#humans can't queerbait when will people start learning this

[syrena-del-mar]

People forget that actors don't owe anybody the knowledge of their sexuality. Whether that be lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, demisexual, asexual, or any other sexuality. That includes their dating history or who they're currently dating. Actors only owe the public one thing: that they do their job and that they do it well.

If that job consists of partaking in CP/ship culture, consume their media knowing that what they show you in public is curated for you as a fan. If they're dating someone who is not their partner, they're not cheating you; they're not making a mockery out of you or of queer relationships. With ship work, they're simply doing their job how their culture expects them to.

Ship work is not queerbaiting. Living, breathing humans do not queerbait. Queerbaiting comes from a marketing tactic for fictional entertainment work to ensure that they don't alienate their straight audience while also ensuring queer interest. You're consuming BLs and GLs, where the shows deliver in the promised relationships. If you're consuming BL/GL, you should know that fanservice generally follows.

Fanservice works because it's understood to be common practice. It's acting, an extension of whatever series they're promoting. Also, realize that fans often find themselves so invested in a couple that a hug or even a tiny brush of their hands will be considered 'evidence' of a relationship. Friends can flirt, 'lovingly' touch each other, and mess around without it meaning anything.

That's still not queerbaiting.

Because of how advanced technology has become, we have so much access to these actors/actresses. Accessibility does not equal entitlement to know how they identify. Claiming an individual is 'queerbaiting' only causes harm in the long term because you might unknowingly force someone to come out of the closet before they were ever ready to be. This only pushes media/reporters to continuously ask for information that isn't anyone's business to drum up engagement, potentially exploiting them for clicks. There's no need to inquire about their personal life, relationships, or sexuality.

But what if they take cryptic 'couple' photos with someone other than their work partner? Stop searching. Take their social media posts at face value. Stop trying to come up with some 'gotcha' moment, whether that be actually dating their work partner or some other individual. It's their personal life (curated, but still their life); you're overstepping, and if what you find out upsets you, then it's time to pull away.

It's really that simple.

Just because you buy into the fantasy a little too much and invest yourself in the pseudo-relationship does not mean the actors are queerbaiters. At the end of the day, fanservice is just that—a service provided for the fans. In other words, it's a job. Finding out that an actor/actress is dating someone of the opposite sex does not make them queerbaiters. (Also, realize that dating someone of the opposite sex does not signify that they're straight; whether they are or not, it's none of your business.)

If an actor/actress's personal relationships make you so mentally unwell because they're not with the onscreen partner, it just means you've genuinely detached yourself from reality. I mean this sincerely, if you're at this point, find help. Try to learn and understand more about why you're putting so much of yourself into a parasocial relationship. It's unhealthy for you to get so worked up that you feel sick because two coworkers aren't together.

If you find out that you're not a fan of CP work because you feel lied to or cheated, just don't consume it. Simply watch the show, look up their artist profile to see what other works they've been in, and log off. Don't follow them on social media, don't look up their fan meets, or watch video compilations that fans have made for shipping.

You're the master curator of your online consumption.

Curate it.

[tbhimnoteasyonmyself]

In the year of our lord 2023, are we really being forced to continue this pointless debate on whether or not people, real life, alive and breathing, living people can queerbait? Seriously?? Have we not had enough of this already?? Especially after the consequences we've seen this behaviour have in the last few years, but ESPECIALLY in 2022???

I can't believe that this is still needed but here we go: Real people CANNOT queerbait.

Queerbaiting implies playing with or toying at queerness without ever explicitly engaging in it in order to capitalise on queer people. By stating that people can queerbait you are not only implying you know every given instance of a person's life and can therefore attest to their non queerness (which is an absurd statement because you don't even know the entire life of your friends and family, who would say celebrities you have never even met) but also that there is a distinctive way to act queer, that it can be performed, that dressing, acting or speaking in a certain way is reserved to queer people and that, therefore, people who aren't queer cannot behave like that. This, as by now should be clear, is not only putting every single queer person into a thin narrow box of stereotypes that we have been trying to escape for long now, it also invalidates many of us and creates a ravine between us and the non queer folk who may or may not exhibit this traits and are fighting this war by our side. In conclusion: it sends us back years and rejects every principle and the freedom you so claim to be fighting for.

Not only that, I belive we have all seen where this type of behaviour leads: a queer person, who did not feel ready to come out is forced to in order to stop being harassed and maintain a career. Not once, so far, and correct me if I am wrong, have I seen this bullshit lead anyone anywhere good. Our strongest example, of course, being Kit Connor, a TEENAGER, who was harassed and threatened for supposedly going out with a girl. Which not only proves you're biphobic but also that you have no regards for anyone's mental health, not even a boy's.

And yes you can argue that people are capitalising on queer folk with their queerness and that is wrong and I will never deny to your faces the existence of rainbow capitalism but I do think you fail to see the bigger picture. It's not about whether or not money is being made on queerness. It's about the fact that queerness is being out out there, regardless of by who. It's about the fact we're working towards normalising non conformity, regardless of who's performing it. And that helps EVERYONE. Literally. You can't fight this war by gatekeeping being outside the norm because that just reinfores the idea that we're the other and the odd ones out when actually, by definition, as humans, we are all weird as fuck. We are only free when EVERYONE is free. And I know it's easier to see things black and white but dichotomies are a lie. I know we're used to see cisallohets as the enemy, but just like men also suffer under patriarchy, cisallohets also suffer under gender norms and homophobia. And even if they didn't. It's no way to stand up against oppression by throwing our own people under the bus. Representation is worth nothing compared to the sanity and rights of a person to live their life in peace.

So I hope you all learn this lesson sooner than later, before this shit starts getting used to exemplify how we're obsessed with children's sexualities and making everything about being gay.

In conclusion: Leave people alone. No one owes you shit about their life, even if they're famous. This behaviour is harmful and unhelpful. Don't make life for your community harder than it already is.

Thank you.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

This was central to Tumblr leftist philosophy as recently as 2014. I remember it well. I can't help but feel like this is in no small way down to the rise of TERF-ism.

But also a phenomenon that happens literally everywhere you get humans interacting about anything at all, which is the creep towards the binary. You start with, for example, a very good position like "The bulk of social discussion should be intra-community, because those are the people actually affected." And then that drifts, just a little, into "The opinions of the directly affected people have more worth than anyone else", which... isn't quite the same thing? And then it drifts more and more, until by the end it's "Unless you are directly and incontrovertibly in the affected group, you must entirely be silent and never speak on this topic AT ALL, not even to express a personal preference for an aesthetic e.g. which of the 27 lesbian flag designs you personally like best (genuine discourse I have seen)."

And like, obviously I get it. I've sat through plenty of cis men weighing in on feminist stuff with the most moronic and ignorant takes imaginable. But I actually think my leftist husband, a basically cis-man, has considerably more valuable thoughts on the role of gender and feminism than some tradwife creep who wants us all to return to a world of one baby and zero orgasms per year because she hasn't understood that she could just do BDSM and then she'd still get her own bank account.

I think the main area I'm personally seeing this in on Tumblr atm is in neurodiversity discourse, actually, and in particular as it pertains to autism. We've now gone rapidly from "ND folks are an oppressed group by an NT social majority and we should discuss all those avenues of social nuance to push for equity" to "ND folks are unique and perfect unicorns who always without exception get along perfectly with each other and are never ever at fault for anything or capable of being assholes, and literally all asshole behaviour on the planet is done by those evil mean NTs who shouldn't be allowed to raise children anymore. Also if anyone ever dislikes someone ND it's because they're an evil ableist sea witch (all genuine discourse I have seen)."

And again! I get it!! God do I get it. When you have been made to feel ashamed your whole life of who you are, Christ there is so much healing in instead being proud. In particular, in taking aspects of yourself that others have denigrated, and saying no; these are objectively good, actually. And it is tempting, isn't it? To take that extra step? To say these are BETTER, actually.

And then before you know it you have posts circling with thousands of notes claiming that if ND folks live together they all magically do each other's accommodations perfectly without a single clash but not a single NT has ever successfully provided accommodations in their lives so we should segregate the population (no, bro, the eugenics is good this time I swear), and anyone who disagrees gets the "Boooooo you're an evil ableist who hates autistic people" treatment that OP talks about here.

It's the same phenomenon you get with terminology too. People learn a new term for a thing, and then it drifts as it creeps to the binary. Gaslight, Karen, trigger, sustainability, cancel, literally, queerbait, special interest. Nuance is lost as the heavy cudgel of easy meaning comes down. And, I think, it's also tied in with the urge to form a rigid and highly parochial community. We see this particularly in the queer community, of course - for a social movement that's supposed to be about removing the boxes, so many queer people are absolutely obsessed with making new boxes and then gatekeeping/enforcing them as strongly as cishet society ever did. It's a stupid and mean part of human nature - we're a social species, so when feeling threatened, we want the support of our tribe around us, but that means needing to define exactly who the tribe is ("Queers only! But not those icky trans people, and aces are basically straight somehow, and bis are dangerous greedy posers trying to look like us and prey on us..."). Once you've got your tribe, then it's easy to identify threats ("Straight people! And those gross other queers, who might make us look bad in front of the straight people, who might then hurt us!")

And then THAT means that anything at all that shakes that perception of the world is itself a threat. "If queer people bully a straight person for being straight - a thing that absolutely does happen - that is harmful and unacceptable." "HOW DARE YOU SAY THE STRAIGHTS ARE OPPRESSED BY THE GAYS. I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU'RE SAYING THIS ONE PERSON BEING BULLIED IS THE SAME AS SYSTEMIC HOMOPHOBIA. I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU HATE GAY PEOPLE. HOW CAN I, A QUEER PERSON, POSSIBLY BE HARMFUL TO A STRAIGHT PERSON. I'M GOING TO DOXX YOU FOR SAYING THAT."

(Genuine discourse I have seen. Including the doxxing.)

Anyway. Sorry OP, I've been thinking about this for a while, so it was your post that got the addition!

Actually turning things over in my brain and yeah, I'd say that's probably my feeling on a lot of these conversations. The wrong thing is getting blamed.

White people do experience racism. The problem is when people hear that they think "people of color have power over white people" and not "under white supremacy, there are white people who are regarded as Not White Enough".

Men are oppressed. The problem is that people tend to think the ending of that sentence is "by women" and not "under the patriarchy, men are forced into a very specific and often harmful role and are heavily punished for any deviance from that role".

And the well has been poisoned by bad actors, so it's hard to get any amount of conversation about this going without either attracting said bad actors to totally derail the whole thing or without having kneejerk suspicion from the getgo due to said bad actors' previous actions.

[lockwie]

I just hate that people keep taking things Taika has said out of context to get people mad at him. No one's beyond criticism but people are mad at him breathing at this point.

Women still get it worst imo, and Taika does have privileges but he has vulnerability as a man of colour

Right??

I don't think it's a case of people turning on him, I think it's people who always disliked him for some reason trying to make a point and make other people hate him. People are mad because he is successful right now, and so they're finding anything he does irritating and making it everyone's problem. Probably some tall poppy syndrome shit going on, with some racism sprinkled on top.

I am honestly so shocked at the violence of what people say?? Wishing death upon him? And for what? He's literally done nothing wrong, like yeah he is a bit clumsy in the way he says certain things (and yes I mean clumsy. I don't mean naive and confused. He's a grown adult and he know what he is talking about), and I'm sure he's made mistakes, he's human, but he is genuinely doing his best to try and make the world better?

People are just trying to find justifications for why they hate him, and to try and make other people hate him too. When they could just go "yeah I just don't like that guy, to each their own I guess" and move on.

Also the discourse coming out of this is absolutely rancid. It's terfy, it's exclusionist, it's colonialist, it's making me want to throw up.

And don't get me started on people demanding a "proper" coming out, or "proofs" of his queerness. This is disgusting. And it's like no one learns. A few years ago a few artists including Rita Ora (who's coincidentally his girlfriend) was forced to come out as bi, because people accused her of queerbaiting for writing a song about wanting to kiss girls sometimes... Like??? What the fuck is wrong with people??? Let people be??? So what if she was mostly straight and wanted to kiss girls once in a while and write a song about it??? What kind of bullshit is this that now people can't embrace a bit of queerness in their life without being accused of random stuff???

Seriously... Taika's right, why are we even having these conversations? Why can't we accept that this is normal? Like literally it's fine. It's good. Let people try things out and get it wrong and have fun and just live? Why do some people want to put other people in neat little boxes? That's not how it works. Each is free to pick a box or not pick a box for themselves and they don't have to tell anyone about it if they don't want to.

[commajade]

thanks for answering me and i'm not uncomfortable whit the " gender talk" is that I don't speak english is dificult exprés myself I was saying Im just confused cause first it was like "we shouldnt be limited by gender roles and gender roles are bad and now is the other way around everybody is like I wAnt your gender, its not like a step back? And its not some kind of steriotype when a men is beautiful and soft in his manners call him gnc and if result that taemin is just some straight guy the moment a relationship goes public every one is gonna get mad for him not been a gay icon anymore, already there are people calling him for queerbating

gender roles and the whole i want your gender thing are completely diff conversations stemming from lgbt intracommunity jokes. the joke is that mainstream culture refuses to acknowledge or understand nonbinary identities so nb/trans ppl started saying joking that everything is a gender since we're unknowable and not beholden to straight cis logic anyway. taemin's gender presentation in advice is "fuck you i wear what i want and i look good" so of course people want in on that.

also i see what ur saying that the entire problem is that ppl will assume he's gay or gnc from presentation alone when it shouldn't be an anything but it's not more progressive by any means to assume he's straight until proven otherwise. presentation/performance is literally how people perceive gender and it's more reductive to claim "ohhh we don't knooow anythiiing let's not step back into gender roles" like isnt it a little convenient that it doesn't matter as soon as he does something wildly transgressive? his new mv is a STATEMENT about GENDER just like move and want and criminal and idea were to varying degrees gender is the field in which a lot of his artistry explores and expresses and it's such a disservice to his work to claim otherwise.

the point is that he learned that whatever he does people are going to see him as feminine and that he no longer accepts that as a shameful thing he has to avoid. that he accepts being called feminine and therefore probably gay by the media as something to be proud of.

the whole everyone's gonna say he queerbaited!! argument is dumb as hell stop worrying about something that hasn't happened yet and also an individual HUMAN PERSON can't fucking queerbait anyway ik ppl keep saying that lately but what am i supposed to do about other people being wrong

[dimples-of-discontent]

(part 1) im gonna preface by saying sorry if you've answered this before or it's obvious, but I wanted your opinion on something. I can't really read Misha at all when it comes to Destiel. I wanted to know if you think Misha plays Cas as being in love with Dean? Do you think Misha sees that relationship or is too in the moment to view it the way we do (similar to Jensen). I'm asking because I know he has gotten questions about it before and something that is obvious 9/10 times when he answers...

(part 2) is that he turns it into something sexual. I know he obviously wont say either way whether for higher up backlash or simply because he’s Misha, but I never got if that is just his wink wink to the fans because he’s supportive of our beliefs or he thinks that we only see sex so he’s like yeah perverts. He genuinely seems insightful at times and I do love the way he has described their relationship on several occasions. i know a few years ago there was a moment where, if i remember…

(part 3) correctly might have been one of the only times he answered without really joking? he seemed incredibly in tune with the audience talking about it but there seemed to be a sad/awkward air to his words. most of the things i have seen are from a few years ago though (pre-season 11) and we have gotten some incredibly deep destiel scenes since then so I guess im asking if you think he sees it, if so, when he might have started, if he thinks it now, if he thinks its just sexual, ect. thanks!“

Hi Nonnie,

First off, it sounds like you actually know a whole heck of a lot about Misha’s take on Destiel so I’m flattered that you would ask for my opinion on it too. I haven’t formulated a whole post about it, though I have reblogged and commented on some really great ones that I will also link you to here. 

I think it’s important to distinguish between Misha’s take on whether it is an intentional part of the show (do the writers write it that way? do he and Jensen play it that way?) vs. his response to fanfic and fandom commentary on Destiel. About the second, he tends to wear his snarky persona and call us perverts and joke about how “me and Jensen write most of that stuff anyway.” That’s easier. It’s a deflection. If faced with a question about intentionality and whether he thinks that the show has been amping up the romance tropes, it’s far safer to instead talk about the fan response and how “I would never have imagined seeing myself depicted giving so many blowjobs.” How much Cas fanart have you looked up Misha? FFS! 

So when, as you say, he immediately jumps to making things sexual I don’t at all think that it’s because he thinks that accurately reflects the way the character is written or how he plays him. After all, as recently as S10 he had Cas stare at a porn site and say, bemusedly, “What is ‘Fortune Nookie’?” (10x03). In 13x21 Cas was obviously embarrassed both by and about Gabriel and Rowena. And, as we learned from S12, the sacred oath that forbids human-angel sex must be very much on his mind. Now, some of us are of the opinion that this season in particular has been revealing Cas to have some understanding of or interest in sex even as an angel but YMMV on that one. But it’s safe to say that no matter how many jokes Misha makes about Cas being a creeper and perving on Dean he knows that that isn’t in the show. He’s responding to a particular, over-exaggerated fan version of Destiel. And he’s doing it because it’s safe.

It’s actually Misha’s standard deflection now because, in my opinion, not only do they want to avoid pissing people off but they are all bound by NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) of some kind when it comes to the actual show…but not when it comes to the fans. So he can say whatever he likes about fanfic or fanart or “what goes on on oil rigs” and neither risk offending people as deeply (since he’s clearly joking around) nor violating any contracts. I don’t know if he really thinks that all fanworks are all about sex. I think….perhaps. And, honestly, given the kinds of things people bring to cons for them to sign I can’t blame him. The linked post also shows how totally ok both he and Jensen are with smutty fanart, as does the infamous Cockles video that I’m adding here because, well, why not:

If you can’t hear the audio it’s Jensen describing two different pieces of fanart that they signed, one of which they drew penises on the other of which was already nsfw that he captioned, and laughing about it and draping himself all over Misha ew. 

But back to your original question, which was whether Misha plays Cas as being in love with Dean or sees that relationship as inherently romantic. I’m actually just going to flat out answer: he does. Misha is an intelligent and sensitive reader (which is not to say the other actors, especially Jensen, are not but that Misha approaches the script as a reader in a way I don’t think Jensen does because his process is so different). I believe Misha has always seen that in the character. As @amwritingmeta​ discusses in this epic post on Jensen, Destiel, and Dean’s bisexuality:

“Misha started out talking rather openly about how Destiel is an intentional part of the narrative - almost going so far as to get pissy about how this was even a question, if rumours are to be believed - then less openly, until he, as early as last year, was scuttling around the Destiel question like it was on fire. Why? I would venture a complete guess and say that it’s most likely to do with all the negativity thrown his way whenever he’s engaged with it, accusations of queerbaiting flying at him and the show, when this couldn’t be farther away from what they’ve actually been doing all these years, delivering a narrative the likes of which has never been seen on television before.”

Comments he made about his initial decisions, staring at Jensen “as if I was looking into his soul”, and the teasing that he garnered, “We’re missing the gay angel,” indicate that he–and Jensen, fwiw–were fully aware of the homoerotic aspects of the character and his portrayal.

I think that the convention clip you’re thinking of might be this one from NJcon 2013 where Misha first says that he ought not to talk about it but then goes on to say that there is a “very profound bond” but that “I will leave you to read into that what you will” and remarks that he doesn’t want to be accused of queerbaiting, which he felt was unfair because he is such a supporter for the LGBTQ community overall. He’s absolutely sad there. He concludes by saying “It’s a lot of things. It’s deep and meaningful, you know. Is it love? Probably. What does that mean? It’s a million different things. I don’t know” which then becomes a joke about “you know, my boyfriend is a wavelength of celestial intent.” He ends by saying outright that “They love each other” before adding “but it’s purely sexual.” That backtracking is frustrating but totally characteristic because otherwise it’s just too definitive. (I’m gonna keep my tinhat in the closet on this one but I can’t help but murmur about actor bleed.)

By 2016, at DCcon, he was delighted to get out of the Destiel question by having West throw balls at him. He talks about how he was discouraged from even mentioning that relationship when he came on the show and how he then flouted that rule because he didn’t see the point. The implication, though, is that he now does see why he shouldn’t discuss it and I can only imagine that a lot of it has to do with the vitriol that often came his way. Most of his answer is a joke on this panel, “How would you approach it if it happened” becomes “face-forward” and “How would you set the scene” becomes a seduction joke. Rich and Rob are there to help out and keep the carnival atmosphere going. (Cockles sidebar: I had never noticed that he answers the question of “How would you set the scene” with “In another language; in Russian.” CAN YOU SAY ACCENT KINK??) That’s a huge difference from 2013′s serious answer, though it’s not easy to tell whether that change is due to something contractural about the show or Misha’s own desire to avoid upset. I kind of think the second.

His most recent comments are from Seacon 2018 where he says that he could “go on and on and on” with his thoughts about Destiel and that he and Jensen do have conversations about it. He again uses it as an opportunity to talk about the fandom response and reflect on changes in attitude within the fandom not on the show…which is interesting, of course, but not really what we are fishing for. As he says at the end he gets in trouble with someone no matter what he says on the topic. And then he will deflect with a joke (”Jensen and I don’t write a ton of Destiel fanfic”) before giving us a tiny glimmer of hope (”because we live it all the time”). The whole cast is certainly much more open about it than they used to be, even Jensen. And I’m not sure whether or not that can be attributed to the deeper Destiel scenes you mention or not. I do think it would become much harder for them to deny the existence of a romantic element and that the way they are coping with that is pure humor.

I hope that helps a little. It’s a very complex question, since it’s bound up with so many other things about the show and about Misha’s character and his relationship to the fans. (I have tags for both “misha and destiel” and “misha about destiel” if you want more.) I agree with you that he is the most in tune with the fan view of the relationship and supportive of it as an interpretation. I think he’s either not legally able to say more about it or, perhaps, is too conditioned not to by previous negative reactions from the fans. His jokes that make it sexual, or refer to fandom and not the show, are simply a clever deflection and one which he does much better than either Jared or Jensen (though Jensen has learned from Misha and gotten markedly less defensive in general, e.g. “There will now be fanfiction written about what goes on on oil rigs” “Don’t let us down”).

My gut feeling is that, yes, Misha has seen the romantic element since Day 1 and that lines like “I love you. I love all of you” and “I know who you love” confirm for him that it is there for Cas. I think that he supports that reading of their relationship but we will likely never get to hear him say that…unless something miraculous happens on the show so that he feels free to.