#pandering to the gay community
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Got an ask saying I’m a big company pandering to the queer community for my post about being trans.
Babygirl.
I’m a parody blog.
A gimmick.
I’m also a huge gay.
And trans.
?????
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it's the levels of scrutiny too.
a movie that has a largely-female cast has to be well-written, well-shot, well-acted, well-advertised. people will spend 2 hours on youtube talking about a single plot hole; about a moment of bad pacing, about a singular background character's poor scripting. if there isn't something obvious, they will say - well there's nothing specifically bad, but it wasn't specifically good either.
they will turn out another all-male movie, and it's just a movie.
a book that has queer representation in it has to defy every convention of writing while also being true to traditional plot, structure, format, and pacing. it must have no boring chapters, no missteps, no awkward dialogue. it must be able to "prove" that any queer relationship "makes sense", their sparks must fly off the page and their love must be eternal. the writing must be clear and beautiful, the storyline original and fresh, the values traditional but with an undercurrent that is modern and saucy.
they will turn out another book without queer rep, where a man and woman just-fall-in-love, and it's just a book.
i am latinx. i am queer. i am nb & neurodivergent. my father said to me once: you will need to be exceptional to be just-as-good, and you will need to be beyond exceptional before they see you as just-a-person, and not your labels.
i am not beyond exceptional. i am a human person. i am skilled because i worked my ass off to be skilled.
i am currently reading a book that's so-bad-it's-good about a girl that falls in love with a vampire. i was 64% of the way through the book before she figures out tall-dark-fanged is not natural. i like books like these, i like letting myself relax while i just enjoy the read. but i do spend a lot of time wondering - would this have been published if it was about queer people? would this have gotten past the editors if the characters weren't white and sexy?
i want to write a movie about being a woman in a male space, and i want to start that movie with a 10 minute scene where the woman is lectured with the exact same whining that occurs in the youtube comments of even the trailers for those movies: "haven't we had enough diversity?" "we've had enough girl power movies" "sorry, this is just pandering. it's boring."
here's what's fucked up: it shouldn't matter, you're right. my identity shouldn't fold after my name like a battalion of stars: a cry of what i've gone through. what we all know i had to move past and through. i should just be a writer, plain and simple, without my work being shifted through with tweezers - i know everything i make, always, i am incredibly responsible for. beholden to. i don't like knowing that if i fuck up, i am also fucking up for every person like me. every person in a community i belong to.
once, back in undergrad, i wrote a short story about a girl who had been kicked by a horse. it was my first time writing about my experience with my ocd; i felt proud of it. the story was mostly about grief and slow recovery. the queerness of the main character was not important to the plot, my main character was just-queer. there wasn't even a romantic interest in it.
i remember one of my classmates being disappointed. "i just feel like you always write about girls who like girls, and i'm bored of it," he said. "you're a beautiful writer, but i'm like - oh, at some point, it's gonna be gay again." during the workshop, he folded his hands over my story and said, "and okay, i'm just going to say it. she's ocd, she's gay, she's depressed - it's a little much for me to believe is all happening to one person."
it is a little much to be that person (and more besides). i have therapy weekly, after all.
over and over, belonging to exception.
#spilled ink#poetry#prose#warm up#idk what this is#maybe more of a confession#btw the book is called crave it's OKAY#it's very straight#main character keeps being like totally okay with situations where dude is DEF#being a stalker villian#she's known him for a WEEK and shes like#'hes all that matters'#girlfriend ur parents only died a MONTH ago#there's a lot about timing in that book im like .... did this author ever have any#actually bad experiences#like main character being like ''i shouldn't cry over them it's pathetic'' a mONTH after her parents die#btw this isn't bc she's in denial/suffering/etc it's bad writing#the narrative is instead like#'' .... bc the author doesn't want to remember to discuss it''#she forgets she has a sprained ankle a lot#tbh im THIS close to saying ''fuck good writing''#and writing my OWN stupid supernatural school YA romance#and YES!!!!! IT WOULD INDEED BE GAY#''oh this school? we're all... different here....bc... of the witches??oh . i mean yeah but no actually we just really believe in a diverse
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i feel so fucking bad for my fellow young queers nowadays. so many are being radicalized by the right because we are so disconnected from our past and history and it fucking sucks man
i remember being 14 and just being so lost and uncomfortable in my own skin and getting wrapped up in fucking exclusionary discourse on fucking instagram of all places. i remember not liking myself and being vulnerable and feeling left out, and all these other online queers took me in and said "its fine, you're normal, but we have to fight the not-normal queers to be accepted" and i believed them because who else would i trust?
the idea that there's a wrong kind of gay or trans or queer is so antithetical to what this community is supposed to be about. we're strange, we're outcast. it's so sad to see infighting knowing that its just successful propaganda meant to divide us.
truth is, bigots don't care if you're the "right kind of queer" or not. they still hate you for existing and pandering does nothing but hurt the only community that actually cares. we have to leave behind the mindset that we can only be accepted if we change, because the people who only accept us when we're the "good kind of queer" never fucking respected us in the first place
we're here, we're queer, and we don't have to be "the right kind" to be allowed to exist
#queer community#queer history#queer pride#queer rights#queer infighting#queer is not a slur#queer inclusion#queer identity#queer youth#queer discourse#queer culture#lgbt history#lgbt pride#lgbtq community#nydias post#nydia vents
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The main problem that I have with Youtubers who attempt to approach media analysis and fandom through theory and academia is that the vast majority aren't academics. Just being in undergrad isn't actually enough, contrary to the thoughts of many. Reading a Wikipedia article and reiterating what one may find in some Google, even Google Scholar, searches. Ideally, these would be topics approached by people involved in academia as a profession, people with doctoral degrees, who can discuss complex topics in a way that is easily understood by the masses. "What is the negotiation between gender and sex in BL?" "How does CMBYN articulate/complicate hierarchal roles within the gay novel?" "Could SnK express an alternative reading of the formerly isolated Japan?" These are complicated questions they attempt to answer in their video essays when they seldom ever understand the theories they employ.
Yes, I understand this can sound elitist, but as a Black afab person who is currently in a doctoral program for literature, there aren't "easy" answers to any of the questions they attempt to pose, and many Youtubers who primarily make long-form video essays lack the life experience and expertise to sufficiently discuss anything. They're usually too set in their thoughts to answer or explore the broader implications of their claims. Defending a dissertation forces you to do this. Forming a committee of experts in various fields and convincing them to aid you in the development of your dissertation forces you to do this. Being in academic and cordial communication with your peers from all over the world in your field forces you to do this. It's not easy to constantly intake new information from various eras and nations (depending on your topic), meld this information into a coherent essay, and continually make edits as you learn new information, thus changing your outlook on things. Also: it's really petty of me, but it's also incredibly annoying to grade poorly researched undergrad essays who, after some prompting in office hours, say they got these ideas on books, movies, and shows from breadtubers like Somerton, SZ, FD Signifier, or hbomberguy. Cue: me going to watch their videos and realizing they have no idea what they're talking about 88% of the time in terms of theory and application of said theory. Even the ones who frame themselves on being educators in real life, like Signifier, lack any nuance, depth, or media literacy to make a compelling argument if you know even the slightest bit of information. On the bright side, I now know why I've encountered several students with ideologies that are basically conservatism with a veneer of progressivism, or "conservatism in a queer hat."
This concludes my long-winded way of saying "Don't turn to Youtubers for media analysis. You're better off just reading articles by people who have to actually know what they're talking about. The majority of Youtubers (especially the breadtubers) don't have the bandwidth to discuss anything more complex than an episode of Blue's Clues."
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I mostly agree, but I'd point to a slightly different problem. I'm hesitant to say that the PhD itself is the deciding factor, but I do think a lot of video essayists are insufficiently prepared.
I'm a big fan of Folding Ideas who does have some formal schooling in film, but I don't think it's that education per se that makes him great. He sets himself apart from other video essayists by actually doing his research and having an in-depth approach to his subjects. He doesn't resort to clickbait, and—here's the key—he often takes months or even a year to work on something.
Honestly, I think that's a big part of it: the hoops most youtubers who want to make a living at it have to jump through involve a lot of clickbait and pandering and a fast production schedule. They don't involve reputable peer review except by the court of shriek-y public opinion on twitter.
They'd like to present themselves as documentary filmmaking (which is essentially what Folding Ideas' longer videos are), but they don't actually live up to any of the usual standards of that either.
I think it can be elitist to say that someone needs to have certain letters after their name, yes, but what really strikes me about your average youtube media analysis type and the fanbase is that they want shortcuts.
Exploring the whole history of the gay novel so that you have enough background to talk about CMBYN means reading quite a few novels. Even if you decide to throw out all past scholarly opinion on the topic (which you shouldn't), if you're going to have a meaningful personal theory, you need to have read a lot of novels first. How can you hope to be the person providing the neat overview of the whole genre if you haven't familiarized yourself widely with said genre, and not just through a summary by someone else? That amount of reading doesn't happen overnight.
The trite, surface-level media analysis online is often from people who want to be hailed as great intellectuals but who aren't willing to put in the years it takes to do all the background reading and to develop their skills in argumentation, writing, etc.
Grad school is a convenient and probably faster way to go about all that, but I think you could do it outside of a formal framework... But you would need to actually do it.
I think it's driven by a bunch of people who were The Smart One in grade school and never learned how to work hard on long-term projects instead of pushing through in a sprint. They're used to relying on being the smartest to cut corners and do things before they get bored, only they probably aren't the smartest anymore anyway, and they mistake being smart at one thing for being smart at all things.
There's a real lack of respect for the entire concept of expertise.
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Unpopular opinion but I'm tired of people conflating queer media that doesn't appeal to them specifically with bad representation or queer media for straight people. Also queer media for straight people can be valuable. Because honestly yeah some mom who just found out her kid is queer who doesn't know many queer people or mentors to teach her how to navigate it would probably look to media. So queer media for straight cis people has a place. And secondly just because queer media doesn't appeal to you specifically doesn't mean it's for queer people. Like take Love, Simon for example. Everyone accused Becky Albertalli of writing a queer book to pander to a straight audience. Even though I a queer person loved it and I was out as queer by the time I had read it. The book is actually really good as a book and it actually has some for a YA novel written by a white author rather nuanced racial commentary. The movie Love, Simon had multiple queer people working behind the scenes and the movie literally helped inspire one of the leads Keiynan Lonsdale to come out . Yet people still accuse it of being for straight people. Why? Because it was fluffy and light hearted and followed the story of a white kid in the suburbs with a stereotypical American family. Because it didn't appeal to them. Even though many of the queer people I know personally said the "You get to exhale now" scene meant so much to them. Even though prior to even coming out as bi which she was pressured to do over the backlash of Love , Simon. She worked with gender non-conforming kids as a social worker and made sure to be mindful of the community. Even though she openly encouraged black actors to play her characters even if they were originally written as white in the books (she was quite happy that Nick who was originally white in the books was casted as black in the films). Even though she collaborated with multiple queer people behind the scenes. she still got accused of writing a queer book for a straight audience. I'm only using this as an example. Now some people are doing the same with Heart stopper simply because it's popular and queer even though the author is openly aroace. I don't care for Heartstopper that much personal but I find other Osemanverse works more compelling(like say Solitaire). But I've never put down people who do for not being queer enough. Or for enjoying gay content for straight people.
TL:DR - Just because a piece of queer media doesn't apply to you doesn't mean it's queer content for a straight cis audience and even then queer content for a straight cis audience has a place and does matter.
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[“Feminists’ discomfort with proximity to sex workers reached a fever pitch during the so-called ‘sex wars’ of the 1980s and 1990s. In this era, radical feminists locked horns with ‘pro-sex’ feminists over the issues of pornography and prostitution. The radical-feminist perspective on sex work holds that it reproduces (and is itself a product of) patriarchal violence against women. This analysis could extend to all heterosexual sexual behaviours, as well as public sex and kink (commonly known as BDSM, for ‘bondage, domination, submission/sadism, masochism’).
The focus in this era was on censoring porn and ‘raising awareness’ rather than addressing prostitution through criminal law directly, but a nonetheless vehement anti-prostitution stance became commonplace in the feminist movement. Writer Janice Raymond stated that ‘prostitution is rape that’s paid for’, while Kathleen Barry said buying and selling sex was ‘destructive of human life’.
The defence of porn and prostitution that followed in response was based on ideas of sexual liberation through nonconformist sexual expression, such as BDSM and the ‘queering’ of lesbian and gay identities. Many ‘pro-sex’ or ‘sex-radical’ feminists posited that not only could watching porn be gratifying and educational, it could upend patriarchal control over women’s sexual expression. Moreover, that the sex industry was sticking two fingers up at the institution of marriage, highlighting the hypocrisy of conservative, monogamous heteronormativity. While some people who fought for sexual liberation were sex workers – such as LGBTQ and AIDS activist Amber Hollibaugh – many sex radicals advanced their arguments from a non–sex worker perspective. Defending porn often meant defending watching it, rather than performing in it.
Radical feminists famously described sex radicals as ‘Uncle Toms’* pandering to the primacy of male sexuality, while they in turn were derided as ‘prudes’ invested in preserving sexual puritanism. Rather than focussing on the ‘work’ of sex work, both pro-sex feminists and anti-prostitution feminists concerned themselves with sex as symbol. Both groups questioned what the existence of the sex industry implied for their own positions as women; both groups prioritised those questions over what material improvements could be made in the lives of the sex workers in their communities. Stuck in the domain of sex and whether it is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for women (and adamant that it could only be one or the other) it was all too easy for feminists to think of The Prostitute only in terms of what she represented to them. They claimed ownership of sex worker experiences in order to make sense of their own.
Anti-prostitution activist Dorchen Leidholdt spoke to this feminist impulse; ‘this de-individualized, de-humanized being has the function of representing generic woman … She stands in for all of us, and she takes the abuse that we are beginning to resist.’ It was in this context that former prostitute Andrea Dworkin’s work became highly influential in the movement, and set a new tone for criticism of sex work. The Prostitute, she said
lives the literal reality of being the dirty woman. There is no metaphor. She is the woman covered in dirt, which is to say that every man who has ever been on top of her has left a piece of himself behind … She is perceived as, treated as – and I want you to remember this, this is real – vaginal slime.
Her confrontational writing style – and her experiences in the sex trade – helped to legitimise and normalise similar usage of graphic and misogynist language in ‘feminist’ discussions of sex workers and their bodies. Barry, a contemporary of Dworkin, likened prostitutes to blow-up dolls, ‘complete with orifices for penetration and ejaculation’, while Leidholdt wrote that ‘stranger after stranger use[s] her body as a seminal spittoon … What other job is so deeply gendered that one’s breasts, vagina and rectum constitute the working equipment?’ Academics Cecilie Høigård and Liv Finstad wrote of women who sell sex that ‘at the core they experience themselves as only cheap whores’.
Sex working feminists have long found themselves harshly excluded, and not only by de-humanising language in academia, but by explicit lack of invitation into spaces. Kate Millett recalls a feminist conference on prostitution, held in 1971. Disgruntled working women arrived to demand a seat at the table: An inadvertent masterpiece of tactless precipitance, the title of the day’s program was inscribed on leaflets for our benefit: ‘Towards the Elimination of Prostitution’. The panel of experts included everyone but prostitutes … all hell broke loose – between the prostitute and the movement. Because, against all likelihood, prostitutes did in fact attend the conference … They had a great deal to say about the presumption of straight women who fancied they could debate, decide or even discuss what was their situation and not ours.
Unlike the hostile environment of radical feminism, sex radicals were welcoming and supportive to sex workers. This influence helped shape the movement’s growth. In 1974, COYOTE hosted the first National Hookers’ Convention. The bright orange flyer nodded to the way prostitutes had been shunned from the women’s movement: emblazoned with a hand touching a vulva, it proclaimed, ‘Our Convention Is Different: We Want Everyone to Come’”]
molly smith, juno mac, from revolting prostitutes: the fight for sex workers’ rights, 2018
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Those buying the "Bumblebee is pandering" line of thinking are a lot of thinly-disguised bigots but others are those who are queer and have grown up on a media landscape that has jerked them around. Be it through LEGIT queerbaiting or gay characters as inoffensive side characters (seen but not heard as the Victorian phrase would go).
Thus it has instilled within us a sort of vigilance to queer depictions in fiction that have often come from a place corporate vetting far more than what a creator will decide upon. Even with smaller companies like Rooster Teeth or the more creatively free CRWBY, that weariness persists.
But this is yet another example of the Right co-opting the language of Left spaces against them. This seed of doubt turns us against each other and plays upon the uncertainty of sincerity. Not helped when RT's mismanaged management trickled down to RWBY's production (not nearly as often post-Gray's sacking).
We've been burned as a community over and over but we owe it to ourselves to NOT always take people at their word regarding queer rep. Some of those people are not working in our best interests and it benefits them to turn us against each other.
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I’ve seen people be very frustrated at the het relationship of Gabriel/Beezlebub working out but not the two gay ships (Nina/Maggie and Aziraphale/Crowley,) but honestly, I’m pretty sure that’s the point
(Yes I know canonically the angels/demons are all nonbinary, but I’m talking about how the relationships are coded and appear to the human world, cool? Cool.)
Of course the relationship where they have the freedom to walk away with no consequences or guilt would work out. Of course “love conquers all” when you haven’t had to hide it for your safety. You should be frustrated that Gabriel and Beezlebub can live the life and love Aziraphale and Crowley never can
Regardless of all the rainbow advertising and pandering to the queer community, the world still by and large despises us. Sure, Aziraphale is canonically nonbinary, but he gets called a fag nonetheless
The ineffable bureaucracy ship is a bait-and-switch meant to remind you that if you’re gay, you’ll never have that freedom. The people who mindlessly “uwu so cute why can’t Aziraphale and Crowley do the same haha they’re dumb??” just don’t get it
#this will probably bother some ppl idc#aziraphale has been a coded gay man from the jump even in book omens so pls don’t downplay that b/c the blorbos are enbie now tysm#good omens#good omens spoilers#ineffable bureaucracy#ineffable husbands#good omens 2#aziraphale#crowley#vinylatte#nina and maggie#gabriel#beezlebub#homosexual#gay#lgbt#lgbtq#bisexual
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I read a book a while back about the erotic appeal of 'women with penises' (don't close the page yet I promise it's useful). the book was called Ambisexuality. it's basically two things, a history of the sexual fantasy of a 'woman with a penis' and a study of transgender women sex workers in australia. content warning for sex work and children forced into sex work.
in the history portion, one of the things it talks about is how it seems that prepubescent boys who enter the sex industry in some cultures are basically taught to perform femininity. dressed like women, taught to dance like women, perfume themselves like women, basically appear cosmetically like a woman. since prepubescent boys don't look too different from girls, many adult heterosexual johns found this attractive. the presence of the penis was considered a positive, because male customers knew how a penis worked and could understand it. from the book:
References to the training of older boys and young men, in the twin arts of seductive dancing and sex work, can be found in many historical religious texts, not just of Afghanistan but as an aspect of cultures in many cities in South Asia and the Middle East until modern times.
[...] The historical record also provides clues that the link between feminised males and sex work even existed in some hunter-gatherer societies. In North America, the journalist and critic, Peter Ackroyd suggests that some native Indian societies accommodated feminised male sex work. The Pueblo Indians for example, maintained a mujerado, a 'trained male prostitute' in each village, who identified as a 'man-woman, not as a male [source mine]. Similarly, records suggest that the berdache were males who took on the roles of wife, communal concubine, prostitute and participant in certain sexual rites of native Indian tribes. The berdache wore women's clothing, did women's work and in sexual relations with their male partners, behaved like women as far as possible.
Many Roman brothels offered boys of different races, skin colours and professional abilities. Boys from the Middle East, for example, were prized for their dancing abilities and exotic appearance, while boys from Northern Europe were valued for their bawdiness and sensuality.
Some brothel owners refined the process of procuring, raising and training very young boys to an art form. Boys considered to possess the appropriate attributes were purchased as young as two or three years of age and were raised and trained by their owners. Their sole purpose in life was to entertain men and pander to the sexual tastes of wealthy clients. Many of these boys were feminised during their training. They were beautifully groomed and perfumed, had unwanted body hair removed and wore their hair long and curly. Some were trained to perform for their clients - as dancers, mimes, singers and storytellers. All were trained in fellatio, sodomy and analingus.
it's disturbing to think about how femininity is conflated with being attractive to men, so much that you can take a prepubescent boy, dress him up like a woman, and apparently plenty of people go "yeah, this is the perfect sex object, like a woman but better."
it also had a section on how trans women and gender non conforming men who dressed femininely across the world were basically often forced into prostitution. since they could not find employment due to their gender nonconformity, the only place they could get money was as prostitutes. being feminine dressed also meant they could make more money than gay male prostitutes who dressed in masculine style. from the book:
According to some cultural historians, the reason why the xanith presented as women was to enable them to make a living from sex work. As will be seen later, the suggestion that this lifestyle is driven by 'economic necessity' probably belies a considerable degree of individual choice in the matter. For many, the rewards of sex work led to a comfortable lifestyle, which was infinitely preferable to other occupations which paid less, demanded longer working hours and offered fewer other intrinsic benefits such as personal gifts.
there's a myth that there exists a certain type of person who enjoys being prostituted, because of some social category they belong to. it has variably applied to women of the lower classes, black people, gay men, and in this topic, trans women. it exists to excuse the dehumanization of these groups who are excluded from normal labor markets, experience higher rates of poverty, and enter sex work to make money.
i've noticed some radfems have suggested that trans women prostitutes 'enjoy' being prostitutes, on the basis of quotes from bailey's book 'the man who would be queen' and taking twitter quotes from unverifiable 'trans sex workers' at face value. but i would be very hesitant to believe that. just in the same way you would not believe a woman who told you she 'loves sex work' without doing further research on her background to see if this statement is honest or produced by trauma, you should also consider the same for transgender women and gender non conforming men. especially since they are often forced out of legitimate labor industry for gender nonconformity.
the idea that trans women inherently love prostitution reinforces the idea that there are feminine people who it is okay to degrade and treat as sex objects, because they love it. the femininity is taken to be a lure to men and proof that they love being 'used'. there may be some portion who are 'erotic professionals' who love it, just like there are women who say they same, but there's a high rate of traumatic background from trans women who become prostitutes. and that's before whatever traumatization happens during prostitution.
in short, there's a dirty history of treating gender non conforming male people as the sort of perfect sex object, the ideal combination of feminine presentation and "comprehensible" male anatomy. radfems should not help this myth by repeating it mindlessly. all this does is spread the idea that a. being dressed feminine means you exist to lure men, b. there exists a 'perfect sex object' who wants nothing more than endless sex with strangers for money, whose trauma, poverty, mental illness play no role in their life, and c. therefore there is no need to include these people in efforts to exit the prostitution industry, because they "love" it after all. no human is a perfect sex object. accepting that it can happen to one group of people means you naturalize it and allow the possibility it can happen to you.
#sex industry#mypost#\ transmisogyny#radical feminism#i've seen this sort of thing and i don't think it's a good idea to reproduce about sex workers living in poverty working the streets#onlyfans is something else for another topic#but it's very disturbing to read this history of basically fetishizing “feminine boys” as perfect sex objects#and then compare that to how trans women/gnc men are overwhelmingly in prostitution#this is relevant to female people because it presumes that there exist 'perfect sex objects' and there do not
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Rant about all the Bi-Buck Arc hate surfacing.
Made the mistake of scrolling through comments on Instagram surrounding 911 and the cast.
I need to blow off steam, so this is gonna probably start harsh.
While there was so much heartfelt appreciation for Buck's storyline, the negative comments kept stealing my attention. I'm so tired of hearing(reading) that people think the whole show is ruined because two grown men kissed. Like, get the fuck over yourselves already. You don't agree with the relationship, you're just gonna have to deal with it the same we've dealt with Buck and Eddie's half-assed, flat, forced heterosexual relationships for the last 7 years, okay?
They all want to justify their biphobia/homophobia by saying that it's "forced" or it "doesn't make sense," or that they "never saw Buck even hint at it and it's just pandering to fans." Like, bitch, welcome to real life. If you're a real fan of this show, and you watched from the beginning, you know Athena and Michael's marriage ended first thing when he came out as gay. A muscular, "straight", black guy with a wife and two kids who'd been in the closet/denial his whole life, came out to his family, and none of them saw it coming, even if they might have suspected "deep down". This shit happens every day, okay? They're all mad cause "if he was gonna be gay, they should have made him gay from the beginning". Why? So you could form your opinion of him based on who he's attracted to? Why does this bother you so much. You were okay with it when it was Michael and Hen cause you knew from the beginning and they were your token gay characters that you've just learned to "put up with" to appease the rainbow crowd.
And it's not even the ones who are just straight up, like "it's wrong"/"it's a sin"/"it's gross", etc. that bother me the most. It's the "I don't care, you do you, but don't shove it down my throat", people that make me mad. Why is simply witnessing a queer person or relationship "shoving it down your throat"? Y'all realize they exist in real life too, right? Like, personally, I have family, friends, co-workers, bosses, who are all apart of the lgbtq+ community, and I'm from a smaller suburban/rural area of Ohio. Those are just the people in my life who are out. Why is seeing them represented in modern media so bad? This isn't covid, it's not fucking contagious. If it was your brother, your cousin, your best friend, would it be okay then? Both of my brothers have only ever dated women, but if one of them came out and said "hey, I think I might like guys too," I'm not gonna throw a fucking fit and invalidate them by telling them it's not possible because they've only ever dated women. No, I'll thank them for trusting me, and gush to them about boys because I never had a sister to do that with.
Every time I read those comments, all I can think is, you just proved that you're not a safe person to be trusted if someone in your life wants to come out.
Just, how do you give up on an entire show after one kiss? And then claim that you don't have a problem with it? You can't have it both ways. If it didn't matter to you, you wouldn't react so strongly and so negatively to it. 911 and ABC's intention isn't to question your sexuality. You don't have to worry that you're suddenly going to have to kiss Buck too, okay? Chill.
The whole "Buck has only ever slept with women" and "suddenly he's gay" responses are exactly why this storyline is so important. So many people to this day refuse to acknowledge sexualities outside of straight and gay. Why is it always, "made gay"? It doesn't have to be one or the other. It can be both, or neither.
I say this with the experience of having a mom who's still in the "I don't care as long as I don't have to see it" camp. If seeing it upsets you, you've got a problem. If it really doesn't matter and you're cool letting everyone be themselves, seeing two men together should be just as accepted as a man and a women together. Unless you're also saying we need to stop portraying men and women in romantic, sexual relationships together with kissing scenes or more graphic ones, then you can't rule with a double standard. Me and my mom loved watching Teen Wolf together, but any time there was a scene with Danny kissing another guy, she'd get uncomfortable. She even told me once, that she didn't think they should show scenes like that but she wasn't sure why when watching het couples together didn't make her feel the same way.
Safe, sane, and consensual. As long as they follow that, and are happy, why can't you just be happy for them?
If you're old enough to have been following along with this show, you're old enough to know that everyone is different. And life as an adult is about opening yourself up to the outside world and learning about what makes people different. From race to religion to sexuality to nationality and beyond. Your views, beliefs, ideologies, etc, are not the only ones that matter. Getting and giving acceptance goes hand in hand.
I get it to a certain extent. Coming from a different time and all that, but it just means you've had more time to learn. Being stubborn and holding onto what you were brought up in doesn't mean a whole lot to me if you refuse to open your mind up as an adult to look beyond yourself.
Okay, I'm done now. That felt chaotic, but I feel better. If you've made it this far, thanks for coming to my TED talk☺️
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i don't want to act like corporations won't make homophobic decisions in their quest to further their financial interests. of course they will, because no capitalist would get anywhere without making the strategic decision to pander to the most powerful members of society, and we obviously live in a patriarchy that violently imposes a dogma of heteronormativity as a crucial method in its system of control. so there is, of course, an incentive to systematically erase any [gender] nonconformity from their product if it's no longer lucrative to present themselves as (pseudo)progressive in this way for whatever reason. so in the case of corporate tv executives, the idea that a show could theoretically get cancelled for being too unapologetically gay isn't ridiculous or far-fetched. in fact, the strategy to produce one or two seasons of a niche show with overtly lgbt characters and then cancel it once it's no longer turning a significant profit is pretty sound. especially if that show happens to be a piece of genre fiction, and especially if that show is bad. that way, the show can garner enough of a fanbase (the intersection of, say, sci fi fans and lesbians in your low budget lesbian sci fi series) that it gets promoted without the company itself having to expend their budget on marketing (which they can instead dedicate to more surefire mainstream hits), and gets viewed just enough to turn a profit. it's an experiment that can then get toted by the company as evidence of their progressive inclinations, without actually having to commit to any sort of reputation as a champion of lgbt rights. the fact that these shows are often qualitatively poor means that they can retroactively justify their premature cancellations by pointing to the low quality rather than the content. it's an insidious strategy.
of course, it's not necessarily true. lgbt media does actually happen to be profitable these days, especially when it's presented as either as a) salacious and shocking or b) heartwarming and wholesome. the fact that most of the shows that people have kicked up a fuss over are just undeniably not good and too niche to be lucrative makes the argument that these cancellations are all motivated by pure, unadulterated homophobia and nothing else (such as viewer retention rates and other fiscal concerns) seem somewhat silly. the desire for more authentic, compelling lgbt exploration in our media should not take the form of clamoring to renew mediocre (or just straight-up-bad) shows ad infinitum, but rather to acknowledge that there will never be true artistic depth rendering our community with love and authenticity to be found in corporately produced mainstream art. the issue isn't that these faceless executives are all individually spiteful homophobes, but rather that they operate under a structure that demands that these systemic injustices continue to be exploited for the sake of accruing capital. i'm not saying that homophobia isn't a real concern, but it's entirely incidental to the primary issue which is profit motive under capitalism. but you guys could also just stand to watch slightly better tv.
#sorry i just saw a rly cringe screenshot (about the flag show) and then started thinking about first kill again... and countless other shows#like i will never forgive hbo/max/whatever for they did to infinity train#but in that instance we all recognize that the issue is capitalism. so it's okay and valid and true#the irony of course being that the flag show and first kill are also both wildly racist#so their cancellations are in a way kind of progressive victories in and of themselves. lol#o
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This ask is going to be kind of long, but your platform is really the only platform where I feel comfortable having this conversation. You don’t have to post this if you don’t want to, I won’t feel any sort of ways about it, but I’ve got to get this feeling out of my system. The way the fandom treats Fates compared to the other games in the franchise, makes them completely unbearable. I don’t think I can forgive the fandom for it even if they did somehow start giving Fates its overdue credit. Treating its fans like shit for almost a decade is unacceptable. I don’t know how so many people can justify their behavior in regards to this game. The fans of this game have literally done nothing to the fandom other than love it unapologetically, and we still get condescended to about it. You dare offer your opinion about a take in the series and it’s like, “You’re a Corrin fan, you have no right to talk about anything.” I have never seen a group of fans that have to literally HIDE the fact that they cherish a game in order to appease its larger community, it’s so disgusting. I don’t care if I’m being harsh with this ask because I have witnessed and dealt with this condescension for years. I don’t care to spare any feelings at this point, and I think the fandom certainly doesn’t deserve any of our grace either. Calling out the elitism, cliquish behavior, and hypocrisy is the right thing to do no matter how much some people soften/normalize these issues.
Hope you don't mind me posting this anon.
It's certainly an unfortunate situation. While Fates has its problems--I say this as a diehard fan--I agree in that it's in a singular situation where it's just met with derision initially and only given praise in backhanded manners. Think "Fates sucks but it does have great X and Y" and including an obligatory compliment towards Conquest. Which, don't get me wrong, Conquest is fucking amazing in the gameplay department, but half the time I'm just like... all right, I think you're just pretending to like anything of Fates just because you feel obligated to like one of the most acclaimed gameplay centered entries in the series.
There was just the perfect storm of controversy and unmet expectations that people had towards the game: the woefully inaccurate conversion therapy accusations, the romance options, the sales model of having multiple versions, the story not being liked, Corrin not being liked, the cast being seen as tropey, the fanservice hatred, etc. Its reputation from pre-release to nearly a decade after release is just a swamp of negativity.
And, in risk of sounding defensive and deflective, Awakening did most of this first. Awakening used being gay as a constant punchline especially in DLC (but people are reclaiming that now as something to be praised cuz of course), Awakening had problematic romance options (Nowi, any of the children but especially Nah, Donnel, Ricken, and Lissa are still underage, Aversa is technically your sister and she's written in the M!Robin support to tease that aspect, Tharja in her entirety), Awakening's cast was the de facto tropey cast before Fates, its story was criticized for the same things Fates was (poorly explained lore and world, pacing issues, convenient plot devices, pandering to a previous game, and had its exclusive issue of being inconsistent with Archanea's lore), Robin was criticized for being an all loved player insert with too many powers/importance, it started the oddly designed armor designs for fanservice reasons, and while it didn't have multiple versions, it was the first game with a ton of paid DLC.
Don't get me wrong, I love Awakening to pieces. But that game started pretty much everything Fates gets shit for. Yet it gets retrospective love or at the very least a pass cuz... Fates does it worse/more and because it was gonna be the last game in the series? Wouldn't it be fair then, to give slack to Fates for following in the footsteps of the most well received and successful game in the series by replicating it while trying to improve on what some felt were lacking? But I guess at that point, people think it utterly failed in improving on the story and characters so :/
I think you have a point regarding Fates fans as well. We're pretty much the only FE fans that get unironic negative labels, at least by casual aduiences. Apparetnly we're "coomer, porn brain freaks who don't know what good games are." Though, that's about it in terms of the elitism thing, otherwise I think it's just fans of older games being out off by the direction newer games have gone, and most make no distinction and criticize all of Awakening, Fates, 3H, and Engage. Still, Fates fans are the ones getting the most accepted flak.
To end this off, let's be honest: If Fates is the example most people give of the worst game in the series, FE fans have it pretty fucking good lmao.
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I've realized something the last few days. I've never experienced big city queer culture. Most Canadian cities are notoriously small compared to metropolis sized centers like San Francisco, Washington, London, New York, Toronto or Vancouver aside of course. While the city I'm in is in fact a city, we're in that weird "big town, small city" micro-cosm of feeling like a big queer community up until you realize it really isn't.
We currently only have like. 3 gay bars, and one of them has lowkey been rejected by the community for pandering to rainbow washing and it's rampant ableism/micro-transphobia. The other is incredibly loud and packed all the time, and the third just feels a little sticky at all times. We don't have dedicated lesbian spaces. The bars we do have, only one is accessible. We don't really have alcohol free queer spaces. Usually our events are so dominated by white people that BIPOC queers just don't show up, and I feel alone as an indigenous person.
Just about every dyke I know in this city at this point complains about having slept with eachother by 3 person proxy at the very least. I can't go out without risking running into an ex, or a friend of an ex. Every Non-monoganous person here has heard of or met "that one guy" in the poly community because word just gets around like that in a smaller space (he loves the reputation don't worry). Every trans femme has at one point or another has a well meaning Gen X cishet person ask us if we know a certain trans woman that championed trans rights like 30+ years ago (it doesn't help that I actually had dinner with her once a year as a kid).
We've also had people used to big city culture come here and comment on the fact that our culture is amazing because of this unique position. Our Pride Parade isn't a party. It's still actively a protest, it's still a march to remind the conservative government that wants to take our rights away that we will fight them tooth and nail. Every big city queer who attends our Pride has said so to me. It's a point of well, pride for me. But, I want to see their party. I want to see what guaranteed diverse community feels like.
As a baby queer I thought my city's queer culture would never cease to show me new things, but as time goes on I realized its small. Being single, I've realized how not tied down I am. I'm free to go wherever really, within financial limitations. I want to travel. I want to go to big cities. I want to engage in big big queer communities abroad. Learn what their experiences are. How their local history shaped their slang, titles, identities, and social networks. I want to expand how I love my queer self and community by seeing how others love their queer selves and community.
#in my realizing just how independent i am feels again#bite me#butch#nonbinary#sapphic#lesbian#queer#lgbtqia+#lgbtqia#two-spirit#trans#transgender#lgbt pride#trans pride#lesbian pride#gay pride#pride
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That's the narrative you'll been pushing, that tkkrs are Tae "leaning" and Jikookers are what? JM "leaning"?
No wonder in this whole shippers drama only JM and Tae get dragged and JK is always safe.
If you don't know several Jikookers and Taekookers have turned into Jk solos during chapter 2, then you must be living in your own shipper bubble or you're purposely pretending it didn't happen.
Not you running around yelling every one is turning into a Jungkook solo this is not the matrix😹😹😹😹
If you go into Jikook and Tae Kook shipper spaces to disrespect Jungkook and they massacre you it don't mean they are all JK solos.
I think it's about damn time both shippers stood behind Jungkook to defend him against your kind.
For the longest time yall were used to jikookers pandering to yall "throwing Jungkook under the bus" just for your likes and follows but honey not all of us care about likes and followers and what not so we will say things as is😹
Hmmmm
So then I suppose in my little bubble it feels rare cos I rarely encounter such persons myself.
I had a best friend who was a JK leaning Jkkers and she was constantly calling out JK while victimizing Jimin and glossing over his "sins" as it were, she had me feeling i constantly had to defend Jungkook as if I was the JK stan not her.
On the Tuktukker side all I know is most of them hate Jungkook because he doesn't follow their scripts and right now he's on the Tuktukkers wanted list for being in MS with Jimin and not Tae.
And frankly they hate Tae too so I don't know what their ship is about anymore 💀
So I guess I'm still a little bit confused 😩
Then again I'm not.
I started out as a JM biased stan but the more toxic stans have me defending Jungkook the more emotionally drawn I am to him. I don't think he deserves any of the heat he gets out here.
So I guess it's cause and effect. Yall are turning us into hardcore JK stans😹😹😹😹😹😹
The irony 🤣
But I don't think I'll ever be his pure solo like exclsusively either. I like Jin I like Namjoon I like Suga too sooooooooo cheating it is😩
Why have a man when you can have 7😌
But I do see myself supporting Jungkook for the long haul whether he is part of BTS or not. I may not be as enmeshed or overly obsessed with him and his life as I may be JM but I do think he has a promising future ahead and i genuinely wish him well.
Besides Jungkook IS THE MAKNAE. he is and will always be the Golden Maknae. I don't think you understand what that means or comprehend just how much clout and likeability that naturally comes with.
Jungkook has always been liked by the Fandom. Next to Tae, as you saw before he deleted his account he was the 2nd most followed BTS member and I have a feeling he would have surpassed V following his release of Golden had he not deleted the account.
So honestly I think you exaggerate and perhaps are just being dramatic and overly paranoid about the Fandom turning into Jungkook solos when we've always been a sucker for the Maknae.
It's a kpop thing. I think you're just now experiencing what being a Maknae means for an idol.
And another thing about Jungkook is, majority of his fans are not shippers at all. Most of them are "OT7"s at best or Y/ns and solos at worst and those that ship him ship tend to ship him more often with Tae than Jimin.
Actually I think majority of his shipper fans are split between shipping him with Tae, Jin and Namjoon rather than Jimin.
Most of his fans are straight and often times homophobic and those that a queer tend to gravitate towards other men who look like him when it comes to shipping him aka Tae Jin Namjoon rather than Jimin because of the stigma against fem gay men in the gay community.
So to me the unsettling question is when you say half the shipper community are now JK solos, does it mean most of them are now straight and homophobic - solo in what sense 😩😩😩😩😩😩😩😩
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queerness in The Remarkable Retirement of Edna Fisher
book description
when you’re an old woman armed with nothing but gumption and knitting needles, stopping a sorcerer from wiping out an entire dragon-fighting organization is a tall order. no one understands why 83-year-old Edna Fisher is the Chosen One, destined to save the Knights from a dragon-riding sorcerer bent on their destruction. after all, Edna has never handled a magical weapon, faced down a dragon, or cast a spell. and everyone knows the Council of Wizards always chooses a teenager—like the vengeful girl ready to snatch Edna’s destiny from under her nose.
still, Edna leaps at the chance to leave the nursing home. with a son long dead in the Knights’ service, she’s determined to save dragon-fighters like him & ensure other mothers don’t suffer the same loss she did. but as Edna learns about the abuse in the ranks & the sorcerer’s history, she questions if it’s really the sorcerer that needs stopping—or the Knights she’s trying to save.
find it here
okay let's talk about queerness in this book
did a thread on twitter in which I said "cishet" five hundred thousand times so will probably get banned lmao but anyway I wanted to share it here too
especially since it's late in Pride Month and I have yet to post anything anywhere about it BEING Pride Month and me being queer and my books being queer, bc I've been burnt out af. so what energy I've had has gone toward planning and writing
anyway
I say "queerness in" rather than "queer characters in" because I want to talk about queerness in the book more broadly, not least bc I'm a queer creator & this is a queer book, but I've had a lot of impostor syndrome about both those things.
I figured out I was queer later in life & am a woman-presenting person w/a male-presenting partner. I've questioned my gender & sexuality repeatedly & ID'd differently over time, which is why I like "queer." I don't have to re-explain myself a dozen times. I'm queer. that's that.
but having figured out my queerness later, and having a relationship that presents as cishet, it took a long time for me to overcome feelings of ~not being queer enough~ (and sometimes I still struggle with them).
similarly, my MC is an apparently* cishet woman, unlike the MCs of many books that appear on queer book lists at this time of year. just like I took a long time to start really engaging with my community bc I worried I wasn't ~queer enough,~ for a long time, I didn't call this a queer book bc I worried it wasn't ~queer enough~. if people asked if the book was queer, I'd reply with a laundry list of explicitly queer characters rather than saying yes
fuck that though lmao. this is a queer book. let me count the ways
1. found family
as found family is so important to many queer people - by connecting us to our community, by welcoming us when bio family casts us off - found family is central to REMARKABLE RETIREMENT. while there are queer romantic arcs, the found family is the most important relationship in the book.
2. queer labels
some characters get explicit labels. Benjamin is gay. Clem is ace. queer labels are important bc they give us the ability to describe our identities and experiences! however...
3. undefined queerness
while labels are important, queerness isn't about fitting into new boxes. it's about smashing the boxes apart.
even if characters don't have specific labels applied on-page, they're queer. they don't need to claim a specific label for that to be true.*
*caveat that some media avoids using labels to pander to queer audiences w/implied queerness without ~alienating~ cishets by stating "this character is Not Cishet"**
that's not what I mean
I mean e.g. in OFMD queerness is inherent even if WORDS like queer/ace/etc aren't used. OMitB is another example (specifically Mabel) and Good Omens is yet another.
**caveat to my caveat that some media is queer-coded & avoids queer labels rather than being explicitly queer because network execs or whoever won't allow explicit queerness.
this is not the fault of the creators. sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference.
but anyway.
in REMARKABLE RETIREMENT, several queer characters are queer without using specific labels.
in some cases this is bc it doesn't come up or isn't important to them to express in the moment. like Clem is bi, but she's not worried about being bi. she's worried about being ace, because she's still kind of questioning that about herself, and she's worried it might cause problems down the road if her crush is >:[ about her not wanting to have sex. so she uses the word "ace" to describe herself in this scene but not "bi," even though she's both.
in other cases it's bc they don't have the language. Kiernan's sense of attraction and desire is described in a way that seems graysexual or demisexual (or both), and Red's sense of desire is described in a way that seems ace-spec, but neither of them use those terms, because neither of them know those terms. despite the lack of terminology, many ace readers have identified multiple ace characters based on description or experience. the lack of a specific label doesn't make those characters less queer.
similarly, some characters have not yet had this realization about themselves. which leads us to...
4. questioning
okay, back to my first asterisk of the post.
Edna is by all appearances an old cishet woman.
for most of the story, that's how she seems. that's what SHE thinks, even. she's a cishet old grandma adopting every queer young person she can find.
BUT THEN
Clem explains aceness to her
and Edna has a brief crisis bc wait a minute this sounds like her??
ultimately, Edna has too much to worry about right now to spend time questioning whether, at the age of 83, she might be somewhere on the ace spectrum
so it doesn't come up again
but that moment of crisis is THERE, & that too is queer
5. queernormativity*
I write queernorm worlds, largely bc I viscerally hate coming out lmao
it doesn't mean everyone's a queer scholar
like Clem has to explain "ace" to Edna, bc Edna thinks blankly of a deck of cards & doesn't understand what that has to do with sex
but it DOES mean queer folks get to just be and do
*caveat that this is not remotely to imply that a story is less queer if its world ISN'T queernorm
it's just a way in which MY story is queer
6. all the queer characters
not gonna do a list (even though my original idea for Pride Month when I was young and optimistic and thought I'd have energy to do it way back when was a list of queer characters), but virtually every character in this book is queer in one way or another
on twitter this is where I ended because 6 seemed like a good number for Pride since June is the sixth month, but tumblr gets a bonus
7. the author is queer
happy pride, buy my queer book
#the remarkable retirement of edna fisher#e.m. anderson#e's writing#pride month#pride month books#queer book recs#book recs#fantasy books#indie author#2023 debuts#2023 books#queer is not a slur#adding that one simply bc I said 'queer' five hundred thousand times as well as cishet so just in case lol
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“The problem with a marriage-based organization of intimacy is not only that social benefits—including access to one’s partner’s hospital room—remain tied to a marriage certificate but also that it automatically vilifies those who reject monogamy, thereby threatening to wipe out queer subcultures that have historically been organized around promiscuous, anonymous, and fleeting sexual encounters. For many queer critics, the disappearance of such subcultures equals the death of queer culture as such. As Dean notes, “the mainstream gay movement [has] achieved considerable institutional success only by desexualizing queers” (2009, 19). Ironically, it is because the lgbtq movement has managed to make gays and lesbians seem “just like” straight people, eager to endorse the family values of married monogamy, that it has made such tremendous political strides. Essentially, the gay and lesbian subject has been sanitized, stripped of its disturbing “otherness,” in order to make it more palatable to straight society. For many queer critics, this is a shortsighted victory that undermines more radical efforts to gain social justice.
More specifically, queer critics accuse the lgbtq movement of pandering to the desires of the most domesticated—and usually the most privileged— members of the gay, lesbian, and queer community. From their perspective, relatively affluent, mostly white gays and lesbians are using marriage as a way to purchase their way into “normalcy” at the expense of those who cannot be so easily assimilated: poor queers, racialized queers, gendervariant queers, immigrant queers, and so on. As Heather Love argues, “the increasing media visibility of well-heeled gays and lesbians” threatens to obscure the fact that one may enter the mainstream only “on the condition that one breaks ties with all those who cannot make it” (2007, 10). Simply put, from a queer theoretical viewpoint, gay and lesbian mainstreaming— or homonormativity—merely intensifies the problem of social marginalization, so that while some gays and lesbians now “make it” in dominant culture, others are all the more irrevocably excluded and exploited.”
Mari Ruti, The Ethics of Opting Out: Queer Theory's Defiant Subjects
#mari ruti#The Ethics of Opting Out: Queer Theory's Defiant Subjects#queer#lgbt#assimilation#marriage#queer theory
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