Like then-Senator Obama, Mayor Pete has an unspoken advantage over his rivals in that any strong criticism of his candidacy could be characterized as discrimination against his special status. In the case of Obama, it was racism. In the case Mayor Pete, it will be homophobia. Will this work again?
SORRY, MAYOR PETE:
Yale Prof: Gay White Men Are Actually Symbols of Heterosexuality.
An assistant professor in women’s gender and sexuality studies at Yale University points out that Pete Buttigieg and his husband Chasten are a “vision of heterosexuality without straight people.”
The professor, Greta LaFleur, made the comments in
a piece analyzing Buttigieg and his husband’s appearance on the recent
Time magazine cover.
At the beginning of the piece, she speaks covers “whiteness” and how “white” the photo is. For example:
This photo also tells a profound story about whiteness, above and beyond the fact that almost everything in this photo is, itself, white. It’s such an all-consuming aesthetic, here, that it practically resists interpretation; like the generically familiar (to me, a white person) porch, the cover photo claims that there’s nothing to see, because we already know what it is. We have seen this image, we know this couple, “we” should be comfortable.
She suggests that the apparent comfortability that the “whiteness” of the photo provides makes it a heterosexual photo: “The argument I am making, of course, is that this photo is about a lot of things, but one of its defining features is its heterosexuality,” LaFleur writes. “It’s offering us the promise that our first gay first family might actually be a straight one.”
La Fleur, who herself identifies as “queer,” goes on to explain how “the awkwardly minimal touching” between Buttigieg and his husband apparently “invokes the most uncomfortable, unfamiliar, culturally heterosexual embrace any of us have ever received,” it actually “offers a vision of heterosexuality without straight people.”
White male Buttigieg has gotten more and better press coverage than female candidates Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren: “And perhaps this is heterosexuality at its immaterial and strategic best, a heterosexuality that could take back the Presidency for the Democrats: white, centrist, and without women.”