Sex and the City star to receive Point Courage Award

San Francisco – The Point Foundation announced late last month that Emmy-award winning Sex and the City star, Cynthia Nixon, will receive the Point Courage Award.

The Point Courage Award recognizes individuals who advocate for the future of the LGBT community and lives with the vision that investing in today’s potential will produce a brighter tomorrow, according to the January 30 news release that announced the awardees.

"Not only does Cynthia Nixon lead a phenomenally successful career as an actress, she is also a strong supporter of New York City Public Schools and an advocate for quality education and it is with great pleasure that we will present her with the Point Courage Award," said Jorge Valencia, executive director and chief executive officer of Point Foundation, in the release. "For her position in the LGBT community and pursuit of quality education for today's youth, Cynthia stands as a source of hope and inspiration to potential Point Scholars."

The awards will be held in New York City, April 7 at the Capitale starting at 6 p.m.

Nixon, 41, a child star and New York City native is best known for her role as the no nonsense lawyer Miranda Hobbes on HBO’s Sex and the City. Nixon currently is reprising the Hobbes character for the Sex and the City movie due May 2008, according to the film’s Web site.

Reports of Nixon’s relationship with the education activist Christine Marinoni surfaced in 2004. Nixon somehow managed to “make her coming-out story boring,” reported the New York Magazine in September 2006.

“I never felt like there was an unconscious part of me around that woke up or that came out of the closet; there wasn’t a struggle, there wasn’t an attempt to suppress,” Nixon told New York Magazine. “I met this woman, I fell in love with her, and I’m a public figure.”

Marinoni has since turned union organizer reported New York Magazine. Nixon has two children with her former partner Danny Mozes, Samantha Mozes, 11, and Ezekiel Mozes, 5.

The Point Foundation also announced the Point Inspiration Award honoree Time Warner.

The Point Inspiration Award recognizes a corporation that champions respect and inclusion of the LGBT community, and operates with the vision that the success achieved by talented young people is limited only by the resources and opportunities they are given to help them fulfill their potential.

The Point Foundation is the nation's largest scholarship-granting organization for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students of merit. Point provides financial support, leadership training, mentoring and hope to LGBT individuals who are marginalized because of their sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.

The Media Sponsors for the event are Metrosource, Genre, Echelon, HX, and The New York Blade.
Tickets for the Point Foundation Award dinner and program will be held April 7 at the Capitale, 130 Bowery in New York City. The evening begins at 6 p.m. with a reception and silent auction and the award dinner award program begins at 8 p.m. Tickets are available for the Doctorate Level Table – $10,000, Masters Level Table – $5,000, Bachelors Level Table – $2,500, Individual Ticket - $500 per ticket.

For more information about the event, visit the Point Foundation.

Miss America gets a reality check

The last time I really watched

Miss America was somewhere during the incredible 1980s that included Vanessa Williams being crowned and decrowned the first African American Miss America in 1984. I guess American’s didn’t want to see their princess for a year in the buff in Penthouse Magazine.

A year later pageant protestors succeeded in booting the Miss California Pageant out of my home town Santa Cruz, California. Santa Cruz hosted the princess event for six decades, according to a 2005 article in the Santa Cruz Sentinel.

Since then my Auntie’s friend, a former Miss America judge, never misses an opportunity to tease me about my disapproval of a contest that encourages women to be Barbie…even though I liked Barbie when I was a girl because she was a glamorous career woman from astronaut to doctor to even the first woman president.

Times have changed, but apparently Miss America is stuck in a time warp. The Learning Channel stepped in to give 52 Miss America contestants a hard core makeover on Miss America: Reality Check.

The show premiered January 4 and the tiara tears have already spilled. Stacy London and Clinton Kelly of TLC’s What Not to Wear already gave a few girls their scathing reviews after riffling through their luggage. But the most interesting part of the first show was when the girls hosted a dinner for “controversy.” Yes, real topics from birth control to same-sex marriage. Yes, it was on the hot plate and the discussion was heated.

America can watch the deconstruction and the meltdowns one removal of sequins challenge after yanking off fake eyelashes challenge after another Fridays at 10 p.m. All of this bleeding mascara leads up to the TLC broadcast of the crowning moment.

Ugly Betty’s Michael Urie hosts the new Miss America boot camp with celebrity judges Mark Liddell, celebrity photographer; Dina Sansing, West Coast editor for Us Weekly Magazine; and Jeannie Mai, makeup artist and founder of the Doll Service.

The best part, Americans have a chance to “really” get to know the beauty queens vying for the honor and to vote for the 16 finalists who will compete for the crown.

So feministas and queer folks here are our best bets based on the platform issues the girl with her state’s crown selected in her profile:

Miss Alaska Cari Makanani Villareal Leyva
Platform issue: Empowering women of all ethnicities to embrace cultures and promote self-actualization.

Miss Colorado Maggie Ireland
Platform issue: opening the door to optimism.
Note: Okay, I don’t know what exactly that means, but I’m throwing my four leaf clover into the ring because she's Irish and does Irish Step Dancing, according to her profile. Erin Go Brah!

Miss DC Shayna Rudd
Platform issue: Best Friends Foundation: Empowerment and Healing Our Urban Communities
Note: Okay, she’s a journalist and minored in African American Studies, according to her profile. I need to give props to us news chasers.

Miss Illinois Ashley Nicole Hatfield
Platform issue: Breast Cancer: Action, Awareness and Advocacy

Miss Kansas Alyssa Anne George
Platform issue: Bullying: the bystander effect
Note: Could that include LGBT youth?

Miss Michigan Kirsten Haglund
Platform issue: Raising awareness for eating disorders

Miss New Mexico Jenny Marlowe
Platform issue: Learn to be powerful against physical and sexual assault

Miss North Dakota Ashley Anne Young
Platform issue: Stop bullying in schools: saving the spirit of a child
Note: Could that include LGBT youth?

Miss Rhode Island Ashley Bickford
Platform issue: The kNOw HIV/AIDS Campaign

Miss Vermont Rachel Ann Cole
Platform issue: building bridges through literacy: closing the education gap.
Note: Okay, her platform doesn’t scream feminist, but during the premier show where the women were asked to host a controversy, same-sex marriage was thrown onto the hot plate. Miss Vermont stood strong for marriage equality as she should coming from one of the few states that have Civil Unions on the books. I know it’s not marriage equality, but at least it’s a step in the right direction.

Miss Virgin Islands Janeisha John
Platform issue: Domestic Violence: awareness, prevention, and recovery

Miss Washington Elyse L. Umemoto
Platform issue: Embracing diversity, empowering women

My queerdare didn’t go off for any of these femmes, but maybe because I like butches. No matter. I’m tunning in to see if America selects a real Barbie to represent women.

MySpace queen Tila Tequila is single for the New Year

Well it wasn’t because she is bisexual that Bobby, the guy Tequila selected on her hit MTV show

A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila, dumped her right before New Years, according to a Jan 1 MySpace bulletin post. It was because of her “crazy lifestyle.” It’s not like people couldn’t see that one coming a mile away due to some of Bobby’s behavior on the show and during the after show, A Shot At Love: The Hangover, where Tequila and Bobby were reunited. It was clear that Bobby had jealousy issues during the show and during the after show he seemed to be rather uncomfortable and awkward when he put his arm around Tequila.

A Shot at Love was the first of its kind bisexual dating show broadcast worldwide this past fall. Tequila, the first bisexual object of desire for 16 lesbian and 16 straight contestants twiddled down her selection eliminating one key to her heart each week (except in the beginning) to one straight guy and one soft butch just before Christmas.

Gracious, Tequila wrote in her post, “I still think Bobby is a great guy and I wish him the best.”

Meanwhile, Dani Campbell, the “futch” of Tequila’s heart, is living a bit of the Tequila lifestyle on her own. The “futch” firer fighter from Florida is quickly gaining her own following since the final “Shot at Love” episode December 18. Dani is being splashed across lesbian magazine covers and club fliers for parties she’s hosting across the United States, not to mention picking up her own MySpace following. She’s even selling her own “futch” merchandizing. As Tequila wrote in a December 19 MySpace blog post, Dani is becoming famous.

Tequila wrote in her blog December 19 that she didn’t select Campbell because she respected her too much and wanted to keep her as a friend. Nearly a week later on the “Shot at Love” after show, Tequila explained that she didn’t select Campbell because she didn’t want to disrupt her life, which is pretty set and stable.

But, Campbell was in New York City for Tequila’s 2008 masquerade ball. It is unknown if Campbell is soothing Tequila’s broken heart…especially now that she’s showing that she can not only keep up with Tequila’s “crazy lifestyle,” but also compete.

Photo courtesy TilaTequilaHotSpot.com 2002

Are we through with being exploited? I say yes!

Why is it that whenever there is a show about bisexual women it has to be sensationalized or worse really cheesy? Tonight I’m pointing my bi finger at Bisexual Girls, on Logo. The show fell on the lower end of “exposing” bisexual women.

The “documentary” that is part of Logo’s Real Momentum documentary series Bisexual Girls follows four British bi-curious girls: Debbie, Linzi, Beth, and Ellie around the old English country and London as they sort out their girl-on-girl attractions. The exception was Ellie who already had her bisexuality figured out.

My big questions are, what is it with cutting to skin footage (not necessarily the naughty kind) and images of a cherry being dipped into a woman’s mouth or women wearing bright red glossy lipstick kissing each other between stories or while the women were talking about their sexual desires? What is it with interviewing a woman, Debbie, in bed with her boyfriend, Orville, or even lower interviewing two women, Angela and Ellie, in a bubble bath? Logo described the couple on its Web site as two lesbians, but in the show one of them, Ellie, turned out to be bi. Oh and let’s not forget, Linzi, the bi-curious stripper by night and horse farm owner by day. I loved when Linzi was giving Debbie a lap dance while two obviously staged women snuggled up voyeuristically martinis in hand watched obscured by other patrons from across the dance stage.

Thank God they had one “normal” bisexual woman, Ellie, happily in a relationship with Angela. Ellie and Angela, who lived in London, helped out Debbie who was struggling with her bi-curiosity, by taking her around to the all girl hot spots. This was all against her fiancé’s wishes, but Debbie was determined. I emphasized with the guy being a monogamous person myself, but I lost respect for him when he called her during her first outing in London.

All in all, you think that the LGBT community would do us bisexuals better than the straight community when presenting “this is what a bisexual looks like” to the rest of the world. Then I forget, not so long ago we were shunned by our own queer community. The show was just in bad taste from beginning to end.

Bisexual Girls reminds me of last year’s Women Seeking Women: A Bicurious Journey, which was also a sensationalistic “documentary” about women who are attracted to other women, but hadn’t had the Sapphic experience. The cure to their curiosity was a Wild Women Vacation to Jamaica at Club Hedonism. Wild Women Vacation is a bi and bi-curious women’s and their partners’, men, vacation package.

I’m really starting to feel co-opted with these exploitative one-hour cinema vérité-style documentaries. These shows are just ridiculous. No wonder why a majority of people don’t understand bisexuals and have all of these bi myths and phobias.
In light of these “documentaries” reality show A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila is starting to look more like a “real” honest perspective of a real bisexual woman than sensationalism. Almost.

We can do better. Just look at Nicole Kristal and Mike Szymanski co-authors of The Bisexual's Guide to the Universe: Quips, Tips, and Lists for Those Who Go Both Ways and Jennifer Baumgardner, author of Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics. While these are successful recent books representing bisexuality in a realistic and positive way I’m sure the efforts that bisexuals are making on film, like the ones shown at this year’s Bi Request series at the San Francisco LGBT Film Festival, can make it to a wider audience at some point.

Bi Top Chef

Well, thanks to Dorothy Surrenders, the lesbian blogger that has bidar, she posted a live video of season three's former Top Chef contender, Lia Bardeen’s, own outing during the taping of her interview for the show.

Bardeen, the 28-year old Brooklyn cutie, was quickly given the knife, but you can catch her on BRAVO reruns.




Lia Bardeen
Photo courtesy of BRAVO TV

The little star pimps its burgers again update

Apparently, Christian rights groups and feminists agreed about the little star's denigrating TV ads. According to an e-mail action alert sent out by Donald E. Wildmon, founder and chairman of American Family Association, not only has CKE Restaurants, Inc., owner of Carl’s Jr., Hardees, and other restaurants, pulled the offending ads from TV, but they allegedly are taking the ads off of their Web sites as well.

Here, here for once we agreed and something good came out of it.

MTV airs bi bachelorette dating show

Love has gone the bi way on MTV.

Bisexual list serves and online bulletin boards lit up like Christmas today after an announcement on Tila Tequila’s, the “Madonna of MySpace,” as she was reportedly called by Time Magazine, posted on her blog September 6 that MTV will begin airing her show A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila starting October 9.

That’s right MySpace is moving into MTV with the bi pop queen who has taken MySpace by storm with “over 2 million friends,” according to her MySpace page. Tequila’s MTV reality show, A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila, will pit 16 boys against 16 girls who will vie for Tequila’s heart. The show starting October 9 at 10 p.m. on MTV with 10 one hour episodes is just in time for National Coming Out day for LGBT History month.

Tequila wrote in her announcement on Thursday that she’s excited to represent the LGBT community, in spite of the fact that none of the contestants were aware that she is bisexual. The producers leave it up to Tequila to disclose her sexual orientation to her suitors and suitettes, according to the message.

“…the show will be about me finding love as a BISEXUAL!!!!! THAT IS CRAZY RIGHT?....the only twist is that these guys and these girls have NO IDEA that I am bisexual and that they are competing against each others sexes!!! GUYS AGAINST GIRLS....WHO WILL I END UP HOOKING UP WITH????? WILL I BE STRAIGHT OR LESBIAN IN THE END?????”

Okay. Will she be straight or lesbian in the end? How about bisexual? Isn’t that an option? Be prepared for some sensationalized mega drama…who ever thought that bisexuality wasn’t “edgy” enough obviously wasn’t paying attention…especially when MTV the mother of reality TV with the Real World and Road Rules and their siblings the Flavor of Love is bringing us bisexual dating. Of course it’s with a cute, young, femme, Vietnamese, bi pop princes, but it wouldn’t be interesting otherwise…at least now the radical right can stop pointing their fingers at the LGBT community for recruiting and start pointing their fingers at MTV and VH1, which aired Women Seeking Women: A Bi-curious Journey in October 2006.

In some sense this is exciting...a bisexual dating show. Tequila is ready to take us and the world along on the heart wrenching rollercoaster ride.

“…it's all Craziness and drama and sexy times all on my new journey to find true love as a bisexual!”

In true youthful fashion Tequila gushes:

“I AM EXCITED TO FINALLY COME OUT AS A BISEXUAL FOR THE FIRST TIME TO THE WORLD….NOBODY IN TELEVISION HISTORY HAS EVER DONE SUCH A GROUNDBREAKING SHOW AND I AM HAPPY TO BE THE ONE TO PAVE THE WAY TO OPEN UP PEOPLE'S MINDS ABOUT THE LESBIAN AND GAY COMMUNITY! LET'S MAKE MY SHOW THE BIGGEST, MOST WATCHED TELEVISION SHOW IN HISTORY OK????”

Are we ready to tune in? Yes, just out of curiosity to find out how bad or good the image of one of us being shot out into the universe is.

Transgender girlfriend the next TV political scandal

Dirty, Sexy, Money, ABC7’s new racy show, promises to deliver on its title this TV season kicking off with a raising political star’s affair with a transgender girlfriend.

The girlfriend to the New York Attorney General, played by William Baldwin, is played by real life transgender actress Candis Cayne, who was born Brendan McDaniel in Hawaii.

Cayne, a veteran performer made a name for herself at New York City’s hot gay night spot Boy Bar and was crowned 2001’s Miss Gay Continental U.S.A., according to IMDb, she will appear on five episodes of the new show that is promising to be hotter than the money soaked ‘80s nighttime dramas Dallas and Falcon Crest.

The drama follows a hard pressed young attorney as he tries to rescue America’s third wealthiest family from themselves. The cast is star studded with former Six Feet Under star Peter Krause, Donald Sutherland, Baldwin, and Blair Underwood will appear during the first five episodes too.

A trained dancer, Cayne recently played Annaka Manners in this summer’s queersploitation movie Starrbooty, with RuPaul, that was a hit at queer film fests around the U.S. This wasn’t the first time Cayne made the big screen in a drag movie. Cayne played herself in an appearance in the 1995 drag cross country road trip movie To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar, which starred Patrick Swayze, Wesley Snipes, John Leguizamo, and a host of star cameo appearances. She was also in the 1995 documentary, Wigstock: The Movie, with Alexis Arquette.

Cayne isn’t giving up her live shows for the big or the small screen. According to IMDb, Cayne continues to perform live in New York City’s queer lounges and bars, such as the Viceroy, Brite Bar, Barracuda, Ritz Bar, and Opus22.

Dirty, Sexy, Money begins on September 26.