We have the ultimate in freedom – we have absolutely no responsibilities! – and we're abusing it. Following a man in his late 30s (based on Kramer himself) who is seeking out a loving, long-term relationship in a sea of hedonism, the novel has a clear message: gay men need to start loving each other instead of being so obsessed with getting fucked up and (literally and figuratively) fucking each other. I spent a few quiet afternoons reading his 1978 debut novel Faggots, a satirical (yet clearly autobiographical) look at the lives of gay men in 1970s New York City that he wrote just before AIDS made him a figurehead of American activism. However, the ghost of Larry Kramer very much remained in my own head as I made my way through a Pride month unlike any other. But "these times" looked very different on May 27th than they did on May 29th, or June 2nd, or pretty much any day since. I thought the fearlessness Kramer showed in the face of HIV/AIDS might teach us all a little about surviving in these times. (If you don't know much about Kramer, please change that immediately by watching the documentary Larry Kramer in Love and Anger - currently available on Crave and HBO Max.) Kramer's legacy was forged during the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, during which he played a pivotal role in combating governments and institutions who could not give less of a fuck about the lives of the marginalized people that disease was killing.
When I decided to put this column on a brief hiatus, I was working on a reflection on the life of legendary gay activist, writer and shit disturber Larry Kramer, who passed away of pneumonia on May 27th.
“The limp wrist feels like a throwback in some ways I remember it felt like a ubiquitous homophobic mocking gesture from my time as a closeted kid in the late 90s and early 00s,” said Philip Ellis, a journalist who wrote a piece for GQ magazine in 2019 about gay men adopting the word “faggot” as a term of pride.Įllis pointed out that the LGBTQ community has for several years used images of limp wrists as memes.Queeries 5 pioneering LGBTQ Canadian films you can watch for free right now Most recently, this has involved many people choosing to identify as “queer” or using that word as a shorthand to describe the broader community - although some still find this offensive.
The LGBTQ community has a long history of reclaiming things that were once used as derogatory slurs against them. (According to a 2012 Slate piece, limp wrists have been deemed “unmanly” since ancient Rome). The 18-year-old said he thought the action would be instantly “relatable” to others in the LGBTQ community, even though he also recognized it had offensive roots. BuzzFeed News can’t 100% confirm if Hallows came up with the limp wrist meme, but he was the earliest we could find and recalled devising it as something different from what he had seen trending. By this time, “Kiss Me More” had been a viral hit on TikTok for months, but that point of the song was mainly used for clips featuring sudden transitions.