the dissonance intensifies

are we in a dystopian YA novel or something?

Welcome to this week’s dispatch from the lesbian internet, a mid-week news roundup from Paging Dr. Lesbian, exclusively for paid subscribers. To read the full thing, upgrade your subscription.

The rich are looking might tasty right about now…

The Met Gala took place Monday night, and as always, it was a night of drama and excess. Sapphic highlights include Sarah Paulson, Janelle Monáe, Lena Waithe, Dove Cameron, Cara Delevigne, and Lily Gladstone. The most exciting attendees were Queen Latifah and her wife Eboni Nichols (pictured above) who rarely attend events together. Here’s a full queer rundown in Autostraddle.

The Met Gala always embodies wealth and exclusivity, but this year it felt more like an event in the Hunger Games universe than ever before. (As if the parallels weren’t clear enough, Susan Collins created that series in response to the Iraq War and the simultaneous rise of reality TV.) While celebs and fashion houses footed the $75,000 bill to attend the gala, Israel – funded by American tax dollars – launched an invasion in Rafah, leaving already destitute Palestinians with nowhere to go. Imagine if all that money was used to evacuate families from Gaza? The fact that the event took place in New York City, where the NYPD are violently suppressing student protests, only heightens this dissonance. In fact, the night of the Gala, protestors breached a barricade nearby. Many were arrested.

Though it’s certainly possible to pay attention to two things at once, sometimes, one thing serves to distract from the other. Think of Israel’s massacre of Gazans during the Super Bowl. On Instagram, popular account Godimsuchadyke posted a roundup of some of the gayest moments at the Gala. The majority of the comments on the post are about Palestine, with numerous users suggesting it was in poor taste to post something so frivolous during the Rafah invasion. One person noted that the comments on that post are much different than the comments on Met Gala posts from accounts aimed at gay men, suggesting that lesbians are more politically-minded than their brethren. Either way, not everyone was willing to buy into the distraction.

In Flaming Hydra, Julianne Escobedo Shepherd wrote about how garish the Met Gala felt this year. It’s behind a paywall, but here’s an excerpt: “If the theory of Israel’s interest in the glitzy annual traditions of the U.S. is true, that would indicate a belief in the indomitable triviality and self-absorption of U.S. citizens, which is correct. The monied classes in the U.S. have long been as easily distractible and as imperially comfortable as can be. Lately, though, it feels as if the flesh of the foundational U.S. mythos is rotting and falling away, so that its ugly bones are finally laid bare all at once.”

When we say eat the rich, it also means those in the ivory tower. In The New Yorker, celebrated novelist Zadie Smith wrote an equivocating, morally vacuous essay about how these student protesters really ought to be nicer with their words, while also maintaining that it doesn’t matter what she thinks about the Israel/Palestine “issue.” Steve Salaita tore the essay down clause by clause. “While positioning herself as a Deep Thinker detached from primitive loyalties, Smith painstakingly tethers expressions of ambiguity to the status quo, the most primal loyalty of all,” he writes. Later, commenting on Smith’s supposition that most of “us” aren’t willing to get arrested for a cause, Salaita posits that “Sacrifice isn’t unimaginable to “many of us.” It is unimaginable to Smith and her cohort of frivolous lickspittles.”

The real issue at hand, of course, is the thousands of Gazans facing extinction. If you’re not willing to put your body on the line, as Smith so haughtily assumes, find a family to donate to. Check out Operation Olive Branch, which includes an index of verified fundraisers for Gazans trying to evacuate. So many are desperate for funds.