Shine bright like a diamond, Sia. Self-identified queer Australian singer and songwriter Sia has agreed to donate her share of the proceeds from her Eminem collaboration “Beautiful Pain” to the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center.
The songwriter of Rihanna’s smash “Diamonds” and the voice and pen behind “Titanium” (a song that inexplicably never became a gay anthem) went public with her dismay over Eminem’s homophobic slurs on his single “Rap God” (sample lyric: “I’ll still be able to break a motherfuckin’ table over the back of a couple of faggots and crack it in half.”) after a twitter conversation with HuffPo blogger and NYC-based DJ Keo Nozari.
“Rap God” appears with “Beautiful Pain” on the aging rapper’s new album The Marshall Mathers LP 2, which is projected to open at #1 on the Billboard charts with upwards of 700,000 copies sold.
While it’s commendable that Sia is donating the money from the collaboration to a good cause, she depressingly walks a very familiar line when defending the violently homophobic lyrics and Eminem himself. As she tweeted to Nozari: “I know personally that he is not homophobic, but a performance artist. I would never work with someone I believed to be homophobic. I respect that he can be misinterpreted in the worst way by the ignorami, and that scares me, but I respect him as an artist and person.”
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That makes one of us, Sia, but we do respect you for making the best out of a bad situation.
Mr. E. Jones
So she respects Eminem, but doesn’t respect the gay community that he trades on, with anti-gay bias to make money.
In five years she’ll be married to a man, and doing the talk show circuit promoting her new straight family life.
Gigi Gee
Eminem is a douche. If he wrote hateful Anti-Semitic songs would that be part of his “performance art” as well, or would we call him Anti-Semitic?
2eo
@Gigi Gee: If he wrote r@cist or anti-semitic songs he wouldn’t have a career.
jimbryant
Giving money to a gay charity smells of damage control. If Sia were truly sincere, she would disown Eminem completely. Lesbians, however, tend to side with straight guys and their homophobic attitudes towards gay men. This is why lesbians are harmful to gay men’s rights.
However, there is something even more concerning here, and it’s got nothing to do with Sia. Rihanna, one of the world most popular acts, has collaborated not once but TWICE with Eminem, including on his current album. Why hasn’t there been any criticism of Rihanna?
The failure of the gay media to criticize Rihanna is a testament to how fake the gay media has become.
balehead
She was bullied into this..way to go!!
GeriHew
@Mr. E. Jones: She might marry a man in the future but I very much doubt she will ever identify as straight.
@jimbryant: Sia isn’t a lesbian, she’s a queer identified bisexual. Most of the songs on her second album were about her boyfriend Dan who was killed in a traffic accident. She has said Dan was her first true love. Fancy you not knowing that when you hate bisexual women so much.
jimbryant
GeriHew,
I don’t know what Sia is. In fact, women can easily pretend to be something they aren’t sexually. It comes with not having to prove you’re aroused in order to have sex.
In any case, I think it makes it worse. Sia should know that Eminem’s lyrics are homophobic, and that he trades on them to make a lot of money. Where has she been the last 15 years?
I will concede that the gay media has been unfair to Sia in the sense that it has gone after her but not Rihanna. The gay media is hypocritical and lacks credibility.
Rihanna has collaborated a number of times with Eminem but the gay media’s silence is deafening in this regard. Queerty should go after Rihanna but I haven’t seen anything.
GeriHew
@jimbryant: Re: ” In fact, women can easily pretend to be something they aren’t sexually”
Really? Have you ever had sex with a woman?
If she’s not into it believe me you can tell.