#idk the thing i wrote wednesday was more raw but also i'm more done now

[terresdebrume]

It’s open to interpretation

So, the reason I had a Queer Sad™ today.

I wasn’t going to make a big post about it—I wrote an angry rant about it on Wednesday, which is when the whole thing started, but then decided not to post it on the ground that a person involved may see it and the whole thing could sound like a personal attack, which wasn’t (and still isn’t) my goal. More stuff piled up on it, however, and now I’m upset again and I need to get this thing off my chest if I want to move past it…so, rant it is, and I’ll see how it goes later on.

Last Wednesday, I and three other persons (two of whom are straight, the other isn’t) went to see Rogue One in the theater, which I was happy about because I thought I’d missed my chance to see it. We had a great time, enjoyed the movie and its ending, and honestly things were fine. Then I mentioned that I wished there had been a Chirrut/Baze kiss at some point (honestly, I’d have taken a forehead kiss) and the two straight friends seemed greatly surprised and a tad shocked at my interpretation, immediately telling me that ‘no they were brothers’ (meant, I’m pretty sure, as blood brothers. The French dub seems to have played a role into that, which is an entirely different kettle and not something I want to deal with right now.)

I don’t think I’m going to surprise many people here when I say this reaction—and the insistence with which they denied the possibility of Chirrut and Baze being a couple, only ending on a conciliatory ‘it’s open to interpretation, and that’s what’s great about it’—was deeply upsetting to me.

I felt invalidated and denied, like the possibility of these two men being in love was only in my head—surprise surprise: I wasn’t the only one out of the group who saw it—and so outlandish it could only be met with astonishment and immediate denial, however innocent the intent was.

I don’t want to go too far into that rant—I already have over a 1000k of word vomit on the topic sitting in my hard drive and it’s just too upsetting to bring it all back up, but honestly—it fucking hurts.

I don’t even take it as a personal thing—I’ve heard people tell me this before, I’ve seen people have the same conversation before, and I’ll see it again and again and again, I have no doubt of that—but it would be nice if for once, just once in my lifetime I could tell a straight person ‘I think those two same-gender characters [who haven’t kissed/professed eternal love/explicitly stated they were gay] are in a romantic relationship’ and not be immediately met with denial and the implicit message that I’m wrong in (and sometimes for) interpreting a relationship like this as romantic.

(I mean, I’m sorry, but replace Chirrut with a woman in the death scene, and tell me if it looks like siblings interacting. I dare you.)

It would be nice, for once, not to be forcibly, painfully reminded that I’m different, that I’m an outsider, that things aren’t meant for me even when they were clearly put there so that I would see it, and my straight friends would not. (But queerbaiting is a topic for another post, I guess).

So. That was super upsetting, I ended up crying about it on my pillow, and then reading Chirrut/Baze fanfiction until something like 4am, because as far as I’m concerned the only proper response to feeling hurt on that topic is to be aggressively gay for a while. Also ship harder.

But anyway, it was Wednesday, and I’ve had two days to kinda get over it, and I mostly did, even if seeing the news about YouTube’s stupid-ass content block this morning brought it all back up and gave me the aforementioned Queer Sad™.

But tonight we went to a restaurant with the same group plus a couple of people, and we got to talking about Rogue One and how there were pieces of the dialogue we didn’t understand, particularly Chirrut’s lines…and then, the conversation with one of the friends went like this:

Me, to help her place who Chirrut was: The blind monk.

Her, amused smile: And his brother!

Me, trying not to sound too upset: Actually they’re not brothers, I checked it out.

Her: I think only gay or bi people see this kind of things.

I wanted to tell her ‘that’s ‘cause straight people have blinders on’. I held it in. I’m still wondering if I should maybe have picked up that fight.

I don’t know what made her think that would be a funny thing to do. I assume it was meant as gentle teasing but the thing she doesn’t realize is, she’s right about 90% of cases. People—straight people—don’t see us. They never do—why do you think I keep saying non-explicit representation doesn’t count as representation? ^ This, right there.

Because unless we shove it up to the front—unless we fit enough arbitrary criteria we’re invisible. We’re just friends. We’re open to interpretation.

Except, of course, for the part where our interpretation—the one in which Chirrut Imwê and Baze Malbus are a couple—gets big wide surprised eyes and ‘noooo, they’re brothers’ or ‘really? I didn’t see it at all’ and the one in which they’re friends doesn’t.

It’s open to interpretation, but one of them gets instant disbelief. It’s not even that people want to hurt us—it’s not even that they hate us, or hate seeing gay characters on screen, it’s that they don’t see them. They don’t see us.

And I’m tired of this, you know—I’m tired of this cultural norm, this learned behavior so normalized it becomes a reflex that has people—that has me—thinking the characters aren’t gay if they don’t kiss/come out/have sex on screen. It’s not real if there’s not tangible proof. It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real, I’m not real, we’re not real, we don’t exist unless we can prove it. We don’t exist unless we can say we’ve kissed a girl—a boy, a person of our own gender, whatever it is.

I tell people I think such and such characters are in love and they tell me it’s open for interpretation and they mean well but all I hear is ‘you’re wrong’. I’m wrong in that these characters are not gay and I’m wrong in that I shouldn’t be seeing things that aren’t there.

I’ve tried to explain it, several times—although not always by using my own emotional reaction because I’m naïve enough to think it shouldn’t compute. I try to be patient, to explain, to back up my argument but I’m tired—shit, I’ve only accepted I was queer six years ago but I’ve been having this stupid conversation all my life and I’m so very tired of it.

‘It’s open to interpretation’ well, yeah, kind of. If you squint hard. But I do have to ask: when I say ‘I interpret these characters as gay’ and the first words out of people’s mouth are ‘Really? Nooooo!’ is it really open to interpretation, or is it only open to theirs?