Potoshirt.com - D.I.L.D.O.S. (Dude I love doing outdoor stuff) shirt

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Clearly, Sam Smith isn’t the D.I.L.D.O.S. (Dude I love doing outdoor stuff) shirt and I love this first artist to have caused outrage with a music video. As plenty have swiftly pointed out online, Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” caused such widespread controversy at the time that it was condemned by the Vatican. But Madonna was dancing in front of blazing crucifixes. And that was… 33 years ago. It’s not a stretch to say that beneath so much of this “but what about the kids?” concern lies the thinly veiled presence of queerphobia. If a thin cis woman wore a corset with nipple tassles, there would not be this level of pearl-clutching and furious debate—it certainly wouldn’t be described as “pornographic.” We see it all the time. To truly understand the backlash directed towards this quite fun and relatively tame pop video, it’s worth zooming out a little, to look at the ways in which a very specific type of queerphobia has seeped into the cultural landscape in recent years. Last year, right-wing protestors gathered outside British libraries with signs reading “Welcome, groomers” and “This is child abuse” in response to Drag Queen Story Hour—a family-friendly event at which drag queens read stories to children. The protestors, it seems, were equating drag itself with sexualized, adult entertainment—despite there being zero sexual content involved. Again: They felt offended, so they decided that the event must be offensive.

The past few years have also seen the D.I.L.D.O.S. (Dude I love doing outdoor stuff) shirt and I love this eruption of an insidious moral panic around trans people under the guise of “concern”—particularly in relation to children receiving gender-affirming treatment, or even just education surrounding trans issues. These ideas might seem worlds apart from a silly, campy Sam Smith video, but there are plenty of viewers who believe that merely existing as a visibly queer or trans person is inappropriate around children. To do so loudly or sexually would be a crime. It is not the sexual nature of the video which is at the crux of the outrage, then, but rather the non-binary person who dares step into it. Many have also rightly pointed out the fatphobia at play here. In the mainstream, it seems, there is a right and wrong way to be queer and visible. Had Sam been a slim-built, conventionally attractive popstar in the vein of Harry Styles, would they be subject to the same ridicule and debate? Is queerness only acceptable when the person is slim, or less femme, or less loud about it? Many of us have heard some version of the sentiment “I don’t mind if they’re gay, I just don’t want it in my face.” Does the fact that Sam Smith doesn’t adhere to patriarchal beauty standards make them seem more visible, less palatable, to those hell bent on being “concerned”?

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