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“Somebody
said to me they thought it was very interesting that [this
year's Oscars] didn't have a single gay presenter, and
I said to them ‘What about Lily
Tomlin?' and they said, ‘Oh, I always forget she is
gay. She's been gay for so long that I didn't think about
it.' I thought it was an interesting answer. They looked
right at Lily Tomlin and didn't see any gay people on
stage. That's important.”
—
Roger Ebert in a March interview
with AfterElton.com |
Important? What's important is that we don't kid ourselves. Let's not be quick to agree that the best lesbian is one people don't recognize.
I know what Ebert is getting at, but Lily Tomlin isn't the best person to help illustrate his point. Tomlin has been around a long time, and I'm extremely happy about that, but time has little to do with a person's ability to “forget” that she's a lesbian. Although she's never tried to hide from the fact that she's gay (Tomlin herself has said, “I was never deceptive in any way…”), she's been a rather mellow lesbian, so low-key and unobtrusive, in fact, that if you're not gay, you might not even know she's a lesbian. And people can't forget what they never knew.
Before
writing this, I took an informal poll of my straight friends.
I sent them all an email asking if they know that Lily Tomlin
is a lesbian. I know a lot of straight people and, as you might
imagine, they are not homo-illiterate. They're my buddies, we
talk, they know more than a few things about gay people.
Yet,
eighty percent of those who answered had no idea that Tomlin
is a lesbian. One hundred percent of the men I asked didn't
know. Additionally, one person believed Tomlin to be asexual
(a comment that perhaps speaks volumes about the public's lack
of knowledge or interest in Lily's personal life), and another
believed her to be dead. My point is, before reading my email
most these bright and perceptive folks would have looked at
Lily Tomlin and not seen a lesbian.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. Lily Tomlin, like all gay women, is certainly much, much more than just a lesbian. But we can't have it both ways — we can't pretend that Lily's invisibility factor is a positive and that it's a reflection of society's acceptance of lesbians, when it's more likely a reflection of society's ignorance.
If we want our sexuality to be a non-issue, we have to inform and educate people, not keep everyone oblivious.
If Lily were Hollywood's answer to homophobia, we wouldn't need Roger Ebert to tell us. We'd already know. Likewise, so would our heterosexual friends and, more to the point, our enemies. What we know instead, what we can be sure of, is that society's tolerance for queers, while improving, is still limited. This bit of knowledge was reinforced not too long ago with the help of Ellen DeGeneres and Rosie O'Donnell.
Drawn
somewhere on a big patch of sand in a land called All We Can
Take is a line that separates acceptable gay behavior from offensive
gay behavior — “gay” from “too gay.” In much the same way that
some folks think children should be seen and not heard, so,
too, some believe, should lesbians know their place and volume
(and, as Rosie discovered, a good hair stylist).
The
public, including the gay and lesbian public let's not forget,
can only take so much ‘gayness' from one person, even if that
person is extremely amusing and likable or known throughout
the land as The Queen of Nice.
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