focusonthefeminist

About a week ago I accompanied two friends to a bar on a Saturday afternoon with a two-fold goal: indulge in some mid-afternoon happy hour specials, and watch the two of them audition for The Real World.

As a middle schooler, rerun marathons of The Real World:Boston were my first exposure to a lot of contoversial social issues, and in the conservative south was definitely my first exposure to gay/lesbian culture. I thought it was about breaking boundaries in our generation. For anyone who hasn’t seen/heard of this show, it’s changed slightly in it’s almost 20 ensuing seasons since Boston. These days  it’s a little less "let’s put people from different political/social/religious/economic backgrounds together and see what happens" and a little more "how much of a shitshow can we get away with."

And apparently these days, the edge everyone feels you need to get on this show is to be of an alternative sexuality. When my two friends emerged from their group interview (10 people in room at once), the first comment I got to my question of "how’d it go?"  was "every single girl in there was bisexual."

Every interviewee was asked at the beginning of the interview to state their name and where they were from. My friend said "hey, I’m James, I’m from Boston." The girl next to him said "I’m so-and-so, and I’m bisexual." Which last time I checked, is at best a very loose interpretation of "my location of birth/origin."

Let me ...