described myself to my husband as a gay man.” 🙄

[NaysayerOrMeanie]

Olivia Colman is currently on the press tour for her new film Jimpa and has come out with some absolute corkers in an interview with them "magazine" including:

"Throughout my whole life, I’ve had arguments with people where I've always felt sort of nonbinary. Don’t make that a big sort of title! But I’ve never felt massively feminine in my being female. I’ve always described myself to my husband as a gay man. And he goes, “Yeah, I get that.”"

Which I can only assume means he likes it when she pegs him.

And a dig at some undefined group of naysayers and haters and meanies:

"Most of the actors were from, particularly in the Dutch side of things, from the queer community there; I’ve never been part of a more welcoming group of people. For all those naysayers or haters or meanies, if [only] they could spend the time with the most welcoming, kind bunch of people. I kind of want everyone to just come and say hi and actually feel total love."

Jimpa stars Olivia Colman as Hannah, mother to the non-binary Frances (played by they/them, non-binary, queer, transgender daughter of the film's director, Aud Mason-Hyde) who go to Amsterdam to visit Hannah's gay HIV positive father (John Lithgow, currently simultaneously scorned by the queers for daring to be in the new Harry Potter series, any by the meanies for talking shit about JKR). I'm sure it will be a hoot.

Congratulations Olivia on your brave coming out as a queer, non-binary, gay man, spicy-straight woman. You're so late to the party all the cool kids will find your identity embarrassing now.

Does what?

How does a woman "do something" as a gay man?

That Guardian piece... good grief.

I don't really watch Woody Allen films these days, but I just flashed back to the scene in Bananas where Woody's character is on trial, and a black woman takes the witness stand claiming to be J Edgar Hoover.

Loves shopping? Keeps an obsessively clean house? Listens to Kylie, Lady Gaga and Abba on repeat? Watches Strictly and all the spinoffs? The narrow, rigid, boringly predictable stereotypes are endless really.

Well I am highly tempted to describe myself as a a gay man should I ever have to sit down with some of my 100% captured friends

i am hoping they will try to explain why that isn’t so. My betting is they will try to persuade me I am obviously female.

I mean how do I know I amn’t?

Don't forget the old Private Eye cartoon of the couple arriving home to discover they've had gay burglars - the furniture has been rearranged and there's a quiche in the oven.

It never fails to amaze me how much people who make a big deal of being right on rely on very old fashioned stereotypes.

I mean I've never thought of describing myself as a gay man, because I'm not, but I own several Pet Shop Boys albums and a copy of the criminally underrated Live and Sleazy by the Village People, so by Olivia Colman's standards maybe I am.

I honestly think that one reason why this absolutely ridiculous ideology took such hold is because it gave sexist homophobes a chance to express their sexism and homophobia and, for once, be told how progressive and kind and inclusive it made them.

How do these people not hear themselves?

I don't know. but I don't know how people pretend to be women either.

Now, now @ThatCyanCat #BeKind

The Guardian piece is hilariously stupid. This was a stand-out bit for me:

'He goes on to say that gayness is more than just who you have sex with, it is also “something you do”. This “means that you don’t have to be homosexual in order to do it”. It’s an idea that would make so many people furiously protective, but I am keen on an expansive view of identity that isn’t simply reduced to core biological functions and urges.'

There's a lot we could say about this, but I think it at least shows how far gay equality has come. Only a few decades ago, men were sent to prison for having sex with other men: to be same-sex attracted meant spending a life in the shadows, unable openly to form loving sexual relationships, to get married, to have a family. It meant risking losing your job or going to prison or being on the receiving end of psychological bullying and physical assault. Gay wasn't about liking musicals or interior design, it was about wanting to have sex with other people the same sex as you. A lot of those people would have given anything not to be same-sex attracted, but to have the joy of an ordinary life.

Believing that gayness is just an identity you can choose rather than a 'core biological urge' is the epitome of a luxury belief.

'gayness is more than just who you have sex with, it is also “something you do”. This “means that you don’t have to be homosexual in order to do it”'

And what does 'gayness' consist of, then?

Oh ffs.

No I don't wake up every morning and 'do' lesbianism, or flap about my lesbian identity, it does not affect how I hoover the stairs or shop for carrots. Of course its solely about sexual relations.

Gay men have traditionally been vilified for being 'too feminine'.

The stereotypes are generally that gay men adopt femininity and behaviours coded as 'for women'.

So I suppose Olivia is saying that she's feminine? I suppose she is saying that she adopts stereotypes but does so in a more knowing way than other women, who are presumably not as clever as Olivia.

Maybe its pointless to try and make sense of the vapid pish, though.

I'm willing to bet it never crossed her mind that she and her to be husband might have had trouble finding a church that would be willing to marry them had they really been a gay couple.

Hey, dont erase the struggles of those co opting gayness as a lifestyle choice! They are oppressed, too, if only mostly in their own minds.

Her publicity worked though, brought attention to her and what sounds like a shit film so she isn't as stupid as she comes across.

Well, there's short term and long term, though.

That was the only reason the ads interviews appeared to begin with

But you know, when I think about people around me who are really "into" being gay and involved in "the community," they do seem to see being gay as having a certain kind of personality, interests, way of behaving, and especially, a certain kind of politics.

Whereas I know other people who don't seem to be interested in being involved with "the community" but are same sex attracted, and maybe fir into certain of those other stereotypes, but they don't feel wedded to them in any way.

But the former group seems to think they get to represent homosexual people politically and lobby on their behalf and so forth, while the other group does not get involved with that, their politics seem much more independent from their personal identity.

The idea that being a gay man is a sort of personality seems to me to come right out of a lot of the things that go on within the gay community, rather than being imposed from outside.

FWIW, I actually think that what she was really expressing is that she doesn't feel she fits in with being a woman in some way. The "gay man" is almost incidental and just because she happens to in fact be heterosexual.

But what does 'feels like she fits in with being a woman' actually mean? The only thing we all have in common are XX chromosomes. It's as meaningless as the claims by men who says they live as women.

she doesn't feel she fits in with being a woman in some way.

In what way, that isn't just a nonsense sexist stereotype that's probably being disproven by 95% of the women reading this this moment?

It's not something to "fit into". She's a woman, she just is. Doesn't matter what she does.

My next door neighbours are two gay men who live in the countryside, don't like Eurovision and at least one of them supports Reform. Basically Olivia could like virtually anything and you could find a gay man who enjoys it.

Are you sure they're gay? They don't sound it. *

*heavy sarcasm.