Noticed for the first time yesterday, on Alex Wagner Tonight on MSNBC, 6/28, in “‘Republicans in robes’: Supreme Court critics see politics behind action on [the Grabpussy] immunity case”, on-line here: commenter Mark Joseph Stern (a senior writer covering courts and the law for Slate Magazine), in his pleasantly gay persona — an engaging fem (vs. butch) presentation of himself — while, with deep seriousness and evident passion, picking apart the Supreme Court’s behavior in the immunity case.
What came to my consciousness for the first time was the gayness of his persona, a collection of his specific variants of fem characteristics, including his particular gay voice and his particular gay eye gestures (eye widening, some flirtation with eye roll and slant-eye). Wonderful that he doesn’t edit out these behaviors, even if many people take them to be indicators of a superficial mentality (just like a dumb broad”, they think to themselves).
I had somehow not attended to any of this the day before, 6/27, when MJS was again on Alex Wagner Tonight, in “‘A seismic shift’: Supreme Court Chevron ruling radically alters U.S. government with power grab”, on-line here; or in his earlier appearances on her show, explaining the intricacies of various US courts to the MSNBC audience. But now I’m a fan, of his brand of a fem persona, combined with visible playfulness and enjoyment in his own performance, and of his elegant explanations of complex legal and political matters, in which his expertise is combined with visible, urgent, commitment to a system of moral values.
I see lot of this in my gay world: pleasantly gay and deeply serious, in tandem. In a while I’ll pull up, from my earlier postings, another example of this pairing, with all the details wildly different from MJS’s case.
But first, more about MJS.
From the “about Mark” section of MJS’s webpage, which opens up wonderfully as it goes along:
(#1) Head shot of MJS, in front of the Supreme Court buildingMark Joseph Stern is a senior writer covering courts and the law for Slate Magazine. Based in Washington, D.C., he has covered the U.S. Supreme Court, federal appellate and district courts, and state and local courts since 2013.
A native of Tallahassee, Florida, Mark holds a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center and a B.A. in History and Art History from Georgetown University. He is a member of the Maryland Bar. His areas of expertise include LGBTQ+ equality, reproductive rights, criminal justice, and Supreme Court jurisprudence.
Mark is the author of American Justice 2019: The Roberts Courts Arrives, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. He has co-authored several law review articles about free speech, gay rights, and transgender equality.
He and his husband welcomed a son in 2023 and are the proud caretakers of one rescue dog and three adopted birds.
And now for something completely different. But also familiar. From my 8/29/21 posting “Sweetly earnest and pleasantly gay”:
Sweetly earnest and pleasantly gay, also, a superhunky muscle bottom (descriptors the man himself laughingly accepts as compliments); a “voracious bottom” (or eager receptive, to put it in more distanced technical terms), as an interviewer put it a while back; and something of a queen (a descriptor he occasionally uses of himself as well as the other “queens in recovery” in his alcoholism support group). This is gay pornstar Beau Butler, who appeared earlier on this blog in my 5/3/21 posting “With knitted brows”, because brow-knitting is one of his Serious Faces, frequently displayed during sex with other men, in particular while he’s being pronged by a Raging Stallion co-worker on a mensroom sink in the porn flick Show Hard. I write co-worker because though Butler is indeed an eager receptive, both personally and professionally, he also views his sex work as a job — requiring specialized skills, attention to the tasks at hand, and teamwork, and following demanding routines and schedules — a job that he approaches with a serious work ethic.
Butler gets another blog posting because of the way he looks — amiably faggy — in a Raging Stallion e-mail ad (for the flick The Territory) that came to me on 8/27 (without identification of the actors in it):
(#2) Touches of fagginess, in the form of bits of symbolic girliness: the big sign is his bodily position, with his back somewhat arched and his butt pushed out (in what’s known as the pinup push — see my 9/28/19 “Gender notes: the pinup push”); girly ax-wielding (I’m not quite sure what makes this unconvincing as butch ax-wielding, but it’s actually what I noticed about the pose first); and, most subtly, his facial expression, not the usual porn-ad cruise of death, but instead conveying alert receptivenessAnd that opens the way for more musing on gay male identities and personas; and more musing on the way personal and social lives are structured in the making of gay porn.
Tomorrow. This posting will serve as a lead-in to a posting set for tomorrow, 6/30, the ultimate day of June, which I’ve suggested should be recognized as Ultimate Queen Day especially celebrating men who are flamboyant (in any way) and those who are effeminate (in their presentation of themselves). Cheers for Mark Joseph Shaw and Beau Butler.
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