#bc it's a bigger convo than just wlw things!

[freckliedan]

heyyyy its the anon from the last one you just answered. i get the nb they/him or they/her. but i'm just a bit confused because i thought being lesbian/gay would be "same sec attraction" which made me question how someone would identify as he/him or she/her when being homosexual? i'm genuinely a bit confused and curious and trying to phrase this as politely as possible as i had thought you could only be she/her to be lesbian or he/him to be gay and identity with homosexuality

(context is here (link) + i asked if anon saw my rb’s and the next ask was anon’s reply!)

yes i saw your rbs! i read through them and understood a bit more (i didn’t exactly understand the ones about the gay men participating in drag though) but i didn’t exactly know how going by a more masculine form of a name would make someone feel as though they should ID as he/him. and i get that its more a "this is my relationship w my gender, its complex" but would being homosexual have nothing to do with it?

ty for your asks b! and i’m glad to be here to answer them!

gender and sexuality are so complicated? so don’t feel bad for not automatically knowing everything, and don’t feel bad if there’s parts that never fully make sense to you-i don’t fully understand certain lgbtq+ identities, but the important thing is respecting them anyways and all working together with solidarity in our community to fight against institutional oppression. 

back to gender and sexuality though! often the conversation around both focuses on the fact that they’re two different things, which is true! but it’s also true for very, very many lgbtq+ folks that our experiences with gender and sexuality are super connected to eachother? another layer of complication is added by the fact that gender identity and gender presentation are two different things. 

i think one of the differences between maybe the way you’ve heard about pronouns and gender before and the way that gnc lgbtq+ folks sometimes use pronouns is that she/her pronouns don’t inherently mean someone is a woman or identifies with womanhood, and he/him pronouns don’t inherently mean that someone is a man or identifies with manhood. pronouns are just words, and those words are a part of people’s gender presentation, in a way: it’s how gender is sometimes conveyed through language. 

some people use the pronouns that are most closely & frequently linked to their gender identity, because that’s what they’re the most comfortable with and that’s what’s right for them; that’s perhaps the more expected scenario for all people in society. however, some people use pronouns not to make ourselves more easily understood or to clearly share what our gender is with others but rather as a method of keeping people from making assumptions about us based on gender, and being able to free ourselves from standard assumptions about our perceived gender is the most comfortable and right thing for us. (both experiences with gender are valid!)

that’s kind of a complicated concept, so i’m gonna use myself as an example for a moment!

i’m a nonbinary lesbian. i figured out my orientation before i figured out anything to do with gender, though; once i realized i was a lesbian and that i’m attracted to women (trans and cis women) & nonbinary people (not like.. all nonbinary people but those who wouldn’t feel misgendered & invalidated by a lesbian being attracted to them), i started better understanding my relationship to gender. 

i’m a woman, and i’m okay with being seen as a woman by other lgbtq+ people. however, i don’t want cishet men or women to look at me and see me as a woman, because their view of womanhood is extremely alienating for me, and in certain ways it’s violating and traumatic. cishet womanhood includes the expectation of being attracted to men, and being attractive for men. being perceived as a woman by cishet people means being seen as an object meant for men’s consumption, and that’s genuinely horrifying!

so, i am a woman, and i’m a lesbian, but i’m not a woman in a way that’s easily understandable to people who are outside of my community and so i’m not going to use easily understandable pronouns. using pronouns other than she/her is a way to take more agency over how i’m perceived and feels best for me. i use they pronouns, but other lesbians who relate to my sentiment in this paragraph use he pronouns for the same reason!

and i assume that a really similar sentiment is true for gnc she/her or they/she or they/them gay men?  i recieved an ask from another anon while i was writing my reply to you (link), but again i’m more familiar with the wlw aspects of this conversation than everything else. i hope this helps b! and i’m not an authority on anyone’s experiences but my own, so don’t take my word for absolute law in any way-this is just my understanding of my own and other people’s experiences!

[capseycartwright]

but why shouldn’t people be mad about casual affection lacking? theyre supposed to be married

ok not to involve myself in discourse lmao but i’m packing and bored so why not

i think the way you frame this argument is more important than anything else, tbqh, because to me framing it as danny and ryan are too str8 to play gay takes away from the legitimate issue at hand, which is that there is an issue with british soap (and tv in general) portraying casual intimacy between men in a healthy and consistent way - off the top of my head, there’s few long term mlm couples on soap who’ve had consistent and believable onscreen intimacy (even on corrie, eastenders) so it’s an issue that’s much bigger than robron, you know? and hyper focusing on danny and ryan to me, takes away from the actual issues which is the blatant disinterest networks have in portraying casual male intimacy pre-watershed, and there’s def an important conversation to be had around that.

like. okay. soaps are inherently plotty and in so many ways intimacy ties into plot, but that’s not the point of this. it’s more than there’s an issue with men being casually affectionate and intimacy bc you see wlw couples be far more open on soap in those terms (because it appeals to the male gaze, yadda yadda you know what i’m talking about.)

it’s just for me, this is all part of a much wider issue that’s worth talking about in the context of being a wider issue because i think (personally) that’s how you draw more attention to the things you’re mad about - by pointing out it’s a consistent issue across different couples and shows, you can prove how systematic it actually is.

anyways none of this makes sense but i feel like my point is that the way you frame these issues matters and sometimes i feel like we as a fandom frame them in a not so productive manner when having these important convos (which is why i just don’t get involved anymore lmao)