GLR November-December 2022

species is anything but binary, displaying a riot of possibilities from fish and birds to the higher mammals. As luck would have it, mermaids are especially prone to gender fluidity in folklore— where, by the way, they tend to be mostly green.

Slippery Creatures Daily Wire host and columnist Matt Walsh usually sticks to transgender issues in his online rants and in his infamous film documentary What Is a Woman? , but he gave those folks a break in order to denounce the latest Disney movie, a live-action remake of The Little Mermaid with a Black girl (Halle Bailey) in the lead role. Walsh was upset about the cast ing because “it doesn’t make a lot of sense to have someone with darker skin who lives deep in the ocean. I mean, if anything, not only should the Little Mermaid be pale, she should actually be translucent.” Okay, then, let the search for a translucent actress to play the part begin! Walsh does understand that mermaids are creatures of fantasy and don’t have to obey the laws of science, right? He goes on: “She should be totally pale and skeletal where you can see her skull through her face. And that would actually be a version of The Little Mermaid that I would watch.” At this point he seems to have drifted into another kind of fantasy alto gether, but whatever. Walsh’s shtick is to gin up scientific-sound ing, but actually quite absurd, theories to bolster his racist, transphobic, and misogynistic positions. When it comes to gen der, the attempt to show that “the binary” is rooted in nature is especially doomed to failure. As ecologist Joan Roughgarden has shown in these pages (and in her books), gender in other BTW

Not Welcome A slice of home security footage that went viral shows two Mormon missionar ies arriving at a front door some where in Indiana and noticing a doormat with the words “Gayest Place in Town,” whereupon they take one look at each other and bolt. The blogosphere loved it because it shows these two sol diers of God dressed in regula

tion short-sleeved dress shirts, ties, and slacks being scared off by a doormat. The two women who live in the house, who be came instant (albeit short-lived) celebrities, told the press that they were just thankful for “the fact that it actually worked! … It was a great investment.” The doormat served to amuse their friends “with the added benefit of keeping religious zealots from knocking on our door to tell us about their god.” The Greatest Good One by one, the vestiges of British homo phobia in the Empire are falling. Singapore is the latest former colony to repeal the infamous Section 377, which criminalized sexual acts “against the order of nature” (for males only). It’s not surprising that Singapore, known for its uptight conser

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