Beth Ditto: Really Only Hates A Small Minority Of Gay Men

jharv | August 22, 2007 12:13 pm
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In an interview with The Advocate, Beth Ditto says her rad-lib queer credentials make her a lesser-of-two-evils voter, with the attendant “George Bush is an illegal-immigrant-raping super-Nazi with a fire-spurting devil’s head on his cock” quote that will be making the blog rounds today. But I’m more interested in her specious “correction” of the flap that bubbled up after her nekkid NME cover and its attendant interview:

Although, since this interview is for The Advocate, I have to ask about your recent comments to the British magazine NME where you blamed gay men for perpetuating the “size zero.” What kind of reaction did you get to that?

I got a little bit of a reaction. Although I think what’s so funny to me — not “funny ha ha,” but “funny strange” is that comment was paraphrased to the max. I know that in America not that many people are familiar with the NME, but everyone in Britain knows that the NME is the enemy. There’s a reason why it’s called “the N-M-E.”

Its coverage is known to be sensationalistic.

Absolutely sensationalistic. Absolutely known for paraphrasing. What I said – and you can still disagree – it was in a list of things that I thought could be blamed [for the size zero] before women were blamed. Like I said, I’m a radical feminist, and first and foremost, I’m a woman. That’s something I’m perceived as by the whole world, and I get the options handed down to me that are handed down because I’m a woman. I didn’t create those standards that I’m supposed to adhere to — those were created for me, and it started before I was born.

That being said, it was a list of things, and half of the list was left out. I mean, one of the things I said which was a very specific thing was gay men in the fashion industry are responsible, not gay men as a whole. But I think it was good, at least, because it got people talking about shit. I don’t blame any one thing, and I would never say “Gay men are to blame for the size zero.” That’s absolute bullshit, there’s lots of things to blame.

Well it’s nice to know she’s now only blaming a miniscule cross-section of gay men, rather than simply blasting the fashion industry as a whole, for fostering fucked-up body issues. Progress! While I have no doubt that Beth likely was misrepresented by the hacks at the NME, and while I’m sure not all gay men in the fashion industry have womens’ best interests at heart, it still feels like an oddly absolutist stance. At least she’s not trying to pretend she never said anything of the sort, no sir. Right?

But if the NME is so known for paraphrasing, misquoting, taking things out of context, and otherwise mangling words for their own “sensationalistic” ends, didn’t Ditto feel any qualms about helping them pander so darn sensationalistically with a nudie cover and an interview that she had to know, based on the above comments, would be manipulated and misrepresented? Or did she only decide/realize the NME was a buncha big meanies after the Internet blowback? Or is she just an attention whore? (I know my pick.) I’m also pretty sure my honorary vagina shriveled up and fell off when I read someone who rolls around with Perez Hilton repeatedly referring to herself as a “radical queer” with (presumably) a straight face. (No pun intended.) Oh the immigrant-raping/devil-cock quote was a paraphrase, but I was totally only saying what she really meant.

Beth Ditto [The Advocate via Gigwise]