#'lgbt rep' made by and for cis straight people

[westmeath]

our flag meets death fans invoke the same response of revulsion in me as when i see harry potter fans now. except harry potter fans are such a large group of usually (emphasis on usually) harmless but misinformed people who just can't let go of their childhoods or whatever. ofmd mfs are a concentrated collection of some of the most willfully ignorant arrogant people i've ever seen in my life spending 20k on a fucking Billboard to try get the show renewed while openly mocking and deriding anyone who says wow... you could've put that money towards an actual urgent cause like hmmmm i don't know palestine... but of course the noble defenders of The Zionist Show aren't going to do that

[just-antithings]

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, especially after reading the Boyfriends webtoon (love it, btw), but I'm starting to think a lot of the problem with people's attitude towards LGBT representation is that people have lost sight of what it's for.

Nowadays, it feels like people think queer representation is meant to be solely for "de-converting bigots", to be made specifically for the benefit of bigots who want us dead and no one else. Which is why they're so insistent on all representation being as sanitized and accessible to straight, cis people as humanly possible. They think we need all queer rep to be "good queers", who don't do gross things like have sex or have flaws or be not-white (unless they're Luz of course). And any representation that falls short of that will prompt the bigots to want to genocide us more.

But obviously, we know that's not how that works. The bigots aren't going to instantly convert to allies because someone showed them The Owl House. They'll hate The Owl House as much as they'll hate the Boyfriends webtoon or Hazbin Hotel. Because in the eyes of queerphobes, there IS NO GOOD QUEER REP. They believe the only "good" queer rep is NO queer rep, or at least, queer rep where the queer people in question are dead.

The people pushing for this view on representation don't understand who queer rep is REALLY for: It's for us. It's for our benefit, not our oppressors'. We shouldn't be looking to reach the queerphobes with our representation because it's not for them, it's for us to feel seen, feel loved and feel welcomed.

THAT is what representation is for, and I hate how anti-adjacent people seem to want to make representation all about kowtowing to our oppressors and trying desperately to please them, especially with the current looming threat of Trump and his cronies gearing up to make it illegal to represent any form of queerness in any media at all.

Let our queers be weird. Let them be fun and chaotic and problematic. Let them be as messy as we are. Let us love them, warts and all.

👆👆👆👆

[trickstarbrave]

i just saw a post on reddit that said "vivec is not good lgbt rep" which i think is a fair enough argument to make there are genuinely horrible issues with how he was made as a character. but they went on to say "because he's a bad person and a murderer and a liar and all the sexual stuff in the 36 sermons is taboo and disturbing"

which i think. just misses the point entirely. vivec is written in very transphobic, intersexist ways, reinforces sexist stereotypes and also insists as someone multi-gendered he has to choose one, and is deeply fetishized in the work. and then we get into the fucking racism in the story that vivec of course is also effected by. and also the fact most of the sex in the 36 sermons is metaphorical, no it doesn't mean vivec is a rapist. vivec is trying to work through his trauma of being sexually abused and forced into sex work in the sermons.

also i think it would be weirder to have a weird, bizarre, very morally grey story like morrowind where everyone kind of sucks and decide that lgbt ppl have to be morally good and squeaky clean and pure and never be bad people to deserve existing in the story or else shouldn't be shown at all. it makes it seem like we're never gonna be real people in stories, just perfect untouchable ideals that are never allowed to falter and if we ever step out of line we don't deserve rights. regardless of if you include morally pure lgbt ppl in ur story or lgbt ppl just as shitty and mean as all the straight and cis ppl around them a bigot will be mad about it.

plus i think its the imperialism and open racist nationalism that appeals to bigots more in this game. i dont think any of them actually read the sermons. i think they think vivec is just some guy who cucked nerevar.

[total-drama-takes-takes-2]

lgbt thoughts

like the ethnicity post i really only have ideas about certain characters and the rest are up to whatever people think they are ^_^ i mean these are too, speculate whatever you want, but heres my interpretation of a few characters

joner: aroace. romance-neutral. this is all self projection on my part, i think joner as a character just prefers friendships to relationships and romance would make him uncomfortable but hes very supportive of others. he/him (impartial to she/her though)

scary: aromantic and unlabeled otherwise. romance-repulsed AND she's a hater about it. she/he/they

kelly: always been transfem somehow to me. transhet. they/them and VERY occasionally they/she, really depends on the mood

michela: bigender boygirl but doesn't really talk about it, especially in those words. would date whoever but high preference for dudes. would label her preference for guys as either straight or gay depending on the context. she/her

courtney: calls themselves non-binary for binary people but it's more complicated than that. sapphic with an itty bitty tiny like for guys they they're still sorting out (is it platonic? romantic? they don't know) . they/them

ass: doesn't care. doesn't know. definitely not cis but a part of it is just not wanting to be like other girls. has a lot of self-doubt over their identity and actually tends to move through labels quite quickly, so they use they/them as a catch-all neutral

max: i had a hard time with this one in terms of good rep and stuff like that, but i think it's safe for me to say max is a pretty binary trans guy. more or less transhet but hes more flexible when it comes to michela's identity. he/him

scruffy: transmasc lesbian and that was always the intention tee bee ach ^_^ they/them but sometimes they/he if they feel like it

fren: gay and definitely not cis but he's very mysterious about it. he/him

bonnie: like courtney also tells binary people that they're non-binary out of convenience, but they definitely don't feel like the term really fits them. not fem not masc not androgynous but something new entirely (goth). on a more serious note i do think the gender fuckery in the goth subculture made them realize a lot of things about themself when they first got into it. also a frequent label-changer when it comes to sexuality. they/them

patrick: unironically too obsessed with himself to be into anyone else in a romantic way /j. hes bad aro representation. hed slay in a QPR tho. he/him

julia: lesbian but she hasnt come to terms with it yet lol. i agree w the headcanons that shes aspec in some regard but havent put much thought into it. she/her

kitty: pan but adverse to romantic relationships. some kind of gender. also a furry i dont think ive mentioned it yet but they have a fursona and made patrick make one too. therres a canon patrick fursona in my notes. no set pronouns, tells people to use whatever

peter: bi and trans guy. tends to prefer girls and feminine presenting people for the most part! he/him

I don't know what sha-mod and mclovin are but they're definitely something. same with caesar, idk what's going on there but he's definitely not cishet.

I definitely need to write albert, phillip, and noco more to get a good feel for them. and everyone else i dont have any strong feelings on

[emo-mohawk-boy]

Ok, since this post has gotten a considerable amount of notes for my tiny blog, I'll elaborate.

As people, we want to RELATE to what we see. This is a major part of marketing; trying to get people to buy something because they relate to the people in the ad, a charity 20% of the proceeds go to, etc.

When we listen to music, our favorite ones are often the ones with relatable lyrics about our love, our experiences, or our mental health.

I saw this really awesome post on here a while ago (sadly I didn't save it) about why queer representation matters so much. The main statement it made was that in media with cis or straight characters, queer people have to translate that character so they relate to them.

I think this is the main reason I was *obsessed* with Romeo and Juliet last year. Because they couldn't be together since their families were expected to be enemies (similar to how society perceives lgbt+ relationships).

Anyways this is my hyperfixation now lol, reblog and tag with your favorite movies or series with queer rep!

I feel like as a society we've carefully been skirting around wlw/mlm relationships in media with the "lovers who can't be together because of society's standards" trope for centuries. Guys it's not going to make the kids gay literally get over it. That trope is basically the same thing because of you

[gayvampyr]

im sorry but this shit pisses me off. i don’t care if it’s a joke. where’s the punchline. even in 2022 gays still do not have equal rep in shows. the fact that only in the last couple years have we gotten actually semi-decent queer rep shows how much queer media is still needed. a lot of people still don’t even know what the word “bisexual” means, much less terms like “asexual” or “aromantic” or “nonbinary”. whether you’d like to admit it or not, it matters that a show actually has a bi character and explicitly says the word bisexual— a popular show at that. ik some of you guys have forgotten that the rest of the world isnt as acquainted with queerness as your online lgbt friend group, but a show on a major streaming platform saying “bisexual people exist” is important. it needs to be said, and it needs to keep being said until people stop forgetting and erasing bi people.

and yeah, the line “masculine guys can be gay” might seem like a stupid obvious thing, but a lot of people don’t consider masc guys to be gay at all, just like they don’t expect lesbians to be fem. i’ve been told several times that i don’t “look gay” and that i must be confused because i should like “boy stuff” and dress masculine if i really liked girls. people need to be reminded that anyone can be gay, as ridiculous as it sounds. we need to be seen as more than a stereotype and im sick of you “edgy” gays shitting on every piece of queer media like it’s twilight.

the show that these tags are in response to isn’t even adult media. honestly it’s hardly even YA. this show is for kids and teens who are discovering who they are. growing up, i never had ANY sort of representation. i didn’t grow up thinking it was okay to like girls, or that i could be interested in people other than boys, or that i even had the option to not like boys at all. queer representation is not only important, but it’s crucial. straight people get to see themselves everywhere, and never as comedic relief or the butt of a joke. queer kids grow up thinking that what they are is humiliating, that they should be ashamed of being those people who get laughed and made fun of on tv (and irl). in 99% of media, gay and trans people have been a laughing stock. the most representation a queer could get a decade ago was a white cis fem (but not TOO fem) gay man who was only a side character, was never shown with a partner, and served primarily as a clown, like queerness is a circus and cishets are the audience.

so i don’t CARE if young queer media is cringe. i don’t CARE if you don’t like it or if you think it’s forced or stupid or pointless or even if it’s just for a corporation to profit off our existence. the point isn’t why it was made or how bad you think the writing is, the point is that it exists and that there are now young queer people who can finally see themselves, not as a joke but as real people, on screen and go, “that. that’s what i am.” and im elated for this younger generation to be able to say that when i couldn’t. so i don’t care if you’d rather just be called a faggot again like in the good ol days when we were dropping like flies and everyone hated us. if cringey tv shows and bad writing is the price for queer kids to understand themselves better and for cishet people to get a better understanding of queer people, then it’s a small price to pay. shut the fuck up and let queer media exist

[silvermoon424]

Friend of mine put it best. So often, any characters who were LGBT+ and open about it were present on adult shows that would often be very... risque (for better or worse). Not only is that the only context non-queer people will tolerate them in but the unfortunate exclusivity feeds into their idea of being not straight or cis being sexual and far too much for kids.

That's such a good point that I've never really thought of! But you're right, queer people are incredibly sexualized in media and that portrayal has had real-life consequences. Of course we all love sexy queer rep but it becomes a problem when that's all that's allowed and all that straight people see.

It also ties back into the problem of queerness being inherently sexualized by straight people. I've made posts about this before, but so many straight people see absolutely nothing sexual or risque about heterosexuality but will automatically associate homosexuality/queerness with sex and degeneracy.

For example, a lot of straight people will see a picture of a little boy giving a little girl a Valentine's Day card along with a kiss on the cheek and they'll gush about how cute and innocent "puppy love" is. But if that picture was of two little boys, those same people would scoff in disgust about how it's "sexualizing children." They don't seem to understand queer love is the exact same as heterosexual love, that queer kids who get crushes aren't going to engage in sadomasochistic orgies but will probably just blush and hold hands and maybe kiss.

The same thing is going on with homophobes and the "Velma from Scooby Doo is a lesbian" thing, they're crying and wailing about how it's "sexualizing a children's cartoon" when literally nobody had any issues with Fred and Daphne having a thing for decades. They're acting like Velma is having uncensored sex on screen with another woman when in reality, from what I've seen, she's just blushing and acting kind of goofy around her love interest.

Homophobia is so fucking dumb, these people don't even know how stupid they're being lol

[mixterglacia]

Just A Thought:

If your automatic reaction to ace folks poking fun at how h0rny people act, or venting about fans ignoring a canon ace’s identity is:

     “UH, YOU’RE OPPRESSING ME?” You’re intentionally ignoring a sexual orientation that is quite often called the ‘Invisible Identity’? Due to people thinking ‘That is not a thing. Everyone is like that?’

     “Aces can have a libid0 too/Aces can still have sex!” Which is correct. However, that leads to a hella slippery slope. Furthering the stereotype that asexuality and celibacy are the same thing. In addition to justifying the ‘You just haven’t found the right person’ narrative. In addition to making aces with no libid0 feel even more broken. In addition to handing aphobe’s a metaphorical knife to wield. In addition to being the top excuse for making our VERY limited canon representation h0rny bc YOU want them to bang. IF YOU AREN’T GOING TO PROPERLY RESEARCH/DISCUSS THIS CONCEPT, DON’T FUCKING USE IT. IT MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE A MASSIVE JACKASS. IT COMES OFF AS FETISHIZTION. YOU REMEMBER HOW UPSET YOU GOT WHEN BBC SHERLOCK KEPT QUEERBAITING YOU? THAT'S HOW IT FEELS.

     “It’s not like I’m making them straight? Why do you care?” My dear, sweet fool. Meet me behind the Denny’s, let’s just have a chat. I did NOT go through 28 years on this fucking mudball for you to spout shit like that. Ace rep is JUST AS MOTHER FUCKING IMPORTANT AS THE REST OF THE LGBT+. This bullshit is EXACTLY what hampers the progress that ace’s have DESPERATELY fought for.

     “You’re being unreasonable/dramatic.” Am I though? So let’s take a few examples then. Let’s hypothetically say that Toby Fox went and retconned Alphys and Undyne’s relationship so they were both straight. Like full on making one of them a cis dude. You’d be justifiably furious. Let me introduce you to Jughead from the Archie comics.

For those who are unaware, in the comics? JUGHEAD IS CONFIRMED ACE. FULL OUT ACE.

Do you understand how exciting this was for ace folks? Let me just show you how much this meant to us.

That’s just a few of the reactions to this reveal. I vividly remember when the issue dropped because like. THAT IS JUGHEAD. JUGHEAD FROM ONE OF THE MOST WELL KNOWN COMICS IN THE WESTERN WORLD. DO I NEED TO SAY MORE?

Yes. Yes I do, but not because I’m happy.

There’s a little show called Riverdale. You may have heard of how wild it is. That isn’t a compliment. Of course Jughead would have to be there, however so there was the potential of an on screen discussion of his asexuality. It was a full discussion in the comic, so I (and many others) held our breath.

Alas, it was not meant to be. They totally ignored his orientation, and made him straight.

Jughead being ace wasn’t just a popular headcanon. He was CONFIRMED ace. Are you starting to see why we aren’t just “Being dramatic?” 

As much as I dislike Hazbin Hotel, you know what I do like? I LIKE THAT ALASTOR IS WORD OF GOD CONFIRMED TOUCH-REPULSED ARO/ACE. You know what I don’t like? That the tiniest FRACTION of fanworks involving him seem to care about addressing it. 

I love The Magnus Archives. I love that John is CONFIRMED ACE. WORD OF GOD CONFIRMED. You know what I hate? How often I find that people just...don’t care. 

Once more, if this happened to any other confirmed LGBT+ character, you would be LIVID. 

So no. I am not overreacting. This is a PROBLEM. One that you don’t care to address, seemingly. 

In conclusion, you’re not just an asshole. You’re a MASSIVE asshole. You make jokes about the straights CONSTANTLY. Ace’s should have every right to mock the shit out of general fandom’s hyperfixation on making everyone h0rny. I will not be accepting criticism, but you’re welcome to try.

[comingoutofthecauldron]

let’s talk about lesbophobia in fandom

i don’t like to use the word “lesbophobia” unironically because of all the gross radfem terfy connotations, so i will clarify right off the bat that i am neither a terf nor an aphobe and that if you are i want you off my blog like, right now. unfortunately, the meaning of lesbophobia has been so warped by alt right lesbians that seeing it in an unironic context makes me, a lesbian, uncomfortable, which speaks volumes in itself. so to clarify, lesbophobia is essentially homophobia with a pinch of sexism thrown into the mix, and it’s running rampant in supposed safe spaces and, more relevantly, fandom. 

/i’d also like to clarify that i’m not only speaking on lesbophobia, but also the general disgust and disdain for all wlw in fandom, and am using it as a sort of umbrella term/

lesbophobia and disdain for wlw has been around forever, but whilst gay positivity, mlm and mlm ships have been steadily increasing in popularity within fandom over time, wlw and wlw ships have remained perpetual underdogs. why? because lesbophobia has become a fandom within itself. both in and outside of fandom, we see instances of casual lesbophobia every single day—from aggression towards wlw to something as simple and prevalent as the complete and utter lack of sapphic ships and characters in media. hatred of lesbians and wlw is practically a trend, and it’s seeping in through the cracks of fandoms who are already facing issues with minorities and marginalized groups (i.e. racism, ableism). if you honestly think that lesbophobia isn’t prevalent as hell in fandom right now, you’re either not a wlw, you’re not all that involved in fandom, or you’re dumb as shit. 

just look at ships. in almost every single fandom, the ratio of mlm ships to sapphic ships is ridiculously unbalanced. people are quick to ship male characters who so much as smile at each other (and i don’t condemn that) but would never do the same for two women—even on the rare occasion that the ship is actually canon. i once wrote a wlw fanfic for a [predominantly straight] fandom, and received messages like this gem:

on the flip side of that, if there is a sapphic ship in canon or fanon, it is often fetishized and sexualised to a disturbing degree. there will be double the amount of nsfw art and fics, and ninety percent of it will be derogatory and fetishized as hell. having been actively involved in several fandoms over the past few years (and currently a content creator in one), i’ve seen instances of all this hundreds of times. people go crazy for mlm ships, but the second you say you ship/prefer a wlw ship, there’s always someone at the ready with, “i think all ships are great!” or “it’s not a contest” or “i prefer [insert m/m or m/f ship] actually” or “they’re my brotp!/why can’t you just let them be friends?”. not only do lesbians and wlw not get to have any rep in media, any rep that they try to create for themselves in fandom just gets attacked or ruined. this is so detrimental not only to all wlw, but especially to younger wlw who will end up being indoctrinated into this belief that their sexuality is something dirty, something that can never be tender and sweet but rather something that deserves to be preyed upon. 

building on that, let’s talk about engagement. i run an instagram account (where i have a significantly bigger following) as well as this blog for my fandom, where i post the content i create (mainly text posts). when i first started creating content, i made a lot for a relatively unpopular wlw ship, in which both girls are canonically romantically involved with a dude—though one of them is canonically pan. their canonical m/f ships are both very popular, and i noticed that my engagement was dropping every time i posted them, so i eventually just stopped. it wasn’t even a conscious decision; i merely resigned myself to the fact that the fandom didn’t want to see sapphic ships, and some people would even go as far as to condemn them. for reference, my instagram posts get an average of about 500 likes per post (popular ones usually exceeding 1k), but when i post this ship, my engagement drops to about 250 likes. similarly, my tumblr text posts have an average of about 140 notes per post (popular ones usually reaching up to 750), but my wlw content rarely surpasses 100. this just feeds the cycle of wlw never getting rep: if, like me, content creators become disincentivised by the lack of engagement with their sapphic content, they’re more likely to stop making/posting it, leading to further lack of rep—and when new content creators try to rectify that, they face the same problems. 

and then, of course, there’s the treatment of actual wlw in fandom. my best example of this is when my friend and i made an anti account on instagram (the first instagram anti account in that fandom), our bio saying something like “salty and bitter lesbians being salty and bitter”, and received an onslaught of lesbophobic insults and threats from angry stans within hours. (tw: r*pe) one commenter even went as far as to tell us that they wanted us to get r*ped. as well as this, i’ve seen so many instances of people using slurs against lesbians in arguments/in anons, often for no apparent reason other than they feel that they have the right. when i first mentioned i was a lesbian on instagram, my account only had about 200 followers, and within a day i lost 20. i also lose followers whenever i post f/f ships, not quite to that extent but enough for it to be noticeable, on top of the aforementioned engagement dips. in the face of all this adversity, i think a lot of wlw turn to mlm ships because they’re the closest thing we have to actual rep, but when we do we get accused of fetishizing them by the same people who fetishize us. there’s an endless list of double standards that non-wlw have been upholding for years, and i can firmly say that i’m really fucking sick of it. because of our sexuality, we will never be allowed to enjoy something without someone labelling it or us as dirty or otherwise problematic, when to them, the only problematic thing about us is that we aren’t pleasing men. 

as i mentioned before, the lack of rep for wlw in media is appallingly consistent, and part of that stems from tokenism. in a lot of modern mainstream media, you’ll have one, maybe two lgbt characters, and nine times out of ten those characters are white cis male gays. of course, there are exceptions to this, but generally, that’s it. script writers and authors (especially cishets) seem to have this mentality of, “oh, well, we gave them one, that’s sure to be enough!”, which means that on the off chance you do get your gay rep, the likelihood of also receiving wlw or any other kind of rep becomes practically non-existant. this belief that all marginalized groups are the same and that one represents all is what leads to misrepresentation on top of lack of rep, which is what makes tokenism so dangerous. if you treat your only gay character badly, you are essentially treating every single gay person badly in that universe. so not only is lesbophobia and disdain for wlw harmful to sapphic women via their exclusion in media, it’s also harming those minorities who do get rep. when people try to defend lesbophobic source material, that’s when fandom starts to get toxic. the need for critical thinking has never been more apparent and it has also never been less appeased—and wlw are getting hit hard by it, as always.

finally, a pretty big driving factor of lesbophobia is, ironically, lesbians. my lesbian friends and i often joke that though everyone seems to hate us, no one hates lesbians more than lesbians do. though i’d say it’s most prevalent on tumblr, i see traces of it all over the internet. the growth of alt right lesbian movements is not only reinforcing hatred for lesbians, but also reinforcing hatred for bi and pan women. here you have these terrible lesbians using their platforms to express their disgust for bi/pan women, for aces and aros, for trans women/nb lesbians, and people see them and say, “gosh, lesbians are just awful.” and just like that, all of us are evil. occasionally, lesbian blogs that i follow get put on terf blocklists for no other reason than the fact that they have “lesbian” in their bio. and the lesbians that actually deserve to be on those blocklists? they’re too busy spewing misinformation about trans women and bi women to care, boosted up by their alt right friends in an ever-expanding movement. i’ve found that this heavily influences fandom on tumblr, lesbians often getting branded as “biphobic” when they hc a female character as a lesbian rather than bi or pan. this criticism of both lesbians and wlw by lesbians and non-wlw alike only ever allows lesbophobia to grow, both in and out of fandom. that said, lesbians aren’t to blame for their own discrimination; rather, many of us have been conditioned into subconsciously endorsing it after spending our entire lives hearing heterosexual platitudes about lesbians and sapphic relationships. homophobic cishets are and always have been the nexus of this oppression—the only difference is that now they can hide behind alt right lesbians.

one thing has been made apparent to me throughout my time in fandom, and that thing is that no one likes to see men “underrepresented”. people hate sapphic ships and lesbians so much because there is no room for men, and men Do Not Like That. so, like the worms that they are, they slither their way in, be it through fetishization or condemnation of wlw characters and ships, and they ruin whatever good things we have going for us. the thing about worms, though, is that they’re easy enough to crush if you’re wearing the right shoes.

so to all my bi/pan gals and lesbian pals: put on your doc martens, because we’ve got ourselves some lesbophobes to stomp on. 

[trailerparkbubbs]

I told you that first because it must be a very nice movie from the trailer and second because... Well Shelley Thompson is an important voice for the LGBT+ canadian community and I'm pretty sure she would have never accepted to have a role in depicting Donna as a bad character because of her transness in TBP... Also when Donna goes to jail she's put in the female jail and Lahey saying she's not a real woman was just the talking of a drunk bastard.

All of this to say that I'm quite sure the Boys aren't transphobic themselves, but their characters could be a little bit... After all they're uneducated criminal "white trash"

I don’t really think Shelly Thompson having a trans son/working on a project with good trans rep automatically alleviates everyone on Trailer Park Boys of being transphobic (especially unintentionally, or in ways that Shelley Thompson would have no control over). I’m not trans and I can’t speak for trans people, but here’s what I know about Donna: she’s a trans woman played by (to my knowledge) a cis man. Her transness/genderfluidity (in season eight) is referred to by Don saying stuff like “I have a sister…. Oh but she’s dead” and is presented more like (an also inaccurate portrayal of) bpd or some other mental disorder resulting from “Don” grieving and trying to keep a loved one alive than her being trans – for instance, nobody ever uses terminology like “trans” or “genderfluid”, and while you don’t necessarily have to do that in order to have respectful representation, it might have helped to make it really clear that’s what they were going for. She’s made a villain in season ten along with Barb (who’s suddenly showing interest in woman, and dressing much more like a stereotypical lesbian, both of which she stops doing after she becomes nice again) and a character who is basically just a stock butch lesbian and also the most straight up evil character we’ve ever seen with literally no redeeming features.

Also, the stuff I mentioned in my previous post, which I’ll reiterate here for anyone who doesn’t feel like going back: the boys have made a couple of comments on their podcast that come across as being ignorant if not outright transphobic, such as repeatedly misgendering Caitlin Jenner after establishing that she’s a trans woman (and saying quote “he turned into a woman” to describe her coming out) and Bubbles casually using a transphobic slur at one point.

Listen, again, I’m not trans, and I’m not an authority on trans rep. I’m absolutely not here to tell anyone they shouldn’t watch or enjoy the show. All I’m saying is that I personally felt uncomfortable with the way Donna was presented, and the way the boys talk about trans people, and it feels like they could have done more research, been more respectful, and ideally had an actual trans/genderfluid actor playing their trans/genderfluid character. I’m glad Shelley Thompson is creating a nice movie with good trans rep, and I’m glad to hear Robb Wells is involved. Maybe he’ll learn some things he didn’t know, and they can all put in an effort to do better in the future.

[19-bellwether]

"Qrow can't be in a gay relationship because he's never showed interest in men before."

“Blake showed interest in Sun, so her feelings for Yang don’t make sense.”

This may be months overdue, but I want to address this idea that’s pushed by some members of the fandom. Even though one of the characters I mentioned didn't follow the path many hoped for, I still think it's important to refute this argument because it's a bad take that's been used to criticize any queer representation in any fandom.

When this argument crops up (and isn't just made in bad faith), it usually follows the logic that a character suddenly having a same sex love interest or LGBT+ identity is bad writing. “It should have been hinted at before,” or “they suddenly changed a character.” On the surface, it almost seems logical. If you’re going to make a major development in a character, aren’t you supposed to build up to it?

Except that’s not how a queer identity works in real life, and that should be reflected in fiction. People are who they are for no reason at all. The key flaw in this argument is that it assumes being straight is the default. It’s ‘divergent’ from the norm, and thus must be justified. This simply isn’t true. It’s someone expressing an aspect of their identity they always had, not someone acting out of character. 

No one questioned when Qrow flirted with a waitress or Blake blushed at Sun, but the moment these characters potentially showed interest in someone of the same gender, the criticisms started rolling out. Critics didn’t see these as bisexual characters acting on their feelings, they saw these as straight characters being forced into being gay (and boy do critics love to use the word “forced” in these discussions). Similarly, a character showing interest in the opposite sex doesn’t disqualify them from having a same sex interest at another time. I frequently see this line of thinking used to argue that Weiss, Qrow, Jaune, and others MUST be straight, hearkening back to their idea that being straight is the default setting.

It’s is 100% acceptable for a character to not have shown signs of being queer beforehand. Maybe they were hiding it. Maybe they didn’t know. Maybe it simply never came up. But it’s never bad writing. Unless a piece of media is specifically about someone struggling with their identity, there’s no argument to be made against a character suddenly showing a non-straight sexuality. In most cases, the same is true of being non-cis as well. Whether dissenters realize it or not, they’re essentially arguing that queer people deserve less simply because we make up less of the population.

Regarding Fair Game, if Clover were a woman I bet we’d have seen a different response to people shipping them. People shipped Qrow and Winter to hell and back after one episode of drunken, angry banter after all. If the show has Yang and Blake officially start dating in Volume 8, then there’d be nothing wrong with it. You can argue whether or not it was well written to your heart’s content, but arguing against two men or two women entering a relationship because “it came out of nowhere” is ignorant at best and homophobic at worst.

TL;DR There is nothing wrong with characters like Qrow and Blake being interested in the same sex because that’s just how sexuality works, and that applies to nearly every queer rep in media. The only people who say otherwise are wearing heteronormativity on their sleeves.

(And yes, there are times where representation is handled poorly such as Dumbledore's homosexuality being confirmed on Twitter but never in the books or movies where it can actually be seen. That’s a different topic altogether that doesn’t nullify this one.)

[ladyalienist]

Rainbow walls and shame

I have a thing I need to get off my chest. It's been there for three days and half and it's now time to write about it.

So. I grew up in a pretty conservative enviroinment - in a rather complicated way, but generally speaking conservative. In early 2000s I barely knew what a gay man or a lesbian were and they were talked about with pity at best and open scorn at usual.

In 2005 a little girl joined my class. She had an incredible black mane of beautiful curls, a radiant smile, green eyes and an adorable accent. I was a bullied child - a full outcast, ostracized by everyone, frowned upon even by teachers, a disappointment in anything I tried. And this stunning creature chose me to be her first friend in class.

I felt blessed by some divine force whose goodness could not be questioned - my gratitude to her almost felt like worship. And I noticed that the feelings I had were not what one was supposed to have towards a friend. I was jealous when she talked to other girls in class (I also threw a rage fit I'm still ashamed of). I couldn't bear the thought of her having a boyfriend and leaving me alone again - yes, having a boyfriend was the big deal even then, in fucking elementary school.

So, being the curious and introspection-oriented child I was, I asked myself the dreaded question:

Am I a Lesbian?

Mind you: I was nine.

Yet I laid in bed, tense, unable to sleep (I started having disordered sleep patterns there), tormented by that terrible question. Am I a lesbian? I can't be one. I love my male crush (a boy in my class I was all over for five years and who never glanced at me twice and who's now a drug addict but that's another story). I can't be a lesbian. There's already too much wrongness in me.

Conceal, don't feel. Don't let them know.

I managed to repress what I felt for other nine years - I spent my teenage years in a constant state of confusion towards other girls, because they were so pretty and I wanted to be like them (I'm not pretty in the slightest, I'm not attractive, and it was a problem back then), but when at night I dreamed of kissing them it was very weird. Oh well, sixteen years old me rationalized, must be that I want their boyfriend and since he actually has a repulsive personality (that's another story again) it's easier to imagine having something soft with them. But I'm straight. Totally straight. The fact that sex with boys feels awful is not a problem.

I was a teen, teens tend to not be very good at rationalizing things.

At eighteen I could not lie to myself any longer: I was in love with another girl. Now I could write an entire book about her and I - but that would be beside the point.

I laid in bed again, tears rolling silently down.

I am bisexual.

Now: I was not that terrified child anymore. I had been exposed to LGBT activism, I fully supported gay rights and gay people. My first "boyfriend" (another complicated story) was openly bisexual and I had supported him.

Yet it took me some time to come to terms with it for many reasons. I'm telling only the main two. One was: if I am part of the community, then my support for it when I told everyone I was straight as an arrow becomes a little hypocritical (teen black-or-white reasoning). The other: I cannot have a meaningful relationship with a boy, how am I ever supposed to achieve anything with a girl? The fact that the main reasons I couldn't have a nice boyfriend was that boys suck, or just that a life can be full even without romantic relationships, was unthinkable back then.

You see what was present at nine but absent at eighteen?

Shame.

I was not ashamed of myself or my sexuality. Not at all. I was not wrong for being bisexual - I actually thought it might be the least wrong thing with me.

So, now the actual post begins:

Monday was International Day Against Homophobia And Its Various Declinations. My social media feed was flooded with rainbows and tearful posts about LGBTQ+ youth and LGBTQ+ rights and whatever, blah, blah. From well-meaning people, let's be really clear.

I stayed silent, for I was feeling nothing but tired and ashamed. Tired - I want this to end. I want this to be a day for LGB, a day to actually speak about us, about our history, and not made it all about the TQ+. I want an honest conversation, I'm tired with this performative, shallow, useless rainbow wall. Ashamed - because I know how much the B, or at least a subset of people self-identifying as B, has its own responsibility in the loss of meaning of everything aimed at LGB.

I feel ashamed everytime I think a man is attractive and I would be lying if I said it doesn't happen (even when it comes to just celebrities, given also the unusually unsocial historical period). I feel lost when I find myself fantasizing about having a boyfriend - rationally I know I can never achieve a good relationship with a man, but wouldn't it be nice to just find one who can do the impossible? I'm not immune to my socialization. Even in radfem spaces it's hard to talk about it because it's hard to find a balance between male-pandering, I don't want to offend attitude and straight up rudeness.

At the same time I'd like a girlfriend - and I don't feel worthy of being loved of a woman who's amazing enough to be my romantic interest. I don't feel ready, I don't feel capable.

My bisexuality really feels like half-and-half. Like I can never be fully committed to someone (thanks to way too much of bisexual rep), I can never be fully described, I can never be fully understood. Even talking to fellow bisexuals sometimes is of no help, let alone to straight or homosexual people. I sometimes feel like I exist only as a porn fantasy - and I personally can't be that either because let's be clear no man wants a threesome with me (which is something I'm currently really glad of). I'm but a series of mismatched parts and desires that can never be accomplished - and that I can't talk about in this climate, because straights don't want to hear about us experiencing SSA and gays are rightly unwilling to hear about us experiencing OSA. And when you find the "inclusive" space it's all about dyed-haired queerios who LARP as gays and claim that "cis gays are gross" in the same sentence.

I cannot say I'm bisexual in a "normie" space because of fetishization and stereotypes - I cannot say I'm bisexual in LGBTQ+ spaces because anything is about the queerios - I cannot say I'm bisexual in other spaces because of this... because of that...

Maybe it's just a personal experience that still stems from feeling that there is a lot wrong with me. I have no clue.

But I really wished I could talk about how I feel openly, with no shame. And the very same community who should have made me proud of what I am is making me feel ashamed.

I don't know. I just needed to write it off.

[starkey]

[Spoilers for The Haunting of Bly Manor!]

I know everyone is super loving Bly Manor cause ~80′s gays~!!! but some stuff about it sat really bad for me so I’m gonna try to verbalise it. Obviously if you loved it and aren't vibing with a critical analysis I'm not offended if you don't read lol. Also I’m not trying to say that there’s anything wrong with liking it! I just...didn’t, and I want to think about why, for a sec. (Sorry this got a bit long)

I think part of my problem is that I count Hill House as one of my favourite shows ever and I had ridiculously high hopes for Bly Manor, which probably couldn't ever have been fully realised. And there was actually a lot about it that I liked, especially at the begining. I thought the kids were great, and I loved the core group of Mrs Grose, Owen, Dani and Jamie. I liked the fact that the Henry Wingrave element was expanded upon, and I liked the complexity of Rebecca and Peter, and the room it gave them to be fully realised human beings. I quite enjoyed that they kept to the Hill House ghost mythology - that ghosts are lost in time but fixed in place, and that they jump from memory to memory, and haunt the people that they care about without knowing. But there were lots of things I wasn't so keen on...

Until the last episode my issues were mainly that it felt a bit...lazy? I can't stress it enough but the british accents were really really bad. Old!Jamie’s accent was deeply unbelievable and jarring, as was Henry Wingrave's, and although Peter’s accent was passable (I assume because the actor is English and not American like the others) it still didn’t match his mothers, or his ‘background’ - i.e. it sounded like a private school Edinburgh accent, not a Glasgow kid dragged up through poverty in the scheme - and yes there is a significant difference in those accents. I appreciate there’s a degree of privilege at play here - I’m used to the BBC producing high quality television where these details aren’t messed about with, and the production of Bly Manor was thoroughly American, but to put it in perspective, it would be like... if a character had a deep south dirt-poor Louisiana upbringing and spoke like somebody from a private school in Virginia. Other details also felt off - Rebecca’s costumes all seemed weirdly 2020-adjacent, none of the fashion or ancillary details seemed to match the UK in the 80s (which has a distinct feel), and the house that Peter returned to on his ‘memory bumps’ looked much more like an LA condo than a Scottish council house. Really, they should have just set it in America, because it felt more American than British, and they clearly didn't have any British people involved in the production.

I really didn't enjoy the narrative framing device of 'someone telling a story to a group of people at a party'. It makes sense in the Turn of the Screw, because the narrator is reading from a document written at the time of the events, so the narration becomes a first person one where the degree of detail is logically accounted for. In this take, the story alternated from being one which made sense - us just watching the characters move around normally - to one in which 'Jamie' (who’d apparently had a complete personality transplant that had turned her from a feisty northern lesbian into a coy, mysterious victorian englishwoman with a severe accent problem) adopted a falsely old-fashioned manner and told the wedding guests a ten hour long story about a haunted house.  And somehow neither Flora nor Miles recognised any part of this story in the least, in spite of what must have been overwhelming similarities? It was very jarring.  

I also kept waiting for a twist on a level with Hill House, but never got one. The big twist about Mrs Grose was, I thought, obvious from almost the first episode. I mean the woman didn’t eat or drink anything and spent most of her time confused about where she was, I thought it was fairly clear that she was a ghost. And yeah, I suppose because I’ve read the book I was never in any doubt that Peter was already dead. The ghosts in the background were much less spooky than in Hill House. They stood around in broad daylight while the characters talked and joked and it kind of felt like the ghosts had wandered in by accident and felt too awkward to leave. I really liked how spooky Hill House was - even apart from the jump scares I thought the psychological elements and the open discussion of death and grief was really affecting. I didn’t feel that at all in Bly Manor, and by the time we found out the details of Mrs Grose’s death, I’d already come to terms with it.  But all of this would have been fine, if it hadn’t been for the last episode.

I really really didn’t enjoy the bury your gays ending. And I’m not even usually against this in principle! I think in a dark/horror context, where there’s implied to be an ever-present threat of character death, it’s unreasonable to expect that no characters will die or experience tragedy - and in cases where there’s abundant LGBT rep some of those characters will by necessity not be cis/straight. So I don’t have a problem with gay characters meeting tragic or dark ends, as a general rule, particularly when it serves a narrative purpose and isn’t gratuitous. My problem here was in the manner and necessity of that death.

There were ways in which Dani could have died in this story that I would have felt were narratively meaningful and cathartic, but the manner in which she did die failed to hit those beats for me. This is a story in which two women in the 80's fall in love and are doomed by the world around them (we're already in Meryl Streep 'groundbreaking' territory here, in terms of metaphor). They know death is coming for them, that it will likely destroy them both, that they won't have an opportunity to grow old together, that eventually one day it will catch them and everything will be over - they're on borrowed time, and they spend a lot of that time looking over their shoulders waiting for shit to break bad. In the end, they're destroyed by a force in Dani's body/mind that she can't fight, that she can't win against, and the spectre of which haunts her through the years. Like... the obvious parallel here is mental health, and suicide - they even go out of their way to feature that classic heartsink moment with the overflowing bath. And to me, any story that has a message of 'no matter how strong you are, no matter how much love you have and give, or how beautiful the life you've built is, eventually the dark forces in your mind will Get You and it'll probably be before you make it to middle age' is... really shitty. The other echo that struck me was the HIV/AIDS crisis - obviously wlw were relatively spared from this, in comparison to mlm, but it still carries a cultural legacy of pain and trauma, and I really didn't need this show to grind down on that for me.

And the thing is... in the original story, the governess doesn't even die! Miles does, so maybe there's an argument here that Dani sacrificed herself in exchange for Miles's life in this retelling, but I'm still struck by this element of, like... they added this in! They chose to do this! Only one character dies in the course of this show (with Mrs Grose dying before the show starts) and it's the gay woman?? Why?? What did it show?? Why was it necessary?

Not to mention, the 'epilogue' scene paints Jamie as being very lonely and isolated. I'm not sure why the children didn't recognise ANY elements of this story from their past - even assuming they forgot the ghostly elements of their childhood, they should be able to see the similarities in the characters, but the scene also seems to imply that Jamie really isn't very close to Miles and Flora, and that she doesn't even really get to have a relationship with them as adults, in spite of losing everything to protect them, and not having any family of her own.

Almost everybody else gets a happy ending, but Jamie ends the night of the epilogue standing alone at a table, with the love of her life dead in a cursed lake, doomed to spend eternity watching over a crumbling house, and idk to me? that kind of sucked.

[abanomath]

DC’s Tone Deafness

So I don’t really like ranting or being negative, but DC Universe recently released an article to celebrate pride month about the Top 5 canon and non-canon LGBTQA+ relationships in Young Justice.

And the tone deafness is just off the charts. Like most of the world, I’m not American so I needed someone to screen-cap the actual article for me. I’m going to organize my thoughts and go down below.

General

For one, its pretty obvious the writer didn’t look at the source material. This article sounds like it was written by someone filled in on the basics and told to write a good PR article for DC.

There are a lot of little details in the story, such as when the writer claims that they “showcased even more LGBTQA+ protagonists in season 3″ implying they had previously, which they hadn’t. One character was implied to be bisexual in the comics, never on screen, but more on that below. Season 3 was the first LGBTQA+ rep for the show.

Also its always a bit tone deaf when in an article celebrating LGBTQA+ and diversity in your show, that you have a list of 5 “ships”, of which only ONE is actually a couple in canon. Not only did they need to resort to non-canon ones, they included people that can’t be called a “ship” or couple.

1. Kaldur/Wyynde

This is the only actual LGBTQA+ couple on the list that is canon in the show, and I liked them. But I can’t deny that Kaldur who was a main cast member for the past two season’s had a vastly reduced role (compared to straight cis white characters like Dick and Conner). He was basically written out of the first half of the season, and then his relationship was really present for 1.5 - 2 episodes max. This in a season that was marked with excessive attention given to heterosexual relationships (like seriously, basically every character was in some form of relationship on-screen). The one healthy LGBTQA relationship got less attention than Black Lightning and Dr. Jace’s romance, something that ultimately went nowhere, Dick/Barbara, even Megan/Conner when Megan was also essentially written out of the season.

2. Marie Logan and Rita Farr

They really dug deep for this “ship”. Ironically, they start this by talking about the scene in Young Justice #25, when Queen B’s powers work on Garfield’s mother. This was the first implication her being bisexual. And of course, she also dies in this scene, so starting off with a “Bury your gays” trope where Marie’s queerness literally got her killed and orphaned her son.

There isn’t much more to say about this ship, because it literally doesn’t exist. The shipping community for this is so small you have to go digging deep into tags to find even hints of it. The article even basically says this, posing the ship as a question. As being interesting. (Does it count as Bury Your Gays when both woman are dead before their relationship is even hinted at?)

In other words this article about celebrating LGBTQA ships literally had to try and CREATE A SHIP to reach 5 ships. Despite the fact there are plenty of LGBTQ fanon ships (Birdflash being the most prominent one left off the list). It really hits at the thing I said above, this is a “write us a good PR article with the barest amount of effort put into it” situation.

3. Harper Row and Halo

Oh boy don’t get me started on this. There are so many problems with how they did Halo this season, she is basically tone deaf personified. (For the purpose of this rant, I’ll be using the “she” pronouns for Halo, because I have no choice but to assume they are her preference, unless the show purposely spent the entire season mis-gendering her, but I don’t think her characterization really supports that she prefers “her/she”).

I’ve had a problem with Halo from the start, because she is basically an attempt for the writers to shallowly include representation without having to actually deal with it. She is Muslim representation, but not actually Muslim (as she confirms on the show). She wears the Hijab because she feels like it. She is genderqueer, but they never once talk about her pronouns. She refers to herself as “not feeling like a boy or a girl” and constantly refers to herself in the third person, but everyone uses “she/her” pronouns without asking her. They even have a scene where she informs them she is genderqueer, and its never brought up again without asking any actual follow up questions or awareness. They also infantalize and treat her as a little girl.

Additionally, she falls into one of my greatest pet peeves - she is genderqueer but for fantasy-scifi reasons. For those that follow genderqueer or transgender characters in media, this is a very common trope. Essentially, the trope is when someones gender identity is caused by/determined from otherworldly experiences.

This trope bugs me because it completely undermines the point of representation. Representation in media is supposed to show the audience that these are natural human experiences and that people like this exist and are normal. But the trope ensures that the experiences are not normal human experiences.

(and don’t even get me started on the fact that this show has made New Genesis tech gendered before, with Sphere. And even gender the bioship in the same season they pull this for Halo).

Lastly, she also falls within the “promiscuous bisexual” trope, with the very kiss this article praises as THE FIRST LGBT KISS ON SCREEN for the show. This is a problematic trope that DC seems to love. Basically, this scene has Halo cheating on her boyfriend with another young classmate, engaging in two kisses with her.

Now I’m not going to say that all LGBTQA+ relationships need to be wholesome one true loves. Problematic behaviour like Halo and Harper’s is a story telling tool. But the fact that the LGBTQA+ was told going into the season there would be LGBT rep so they should watch, and this was the first rep we got 18 episodes into the season? It felt a bit like a slap in the face. They could’ve had her break up with Brion beforehand, or any number of different ways that would even keep the scene in tact.

And the relationship doesn’t really go anywhere anyways. Harper doesn’t really remain part of the season going forward, Halo and her boyfriend continue their relationship after it was revealed until the end of the season.

This is ultimately my problem with Halo. There are a few tropes that basically are summed up as “writers put all their diversity into one character” which is basically what Halo is. Each of these qualities, from faith to gender identity to sexual orientation could’ve been a fleshed out character arc (oh! I forgot to mention she also falls into the “My gender identity isn’t cis, so my sexual orientation is also bi/pan/gay” trope). Instead all the diverse qualities of Halo are addressed shallowly as the show-runners pat themselves on the back.

4. Bluepulse

I’ve ranted a lot so I’m not going to go crazy on this point. You can probably find tons of posts about the drama between Bluepulse Shippers and the show, which again makes their inclusion kind of tone-deaf. Bluepulse shippers have been called disgusting by the fandom for the three year age gap, an age gap that was never confirmed on screen and you had to go digging in Greg’s personal message board to know (resulting in many people shipping them not knowing their ages at all).

In addition, the showrunners made it clear they did not like this ship over the several years the show has been off the air. And in Season 3 they give Jaime a girlfriend….who is a lesbian in the comics. Now Traci and Jaime did date in the comics before she came out, and this is another Earth. But when the sole purpose of their relationship being on screen was to tell the audience that bluepulse wasn’t happening, choosing a lesbian character to play the cis straight girlfriend is a bit of a slap in the face. again.

5. Bart Allen and Eduardo

Queerbaiting, nuff said.

For those not in the know, Ed is a character introduced as a runaway in Season 2, but he doesn’t really interact with Bart until mid-season 3. There is an episode where a group of heroes go to a carnival, and Ed and Bart appear to be on a date. They are in a group with all couples, except for Virgil. Virgil laments being the only person there without a significant other, implying that Bart and Ed are together. Additionally, Bart and Ed do everything that the other couples do together. It was pretty heavy-handed that the couples were there on dates.

And fans liked this! Even if Bluepulse wasn’t happening, Bart may still be bisexual or gay. This was made worse by Greg retweeting and liking Ed/Bart content, and not giving a straight answer on whether they were dating.

Which obviously, creates the expectation among LGBTQA+ fans that they will get together. They don’t. And later at a convention, one of the main writers (not Greg) said something like “its funny how the fans see relationships between characters differently from our intent” when asked a question about them. Essentially confirming that yeah, they didn’t have any actual content for them planned anyway. Though they did have an addendum that they may build on the fan reception/view of the relationship in the future (basically saying, maybe they’ll be canon).

As much as I’d like to be optimistic that they actually will get together and we’ll get a LGBTQ relationship that is in the spotlight for once, I’m not. I’ll be happy to be proved wrong on this point.

And that was my TEDtalk about how tone-deaf DC patting themselves on the back for LGBTQA+ content in Young Justice is. Especially when other animated shows do so much better with fewer episodes and screen time.

[luciferbecons]

You're a trans female. A biological female who identifies as a man. You're also straight. Opposite sex attraction is straight. You're bad LGBT rep because you fetishize and disrespect gay men, trans homosexuals who made this community without you transhets, and the same sex attraction this community was founded over. Repulsive.

I don’t know how long this has been in my ask box because I haven’t checked it in a good few years maybe even 5 years but I wanted to address this ignorant and phobic behaviour.

1. I am a transMan. A trans man is a female a birth who transitions to become a man. That is what I am.

A transfemale is someone born male at birth who becomes female. Not the other way round like you claim it to be. A simple google will even show that you are wrong about that.

Also even if a person wears make up and female clothing and the like they are still who they claim to be. Biological sex and gender identity and self expression are not interlinked.

2. I am gay. As we established in point 1 I am a man. I am sexually and romantically attracted to men. Therefore I am gay. What gender I was before does not mean I’m any less gay than a Cis gay man.

3. You say I’m “a bad Trans rep because I fetishize and disrespect gay men, Trans homosexuals who made this community” “and the same sex attraction this community was founded over.”

I never claim to be a Trans representative. (I did run to be the Trans Rep at my uni but I didn’t win so you can’t even claim that I was the trans rep there.) I am just trying to live my life.

I do not fetishise and disrespect gay men. I support and love gay men. I have fought for gay and trans rights and I have worked towards a better future for us. I worked with Stonewall as part of their youth activist program, I worked with my community when I was doing A levels to improve aware and understanding of the lgbt community and what we go through every day. I worked on a project for my local county to help doctors understand what a typical life for trans people is. And I still do magazine interviews to help trans men even though my health has deteriorated since I was at school.

4. And finally you call me Repulsive. You have been disrespectful to me and even though you don’t agree with the labels I choose to label myself as that does not mean that you get to call another person repulsive. I am a person trying to live my life. If you don’t like that or don’t agree with it then click away from my page.

[pointlesstrashyexistence]

Ammonite - Just Because We Want Historical WLW Rep Doesn’t Mean You Should Intentionally, Innacurately, Retell The Story of Someone’s Life

So I see some people talking about how Lee is a gay man and has made another movie about queer relationships with great sensitivity. I haven’t seen it yet, but I feel like people are missing the big picture using this as an excuse. The problem isn’t so much that Lee is a man as gay men also understand what it’s like to be fetishized and oversexualized. The problem is that at the end of the day, Ammonite is a Hollywood movie, and Hollywood movies are generally made for white, cis, straight audiences, no matter how much the director tries to stray from this. Even though it’s being made and largely produced in Britain, it’s being distributed by Lionsgate, which isn’t going to risk this movie not doing well. Let’s then compare it to its predecessor, POALOF, a non-Hollywood movie about two women in love, directed by a lesbian and featuring at least IRL lesbian actress who understood the importance of their performances and this movie for other queer women. Despite its praise, it got no major noms. Ammonite only just released its trailer and is already an unequivocal Oscar bait movie, in part because of Kate Winslet and, to a lesser degree, Saorsie Ronan. Kate Winslet never stars in any role unless it is undeniable Oscar bait, and for straight actors, LGBT roles played by non-LGBT members are almost always big Oscar roles. Even though Saorsie Ronan identifies as an ally, she’s still a straight women portraying a queer character and she has consistently been nominated for her acting or been in nominated movies. Either way, with straight actors, especially straight female actors portraying queer women, there is always the risk that they oversexualize the characters rather than focus on the relationship. You can have sexual tension, you can have sexually charged scenes where there is no sex. But the first big budget Hollywood movie that is focused on two queer women’s romantic relationship stars two straight women and just had to have a sex scene, because Hollywood still doesn’t know how to stop sexualizing women, and teenaged girls, which means that it also doesn’t understand how to not make images of queer women that aren’t for male consumption.

Also, I haven’t even gotten to the fact that trying to make a biopic about any historical figures that centers around their sexuality is always risky when we’re not sure if they were queer or not. Yes, unless it’s like a police record that has something to do with homosexuality or first hand records written in the diaries or private letters, no one ever has 100% certainty, but that doesn’t mean we immediately jump to assuming they were queer just bc they didn’t marry and were mainly surrounded by their own gender. No one can actually look at the relationship between IRL Mary Anning, played by Winslet, and Charlotte Murchison, played by Ronan, and claim there were romantic undertones that could point to a relationship. And the accuracy of the film already is under question when they for some reason switched the ages of Murchison and Anning so Anning is being played by a woman almost 20 years older than the actress playing Murchison, when in reality Murchison was at least 10 years older than Anning. Also, it’s really weird that the director made Murchison seem unhappy for no reason when she was a rather popular figure, was generally viewed as quite happy despite her chronic health issues, came from money, had a good relationship with her husband as spouses and as professional partners traveling and studying geology, had friends, socialized and played hostess to ensure funding for the sciences, and made a space for herself in academia. And that he made Murchison seemingly unknowledgable in fossils even though she had a maintained collection she purchased and hunted for while on geological studies with her husband that was so impressive parts of it were referenced in later publications. I understand wanting to find figures like yourself, but what might be attempting to completely rewrite the lives of two people who were notably close friends isn’t the answer to finding representation and is probably just as bad as straight people intentionally rewriting the histories of queer relatives so no one actually knew they weren’t straight or cis. Even if the director rightfully claims that history is “straightened” it doesn’t make it any better to purposefully read through lines to find information that likely isn’t there and show it as if it were true.

Anning didn’t have any romantic relationships with men yes, but Anning also didn’t seem to have any romantic relationships at all, with men or women. She was treated as an outcast so often that she stated that “since the world has used me so unkindly, I fear it has made me suspicious of everyone”. So why is this film so focused on the potential and likely fictional romantic life of a woman who notably had no romantic life, heterosexual or homosexual, and her close friend? It would have been just as easy to make Anning asexual and aromantic, explore how even in a society where any sexual act is frowned upon, people are still expected to be sexual and those who aren’t are deemed outcast, and still focus on the budding friendship of two women in related fields bonding over fossil finding, providing an outlet for each other to vent over their frustration of working in traditionally male spaces, and the elder helping the younger open up and realize the world isn’t as bleak as she might believe. I guess the director thought giving a romantic and sexual aspect to her character would make her seem more interesting and 3-dimensional, but an even better way to do that with a historical character is to take the most interesting relationships in that characters life and show the different forms of interaction and appreciation in them. There are just so many problems with this movie that for as well acted and beautiful as it looks, I just don’t know if I can bring myself to actually try and enjoy it when it comes out.