Twentysomething Hairless White Gay Men Who Have Time To Take Pilates 5 Days A Week
J. Rudy Flesher is a Philadelphia based actor, blogger and college student. After a three-year detour working in health care he recently returned to The College of New Jersey to complete his B.A. in Women’s and Gender studies. He blogs (sporadically at the moment and daily when school is not in session) at The Pistol in Bed Thirteen.
A while back I invited Rudy to join The New Civil Rights Movement because I was quite impressed with his thoughts, his ideas, his background, his grasp of the issues affecting our community, and his work. Later, via Twitter, I wrote something like, “I am happy today knowing our community’s future is being created by people like Rudy.” I think you will be too. This is Rudy’s first post here.
I have been following the debate surrounding David’s decision to discontinue writing for Bilerico with interest as it has sparked debate here, and around the queer blogosphere. David’s argument hit home for me as I have chosen to stop following blogs precisely because they mixed scantily-clad gym bunnies in with their editorial and news reporting content, though perhaps for different reasons. I believe the images portrayed lack diversity, and therefore under-represent, misrepresent, alienate, and ghettoize many LGBTQ communities and their members.
First, why I stand with David on his decision to step down from Bilerico: My issue with the way they handle this content is that they style themselves as a queer think tank and the goal on their “about us†page is to “foster…conversations in order to strengthen us as individuals and as a community.†To my mind, that means the naked Mormon boys are simply, in corporate parlance, “off mission.†Porn is awesome, but if Judith Butler or Kate Bornstein popped up in the middle of a sex scene to offer a post-modern analysis of gender identity, it too would be “off mission,†and I’d be annoyed. It’s just out of place.
Now, on to my larger issues with this content. Queerty was the blog I chose to unsubscribe from. I consider myself a sex-positive feminist and do believe that our society has a long way to go in terms of maturely integrating sexuality into daily life in a way that is celebratory, healthy, and free of shame and stigma. However, the images portrayed on Queerty and, as far as I’ve observed, other mainstream LGBTQ blogs, including Bilerico, do not achieve this whatsoever.
Instead, these pictures say that, no matter how many letters we add to the LGBTQ alphabet soup, no matter how inclusive the other content becomes, that clearly, it is white, gay, men with single-digit body fat who matter. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Sure, the blogs are writing about lesbian issues, but there never seem to be any photos of hot dykes to oggle. The bodies of trans people certainly aren’t represented. Without a doubt, people of color, the hirsute, the disabled, those older than twenty-seven, and so on clearly need not apply. Men destabilizing gender roles — wearing makeup, “women’s” clothes, nail polish — well, we’ll watch them in drag shows, but Goddess forbid we celebrate their sexuality because then we would be radically dismantling a false gender binary which oppresses all of us. Gosh, who would want that?
Instead, these pictures constantly reinforce that only certain people matter, that they’re all men, and only certain kinds of men. If that’s your type, then by all means, oggle away! But put it on a blog called “Twenty-Something Hairless White Gay Men Who Have the Time to Take Pilates Five Days a Week.” Don’t run a blog that purports to represent a dynamic population and then only represent a historically-privileged demographic.
David is spot on when he notes that blogs offering this type of material as content use it as an easy way to get traffic, but I’d go a step further and say that the incredibly narrow spectrum of men represented in this material speaks to a whole lot of patriarchy and ugly “isms” that pervade our communities today. How quickly we forget history and fail to learn from it.
There was a feminist backlash against the “Lavender Menace” of lesbians, and then against transsexual women who were (and are) portrayed as invading women’s space. All variety of people who were gender rebels were at the forefront of queer liberation, and quickly thrown under the bus for those seen as less threatening to mainstream (read: white patriarchal) society. To turn this tide requires intense, critical introspection, both collectively and communally.
While both mainstream media and queer blogs seem content with appealing to the lowest common denominator (and ignoring the needs and desires of much of their audience), we must be willing to take a principled stand to buck this anti-intellectual trend and have intelligent discourse on the damage done to our communities when so many are excluded. As Judith Butler notes in the preface to the 1999 republication of her landmark “Gender Trouble,”
“…we underestimate the reading public, its capacity and desire for reading complicated and challenging texts, when the complication is not gratuitous, when the challenge is in the service of calling taken-for granted truths into question, when the taken for grantedness of those truths is, indeed, oppressive.”
I could not agree with her more. It is a time to be critical, compassionate, celebratory, and radical. It is time to love and value ourselves and each other.
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
