How Do You Solve a Problem like Marcus?

A queer colleague of mine brought up this article about the potential problems of calling Marcus Buchmann out as gay.  The concerns about what this rhetoric potentially does is important to examine and take seriously.

It's been popular among (at least the gay blogosphere) to point out Marcus Buchmann's more effeminte qualities, including but not limited to the nickname "Ladybird," which I do find fairly amusing.  As with most things, the rhetorical strategy, politics and rationale behind such a move are complex. 

On the Baby Boomer Generation

This really is a gross oversimplification, but the following quote really does capture the gestalt of my feelings on how the baby boom generation as a whole (there are always exceptions) has really impacted the world (and continues to do so):

For all that Baby Boomers fetishise “the Sixties” as some mythical time when everything was perfect – not realising that it’s their own generation who have pretty comprehensively fucked the world up for those of us who are following them, by pulling the ladder up after themselves – they did have the luck to be a giant demographic bubble of youth at precisely the point when this could almost sensibly seem true. The ‘long 1960s’ (from roughly the Suez crisis to the OPEC crisis) were built on cheap oil, and that meant everything from cheap plastic consumer items to cheap transport. The Western world was rich and (other than Vietnam) at peace, and that meant an explosion in possibilities, ... After the OPEC crisis all this changed. We can’t afford hopes and dreams any more. To do that the Boomers would have to make sacrifices.

From, of all places, a commentary on Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: 1969 over at the Mindless Ones.