I'm pretty sure this is a better example of what you're referring to
I've seen but not been involved in the controversy in bandom over whether stagegay is good or bad -- not been involved in because bandom is not my fandom. Yes, some of those boys are pretty and look good on each other, yes I've heard the music and like some of it (and know what "This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arms Race" means) ...I'm just not fannish about it. All of you who love it are welcome to it.

I haven't read all the posts; I haven't even read all the posts which showed up on my flist. In other words, it's nearly certain I'm missing a lot of the nuances of the arguments on each side.

That said,

...You want to talk about boys kissing and feeling each other up in public but refusing to state publicly that they're gay, queer, bi or what have you? Have a look here. Not the same rugby players who keep posing for those notoriously homoerotic and borderline-pornographic calendars (that's a French rugby team) but, well, rugby players do have something of an international reputation for this sort of thing. To the point where homoerotic rugby images have been used in tourism billboards.

Apparently someone also compared stagegay to blackface. I'm not going to comment on that beyond "Um, *NO*," but coincidentally, over the weekend katarik and I were discussing some actual blackface worn to this year's Dragon*con, which she attended and I ...found the website with the official costume-contest photos from. Those of you who plan to ever attend a comics and/or sci-fi and/or fantasy con in costume, take note:
This is okay.
This is *really NOT* okay.
(For the benefit of those who need to google who the geeks in those photos are meant to be dressed as, the former is probably Drizzt Do'Urden, a character from a series of tie-in novels for Dungeons & Dragons -- certainly he's a drow elf -- and the three in the latter are Zoe Reynolds, Hoban "Wash" Washburne, and Mal Reynolds from Firefly and later Serenity; in both the television series and the subsequent film, Zoe was played by Gina Torres.)

Here's a better-quality photo of two completely different people in drow costumes who apparently missed the official hallway contest. And, for contrast, here's one of several white women who managed to be recognisable in their Zoe costumes without blackface makeup; there were also several different women of colour dressed as Zoe. Mind you, when I say "recognisable" I'm speaking as someone who is not and never was a fan of Firefly/Serenity -- I watched one episode and parts of a few others to see if I could get into it, and I couldn't. (I am a Gina Torres fan, but that's beside the point.) And actually, I'm reasonably sure there were a number of women (and maybe even a man or three) in Zoe costumes at the con other than the handful I've seen, but I didn't look further than what came up in searches on Flickr, since I was already there viewing the "official" photos.

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