Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Sense of humour failure?

Bisexual FTW tweeted:
Really unimpressed with @pridelondon and @petertatchell referring to the pope as "Pope Betty". Emasculating him is sexist and out of order.
Referring to a man as if he was female is potentially sexist towards women, because it implies that women are inferior; but referring to this as "emasculating" sounds as if Bisexual FTW thinks it is sexist towards men. 

However, I think what they are doing by referring to him as "Pope Betty" is the old-time Polari habit of referring to everyone (up to and including God, who is known as Gloria) as female. It also implies that he is a closet case (and given the propensity of Catholic clergy to wear dresses - sorry, robes - and froth at the mouth about gay sexuality, that's not an unreasonable conclusion).

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