Reviews tagging 'Homophobia'

The 2000s Made Me Gay: Essays on Pop Culture, by Grace Perry

27 reviews

v_neptune's review

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funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective medium-paced

4.0

did not appreciate the lack of emphasis on jkr's transphobia, but otherwise this was a good book

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kbweis's review against another edition

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funny reflective fast-paced

3.25

i liked this! got quite repetitive at points but overall an enjoyable read. a lot of the essays center on media i have not personally consumed, but for the most part i was able to follow along. for the things i have watched, i felt like a lot of the points made were things i already know (jk rowling is bad, being a terf is bad), but it was still mostly nice to get to hear it from someone in a longer form essay rather than on twitter, etc. 

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ninjamuse's review against another edition

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emotional informative inspiring medium-paced

3.75


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lilybearillini3's review

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emotional funny hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

From the introduction, Grace Perry had me hooked! I rarely laugh while reading a book, even if it's funny. This book broke that for me as I laughed many times throughout.  Grace and I are technically in the same generation, albeit I'm so close to the next one.  Her voice is exactly my humor, so I felt like I had a grasp on the pop culture moments that were before my time.   A++ for essay titles, my favorite being "Harry Potter and the Half-Assed Gay Character."  "Taylor Swift Made Me a U-Haul Dyke" is one of my favorite chapters, because I semi-grew up knowing and sometimes liking her and her music. I have to agree with Grace, listening to her music made me a romantic, to my detriment at times.

I enjoyed reading Grace's experiences and her use of pop culture to tell these stories.  I found myself reflecting on my own journey in discovering my sexuality, often relating to the pop culture references.  It was a super fun read and I will be recommending to everyone.

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pleigh02's review

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funny hopeful informative inspiring medium-paced

5.0


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livbarry's review

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emotional lighthearted medium-paced

2.75

Desperately needed an editor and I will leave it at that…..

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cassielaj's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective fast-paced
Entertaining, enlightening, funny, heartwarming, full of pop culture references and queerness. Love

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kaitlinlovesbooks's review

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emotional funny informative lighthearted reflective medium-paced

3.75


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thebacklistreader's review

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funny reflective medium-paced

4.0

Grace Perry's The 2000s Made Me Gay is a collection of short essays about the pop culture that shaped Perry as a queer millenial. Navigating identity through pop culture that is largely cis-gendered and heteronormative has an impact, and Perry does so with humour and a certain self-awareness that while somewhat depricating (in the best way possible), is enviable. Open and honest, 2000s Made Me Gay is open and honest in a way that feels like a celebration of not only the pop culture media that would be by modern standards 'problematic' but queer identity as well.

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criticalgayze's review

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funny informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

While the writing in this book was a little more mid-tier pop culture blog than is my personal taste, as a fellow Queer millennial, I found the subject matter Perry dove into to be VERY relatable. Finding someone spotlighting and validating so many of my own cultural touchstones, like "Glee!" and the "Dumbledore is gay" scandal of the aughts, was akin to the way cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib elevates "scene" music in his collection They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us. Even when Perry is talking about a property that I didn't engage with as a kid ("Gossip Girl" and "The L Word"), I was almost always able to substitute in my feelings for a similar property ("Degrassi: TNG," "90210," and "Queer as Folk").

I think this one is a must read for the rest of my Queer millennials with shit to unpack.

Quotes:
Pop culture might be an escape from real life, but I haven't been able to escape pop culture itself. It's glommed onto my psyche, it's shaped my view of myself, my reality, my body, my sexuality, as it has for most people: when we ride the subway in quiet hope for a meet cute, or we huff, frustrated at our hair for not flowing like Harry Styles's, or shame ourselves for not having a large group of hot friends with standing plans at the same bar every Friday night. (11 - 12)
But I think singling out my Catholic ethics class, or those all-school masses, or my CCD classes as the place where I inherited negative ideas about queerness lets the secular world of the 2000s off way too easy. (65)
There are moments when I feel so gay that I've been stripped of any nuance, my defining cracks smoothed such that I am a plastic Easter egg indistinguishable from any other pastel orb in the garden. (82)
That's the thing about being a queer millennial: it's not about things getting better in any linear fashion but holding a painful past and an optimistic future together, one in each hand, at the same time. (227)

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