Dyson Kilodavis

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SEATTLE, WASHINGTON – A little boy in a bright red dress and his mom’s picture book about acceptance are front and center in a biting debate over a question well beyond his years: Are society’s gender roles so rigid that a male child can’t have fun in a tutu?
Cheryl Kilodavis self-published “My Princess Boy” over the summer about the sometimes cruel reaction 5-year-old Dyson faces when he wears sparkly frocks, twirly skirts and jewelry. She shared it with his school and hopes it will be used as a tool for teachers, day care centers, summer camps and afterschool programs to address bullying and promote tolerance.
What the Seattle mom hadn’t anticipated was that her family’s appearance on local TV – with a sullen Dyson in red dress and sparkly pink socks – would land on YouTube, light up Twitter and produce packs of snappish doubters along with loving support from around the world.
“It’s been, you know, the dialogue is happening, which is the goal,” Kilodavis said.
Much of the positive reaction has come from educators, parents of like-minded boys and members of the gay community. Much of the negative seems centered on the video of Dyson as he sits sullenly next to his mom on a talk show couch, flipping through the book and sniffing from a cold while he listens in on the grown-up conversation.
“I like to dress up in different kinds of clothes and jewelry,” the boy offers on KING5-TV’s “New Day Northwest.”
The host asks: “‘Cause it’s fun?”
“Mm h’mm,” Dyson responds.
Some wonder whether his parents’ indulgence has led them into dangerous territory, and whether putting him on TV to sell books, no matter how valuable to others, was a wise thing to do.
“The parents shouldn’t let the kid do it just because he wants to,” said Alajauan Adams, 27, a youth coordinator for a nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C. “I’m not here to judge if it’s right or wrong for him to be an outcast, but the reality is he’s going to be and you’re not protecting him from it.”
Online radio blogger Lashaun Turner, the 46-year-old mother of three grown children (including two boys) in Riverside, Calif., was taken aback by Kilodavis tracing Dyson’s fashion sense to age 2. “I mean it’s just crazy. Your 2-year-old is picking out pink colors and wanting to wear pink dresses and so therefore you start buying him dresses? I mean a 2-year-old has not a clue as to whether they’re boy, girl, fruit, vegetable or a rock.”
Kilodavis acknowledges her initial discomfort when her youngest son’s “unique eye for everything beautiful,” especially things pink and glam, surfaced at a tender age at home, and a few months later more publicly when he ran into her arms at day care pickup one afternoon dressed in a red sequin dress and pink high heels.
“He was so happy. He said ‘Look how pretty this dress is,’” she said. “I was worried about if the other parents were looking at him, and were they looking at me.”
The parents had Dyson evaluated by a medical team that included a psychologist because, Kilodavis said, “Everything out there is always about gender identity confusion, and I wanted to make sure my child was happy with who he was.”
The verdict? He is. He just enjoys tiaras and ballet leotards, but also basketball and climbing trees – all interests that tomboy girls delight in routinely without an eyelash batted.
Kilodavis did try diverting Dyson’s attention as a toddler by providing his day care with a little more flash for boys in the dress-up area. She brought in a red-and-gold karate outfit and a band uniform, but they were no-gos for Dyson. “The next day when I went to pick him up he was in a yellow dress,” she said.
Forward to age 4, when Dyson and his 8-year-old brother went shopping with mom for Halloween costumes. Older brother settled on a ninja turtle. Dyson begged for Cinderella. The worried mom made the purchase and made sure his private school was aware of his costume choice.
In solidarity, three “stereotypically macho men” who work at the school dressed up as ballerinas, but Dyson wasn’t there to enjoy a little dance they put on in his honor, or the annual holiday parade. His mother couldn’t bear to send him, afraid it would be too much.
Dyson did go trick-or-treating in his Cinderella gear. “Somebody laughed at him, a lady at a house. She said, ‘Oh my gosh I can’t believe you’re dressed up as a girl. You’re a gender bender.’ He asked, ‘Why did she laugh at me, mommy?’” Kilodavis said. “People would make comments at stores, like ‘Are you really going to get that Tinkerbell outfit?’”
That’s when she got busy on the book. Requests for it have skyrocketed since Dyson’s story hit the Web. The family is now in search of a publisher. “People are walking into stores looking for the book. They’re e-mailing me, saying I wish you were my mom when I was a princess boy growing up.”
Wendy Rosen in suburban London bought the book for her own princess boy, 8-year-old Cameron, and reached out to Kilodavis on the book’s Facebook page. By telephone, she said Cameron accessorizes his school uniform with ladies’ pins and a sparkly Hannah Montana bookbag.
“The book really hit a button for us,” said the legal secretary. “I think it’s the only time he’s seen a boy dressed as a girl.”
How does Cameron handle teasing? “I just ignore them,” he said. “It doesn’t bother me much. I really, really like to wear glittery stuff.”
The book doesn’t mention Dyson by name. It doesn’t even give the princess boy a face (the illustrations look more like an acorn in a dress), but Kilodavis used real life to tell the story and urge tolerance.
“I’m still going through the process, too. This is a journey,” she said. “I’m not professing to know all the answers. I have the heart of my little boy in my hands.”
from The Associated Press

The Dilemma

Comics have been making gay jokes for years, but perhaps none of them has caused as much of a stir as the quip uttered by Vince Vaughn when he made fun of an electric car by saying, “It’s gay,” in the trailer for the upcoming Ron Howard comedy, “The Dilemma.”  Coming just as the media was full of stories about taunts and attacks on gay teens that drove some to suicide, the joke hit a raw nerve. After CNN’s Anderson Cooper publicly took issue with the trailer’s joke, saying “we’ve got to do something to make those words unacceptable ’cause those words are hurting kids,” a full-blown controversy erupted. Universal Pictures pulled the trailer, substituting a new one scrubbed of any gay humor.
But that was three weeks ago, and this is now. Universal has confirmed to me that the joke is staying in the movie, which is slated for release in January. The decision is ultimately Howard’s call, since he is a final-cut director, although my sources tell me that Howard sought advice from a variety of sources, not only from talent involved with the film but also from people at Universal and in the larger comedy community.
I’ve already staked out my own opinion on the issue in a column I wrote several weeks ago. I concluded that “comedy is a lot like free speech–sometimes you have to hold your nose to support it.” In other words, I’m not sure that I’m all that comfortable with most of the gay jokes I’ve heard, but once you start trying to make value judgments about one joke over another, you’re on a slippery slope to the arid wasteland of political correctness.
Howard recently asked if he could respond to a series of questions I’d raised when the news first broke about the controversy. He’s provided answers to everything I initially wondered about, and even asked a few provocative questions of his own. He makes one particularly important point about an issue that was lost in all the hubbub, but applies to a lot of art that is viewed as offensive or controversial: Just because a character in a film says or does something wildly inappropriate doesn’t necessarily mean that the filmmaker agrees with it.
He explains why the joke stays in the film, as well as offers his take on the difference between sensitivity and censorship. Here’s what Howard has to say:

Patrick,
I’ve been reading your posts about THE DILEMMA with a lot of interest.
In the couple of weeks since you started covering the debate over our
joke, it seems a larger conversation made up of many questions about all
sorts of freedoms of expression has broken out:  When’s it okay to walk
off of a talk show if you disagree with the guest? Who is appropriate to
cast in a movie and who gets to decide that? Should news people be held
to a different standard in what they say? How risqué can a photo shoot
be for a men’s magazine promoting an all-audience show?  What role does
comedy play in both pointing out differences and unifying us through
laughter?
They’re all good questions and I’m certainly not the person who has
definitive answers to all of them.  The debate about what is appropriate
in films and advertising has been going on since well before I started
in the business — which is to say a very long time — and will never
have a conclusion. But I do have some answers to the five questions you put
forth in your post.  I suppose you’re right that since our
movie about two friends trying to do right for each other has been caught up
in this larger debate, I’ll have to face these questions as we start to
promote THE DILEMMA.  I figured I’d address your questions here and maybe
answer them once and not from, as you said, “every reporter with a
functioning brain.”  So here we go.
So why was the joke in the movie?  Our lead character of Ronny Valentine has
a mouth that sometimes gets him into trouble and he definitely flirts with
the line of what’s okay to say.  He tries to do what’s right but sometimes
falls short.  Who can’t relate to that?   I am drawn to films that have a
variety of characters with different points of view who clash, conflict and
learn to live with each other. THE DILEMMA is a story full of flawed
characters whose lives are complicated by the things they say to and hide
from each other.  Ronny is far from perfect and he does and says some
outrageous things along the way.
Was it in the script or was it a Vince Vaughn ad lib?  Vince is a brilliant
improvisational actor, but in this case It was always in the script.  THE
DILEMMA is a comedy for grown-ups, not kids.  It’s true that the moment took
on extra significance in light of some events that surrounded the release of
the trailer and the studio made the decision to remove it from advertising,
which I think was appropriate.  I believe in sensitivity but not censorship.
I feel that our film is taking additional heat as an emblem for many movies
and TV shows that preceded it that have even more provocative
characterizations and language. It is a slight moment in THE DILEMMA meant
to demonstrate an aspect of our lead character’s personality, and we never
expected it to represent our intentions or the point of view of the movie or
those of us who made it.
Did you think it wasn’t offensive?  I don’t strip my films of everything
that I might personally find inappropriate. Comedy or drama, I’m always
trying to make choices that stir the audience in all kinds of ways. This
Ronny Valentine character can be offensive and inappropriate at times and
those traits are fundamental to his personality and the way our story works.
Will comedy be neutered if everyone gets to complain about every
potentially offensive joke in every comedy that’s made?  Anybody can
complain about anything in our country.  It’s what I love about this place.
I defend the right for some people to express offense at a joke as
strongly as I do the right for that joke to be in a film.  But if
storytellers, comedians, actors and artists are strong armed into making
creative changes, it will endanger comedy as both entertainment and a
provoker of thought.
And what do you have against electric cars anyway?  Nothing!  We have a
couple of them in our family including the one I primarily and happily
drive.  Guess what that makes me in the eyes of our lead character?  But
then again, I don’t agree with everything Ronny Valentine says and does
in this comedy any more than Vince Vaughn, the screenwriter or any
member of the audience should for that matter.
from The Los Angeles Times / Patrick Goldstein

SANTA ANA, CALIFORNIA -  – A black noose was hung this week from the door of a gay-rights organization here, and the worker who found it now plans to file a formal complaint about how police responded.
Mel Distel found the cloth noose on Thursday evening on the door to Equality California’s office in south Santa Ana. She called police and says one of the officers who responded dismissed the noose as a string on the door and told her: Sometimes, you just have to live with being a victim.
Santa Ana Police Cpl. Anthony Bertagna declined to comment on Distel’s account. But he said the department is treating the case as a possible terrorist threat to real property, a misdemeanor. It’s been assigned to investigators who handle crimes against persons.
The noose “was shocking,” Distel said Friday. “It struck me as something that could escalate, something that was definitely meant to be hurtful.”
Distel, a phone-bank trainer at Equality California, said she “absolutely” plans to file a complaint about the police response. The organization also said it intends to file a complaint and to demand that police discipline the officer involved.
“This is an outrageous, despicable attempt to intimidate the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community just a few days before the election, but we will not be silenced,” Equality California’s Executive Director, Geoff Kors, said in a prepared statement.
Equality California works out of an unmarked office in a strip mall on Grand Avenue, but Distel said it had a “big, gay rainbow flag” outside. The office has no surveillance cameras.
Distel found the noose when she arrived at the office shortly before 6 p.m. Thursday to unlock the doors for campaign workers. The office had nine volunteers working the phones Thursday on behalf of Assembly candidate Melissa Fox.
In a statement, Fox described the hanging of the noose as a “despicable and hateful act, clearly intended to threaten and intimidate Equality California and other supporters of marriage equality from exercising our Constitutional rights to free speech and free association.”
She pointed out that the noose is a historic symbol of lynching, and said it was no coincidence that it was left just days before Election Day on Tuesday.
from The Orange County Register