I feel like the "dan is bi" anon is trolling but just in case they're genuinely confused: yes dan said in BIG that he loved and felt attracted to his high school gf (although he also made it pretty clear that they did not have sex so idk where anon is getting the idea that he has slept with "multiple women" 💀), and he alluded to his attraction not being confined to a specific gender in the part where he talked about labels, but you're completely taking all of that wildly out of context and missing the point of the whole video by calling him bi. I feel like this is probably the part that's frying their brain:
(shoutout to the legend @goldenpinof for this transcript!)
But firstly, imo it was very clear from BIG, as well as other stuff he's said over the years, that he just doesn't like labels. Which I find very valid, it took me a long time to figure out how to label myself. I still don't know what my gender is lmao but I started saying "bi" for my sexuality because it's a widely-used term that gets the point across. And I think that's the thing here: he came to the conclusion that the labels "gay" and "queer" are the best descriptors of his identity, which do the most accurate job of approximating something extremely psychologically complex and multilayered and nuanced in a simple everyday term that gets the point across to other people.
Obviously words mean things and it doesn't make sense to just pick a label at random (like for example it wouldn't make sense for me to identify as a lesbian, since I definitely feel attraction to men as well as women and everything outside the binary, and am interested in acting on that attraction at times, so I wouldn't be conveying accurate information to other people if I used the label lesbian for myself) but a label is just supposed to serve the task of conveying relevant information to other people (if a lesbian feels some kind of abstract attraction to dan and phil, that doesn't mean that the alphabet council needs to immediately revoke their lesbian card!! Since the word "lesbian" still does a perfectly good job of conveying relevant information to other people. Likewise if a straight dude has a fun little gay dalliance with his college roommate, but has absolutely 0 interest in men beyond that incident, it wouldn't be remotely necessary for him to start calling himself bi if he didn't want to, because what would be the point in that if he's only interested in women? Like if he told a gay dude who found him attractive that he's bi, only to backtrack... Do you see what I'm saying here?). It's perfectly valid for Dan to use "gay" and "queer" as umbrella terms that in his opinion do the best job of describing him, out of the language that's available. If he's like essentially a kinsey >5 and decided to just round it off to a 6 at this point, who are you to tell him he can't lmao
(shoutout to the legend @goldenpinof for this transcript!
Human sexuality is often way too complicated to boil it down to a single label in a way that doesn't erase any of its nuance, and I feel like this is something he's struggled with in the past, especially with him being a public figure. He's mentioned multiple times that feeling like he had to choose a label was a factor that prolonged his decision to come out.
And this is not even getting into the impact that his trauma from his childhood and also from spending a chunk of his formative years in the public eye probably had on the way he identifies or the way he chooses to label himself. It clearly took so much courage and strength for him to finally be able to call himself gay/queer please have some respect for our brave troops
Ultimately the point is that he uses the labels "gay" and "queer", not "bi", and it really shouldn't be difficult to respect that. It's also not biphobic for him to choose not use the label "bi" (again speaking as someone who uses that label). It's just that he feels "gay"/"queer" are better descriptors for him and nobody gets to determine that except him!! :) He wants people to know he's gay so he calls himself gay and that's that on that.
There are definitely people on here who are way smarter and more well-educated than me who would've done a much better job eloquently discussing this topic without rambling all over the place but that's my take (if anyone would like to add to this please do so, I'm always open to learn more about topics like this. And I'm also not saying that the way I see it is the only objectively correct opinion, but anon is definitely wrong so 💀). Thank you for coming to my ted talk
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In conclusion transphobia is 1. Facts 2. Having boundaries 3. Asking questions 4. Something no one says
And what is a girl exactly?
Ah yes our ‘made up definition’ rooted in material reality, science and acknowledged by the vast majority of society, and the ‘many definitions’ that only you and your friends recognise
Weren’t you just saying men and women were social not biological terms?
Apparently terfs can occasionally be confused with 10 year old children with a Harry Potter obsession
Yes because no one is trying to transition ‘cis’ kids.
…So do you like the word cis or not?
If girls can have male bodies, what is a girl to begin with?
No they’re a biological reality…kinda like being male or female..
So women yeah…
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Just randomly remembered that time in high school I told a girl I was asexual and her response was "but have you tried it?"
Bruh it doesn't matter. Asexual means lack of sexual attraction. Ace people can participate in such activities and enjoy them. Its whether or not you expirence a certain type of attraction not if you enjoy an activity.
Shoulda told her that 🙂↕️
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I cannot STAND the shipcourse label terms.
Rant.
"Anti-ship". "Pro-ship".
They're such fucking misnomers for what they're actually referring to that it's not even CLEAR what they're actually referring to.
I struggle to even apply any of this shit to myself. Labels serve as a concise way to communicate something. A label has failed to function as a concise descriptor when it does not describe what you want it to.
Put the shipcourse connotations to these words aside for a second. Just take them for their literal, face-value translation.
I'm not """anti-ship""". I'm not fucking against shipping. Nor am I """pro-ship""" per se?? I'm shipping-positive and shipping-favorable -- like sex-positive and sex-favorable, I'm good with other people doing it and I like doing it -- but not indiscriminately???
There are ships I dislike and there's nothing about it related to ethics. "Anti-ship" and "pro-ship" are such absolutist fucking terms, black-and-white and binary and un-nuanced, "this or that".
But here's the thing: these words don't just mean "how you feel about shipping". Shipping is hardly the tip of the fucking iceberg. A small, singular, surface-level facet to a deep and complex issue related to art, reality, human relationships, and responsibility.
(And that's problem #2 with the labels: encompassing a fraction's fraction's fraction of what this is really about and making it sound like petty fandom bullshit instead.)
What it's really about is portrayal of sensitive and fucked up matters in fiction, and of how to engage with it. It's about what's healthy and what's not. It's about what's ethical and what's not.
It's about boundaries; the line between fiction and reality, the line between artists and their works, the line between creator and audience.
It's about the nature of art, the nature of the relationship between an artist and their artwork, the nature of the relationship between artwork and those who view it. It's about art as a medium through which interaction occurs simply by one person creating it and another perceiving it.
It's about responsibility and accountability. It's about the placement of responsibility and accountability in the artist-viewer relationship. Who is accountable for what. Where does the artist's due diligence end, and where do the viewer's discretion and critical thinking begin. Who takes credit or blame for what.
It's about consequences and who receives them. It's about how art reflects upon the artist, and how it doesn't. It's about what it means to create, to bring something forth to the world and to put it out there to be perceived and judged and acted upon.
I ran out of spoons but. TLDR: shipcourse labels suck so much -- dysfunctional and counterproductive, misleading, wildly failing to capture stances in the real issue at hand -- and we should stop using them actually
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One thing that still bugs me about that whole watertok controversy a little while ago was when people were criticizing the semantics of whether or not the drinks could still be called “waters” after adding all the syrups and powders, soooo many people were like “omg words MEAN something. That is NOT water. It’s like, juice ✌️” like wtf no it’s not juice either lmao. There was literally no juice in those things. Like personally I wouldn’t call them water either, maybe a mocktail or something I guess, I don’t really care, but if people making the whole “words mean something” argument and then supplying an alternative word that was arguably MORE WRONG, then I don’t really think they actually cared about the ~word meanings~ as much as they said?? Like sure there were some good constructive critiques about the nature of the trend and all but I think some people were kinda just getting on their high horse for no reason other than to feel superior about some trend they didn’t care about lol
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