#tippingthevelvet — Public Fediverse posts

At the same time, however, I want to end on an optimistic note, and watching #TippingTheVelvet reminded me that when I first saw it, #SameSexMarriage wasn't legal in the US, and it is now, even if its future is in doubt. Also, at the time, the city near where I went to college was having a referendum on #LGBTQHousing and #HousingDiscrimination, which eventually won #HousingRights for queer people. Dan Savage's #ItGetsBetter campaign was going viral.

We were fighting the bigots then, and it felt like we were winning. Now it feels like we're on the backfoot in that fight, but that doesn't mean the fight is over. We've come really far, too far to give up now, and we have the opportunity to both protect what we've won while pushing for true #justice and #equity.
9/9

#QueerRepresentation #Queer #LGBTQ #QueerMedia #Sapphic #Lesbian

At the same time, however, I want to end on an optimistic note, and watching #TippingTheVelvet reminded me that when I first saw it, #SameSexMarriage wasn't legal in the US, and it is now, even if its future is in doubt. Also, at the time, the city near where I went to college was having a referendum on #LGBTQHousing and #HousingDiscrimination, which eventually won #HousingRights for queer people. Dan Savage's #ItGetsBetter campaign was going viral.

We were fighting the bigots then, and it felt like we were winning. Now it feels like we're on the backfoot in that fight, but that doesn't mean the fight is over. We've come really far, too far to give up now, and we have the opportunity to both protect what we've won while pushing for true #justice and #equity.
9/9

#QueerRepresentation #Queer #LGBTQ #QueerMedia #Sapphic #Lesbian

At the same time, however, I want to end on an optimistic note, and watching #TippingTheVelvet reminded me that when I first saw it, #SameSexMarriage wasn't legal in the US, and it is now, even if its future is in doubt. Also, at the time, the city near where I went to college was having a referendum on #LGBTQHousing and #HousingDiscrimination, which eventually won #HousingRights for queer people. Dan Savage's #ItGetsBetter campaign was going viral.

We were fighting the bigots then, and it felt like we were winning. Now it feels like we're on the backfoot in that fight, but that doesn't mean the fight is over. We've come really far, too far to give up now, and we have the opportunity to both protect what we've won while pushing for true #justice and #equity.
9/9

#QueerRepresentation #Queer #LGBTQ #QueerMedia #Sapphic #Lesbian

At the same time, however, I want to end on an optimistic note, and watching #TippingTheVelvet reminded me that when I first saw it, #SameSexMarriage wasn't legal in the US, and it is now, even if its future is in doubt. Also, at the time, the city near where I went to college was having a referendum on #LGBTQHousing and #HousingDiscrimination, which eventually won #HousingRights for queer people. Dan Savage's #ItGetsBetter campaign was going viral.

We were fighting the bigots then, and it felt like we were winning. Now it feels like we're on the backfoot in that fight, but that doesn't mean the fight is over. We've come really far, too far to give up now, and we have the opportunity to both protect what we've won while pushing for true #justice and #equity.
9/9

#QueerRepresentation #Queer #LGBTQ #QueerMedia #Sapphic #Lesbian

At the same time, however, I want to end on an optimistic note, and watching #TippingTheVelvet reminded me that when I first saw it, #SameSexMarriage wasn't legal in the US, and it is now, even if its future is in doubt. Also, at the time, the city near where I went to college was having a referendum on #LGBTQHousing and #HousingDiscrimination, which eventually won #HousingRights for queer people. Dan Savage's #ItGetsBetter campaign was going viral.

We were fighting the bigots then, and it felt like we were winning. Now it feels like we're on the backfoot in that fight, but that doesn't mean the fight is over. We've come really far, too far to give up now, and we have the opportunity to both protect what we've won while pushing for true #justice and #equity.
9/9

#QueerRepresentation #Queer #LGBTQ #QueerMedia #Sapphic #Lesbian

I also find myself worrying whether a show like #TippingTheVelvet could be made today. There's such a backlash toward #queer stories and #QueerMedia right now, and the BBC especially seems to be going backwards rather than forwards. Also, almost none of the characters in the show really seem to fit the blandly squeaky clean kind of representation that certain very vocal parts of the internet seem to demand of queer characters.

It feels like the fact that I couldn't quite imagine this show being made today both days something about how far we've come, in that we're telling lots of other queer stories, but also how much we've recently been backsliding, in that I worry a show like this would seem too controversial

8/?

#QueerRepresentation #Queer #QueerMedia #LGBTQ #Sapphic #Lesbian

I also think that when I first watched #TippingTheVelvet in college, I was disappointed that Nan and Kitty didn't get back together. I think my younger self found the idea of them having a secret affair to be romantic, and I think I found Florence to be a bit boring.

Now though, as an older socialist who works for a nonprofit and likes stability, I am fully on team Florence! I actually now see a lot of myself in that character, and I'm glad she and Nan ended up together. Florence was clearly the healthier choice for Nan.

7/?

#QueerRepresentation #Queer #QueerMedia #LGBTQ #Sapphic #Lesbian

Don't get me wrong. There were things I liked about #GentlemanJack. But I think the show could have been stronger if it would have dug deeper into the class dynamics of the show. Anne's ability to express herself as she does is very much the result of her class privilege and her ability to do so is literally paid for by children working in coal mines. I'm not saying people can't like her character or the show, but I wish the show would have maybe made space for discussing the intersections of heteronormativity and cis-normativity and class.

Because #TippingTheVelvet focuses specifically on working class queer characters, though, it didn't bring up as many complicated feelings for me around the characters.

6/?

#QueerRepresentation #QueerMedia #Queer #LGBTQ

That being said, I think #TippingTheVelvet pretty much still holds up today. Maybe there's a bit more opportunity there to explore the possibility that Nan is nonbinary now than there would have been back in the early 2000s. The camera work does this unnerving thing where the audience is sometimes put in the perspective of a character in the show in a way that to me is unnerving and 4th wall breaking, I think unintentionally. Sometimes tonally the Vaudeville kind of aestheic they're going for doesn't always work. But it mostly holds up.

I found myself comparing it to #GentlemanJack, and overall, I think Tipping the Velvet does a better job of examining class, which I really wish Gentleman Jack would have been more critical of or encouraged the audience to be more critical of. I'm sorry, but I struggled to root for Anne when she was a landlord.

5/?

#QueerRepresentation #LGBTQ #Queer #Lesbian #Sapphic #ComingOutAsAnAdult #QueerMedia

Watching it again, today, brought me back to my college days and just how paltry #queer representation was at the time. People didn't really even talk much about queerness then, honestly. In the mainstream, both in media and activism the focus was on white, cis, gay, middle class men and the big political demand was for #SameSexMarriage. Stories about anyone else were few and far between, and stories about even those white, cis, gay, middle class men were few and far between.

There was also a heavy focus on #monosexism, so in retrospect, maybe it makes sense #TippingTheVelvet didn't lead to a queer awakening for me. After all, I knew at that time I was attracted to men, and the main character in that show says she feels nothing for men. So maybe that's why I didn't relate?

4/?

#LGBTQ #QueerRepresentation #Lesbian #Sapphic #ComingOutAsAnAdult

Also, the actor who played Nan Astley looks a lot like my college crush (who I didn't realize was a crush until a decade later). So rewatching #TippingTheVelvet has kind of left me wishing that it would have spurred some sort of #queer awakening in me. But I guess it didn't. Maybe that's too much to ask of just one show in the early 2000s. As I said before, it was the first piece of media I'd ever seen at the time that focused specifically on queer women.

3/?

#LGBTQ #QueerRepresentation #Sapphic #Lesbian #ComingOutAsAnAdult

I didn't watch #TippingTheVelvet when it first came out. I watched it a few years later when I was in college. Someone had uploaded it to YouTube, and this was back in the day when YouTube videos had a 10 minute time limit, so anything longer than that had to be seen in 10 minute increments, and after each video you had to search for the next one and hope that the user had both remembered to upload it, number it correctly in the title and that one of the videos hadn't randomly been taken down for copyright violations even though the rest of them had been left up.

What I'm saying is, in retrospect, I think the amount of work I put into watching this show went beyond the "I'm just being a good ally™️!" explanation that I gave myself at the time.

2/?

#Queer #LGBTQ #QueerRepresentation #Sapphic #Lesbian #InTheCloset

If you're in the United States and have access to Amazon Prime (and if you're boycotting Prime, I don't blame you and you're doing the right thing!), they have the BBC's 2002 show Tipping the Velvet available right now.

I watched it because I was feeling nostalgic. I think it was the first piece of media I'd ever seen about queer women, in which queer women were the main characters of a show and straight characters were peripheral to the story. So I want to do a thread on it. Not sure that I'll have any brilliant insights—this is probably just going to be me being nostalgic and reflecting on how far we have and haven't come since the 2000s.
1/?
#Queer #LGBTQ #QueerRepresentation #Sapphic #Lesbian #TippingTheVelvet