Maybe those other gays are promiscuous and don’t love their country or apparently their kids but hey! Here’s this sexless lesbian who’s already fulfilled her heteronormative requirements as a woman and celebrates the US military! We can support her specifically but not necessarily the community at large. It really feels like this story tried to isolate Cammermeyer from the larger gay community and their struggles like she’s the exception to the rule. Ah yes, that old queer stereotype that gays can’t love their kids. Cammermeyer responds to that staggering piece of ignorance by telling him not to stereotype her like that. Later in the movie, another of Margarethe’s sons asks her if Margarethe won’t love him because she’s gay and gay women don’t love men. She just answers the question without educating the kid on his ignorance about how sexuality is not a choice. Diane never addresses that very incorrect wording. One of Margarethe’s sons asks Diane when she decided to be gay. The movie’s overall opinions on the LGBTQ* community is really not progressive. As such, their queer characters are beholden to straight opinions. I don’t need their approval.” But no such moment happens. Just once I wanted her to have a moment where she says, “fuck ‘em. Her relationship to her family and overall, to herself is very contingent about whether various heternormative structures accept her as a lesbian. While it’s understandable in the main story about the legal ruling, all the subplots also tie back to this. It’s a very bizarre juxtaposition of having Cammermeyer’s story about being open and proud and yet the film treats the subject of lesbian relationships with such kid gloves that it ends up looking more like “gal pals” than two committed female partners.Īdditionally, this entire film is about Margarethe seeking validation of her sexuality from the straights. They don’t even kiss until the last scene in the movie. There’s so little physical affection between these two women. This sexless lesbianism follows into the depiction of Cammermeyer’s relationship with her partner, Diane Divelbess. Margarethe Cammermeyer is a lesbian you can root for because not only does she already have four kids and all that heternormative stuff, but because they’ve depicted her in a completely sexless manner. Instead, it came across that the movie was trying to shut down any notion of sexual perversion. But that’s not how the scene came across. And hey, maybe the real Margarethe Cammermeyer is an asexual lesbian and that’s a totally valid identity. Sex has nothing to do with her sexual identity. She responds each time about how her lesbianism is about her emotional connection to women, not her physical one. The interviewer asks her several times about her having sex with women. When Cammermeyer does come out during her security clearance interview, she spends the following investigation desexualizing the lesbian identity. There’s a lot in this movie about how despite being gay, she still upholds traditional American family values. To start with, she was previously married to a man and has four kids. Cammermeyer is the most straight-friendly lesbian you can imagine. Where the movie panders the most to a definitely straight, conservative audience is the depiction Cammermeyer’s lesbianism. In order to get fully on board with Serving in Silence’s narrative , there needs to be a degree of American patriotism and frankly, conservative American values that one usually doesn’t encounter in a lesbian film. There is an expectation of both understanding and support for the US military from its audience. The politics colour the entire film and how this story is told. However, the political opinions of Serving in Silence are not just that of individual characters but of the movie itself. She is an individual and allowed her beliefs. I would be fine if it was simply the depiction of Cammermeyer that was the conservative and pro-military element of this film. This is probably the first lesbian film I’ve seen that genuinely seems to be made for a Republican audience over a certain age.
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