According to Patti Harrison, 2018 has been a mixed bag. "We saw a lot of cool things happen," says the comedian, who this year alone has had cameos everywhere from The Tonight Show to A Simple Favor. "I got a manicure for the first time this year. That was really scary, so that was an epic win. But the nail technician did cut my cuticles until they bled and they did get infected and they're still infected." So, not all great.
"There were people who were mean and there were people who were so rude," says Harrison, which is a succinct way to say that 2018 hasn't...been the best for queer people, and trans people especially. Here, we looked back at some of OUT's recent headlines and queer news in general and asked Harrison for her hot takes.
Trump Administration Seeks to Redefine Gender, Erase Trans Americans
Patti Harrison: That is my favorite thing I've read, very cool. I was upstate apple picking when I read it and everyone I was with cheered. It's always very cool to define someone by their pussy or their dick, that always works out really well and I think everyone's really happy with that.
Trans people are such a minority that realistically there are people who will go their whole lives and not have a discussion with a trans person. We are still a minority, so it does take the help of cis people and allies to politically advocate for us and speak to other cis people to make them allies. [I said that online and people responded] "You call cis people scum and now you want their help? Yeah right, fat chance!" I think I've maybe referred to cis people as scum once as a joke [but,] I earnestly believe everyone is scum, cis or trans, and that we all need to advocate for other scum.
Trans Women Don't Exist in Victoria's Secret's Fantasy World
Victoria's Secret: a company started by a straight cis man. It is fully the fantasy of a 13-year-old boy to fuck a 10-foot-tall woman who weighs 40 lbs and has 75lb angel wings on her back that she's ragging down a runway in her 10-inch high heels that are deforming the bone growth in her feet. If that's the fantasy, sure, great.
I clocked pretty early on that Victoria's Secret is an evil place, it's a giant, evil corporation, that is not where I personally seek to explore my feminism or see representation. I don't think it's a healthy place for a lot of women to seek representation, but I understand that it's this huge corporation with a giant platform and there is responsibility there. It doesn't shock me in the least--you see these companies doing evil things all the time and you don't get outraged about it until they say, 'Oh, we don't really like trans people or fat people.' You can just look at their body of work, you don't have to wait to be outraged when their actions speak so violently already. I think the ultimate representation win is if they let the sloth from Ice Age walk [in the show]. That's the only representation I'm looking to Victoria's Secret for. Once that happens, then I'll buy one of their Miracle bras for my perfect, huge, gigantic, natural tits.
Nonbinary Extra Quit Fantastic Beasts Over Queerphobia
The world of Harry Potter is absolutely amazing and it's wonderful and magical, and all of the offshoots in that universe are also magical. We have to remember that homophobia and transphobia in the Harry Potter world are very cool and good. We have to stop looking at fiction as a source of political validation. Things are all topsy turvy, crazy weird in that universe, so it's actually cool to subject someone to political violence if it's in the name of an enchanting story about someone who is putting a bunch of weird wiggly monsters in a big suitcase, especially if that person is a cis man who played a trans woman unapologetically. Any time I try and read about Eddie Redmayne playing a trans woman, I actually cum and I blackout because I'm so fucking happy for Eddie Redmayne. So happy for her.
Dwight Howard's Messy Public Outing is Riddled With Transphobia
My baby. I miss him, I miss all the crazy, nasty, twisty, bouncy bareback stuff we did on and off the court.
It was very interesting to see all the transphobia come out about this person who is gay but presents very feminine, so people assumed he was a trans woman. It was fun to read everyone's transphobic responses and then when you reply to them they say, 'Actually, it's a he, and this has nothing to do with trannies so shut the fuck up.' I really like the internet and the way it gives every single person in the world direct access to me and all trans women to say every single thing they think about at all times with no way for me to delete that. I like to wake up and look at my phone and see that someone has called me a "trans-tarded-he-she-fag-man," I'm glad that Twitter exists to hold a discourse like that.
My New Vagina Won't Make Me Happy
When I read [Andrea Long Chu's New York Times essay], I was getting my asshole fully bleached and waxed and my face was down through a donut, so I couldn't really read the whole article, but it felt like The New York Times was maybe not the place for that essay. It was a very nuanced essay and I get it, but a lot of people assume trans people are all surgery-obsessed, and that's the nuance that gets lost with cis people who have already made up their minds about trans people. They take one trans person's experience about themselves and because people are so lazy already, they decide to adopt that as their point of view for how all trans people feel, that all trans people feel this eternal, endless sadness -- which I'm going to say is 100% the experience. That is what's cool about being trans: that everyone has the exact same experience and everyone looks and feels the same and everyone is actually being cast in Transparent. It's really great of Jill Soloway to cast every trans person in Transparent.
Celine Dion's Nonbinary Clothing Line Not Faring Well with Exorcists
Oh my fucking god, if someone described my clothing line as demonic, hell yeah! That rules, she's slaying! She has a demonic voice, she can sing so high and so low, yes baby I love that, she's a demon from heaven, angel from hell. I think it fucking rules and it makes me love this renaissance of her coming out of Vegas and being in the public eye again. Congrats, demonic bitch!
