#and that we need to hold ppl to a higher standard to actually create more lgbt characters in media in canon

[croix-meridies]

I hate that there are so few butch characters in media that we headcanon male characters we like as them but also it’s fine and fun and good even when I do it

[bassiter2]

one of the lesser talked-about consequences of homophobia is how all the supposedly Problematic sides of gay culture are basically literally homophobia’s fault. when someone grows up totally unable to make the same kind of romantic connections that their cishet peers are making AND simultaneously seeing their identity hypersexualized, they wind up touch-starved and believing that the only way they’re going to recieve love IS through sex. so they immediately go full hog at seeking it out the MOMENT they’re able (often even before reaching 18) and are subsequently at a much higher than average risk of being preyed upon by older, abusive men, because they’re desperate for attention that they’ve literally never gotten before. 

and because we often get so little (if ANY) practice in our adolescence as well as no relevant sex ed, we have very little blueprint for how a healthy relationship works. we take literally whatever we get for a good portion of our adulthood the same way that straight middle-schoolers do.

not to mention that even outside of how sexualized we are, our relationships are demonized so we feel a heightened pressure to prove that mindset wrong - aka we’re LESS likely to leave a relationship that isn’t right for us as quickly as we should so as to avoid being percieved as promiscuous (even though, of course, cishets get away with the same exact level of “promiscuity”) which ALSO means we’re more likely to stay in abusive relationships. 

and like, even knowing these facts, it’s still hard to not feel bad hooking up even if you’re hooking up way less than plenty of straight ppl do. it’s hard to not feel like you’re betraying your whole community every time a relationship doesn’t work out. you feel like you NEED to find your soulmate as quickly as possible so that you can prove that your love isn’t bad.

so many of us take one of two sides and either lean into the hypersexual stereotype just so we can own it and take pride in it, or try to be as contrarian as possible to it and hold insanely high standards for anyone that we so much as attempt a relationship with so that we have less of a risk of a romance that doesn’t work out. some of us consistently flip-flop between them. neither are inherently bad, but i’d put my money on the notion that they’re not actually authentic for most of us who approach relationships those ways - we just do it because the middle ground is scary. we don’t want to risk feeling like we’ve only gotten closer to fulfilling a homophobic stereotype and at the same time, we even don’t want to feel like we’re doing the same thing straight people do, because whichever of the extremes we take, there IS a sort of comfort in doing it different than straight people when it’s on purpose. we ground ourselves in the idea that that’s our truth so that we can feel comfortable from ostracized positions. we, once again, feel like we’re betraying our community if we do something “straight.”

and it sucks because that’s really not true. dating casually is an entirely healthy way to go about seeking love, and way more attainable than hooking up or waiting for a friends-to-lovers slowburn. it’s literally just NORMAL, but being gay has for so long been so un-normalized that we can be doing exactly what straight people do and still feel like we’re just proving their homophobic ideas right! and we’re NOT! we’re just living our fucking lives, but everything about our lives is automatically on full blast because to cishets every single one of us represents the whole community, thus creating a loop of constant homophobia-fueled introspection that informs our behavior and vice versa whether we like it or not.

and we’re all going to keep doing it to some degree, because there’s no fool-proof escape from homophobia, but i hope this post at least gives some of yall a mental tool to help smack the internalized homophobia away so that yall can do exactly what you want, WHATEVER that is, and not just what you think you need to do