#and when cishet men show up it usually isn't great

[transformersbrainrot]

watching straight dudes discuss transformers among themselves is so fascinating

There's this podcast or someone that's been coming up on my fyp of these 4 dudes ranking transformer designs/generally having tf discourse. They're not toxic or anything, and they clearly are actually fans of the series itself. (I'm not trying to gatekeep or anything but we all know there's a difference between a Transformers fan and a Bayverse fan.) The vibe is just so different to how most transformers fandom discussion has been for me. It's hard to put my finger on because it's not a "they're only here for the badass stuff" situation or anything. Like I said they clearly genuinely do appreciate the whole series. It's just so interesting

[they-them-that]

Light trigger warning: gender roles, misogyny, transphobia

I love Ouran Highschool Host Club and with the Shoujo classic that it is, I adopted the general consensus that the show was "ahead of its time" with how it portrayed gender. Haruhi will always be a non-binary icon but upon rewatching it, especially after my own trans awakening, I remembered something that never sat right with me and that was how Tamaki treated Haruhi. My two cisgender friends didn't seem to pick up on the same problems even though they also consider Haruhi to be non-binary which made me think I was just projecting onto the anime. But another friend of mine later told me how it was much more "heterosexual" than she remembered that helped validate the feeling I had.

Although Haruhi doesn't like to make a fuss about gender, the anime does and it constantly reminds us that no matter what Haruhi feels, she is still a "girl". Tamaki is the worst offender of this mentality where even his entire perspective on Haruhi changes as soon as he finds out she's afab. A huge part of Tamaki's character is that he dotes on Haruhi "like a father" where his actions are actually founded on the authoritative, patriarchal belief that he needs to "protect" her because she is a woman. Not just protect her from actual harm either but from things like kissing someone and wearing a swimsuit...

Although in certain ways, we're supposed to laugh at Tamaki's overbearing nature, he's never actually taught to respect Haruhi's autonomy. In what felt like every episode, Tamaki fixates on Haruhi's assigned sex much to her annoyance. Yet rather than learning to look at Haruhi as a person regardless of gender, we're expected to see his obsession with upholding gender roles as a sign of affection. This felt clearest in episode 8, "The Sun, the Sea, and the Host Club!" where Haruhi confronts two men for harassing her female peers. She gets shoved into the water where Tamaki saves her but the conflict arises when he scolds Haruhi for standing up to men at all. The message emphasizes to us that "Haruhi is a girl" and it's something that she has to accept for her own well being while Tamaki's anger is meant to be perceived as chivalrous rather than patriarchal and heteronormative. The reality is, even if Haruhi was in danger, that isn't actually her fault but the fault of the men who felt entitled to women's bodies (something Tamaki is guilty of, even if not to the same level of aggression).

I still cherish OHSHC but it hasn't fully stood the test of time as I've been led to believe. That's not to rob gender queer people the comfort they feel from the show but that for myself, it's a bit hard to look past the cishet energy that the anime exudes. Although I see Haruhi as non-binary, the show doesn't seem to agree and goes great lengths to invalidate Haruhi's gender indifference. It's tragically common in anime and manga where trans-coded afab characters are reminded that they're still women and it's usually "proven" to them through patriarchal scenarios that put CIS men in a role of dominance. A lot of the time, these women are only gender nonconforming out of happenstance or circumstance rather than by choice, which even includes Haruhi Fujioka (she only cut her hair because there was gum in it). That's not to conflate gender expression with identity but it does feel like we're only being met half way, especially when the anime still romanticizes the gender dichotomy with Haruhi and Tamaki's relationship. I would've loved to see Tamaki be able to toss the notion of gender the same way Haruhi is able to and have that be the groundwork in which their mutual feelings blossom. Instead, it just felt like we got a man who stubbornly wants someone who grew up without gender labels to visualize herself the way he does, as a "woman".

[a-roguish-gambit]

More turn of the century thoughts

Morph being an elder gay to the kids. Xavier is a big fan of Dr Hershfeild in germany and is thus fostering a queer positive space in his institute.

Despite being early 20th century Catholic, Kurt's early 20th century German background also makes him more progressive than a lot of people in his family's little Iowa German community. (Early 20th century Germany pre 3rd Reich had a brief but hella important queer progressive era) his parents paid for publications from Germany to come to America so he could study without attending a school for a while, and he got quite an eclectic collection of scientific info that way, including sexology papers as he reached adolescence.

And being part of the underground of New Orleans+just the general mardigras culture has made remy very chill with queerness and relatively comfortable with his own for the time period.

Ororo herself also is very open about things coming from a very non western perspective on queerness and Forge never accepted a lot of the white standards of gender and sexuality.

And well, Logan is Morph's wolf so he's absolutely chill with all this. (Wolf was a term in the early 20th century for a gay man or bi man who passed for cishet. Usually it was used in reference to gender conforming bi men as it was most often applied to those who had sex with both men and women as "bisexual" was actually a term to describe someone who was trans at the time.)

So now that all that's been established, onto my plot idea:

Kurt overhears morph talking about the various queer clubs of nyc, which has its own thriving queer community at the time. He asks them if he can see it some time out of curiosity. Mentions how much he's read from queer people but hasn't gotten to meet many and wants to learn more about them. morph and Remy come up with a plan to take whoever wants to to their first fairy ball, licensed drag balls the police couldn't mess with.

Kitty and jean are immediately onboard for the excuse to wear men's clothing for fun. Scott gets dragged along (pun intended) with his girlfriend. Remy convinces rogue with a dapper Gothic suit, and Kurt jumps headlong into the idea having morph fit him for a hoop skirt so he doesn't have to tuck his tail in anywhere. Evan comes but isn't crossdressing, mostly just casually curious. Plus his aunt and Logan promised to tag along too so it doesn't feel like he's doing something he's not supposed to like he might have otherwise.

The kids enjoy the night mostly keeping to themselves but also chatting with couples there, even finding some gay teens that snuck out for the party. They meet some old friends of morph's from Broadway, enjoy some snacks, and is forced to promise to get the kids tickets for their friend's next show. Scott and Kurt get complements on their dresses, a queen giving Kurt her feather boa when she is informed it's his first event. The kid cries feeling like he's the star of a debutante's ball. He's never had this much positive attention from strangers. He feels like he's at home. They all do.

They end up leaving at 2 am as the party wraps up. Most of them passing out on the buggy ride back home. Having had a great evening out, they silently agree, even in their slumber this wasn't going to be the last fairy ball they attend.

[deramin2]

Neil Gaiman was putting queer stories in comics when it was virtually impossible to do so at a big publisher. You have to have such a narrow (and bigoted and exclusionary) definition of queerness to view Good Omens as homophobic or queerbaiting. Every part of it is queer. (And it doesn't look down on gay sex even though that's not Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship. The guy in the cemetery who loans Aziraphale his phone uses it for Twitter and Grindr.)

I am a gay asexual trans man. By boyfriend is bi asexual and trans. Are we not queer because sex doesn't interest us? Are we queerbaiting when we say we're together and love each other? Are we inherently against gay sex by supporting it generally but not practicing it personally?

Or is real queer liberation the acknowledgement that each relationship is unique and each person has sexual preferences which include being into sex or not into sex. Being asexual isn't repression and it's not a commentary on how other people should be. Allo people just think ace people want everyone to be ace because allo people want everyone to be allo (which is the exact same violence as heterosexual people wanting everyone to be heterosexual).

We do actually want to see our experiences reflected in media the same as allo gay people do. Ace people are queer. Stories about us are queer. Showing us as deeply loving people with full lives and recognizable relationships is great representation that we're lacking. 80% or more of what I watch is queer media, and most of it is about allo cis gay men and includes sex. We need more of it, but we're no longer in the bad old days when it was rare. There should be room at the table for more voices (even sapphics don't get that many films and shows, but they got Good Omens). We need films like Bros and Fire Island as much as shows like Good Omens. Both of them. A variety too match the variety of experiences.

I think Good Omens might just be too advanced in queer theory for the people that complain about it. Genderless beings who usually but not always present as male but aren't muddies gender norms quite a lot. That's inherently queer. Showing a long term complicated but committed and deeply loving relationship that's not sexual but also thrives ONLY when they don't repress themselves is very queer. It's just not allo. Although allo and asexual are also mortal terms for mortal biology that don't neatly translate to angels, either. It's fair to questions if a species with one gender can be gay. Ursula K. Le Guin had to reimagine what sexual deviancy would look like for an ambisexual species in The Left Hand Of Darkness (it was being a fixed gender and sex like the cishet Terran who takes the whole book too process but being the default).

Allo queer people being taught to repress their sexuality and not engage in gay sex is a problem of bigotry. Ace people being taught to repress their sexuality and engage in sex is also a problem of bigotry. The solution to anti-gay sex bigotry is not to take it out on ace stories about the liberation of being yourself. In 40 years Gaiman's work has never treated gay sex as dirty or gross. There are simply queer people that aren't sexual that also factually exist, and they deserve stories too. Those are not at all in opposition with each other. We're allies in this fight but The Straights have y'all doing their dirty work for them oppressing us because it's too hard to fight them.

Wake up and realize who your true enemy is because it sure as shit isn't this. There are not conservative christofascist parents handing their queer kids Good Omens and telling them they'll go to hell unless their relationships look like these ones. And if you actually took the core message to heart instead of needing everything to fit in little narrow minded pre-existing boxes, you'd see that. Gaiman hasn't been dismissive at all, he's just stuck to the story he and Pratchett are actually telling, not the one people want them to be telling. And people are offended it's not all about them and only them.

hello! recently i've been thinking about stuff and thought it might be good to send those thoughts somewhere (even if the chance of you seeing this is slim to none) I've seen quite a few people say that they see your insistence that Crowley and zira aren't gay in human terms (b.c. they're not cis men or whatever) or because they're sexless is homophobic as it implies a certain level of disgust with straight up gayness (these characters can be queer but not gay, they're the "good" type of queer because they aren't sexual, etc.). as an example, asking "why did you think it was sexual?" as a response to a Sara McCullar on Twitter about the season 2 kiss was rather tasteless as it pretty boldly implied that sex would ruin or dirty the moment.

obviously gayness is no more inherently sexual than straightness, but I am rather uncomfortable with the idea that gay sexuality is somehow dirty or would ruin a&c if included. especially when there are scenes (the ox scene for example) that feel very much like they are meant to be sexual in nature. it definitely comes across as queerbaity to put in sexual themes and then attempt to retcon them away.

It is rather confusing as a viewer to see your position on this jump from "we put in the kiss because we wanted it to be unambiguous" to "what did you see that was sexual". I suppose the crux of the issue is that you seem to want to include queerness in your story while still holding topics like sexuality at arms length.

anyway. mostly wrote this to get the situation straight in my head, though I would be curious to know if you were aware of this discourse at all.

Not aware of it. Not interested in it. If anyone seriously thinks Good Omens is homophobic I'm not sure what they think they watched, but I know I'm not making a story for them.

But no, I don't think of that kiss as being "sexual". I think of it as a last-ditch desperate attempt to communicate, not as a prelude to or part of lovemaking. (I've written kisses I would classify as sexual and kisses I wouldn't. That's not a sexy times kiss nor was it meant to be one.)

[freedom-of-fanfic]

I need your help friend, the fandom is at stake: can you do a quick recap of why shipping isn't activism? And I don't mean just in terms of antis, but also the anti-backlash where people defend their ships by trying to prove they're actually progressive (which would still imply you need to prove your ship is not harmful before shipping it). Fans may have good intentions and mean no harm, but social justice is not achieved through fantasy.

what a good question. let me see if I can do this justice with a good answer.

Why Shipping is Not Activism

(edited on August 6th, 2018, 1 year after initial writing)

First off: let’s define ‘shipping’ as ‘desiring two characters to have romantic and/or sexual interactions and using social media or fanworks to share this desire with others.’  So: specifically looking at shipping as a social activity here, because I hope we can all agree that ‘shipping it’ - simply wishing for two characters to have some kind of interaction in your head - is not activism because it’s thoughts, which on their own nobody else knows about and thus can’t have an impact.

Shipping as activism is mainly talked about in the context of being ‘queer/LGBT representation’, and everything else is treated as secondary.*  So I’ll be talking about this primarily from that POV.

Okay.

shipping is not activism because shipping doesn’t do two important things that activism does: 

shipping does not generate or act as mainstream representation

shipping does not increase awareness or change social values

and that’s okay. Shipping doesn’t need to do these things because shipping takes place in a microcosm. Fandom is but a tiny, tiny fraction of internet and social activity as a whole. No matter how ‘progressive’ we collectively are, only in the rarest cases will we make a meaningful impact on society as a whole.

Shipping serves a different, but no less important purpose, which I’ll get into below.

That’s the short version. the long version is below.

Shipping is not activism because: 

Shipping is a fandom-specific activity and fandom doesn’t make much of a social impact. We get talked about a lot by the creators because we’re the people most likely to have contact with them and provide feedback on their content; we have an impact on creators in that sense.  But apart from coming to cons and talking on social media, when we get mainstream attention it’s almost always to talk about how weird we are. Also, we don’t cause social change. We can fan over something that already exists, but we can’t cause a show with better representation to be created.

Because of this: 

Meaningful, mainstream representation of LGBT/queer relationships come from mainstream media, and fandom is not the main force acting on mainstream media productions.  Remember when korrasami became canon in the last few minutes of the last episode of Korra because the creators knew about the shippers? Congratulations: you’re looking at an outlier that took a lot of very specific circumstances and luck to have happen. And most importantly: it wasn’t done to please the shippers.  Shippers may have given them the idea, but it was done because canon korrasami would create visible bisexual/LGBT representation. It was possible because the show was only airing online, to a smaller audience, and because of the herculean efforts of LGBT/queer activists over the last century to get our collective visibility and acceptability as high as it is (and yes, we have a long way to go, but we’re miles past where we were even 10 years ago.)

Current fandom seems to carry the belief that if we just ship hard enough and loud enough, the creators of an ongoing mainstream media will reward us by making our favorite ship canon.** The reality is we rarely, if ever, make a meaningful impact on the direction that canon takes. We’re a small, small part of the consumer base - a loud one, but small!  We’re often not the aimed-at demographic, either, so pleasing us is the last thing the execs trying to make a buck are thinking about. The material we’re fanning over is already old news to producers; short canons are usually already finished by the time we receive it, and longer ones are at least a season ahead in production time. (If we do make an impact, we won’t see it for at least a year or more.)  Shows must meet decency standards, and LGBT/queer relationships are still seen as higher-rated than their cishet counterparts.  Executives care about what will sell ad space or toys more than what fandom wants.

The fact of the matter is we have the cause and effect backwards.

Ships being ‘good representation’ is a function of increased mainstream media representation of marginalized identities, not the other way around.  When media was entirely full of characters who were white cis men, we shipped white cis men. And as media slowly stops having nothing but white cis men, we’re … still shipping white cis men a lot, because there’s still a lot of them and there’s still a societal bias that tells us that white cis men are the most important/interesting people (and simultaneously, because they are unmarked, we can’t accidentally fall into stereotype pits while fanning them), but we’re shipping more and more non-white, non-cis, non-male characters too. 

Real social activism leads to increased media representation - like the reclaiming of the word ‘queer’ in the late 80′s/early 90′s leading to a TV show called ‘Queer as Folk’ and featuring gay characters. And increased media representation leads to more marginalized characters for fandom to ship.

While transformative fandom does, to an extent, change things from canon to represent ourselves more - or just to suit our fancy! - canon always reigns supreme and is the most widespread version of the characters.  Canon becoming more diverse will always have more of an effect on fandom than fandom being diverse/having diverse content will ever have on canon.

Besides:

The desire to see ships become canon is not primarily motivated by generating healthy representation of marginalized identities.  Fans have been wanting their favorite ships to become canon since the Stone Ages.  The Harry Potter fandom wars were all about what was most canon: Harry/Hermione, Hermione/Ron, or Harry/Ginny.  Notably: Draco/Harry is not one of the pairings I list, because nobody thought there was the remotest chance that Draco/Harry would ever become canon.  It’s only recently that LGBT/queer rep in particular has been making a meaningful appearance in mainstream media, and suddenly slash ships have entered the ‘will it be canon!?’ fray. And some mlm fans feel they have more ‘right’ to canon because mlm ships are LGBT/queer rep.

Here’s the thing: if this was really about representation, then we’d all be celebrating if any mlm pairing became canon. No matter which pairing is ‘more progressive’, any LGBT/queer canon representation is better than none. But (surprise!) it’s not; the ‘queer rep!’ battle cry is just an additional cannonball in the arsenal of ongoing ship wars.*** And I venture to say that most mlm shippers engaged in a ship war would rather see an unrelated het pairing become canon than their rival mlm ship.

And this is because: 

Shipping is not, and never has been, primarily about creating healthy marginalized representation.  

Don’t get me wrong: transformative fandom is heavily LGBT/queer/mentally ill/disabled/otherwise underrepresented, and we often create transformative fanworks that bring our identities into the story. That’s awesome self-fulfillment, and it can really bless and excite fellow fans who see fandom content that makes them feel more welcomed and recognized.  However.

Generating marginalized representation isn’t the primary motive for shipping. We ship out of love. We see the dynamics between two characters and think ‘oh, that’s hot’ or ‘I’d like to see more of that’. We ship for fun. We ship because we think two characters would look good together. We ship because we imagine ourselves as one character and have a crush on the other. We ship things for many, many reasons, many I haven’t mentioned here, maybe as many reasons as there are people in fandom doing shippy things.  And to that end, I’m sure that some people do decide what to ship purely because they believe it represents minority groups that need representation - but it would be too much to say that’s the main reason people ship things.

Shipping doesn’t need to be about creating healthy marginalized representation because:

Fiction is not reality; a person can ship the ‘right’ ships and still be a bigot IRL. and visa versa. Because we interact with fiction and reality in different ways, there are people who really love mlm ships but still think gay marriage is icky. On the other hand, a person can be the loudest activist for LGBT/queer causes in real life and only ship het ships in fandom, just because the dynamics of het ships pings their fancy more.

Shipping as activism preaches to the choir. Shipping being a fandom-specific activity, and many of us being oppressed ourselves, shipping the ‘right’ ship to increase awareness in the microcosm of fandom isn’t really accomplishing anything. Most of us are ourselves LGBT/queer, or friends with people who are LGBT/queer. Most of us are aware of how much pain the lack of representation in mainstream media brings on.  And most of us are sensitive to the fact that we’re not the only oppressed person in fandom space and are willing to learn more about how we can help other oppressed people.

If I could sum up the problems of current fandom, it’s that we assume that nobody else is #woke (even though most of us are sufferers). 

In that sense, shipping the ‘right’ ship doesn’t bring more awareness; it acts as a signal to others that you have awareness, and hopefully protects you from being erased or harassed as an ignorant asshole (’cishet’).

Most importantly:

Shipping isn’t activism, but it does something else great: it lets marginalized fans express and indulge themselves in any way that pleases them.  

- fandom is hugely made of underrepresented minorities, so shipping is a way that we express ourselves and relate to one another - whether those ships are ‘progressive’ or not. So, so many of us deal with social stigma or harassment or hate in our real lives; we consume media to get away from that, and we indulge in fandom to get away from that.  

Most of us are, just by existing and demanding space in the world, activists for the rights of the marginalized and oppressed. 

I’ve had some people disagree with me on this, but I stand by it. many people in fandom have orientations/identities/nd/etc that politicize our existence. When we are ‘out’ - when we are visible - and vocally demanding recognition for our lives by being visible and refusing to compromise, we are activists by existence. And many of us are allies, taking political action on behalf of others. and many of us are both - marginalized this way, allies to people marginalized that way. 

the actions we take as activists in the real world are the ones that matter - not fandom.

Fandom is a space for us to play with each other and connect over something fun and pleasant, and those fun and pleasant things don’t have to be activist things. We’re allowed to take a break.

The importance of activism and representation is to benefit the marginalized and oppressed, letting us be recognized and less stigmatized, and deconstructing the social and political structures that work against us leading fulfilling lives.  When we use shipping the ‘right’ ship as a bludgeon to attack one another, we are literally defeating the purpose of our own causes. We’re stigmatizing each other for our fandom interests. And we’re certainly not deconstructing any social structures that harm us!

In conclusion: The way we can be most activist in transformative fandom is, no joke, to care more about the fact that almost everyone else here is marginalized too than that one another’s ships aren’t marginalized enough.

fandom is different from the way it used to be: it’s more visible, more mixed with non-fandom, and easier to access. certainly, it’s important to make clear where we’re addressing relationship stuff for fandom versus relationship stuff for real life. there’s value in taking steps to counteract the harm done by lack of education about sex, consent, and healthy relationships, particularly as LGBT+/queer people, or people who need access to & information about reproductive health care taking care of one another in a world that doesn’t care enough about us. 

but educating each other doesn’t happen through a ship: it happens through open, friendly communication. shipping can open the door to communication, but it can’t substitute for straightforward honesty. 

Let’s foster healthy interaction and honest communication wherever we can: by celebrating each other and our creative endeavors - instead of creatively locking us down with terror of getting erased or driven out of fandom by demanding everything be treated as a teaching opportunity.

be kind to one another. 

(the rest of the world is not going to do it for us.)

–

*In talking about ships as representation we generally start with ‘this ship is queer/LGBT’ and then use all other axes of oppression to prove which ship is ‘more progressive’, i.e. - F1nnPoe and Ky1ux are both mlm, but F1nnPoe is more pure because it’s a black man and a Latino man as opposed to two white men. (Occasionally race will also be talked of as the primary point of value, depending on the fandom.)

**On a side note, this whole paragraph is also why it’s unlikely that fandom being ugly will ever cause a show to be cancelled or a pairing will get changed in canon because some fans were nastier than others. We’re like bugs with stingers: scary and painful but ultimately not that impactful (unless you’re allergic, I guess, but forget that part of the metaphor). 

***This is part of where the ‘I have to prove my ship is wholesome/their ship is evil’ stuff comes from: ‘proving’ to creators that your ship is the ‘better’ queer representation because it either covers more marginalized bases or is ‘more pure’, making it less objectionable for mainstream representation. (the joke is that bigots don’t care how pure an LGBT/queer ship is: they’re gonna still think it’s awful because it’s LGBT/queer.)

PS - I don’t think this answer really addresses why arguing about purity of ships is a bad plan, but this is already so long that I’ll address that somewhere else I think.

[blackwoolncrown]

I saw the Spock isn't Jewish thing and eyerolled so hard but it brings me to the problem preventing me from engaging with the modern (mostly male) scientific community. There's this idea that science and religion and logic and emotion can't coexist. A lot of great scientists were religious and emotional (Einstein comes to mind). And science can't be fully objective bc humans are not objective. Plus do they think our science is so advanced and absolute today that we can explain everything ever?

“Same Anon, additional point. Usually when I talk to white straight people (usually men) about this it's like talking to a brick wall. But I just have to mention the basics of the concept to most minorities and they will get it right away. The implications are pretty obvious here.”

So like, I don’t talk about this much bc it’d be very easy to misconstrue my sentiments, but I absolutely abhor the way our culture treats science, or alternatively, ‘science culture’. To get right to it I feel like ‘science’ as an intellectual approach has been co-opted by anti-intellectuals masquerading as intelligent people (usually men). It has become the cornerstone of arrogant atheists which is only frustrating because both the concept of science and how it is used, and also the way they interact with it, is completely comparable to any other belief system.

People seem to have gotten this idea that ‘science’ is the source of all correctness, of pure ‘rightness’ without taint of partiality, but that’s just not true and it never has been. From what gets funded to how its written about and thought about, science is always biased and influenced by the times. I am not saying that there’s no point or accuracy in the scientific method, but...

I digress. You’re right. And it’s obnoxious. People seem to think that if something cannot be measured by our current scientific means then it just isn’t real, doesn’t exist, and shouldn’t be talked about. The only explanation for why so many ~science fans~ are so apathetic and doggedly anti-spiritual is that they don’t know even half of what their role models did, and haven’t actually spent too much time reading up on them. Most likely, they probably avoid the more gnostic bent many historical scientist show bc by the time they dug their way to it, they had already loudly identified as a ~rational atheist~ and selection bias made sure they didn’t have to eat their words or worse- change their minds.

Given that the entire motivation for scientific pursuits is the admission that ‘I don’t know’, it’s hilarious how people these days are “if it hasn’t been discovered yet it never ever will be, and that’s finite.”As far as Spock being Jewish...He’s Jewish. And it’s awful that white cishets would balk at the idea. I had never seen the concept before it was mentioned in a Trek documentary but it made sense instantly. And even if I didn’t ‘get it’ as someone might not, what’s the point in refuting the evidence? Antisemitism is a helluva drug. It’s crazy how those people consume so many stories intended to be cautionary tales about oppression and the oppressors constantly ~don’t get it~....

[salsa-and-light]

"The vast vast majority of people calling LGBT people degenerates aren’t doing so because they are kinky."

No of course not, not all Queer people are kinky.

But they're still called degenerate because bigots consider Queer people inherently disgusting. Kink is just another thing on the list for most homophobes. Though it is certainly possible for kinksters to be homophobic, even if most homophobes are also sex-negative.

"A ton of straight people are kinky."

And they're discriminated against too. They're also (generally) far less prejudiced about gender and sexuality; for fairly obvious reasons.

"I’m super into femdom and almost every kink and fetish associated with it, and my ex girlfriend (who had tied me up, spanked me, among other things) actually described me as “the most most cishet person she knows.”"

Great, happy for you, but I didn't ask and I'm not sure why you're sharing.

The main relevant detail to me here is that you have some amount of experience in kink so you should already have some basic familiarity with how kink is treated in the world.

"The vast majority of of the people calling gay people degenerates are doing so because of things like bringing drag queens into children’s classrooms and bringing kids to pride parades where all sorts of sexual stuff is on display."

And you should definitely know better than this.

Assuming that you've unlearned your hypersensitivity to sex and sexual themes while you were unlearning your sexual shame(which I would have to assume that you've done).

..

Back on topic, this is exactly my point.

When I was a child there were wild animals brought into my classroom, including in sizes and dispositions which could hunt and kill adults, never mind children.

I'm not remotely concerned about a drag queen showing up.

Of all the drag queens(, kings and things) that I've met, not one of them had any history of rape or sexual abuse.

I can not say the same of all the people who taught me in school.

I'm well aware that some drag performance isn't for children, I'm well aware that some drag can be uncomfortable or frightening(I was a mascot I know about scaring people), but what you seem to be unaware of is that drag can be my-little-pony and care-bear levels of over-saccharine and inoffensive.

If all it takes for you to get upset, is a man in a dress.. then you're a bigot, simple as that. Gender nonconformity is an invalid concern(which I hope I don't have to tell to someone into fem-dom).

And the fact that there are so many people who are perfectly willing to put drag into the same category as sex work and porography only proves my point:

There is no level of Queerness that can not be condemned.

So in that context I don't have much patience for people who hem, haw and swoon over the fact that ""sexual content"" is on display at a pride parade.

Because 9 times out of 10 it's nothing. nothing-

It's fishnet stockings, it's dancing, it's a man in a speedo(people are complaining about that in the notes🙄), it's someone who's fully clothed but the clothes are made of leather(because somehow people's social standards go back half a century whenever Queer people are involved).

And for that one out of ten times where it's something genuinely shocking, most of that isn't actually objectionable, it's just shocking.

Someone walking on stilts in a suit made entirely of rubber which covers their face; shocking- sure, I'll admit that(I was a unnerved)- but what's the problem?

They're fully clothed.. full mobility is probably an issue so I doubt that there's going to be anything sexy happening.

It's weird.. but what's the issue?

So generally unless someone is having sex on a float, breaking nudity laws or misrepresenting the content of private events then I'm not usually that concerned.

[Queer people in my experience ar far more cautious about sexual propriety, especially if they were raised as men or date women(God bless the transfems)]

Maybe it's a case of too many false alarms or maybe it's just genuiely hard for Queer people to do something that straight people aren't already doing but I am very limited in my sympathy on this point, especially as I see over and over again, cases of people breaking down into tears because their teenagers read a curse word or because someone wore a crop top.

..

But all of this just proves my other point, which is that in all the time we've spent talking about what is or isn't appropriate for Queer people, we're ignoring that Queer people don't have equal rights and we're fighting about how Queer people need to change to become acceptable to society.

Sorry, that's not a valid conversation.

I'm not an anarchist, I'm not "no holds barred" but if a conversation is premised on how Queer people need to change as a group so that individuals have basic rights and dignities then it's a conversation premised on prejudice.

If a Queer person does something wrong, fine lock them up, shun them whatever you need to do, (I have no interest in excusing bad behavior)but I have no intention of stopping perfectly moral behaviors(in myself or others) based on the premise that old auntie Jezebel might be scandalized and then vote for a homophobe.

Homophobes will criticize anything.

Obviously we should try to counteract misrepresented ideas wherever possible(i.e. the sensationalization of drag), but in the meantime the best thing to do it to set the bar for criticism as high as possible by being the biggest unapologetic Queer freak that you can be.

Note the assumption that all LGBT people automatically support each other.

Even though many TERFs/“Gender-critical feminists” are lesbians.

Also, many people specifically say that their issue is not with LGBT people, it’s with “degenerates” hiding behind a minority label.

Including some LGBT people who don’t want to get dragged down with the pervs.

Most of the people who talk about “degeneracy” will apply that label to straight, non-trans people too.