I keep seeing I LOVE THAT HOMOPHOBIA DOESN’T EXIST IN OFMD and HOMOPHOBIA JUST ISN’T SOMETHING THE CREW HAVE TO DEAL WITH and that is [Siegfried voice] patently falsssh. And it’s extremely important to the overall themes of the show!

OFMD is fundamentally a show about masculinity and toxic masculinity, in particular. Homophobia is an inextricable part of the exploration of those themes, especially in a show that’s centered around the romance between two gay men.

The show takes care to gentle this so that the audience isn’t constantly being bombarded by it in a way that can be harmful or triggering, but it’s still undeniably there.

Stede Bonnet is a flamboyantly gay man and homophobia is the clear subtext of much of the derision he receives from representatives of toxic masculinity like his father, the Badmintons, Calico Jack, and Izzy. He’s soft, he’s weak, he’s not a “real” man. Nigel Badminton excoriates him for crying all the time and picking flowers, for fuck’s sake. He’s a “fop,” a “ponce,” a “namby-pamby.” Derogatory terms absolutely meant to imply unacceptable homosexuality without hitting as “hard” slurs for a modern audience.

Stede makes the Revenge a place where piracy (read: masculinity) doesn’t have to be abusive and toxic, which, in turn, allows for authentic expression of emotion, including queer affection and desire and that is part of why the toxically masculine find it such a weird and/or unbearable place ("What the fuck kind of pirates [men] are these?"). Stede, for all his faults as a leader, creates a space where it’s safe for Lucius, who explicitly talks about bearding and was implicitly expelled from his previous life for being gay, to find and be openly affectionate with a boyfriend and be beloved by his peers! A space where Pete who starts off with pretensions of toxic masculinity can shed that and be in a loving gay relationship. A space where Jim can say that they’re Jim and that’s the end of it. Stede helps create a space where he can “ruin” history’s greatest pirate by making it safe for him to be flamboyant and emotional and fall in big, sweeping, first, last, once-in-a-lifetime love with another man.

And you go “oh but Jack and Ed used to fuck” and “oh the subtext is that Izzy is gay for Blackbeard” but that doesn’t magically remove the homophobia they perpetuate!

Homophobia isn’t just “MLM bad, the end.” It’s Izzy’s subtextual unrequited feelings for Blackbeard being forever unspeakable and inexpressible except through the veneer of horrific masculine violence. It’s the idea of m/m desire being purely sexual. Men just fuck and that makes it not “really” gay. Jack thinks that “anything goes at sea,” that “dalliances” are fine and to be expected, but Ed’s genuine affection for Stede is inexplicable, anathema to what he understands about being a pirate (read: being a man). Izzy hates Lucius’ open gayness and the fact that everyone else DOESN’T hate him for it, and he literally thinks that Ed being in love with Stede is brain damage. (“He done something to my boss’s brain.”) Izzy also thinks that Stede, as a flamboyant gay man, is a pathetic creature that needs to be put down, and that Ed “corrupted” by him into a similarly open and flamboyant gay would also be better off dead. This mirrors Chauncey’s diatribe about Stede not being human and needing to be wiped from the world. It's all textbook homophobia!

And you sell the show short by pretending that it isn’t engaging with these things, because it is and it’s doing an amazing job of it.