Elisabeth Smith, Resident Blogger (’14, University of Washington School of Law)

Over Christmas my cousins and I were watching television and we just kept flipping channels until we got to TLC and saw some women dressed up in 1950s garb turn from black and white to full color. Heard of Wives with Beehives? The show is basically a Real Housewives variant, but all the women live a “vintage lifestyle”. Other people have talked about the show, but I want to highlight something besides its antiquated notions of gender roles.

All of the women go on and on about the magic of the 1950s.  Dollie calls the 50s “a very romantic period. It’s romantic to have a husband [who] you love, and beautiful children [who] you take care of and a beautiful home you take pride in.”  Here’s where I take issue with this show. Traditional gender roles aren’t my cup of tea, but a show about 4 white women mooning over the romance of the 50s without any recognition that the decade wasn’t all moonbeams and starbursts for everyone is gross.

Let’s start in reverse order. The home.  After World War II, “FHA underwriters warned that the presence of even one or two non-white families could undermine real estate values in the new suburbs. These government guidelines were widely adopted by private industry.” [Click here @ 1:30:55]  So if you were a white GI you could take advance of the GI Bill and get a home in the new suburbs. A GI of color had far fewer options. As Dalton Conley, a sociologist, a points out “basically, the whites moving to the suburbs were being subsidized in the accumulation of wealth, while blacks were being divested.” If a beautiful home is one component of the magical 50s, it was out of reach for many people.

Okay, two: beautiful children with whom you spend your time. In the 1950s, African American women worked outside the home in large numbers so they if they spent their day with children, those children probably weren’t their own.   Another statement made by one the “Wives with Beehives” underscores this reality. When the women discuss whether any of them have dishwashers, one replies “I don’t need a dishwasher, I have Maria.”  Wow. So living a vintage lifestyle also includes vintage racism!

Yikes, people, yikes. I get that these women have chosen to make the 50s their thing, but seriously, what we say on tv does have effects.

Rosie Wang, Resident Blogger (’14, Columbia Law School)

A week or so ago, my classmates and I were arguing one of the most pressing questions of our nostalgia-obsessed generation: What is ultimate high school movie – Clueless or Mean Girls? (Answer: Neither, it’s obviously Heathers.) Amid the heady discussion and subsequent teen movie marathon planning, I started thinking about how high school movies have portrayed teen sexuality, contraception, and pregnancy over the years. In so many of the teen movies I grew up watching, sex was something that characters are obsessed with and defined by, and pregnancy is the ultimate horror. But is this moralizing cast on teen movies a modern thing? Maybe so.

One of my favorite teen movies is the cult classic, Fast Times at Ridgemont High (FTaRH). For a film that came out in 1982 – smack dab between two landslide election wins for Reagan – it’s shockingly open-minded. One of the main characters, Stacy, is a 15 year old freshman. She has sex for the first time with a 26 year old man and then initiates an encounter with a classmate, Mike Damone, from which she gets pregnant. She decides to get an abortion and tells Damone that he owes her half of the fee and a ride to the clinic. When Damone turns out to be a flake, Stacy’s brother deduces what has happened. He picks her up from the clinic, agrees to keep it a secret from their parents, and takes her out for lunch. Her best friend get revenge by vandalizing Damone’s car and locker in a classic act of high school public humiliation. Stacy, rather than being ostracized or shamed, is shown as being supported by her social circle and loved ones. It is Damone who is ridiculed for shirking his responsibilities, not Stacy for being sexually active. Stacy shows no signs of trauma and the abortion is never brought up again. Instead her narrative becomes one of her blossoming romance with Rat, a boy who has long harbored a crush on her. Rat angrily brushes aside Damone’s veiled insult that Stacy is “a very aggressive girl” (undertones of slut-shaming fully in force). Stacy continues to be assertive by giving Rat a picture of herself with her phone number on it and kissing him. Her reputation, as well as her confidence in herself and her sexuality is unshaken and unpunished.

I can only imagine the outcry such a story line would cause now. It’s a testament to how much we’ve gone backwards to imagine the complaints that would hound FTaRH for giving teens license to have wild, unprotected sex because the movies told them there’d be no penalties! The climate we live in today even mistakenly accused Juno, a movie in which the young woman chooses adoption rather than abortion, of glamorizing teen sex without consequences. In reality, teen pregnancy and teen moms face a great deal of stigma that is racially charged and makes it difficult to continue their education.

Turning to a classic of the aughts, Mean Girls is a film that has people endlessly quoting and referencing it eight years later. It was written by Tina Fey who promisingly said last week, “If I have to listen to one more gray-faced man with a two-dollar haircut explain to me what rape is, I’m going lose my mind.” And Mean Girls does have some golden reproductive justice moments. For example, it makes fun of a health curriculum that tells students that they’ll die if they have sex (taught by a teacher later revealed to be in a relationship with an underage student no less). And yet it leaves some things to be desired. When arch-Mean Girl Regina is in her bedroom with her boyfriend, her mother pops in and asks, “You guys need anything? Some snacks? A condom? Let me know!” It’s part of a larger characterization of Regina’s cold personality resulting from a dysfunctional family in which her mother sets no boundaries because she wants to be a “cool mom.” But is it really being a bad mother to make sure your daughter is equipped to deal with her sexual decisions rather than trying to control her sexuality? Not according to the way many families treat teen sexuality in the Netherlands. Apparently acknowledging that teens have sex, having open communication about contraceptives, and allowing sleepovers actually encourages trust and responsibility rather than the opposite.

Even if Hollywood is unlikely to portray teen sexuality in this way anytime soon (because of both conservative backlash and the lack of narrative drama), hopefully the actual experiences of American teenagers can begin to approach it.

Rosie Wang, Resident Blogger (’14, Columbia Law School)

Women being catcalled on the street, paparazzi spying on celebrities’ intimate moments – these are two unsavory, disrespectful practices with unfortunately long legacies and deep roots in our culture. With the modern technology and social networking thrown in the mix, these practices start to intersect and evolve in disturbing ways. Parallels definitely exist between society’s fascination with spy-style photos of Kate Middleton topless on private, secluded property and the power that perpetrators of street harassment feel – parallels that find an overlap in certain internet communities.

Creepshots was a sub-forum of popular link-aggregator Reddit, where anonymous posters upload and comment on photos they take of women’s bodies, taken without these women’s knowledge as they go about their everyday lives. Part of their stated motto was “When you are in public, you do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy. We kindly ask women to respect our right to admire your bodies and stop complaining.” The photos’ distribution for mass consumption, the flippant physiological and sexual commentary they produce, and the fixation on the nonconsensual nature of the photos all combine into something supremely icky although probably not illegal.

Now, some have taken to fighting fire with fire. Gawker exposed the identity of a prominent member of the Reddit community who has the stellar track record of starting sub-Reddits promoting domestic violence and sexual attraction to underage girls. Others tracked usernames into other sites that Creepshots users were active in, gathering personal information and then posting it to a tumblr named “Predditors” that has since been shut down, but not before the arrest of a teacher in Georgia [need link]. The exposed people in question unironically invoked both their 1^st Amendment freedom of expression to photograph women unawares and their own right to privacy and internet anonymity.

This summer, while interning for LSRJ, one of the most inspiring talks I heard was from Sujatha Jesudason and Tracy Weitz of CoreAlign. They asked why, if reproductive rights is the most funded field in women’s issue, do we still seem culturally deadlocked? One of their major points was that the reproductive justice movement has often aimed for incremental changes – reform rather than radical transformation and immediate rather than long term goals. Calling out individual offenders seems to fall squarely into the immediate and incremental. It is reactionary rather than revolutionary and responds to this particular instance, rather than an overall culture of viewing women’s bodies as public property and fetishizing women’s nonconsent. While it is crucial to have discussions on the individual facts of this situation, how can we proactively work to create a different dominant mindset? Perhaps, start by educating people while they are younger. Perhaps the answer is to build into our public school system a more explicit and complex discussion of the importance of privacy and autonomy. Perhaps the answer is to encourage more open discussions among men as a jumping off point to encourage internal moderation of both online communities and real life social groups.

These tactics have echoes of the Hollaback movement, which posts photos of catcallers and narratives of harassment. Both situations have an element of turning the tables of public humiliation on the offenders. But does posting the name, age, and phone numbers of the perpetrators cross the line? While it has undertones of quid pro quo, poetic justice, and may indeed deter future creep-shooters, these tactics raise questions to ponder: Is this sinking to the same level? Is this perhaps engendering (misguided) feelings of victimhood that may fuel a feeling of entitlement or an alienation from seeing women as people rather than a desire to change one’s way of thinking? What can be done that is productive rather than destructive?

Catrina Otonoga, LSRJ Summer Legal Intern

Sometimes, the internet is a glorious thing. Information! Reconnecting with old friends! Shopping! Finding delicious recipes I’ll never make! And sometimes, the internet is like walking down back alley in New York City that is home to the largest rats you’ve ever seen. Sometimes, a woman posts a demonstrational video on breastfeeding to the internet, and that video gets turned into porn through editing. Sometimes, the internet is wonderful, and sometimes it is so completely awful. This is one of those awful times.

After becoming a first time mother who was initially fearful of breastfeeding, and then finding her breast-feeding mojo with the help of a lactation consultant, MaryAnn Sahoury wanted to pass that mojo on to other ladies in need. So, in 2010, Sahoury agreed to appear in an instructional breastfeeding video shot by Meredith Video Studios. A few months after the shoot, Sahoury Googled her name and found that the  footage of her instructional breastfeeding video had wandered from its ownership by Meredith Corporation to YouTube, and finally, was spliced into pornography that was being shared on porn sharing cites XTube and YouPorn.

While the story itself is enough to incite emotion, the comments have been a trip down feminist history lane. News sites covering the story, like Huffington Post, Jezebel, and USA Today are flooded with them, many of them lambasting Sahoury for breastfeeding in public, for not having the dignity to at least cover up, and for having the audacity to show other women how to breast feed. And while it’s safe to say that these commentors don’t know Sahoury, it’s not for lack of wanting. They claim to know exactly who she is and how she lives,“emotionally screwed up” woman who doesn’t understand what “should come naturally” to her, and who was probably complicit in the video being turned into porn. Bottom line: she was asking for it by not being modest enough. And while a few of these comments speak to the responsibility of men in these situations, most are countered with the fault and blame being directed at Sahoury. We are reliving the battles fought by other mothers, our aunts, our grandmothers.

Lately, women in this country have faced an avalanche of criticism that starts the day they have sex, and continues throughout their parenting choices. The misuse of the video is more than just a rouge act; it is part of a systemic cultural effort to undermine and eliminate the voices of women. Sahoury has made a clear choice in how she wants to use her body and in how she wants her body to be seen, and that choice has been violated, with little acknowledgment or attention, other than the sheer shock value of it. Sahoury exhibited a powerful action: reclaiming her body for her daughter’s nourishment, and using it to empower other women who would like to make the same choice, or to discover that it isn’t for them. To have Sahoury’s video turned into porn is not entirely shocking to me; the internet often twists and turns words and actions into beings that are far from their original intent. What’s shocking to me is that the public conscious is endorsing this mantra every day: stay inside, cover up, have a little more modesty. Sounds to me like the public conscious needs a new Jiminy Cricket.

Rosie Wang, LSRJ Summer Legal Intern

Somewhere along the way, as part of the natural process of hitting their mid twenties, my friends are making wiser decisions, marveling that that people born during the height of Spice Girl mania are old enough to drive now, and forgoing buying birthday cards in favor of birthday beers. That might explain why I was in for an unpleasant surprise when I looked at birthday cards recently, with the “Getting Older (Humor)” section standing out as a complete minefield.

Comparing the cards that fell under the “For Her” section with those in the “For Him” section, there was a clear divide in the mindset towards aging that reflects the general attitude society sees women bodies versus men’s. Check out the American Greetings website, you can see for yourself gender bias in their selection of print-out birthday cards.

Beyond the cake and shoes women’s cards, the hot-rod and baseball men’s cards, and the “Celebrating You” platitudes that both genders must suffer, these supposedly humorous cards focused on fear when they targeted women. Specifically, the fear that aging diminishes your sex appeal as a woman was joked about while simultaneously reinforced. For men, changes in their body were celebrated with friendly irony, without any competitiveness. In fact aging frees, rather than constrains them. Sure, one card references “breaking wind” instead of “breaking hearts” and mentions Viagra, but another lists ten reasons it’s great to be a man, including not fussing about shoes, nails, weddings, but above all “the older you get, the more you fart.” Crass perhaps, but it still focuses on what your body is capable of rather than what it looks like and highlights the release from other people’s expectations. The only card I found that addressed men’s changing physical appearances was in a drugstore. It had a quasi-vintage image of a boxer with six-pack abs and the caption “Is this the year to start sucking it in? Not for you! Happy Birthday!” It was downright reassuring.

Compare that to birthday cards for women, who with age, are increasingly subject to mockery that seems markedly more mean-spirited. Take this one for example, which says “Remember when you were a kid and how you always tried to make yourself look older? I guess all that practice paid off!” Or one that says there are six stages to a woman’s life, with stage 4 through 6 as “Young woman,” because all women lie about their age and the insecurity being further fed by cards like these is hilarious. A particularly vicious one asks, “What do you call a bunch of women who look fabulous in aerobic wear? A) A group B) A flock C) A gaggle, and then inside: d) Bitches.” The kindest one about bodily appearance is the insipid, “May your life be filled with one good hair day after another.”

What is really disturbing is that women are supposed to be sending such messages to each other in the spirit of well wishing. It is a bonding activity to agree that all women feel inadequate about how their bodies change over time, or to hatefully talk about other women’s bodies as a point of comparison. It says women’s relationships with each other and women’s identity are defined by a competition to fulfill an ideal. They send the message that it is normal for women to critique and police each other’s bodies in that process. In light of the fact that pregnancy and birth are the catalysts to some of the most dramatic changes in many women’s bodies as they age, this type of body snark criticizes by proxy people’s reproductive and health decisions. It shows a lack of respect for women beyond their bodies and tells women not to trust one another. I’ll take a birthday beer over that any day.

Shelley Halstead, LSRJ Summer Legal Intern

I am not a reviewer of movies but I feel like I can review previews of movies. OK, I don’t even know if I can do that. But I can tell if I want to go see a movie from the preview. And after watching the Ruby Sparks preview I now know I will not be going to see that movie.

Dig this: Through a young author’s spark of imagination, his protagonist, the ingénue Ruby, transforms from existing on the page to a living breathing entity to behold. Or to be held as our writer protagonist will soon enough be able to do. The opening shot of the preview begins with the young male author putting paper into a typewriter (old school, perhaps it’s just that old fashioned kind of love he’s looking for) with his voice over telling us that he has a good idea but then says he thinks “it’s just stupid.” To which another male voice responds, “Tell me about it.” Immediately I think the response is sarcastic, exasperated like mine, as in yeah, buddy, tell me about your stupid idea. So, the young author begins to speak about the girl he wants to write about as her image appears on screen backlit by the sunshine, nothing discernible except the outline of her body, with her legs and figure accentuated beneath a white flowing skirt  as she walks through a golden field. His therapist(?) editor(?) says that it sounds romantic. Cut to him saying: “Ruby is from Dayton, Ohio” (sounds wholesome) “but was kicked out of high school for sleeping with her art teacher, or maybe her Spanish teacher. I haven’t decided yet.” So ok, not that wholesome. And why does he almost immediately begin with examples of her sexual  exploration? Does this exemplify her free spirit? I, of course, wonder what happened to the male teacher she was sleeping with? How old was he? How old was she? Cut to:

Therapist/editor: I’m glad you found something that inspires you.

Young author: [But] I can’t fall in love with a girl I write.

Therapist/editor:  Why not?

Young author: Because she’s not real.

Oh, but soon enough she will be. She will be everything he’s ever wanted, ever dreamed of, ever created. When she does appear in the preview sequence the young author calls his friend to tell him the wacky news. His friend, incredulous at first, says, “There’s no possible way that girl is in your house, because she’s not a real person. People don’t just appear out of thin air.”

But because it’s the movies we can suspend reality for the sake of art. The art of let’s make believe you are loved not for yourself but what you could be.

 Friend: Have you tried writing more?

Author writes, Ruby acts.

Friend: That’s insane, you’ve manifested a woman with your mind. You can make her do anything you want. For men everywhere, tell me you’re not going to let that go to waste.

This audience member: Big yawn.

 Omniscient voiceover (again): You may see this and think it’s magic, but falling in love is an act of magic.

What’s frustrating about this preview is that it leads us down the oft-trodden male fantasy of the perfect woman. If only one could create her she’d be perfect. (Bwwaahaahaa.) And according to an interview with the NY times, Ms. Kazan, who in real life is the author of the screenplay and plays Ruby on the screen says that “I think I was writing in reaction to a lot of fictional female characters that have been on screen the last few years,” and “just feeling like there’s a diminutive ideal of a girl that’s just one shade away from being true.” While the director puts it more succinctly, “The film is really talking about a male fantasy in a very blatant way.”

Again, I don’t know about the film, but the preview certainly conveys that. For me, it hit that male fantasy squarely on the nose, and appropriately, it made my skin crawl. For the untrained or less cynical or even more hopeful in the crowd (none of whom are me) it’s selling the most magical of magic—it’s selling love or at least the idea of it. The problem is that the preview sells what the interviews, the artists’ statements, and the movie purport to critique—female autonomy within a three dimensional relationship/character. When the omniscient voiceover calls this magic and love it’s forgoing all the creepiness that we just witnessed. They’re selling the fantasy whereby the leading male, lost and forlorn, is to be saved or invigorated by the love of his/the woman.

Believe me, I agree with Kazan and the director that this notion of love, the one where women can be molded by her intimate’s desire, should be critiqued. And I understand that the studio and not the actor/screenwriter/director have a say in the how their film is marketed, but if one does want to make a statement or turn a trope on its head, this preview makes it more difficult for someone like me to buy it.  So even if this movie ends up being quirky and lovely, or quirky and thought provoking, I will never know. But then again, I’m apparently not their target audience.

Catrina Otonoga, LSRJ Summer Legal Intern

Each spring, my elementary school, like elementary schools across the country, had field day. A day where the 1^st through 5^th graders with innate talent to run fast, treat tug-o-war like life or death, and leap through obstacle courses like mini-Olympians, shine. I wanted so badly to be one of those kids, to run fast, “like Greg”, arguably the fastest kid in my class, who went on to excel in high-school sports and field letters from football recruiters across the country. Instead, I had short, spindly legs, thick glasses, and barely the muscle definition to allow me to walk properly. My grandfather wouldn’t let me carry an umbrella on a blustery day for fear I’d blow away with the wind.

“Not everyone is good at everything, not everyone can have everything,” my mother told me. Sometimes hard word doesn’t pay off, sometimes you just aren’t meant to be a fast runner, or an astronaut, or the President. But sometimes it does, and those are the things I was told to focus on. Instead of struggling to be good at everything, trying to be spectacularly awesome at one thing that makes me tick.

Now, the dialogue has changed. Society, feminism, and sometimes even well meaning family and friends are pulling women in opposing directions. And, as I approach the beginning of my 3L year, where applying for jobs and starting my life outside academia is knocking on my door, I feel it more than ever. The push to have an amazing career, get married, buy a house and also to travel, see the world, not compromise. The pressure to Have. It. All. Even in a world where we are increasingly being told that having it all, isn’t going to happen. Not with these institutions, not among this systemic culture of disadvantaging women and annihilating our path to meaningful choice. Not without some serious change. And even when we see women who have finally reached that pinnacle, they distance themselves from the history of struggle and sacrifice that they built their education, careers, and ability to achieve balance on.

Increasingly, I’m unsure of what I want for myself; how many kids I want to have, if I want to own a home, if I want to live in Bangladesh and help provide women with micro financing, if I want to be a mother, a conventional lawyer, a U.S. citizen, at all.

What I do know, is that I want to live a passionate life. To work for a cause I’m passionate about, and to surround myself with people who not only work passionately, but live their lives with laughter and tears and friendship at their core. It’s an experience I have gotten a taste of in my time at LSRJ. I have seen passionate women who are growing and raising their families, expanding their careers, pushing through law school, struggling with what it means to be a woman, a friend, a partner and an advocate, and living lives of growth and intention. In a political climate where our identities as women are under scrutiny, my internship at LSRJ has been shelter from the storm—a shelter full of balloons, Friday Night Lights, dialogue, and affirmation. And, as I begin to wrap up my time here it is a way of thinking and living that I’m sure will carry me through my final year of law school, down whatever path I find myself on, and through the obstacles that I’m sure will be there.

So thanks, Mama LSRJ for giving me shelter.

Rosie Wang, LSRJ Summer Legal Intern

*trigger warning for transphobia.

In mid-December of last year I was at the tail end of finals. I hadn’t left the two block radius around library for weeks. I kept coming up with terrible law jokes like: “What did the turtle say after he had to pay damages to a thin skull plaintiff? …Tort-is-hell.” Obviously, I was facing major burnout.

It was under those conditions that I decided to give up on studying in favor of escaping into a more cheerful version of mid-20’s New York life than I was currently leading – namely, by watching Netflix marathons of How I Met Your Mother. My classmates referenced it constantly and favorably as a cultural touchstone for our generation. I figured that since one of the main characters attended Columbia Law, it would almost be like studying vicariously. Well, Marshall had way too much free time to be remotely realistic as a law student and the show turned out to be virulently transphobic. It was a multi-season phenomenon (spoiler alerts ahead!):

Season 1, Episode 19:

[Barney pays an escort $500 to attend a social function with Ted.]

Barney: Ted you’re my cabrone, you think I’m going to stick you with some toothless tranny from Port Authority?

Season 2, Episode 9:

[Ted’s wonders why his friends dislike his date. He alternately imagines that she had a man falsely imprisoned for statutory rape, enjoys killing puppies, and the following:]

Ted: I’ll be back in one second.

Kathy: I bet he’s going to the urinal. Yeah, I remember when I had a penis.

Season 3, Episode 8:

Ted: If there’s some potential “Ohhh….” [dealbreaker] moment, I want know about it right away. I mean, what’s the alternative?

[Cut to fantasy sequence Robin and Ted at the altar]

Priest: I now pronounce you man and wife.

Ted: I love you.

Robin: I used to be a dude.

Ted: Ohhh….

Season 6, Episode 5:

[Ted, in a rough part of town, is approached by a blonde woman shortly after being approached by a cross dressed, possibly transgender sex worker.]

Ted: Look, mister you are very convincing, and I’m very flattered. Confused, even, but I’m not looking –

Zoe: Definitely not a drag queen. But you have me rethinking this eyeshadow.

[Later in the episode after Ted compliments her looks.]

Zoe: That’s sweet. It would be sweeter if you hadn’t said I was a tranny before, but it’s still sweet.

Season 7, Episode 5:

[Ted wonders why his date is secretive. A fantasy sequence ensues where Ted is in the bathroom of the restaurant and Janet comes in.]

 Ted: This is the men’s room.

[Janet strides to the urinal and hikes up her dress.]

Janet: I know. I’m a dude.

Ted: [gasp of horror]

Ted, the main character, the everyman we are supposed to champion and identify with, apparently lives in constant fear of transgender people and his friends are not much better. HIMYM consistently takes cheap, easy shots at trans people, a kneejerk reaction to the portrayal of transgender sexuality and bodies as something unfamiliar to be feared. The writers clearly assume that the audience will guffaw along with this, because they assume that everyone agrees that a person undergoing a gender transition is the least desirable partner possible, someone’s worst nightmare. And on top of being portrayed as inherently unattractive, transgender people are also portayed as inherently immoral. Ted imagines trans women as predators who trap poor deceived straight men into marriage by pretending they are cis-women (because how else would they find a romantic partner)! People in the transgender community even belong in the same train of thought as sadists who target baby animals. The slur “tranny” is bandied about as if it were hilarious in and of itself. Zoe, who later becomes Ted’s serious girlfriend, uses it in an  especially clueless way by equating cross dressers, drag queens, and “trannies” into one non-conforming group of People She is Insulted To Be Associated With.

The message that biology trumps any internal sense of self or personal choice is reinforced through Ted’s imaginings. The hypothetical “reveals” are always crass and focused on intimate anatomy and bodily functions. People are identified as transgender, not because of different gender expression, but because they visually or verbally announce the presence of a penis or erstwhile penis. All this is completely disassociated from any reference to internal sense of self or humanity.

If it seems ridiculous that this actually happens on a show watched by over 9 million people, what is even more startling to is that HIMYM has won six Emmy’s and was nominated for a GLAAD award. The GLAAD nomination probably is a result of HIMYM starring an openly gay actor and writing a gay brother for him (who is a total amalgamation of non-threatening gay stereotypes). However, Neil Patrick Harris’ sexual orientation in no way begins to excuse the frequent potshots at people with gender identities that do not match the biological sex they were born with. Indeed, GLAAD awards are given to recognize “outstanding images of the LGBT community,” but what part of being outstanding is the tired trope of “gay panic” supposed to fit into?

Season 8 of HIMYM starts in two months. Its highly anticipated as the season in which the audience might find out the answer to the titular question, but I’d rather know when these characters will meet some empathy.