#lesbophobia in fandom

[citadelofmythoughts]

One of the worst takes I've seen about RWBY and the CRWBY in a long time: 'They discovered the same thing the developers of Life is Strange discovered. Nobody actually likes their work or thinks they write good stories, they just want to ship lesbians. ' And many replies to it are just as bad.

Oh look, underneath it all it's just lesbophobia.

I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked.

[cherylesbian]

{character is explicitly stated by the creators to be a lesbian/refers to herself as a lesbian} fandom: ugh her being gay makes no sense / she should’ve been bi!! / I’m just gonna say she’s bi

{character’s sexuality is never explicitly stated / they were intended to be straight / creator and actor differ on opinion on their sexuality} {someone headcanons them as a lesbian} fandom: BI ERASURE!! BIPHOBIA!! WHEN WILL THE EVIL LESBIANS STOP

[kjzx]

I by far prefer drawing women but I really tend to latch onto male characters, it's like I find them inherently more interesting or something.

I notice that even amongst my own characters. I hate writing this off as 💞everyone has their own tastes💞 for myself because that's a weirdly not random thing to have a taste about especially considering when I was a kid I liked and created women characters much more often than I arguably do now, so I've been giving more chances to female characters and I think it's slowly working maybe?

Still, a weird thing to have biases about, and it sucks that even when people do talk about that they never give ideas for how to move forward

[rhfffas]

srsly why *canon* wlw ship is even less popular???

theres def some internalized misogyny and lesbophobia in fandom

if charlie and vaggie are mlm, ppl would be CRAZY abt them

[mayhem-ensues]

It's crazy how people will still try to downplay fandom's very obvious issues with misogyny and racism when there's like, a monthly discourse over on twitter because someone says, "isn't it weird how fandom keeps elevating white male characters over everyone else" and fandom types always respond with talking points that could have come from a 2016 anti-sjw youtuber.

[actual-changeling]

sometimes i just wanna shake people in fandom spaces and yell "but are you normal about lesbians????? ARE YOU???" because unfortunately the answer to that question is 'no' 95% of the time

[justanisabelakinnie]

Rare smart person on Tumblr: Yk I just think it's wrong to completely and constantly sideline/hate female characters in favor of male ones, I know that female representation in media isn't where it should be right about now, but surely you can find SOME female characters that you like??? More than you can count on both hands and feet, perhaps? Even if you have to reshape them to have actual depth in fanfiction??? I mean we do it all the time for male characters, so why not female ones? There are plenty of already good female characters that you could enjoy and ship together and write fanfics and thinkpieces about too, why don't they get any of the attention that they deserve?

The rest of the idiots on the so-called "SJW" site: HAHAHAAA! Silly rare smart person on Tumblr, don't you know that it's impossible to care about female characters in any capacity??? I mean, I'm a straight woman/gay man, I'm fundamentally incapable of giving a shit about characters that I can't envision myself fucking. Besides, everyone knows that female characters are never anything other than flat cardboard cutouts(unlike the male cardboard cutout that I've fleshed out in fanfiction and made my blorbo) or sex objects for the male gaze, and even if they're not, what if I don't want to engage in media where the female characters are written as fully-fledged people??? Huh??? What about it??? Are you gonna stop me from consuming the media that I love??? I'm not sexist, it's just that women are written so terribly in every single piece of media that I choose to watch out there so obviously the logical conclusion is to give up on female characters altogether and just focus on male ones, because everyone knows the solution to misogyny in media is to remove the women from the equation, hip hip hooray!!! And also jsyk I DO have female characters that I enjoy! Sure they're all canonically dudes who I headcanon as transfem and he/him lesbians, and sure I consider them "like a girl to me" because they're weak and scared of the dark and cry easily, but that's gotta count for something, right??? I just care about girls so much! Anyway giving a shit about girls is too much work, I'd rather just ship these men who don't talk to each other together while claiming the girlfriend is abusive or a mean lesbian bestie, and there's nothing you can do to stop me!!!

[punkeropercyjackson]

'We're in an era of fandoms where people are finally starting to hate really shitty cishet ships'You guys don't even hate Percabeth

[fortheloveofexy]

speaking as a lesbian, I really, really hate when people on this website use the "you guys just hate lesbians :/" argument over trivial things like character polls.

[leikeliscomet]

Let's Talk About Thasmin

Intro Chapter 1 - Not Something I Usually Do [TW: SA Mentions] Chapter 2 - I Haven't Even Told Anyone, Not Even Myself Chapter 3 & Conclusion - I Wish This Would Go On Forever

Intro

I didn’t know how to write about Thasmin because I didn’t understand what Thasmin was. 

I’m in a weird position with it. I watched the Chibnall era and barely thought about it. I knew about it in series 11, not minding if it became canon or if Ryasmin would instead. I thought Yaz’s attachment to Thirteen seemed stronger than Ryan and Graham’s in series 12 and it was interesting but not that exciting enough for me to go full thassie. I liked the Thasmin bits in series 13 like in Eve of the Daleks and Legend of the Sea Devils (even though I didn’t like the rest of it). But after my rewatch, several things started coming together. I started to see Thirteen and Yaz differently, even seeing parts of them in myself and essentially started looking at the Chibnall era a bit differently as a whole. It’s still not my fave era, but there’s things from it I can appreciate that I didn’t see before.

What interests me about Thasmin isn’t just the ship itself but how the fandom talks about it. Both praise and critiques. Thasmin is the first sapphic ship involving the Doctor, with one sapphic only realising her attraction to women recently, and the other essentially being one of the very few asexual sapphic characters in mainstream TV at the time. Thasmin was fresh with potential but as the essay goes on and from the fandom’s reaction, the potential didn’t fully blossom in the way a lot of fans wanted it to. Whilst I’ve stayed indifferent to it, this ship is somehow so controversial it’s torn the fandom in half, caused many YouTube videos, debates and articles (like this lol) and caused some of the wildest discourse I’ve ever seen throughout my time in the fandom. So this essay is basically an attempt at an asexual, lesbian and possibly bi interpretation of what Thasmin tried to be, how lesbophobia and compulsory sexuality shape the fandom’s ideas about queerness using Thasmin as an example and what Thasmin could've been if handled differently.

I need to make it clear this essay isn’t about proving whether or not Thasmin is queerbait. The discourse since 2022, to me, is unproductive, repetitive and only reinforces misinformation and ignorance towards other queer labels. Regardless of writing quality, Yasmin Khan and the Thirteenth Doctor have confirmed feelings for each other so in my personal opinion, I don’t consider the ship queerbait. I’m aware queerbait has expanded definitions like how the queer character’s storylines and how the queer relationship is carried out but to me, that isn’t proof either. Queerness is a large umbrella term of various identities that are outside of the norm, so not all forms of queerness depend on or can be ‘proven’ solely with a romantic/sexual relationship. These definitions to me exclude queer people whose queerness isn’t dependent on those things or doesn’t involve them at all. Lastly, I don’t believe the conclusion of bad queer representation is that it isn’t queer. It is. It just flopped. 

I’m not writing to prove Thirteen really loved Yaz because as far as I’m concerned, her feelings for Yaz are canon. I’m not writing to prove Thasmin is toxic or morally good because as far as I’m concerned, all ships involving the Doctor, a morally grey character, are all morally grey in their own ways and that would mean also critiquing the ethics of Thoschei, Tenrose, TwelveClara and DoctorRiver. I have no interest in doing this or singling out Thasmin as some unique evil because to me that’s performative. I’m not writing to prove that Yaz is ‘really gay’ or ‘gay enough’ because as far as I’m concerned she is a canon sapphic companion and I don’t believe in gold-star, lesbophobic or biphobic rhetoric to erase any sapphic character’s attraction to women. I’m not writing to prove Thirteen/The Doctor is ‘actually asexual’ because as far as I’m concerned they are, as confirmed by Tennant, Smith, Pertwee, other actors and the official account and I don't care for the validity or close-minded opinions of anti-asexual and ace exclusionist fans, the same way I don’t care for the approval or permission from homophobes, lesbophobes, biphobes, transphobes or any group of queerphobic people to exist.

If you’ve come to this essay for me to critique Thasmin specifically on the basis that the Thirteenth Doctor, Yasmin Khan and/or Thasmin the ship have failed to live up to some arbitrary measure of queerness and that they are un-queer, less queer, fake queer, queerbait or ‘cishet’ then basically… you’re in the wrong place.

With that out of the way, let’s talk Thasmin!

Chapter 1 ->

[strawberrycloudmjj]

Ykw? I'm gonna say it:

90% of fandomers are smut addicts who can't “respect” any identity outside of cis gay male for pure fetishism.

[princessefemmelesbian]

Lesbian: I hc this character as a lesbian!

Other lesbians and people who aren't lesbophobic assholes: OMG same!

Lesbophobic assholes: Okay but is this not a stereotype tho???? Just because she does x doesn't mean she's a lesbian! She can still like guys yk? What do you have against women who like guys?! Let women like guys, goddamnit, because Lord knows they don't get to do so enough. 🙄

The rest of us smart people:

[samble]

kind of awesome how even on Supposedly Progressive Tumblr™ it's always been seen as a Normal thing to say stuff like you never like female characters, how all male characters are soooooo much more developed, how two female charas could kiss on screen and it not be "canon" but two guys could exist in the same room and it's Real Love, how the best, most complex female character is Totally Evil while her male counterpart who does the same thing is an uwu soft boy who does no wrong ever, but if you ever say something like "i do not prefer [popular male chara]" it's somehow an awful take? ?

[redheadlesbianfreak]

I know that I'm a little late to the James Somerton thing but I wanted to make my own post about this. I started watching James when I was 20 during the pandemic. It made me feel comforted to watch someone talk about queer theory in film, especially because I found out so many films I never heard about. His stuff did make me very passionate about queer history as well, and led me to start seeking more of it. I took a queer literature class in University (one of my fav classes) and I started watching more queer creators.

I grew up in Texas and Mississippi (the Deep South) in a pretty conservative environment. I started to break free of that in middle school and high school, though I was still very ignorant. I think I knew I was queer for a long time, but it took me a while to come out. I felt that I was around queer people who were somewhat hostile and wouldn't believe me. This is because I identified as ace for a little while. People were either actively hostile about that or they acted like it was a dumb identity that didn't matter. I also don't know if I'm cis or not, all I know is that I really relate to the experiences of the trans community.

I kept watching James' stuff over the years. I fell for the hole "academic queer" vibe. He talked so much about queer erasure that I thought he cared deeply about it. I felt connected to the queer community when I watched his content. He talked about trans and sapphic experiences so I thought he cared about that--turns out he stole all of that. All my favorite videos of his were stolen, word for word, from queer writers. All of the passion, all of the great writing, that was stolen. I thought I was watching someone who cared about queer history, but he was actively erasing it and harming other creators.

There were some things that I noticed. He mentioned the indie movie studio and I thought that was weird. I thought his Attack on Titan video was extremely weird and made a lot of non-points. I also remember disagreeing with a lot of it because he just said a bunch of nothing. I thought that it was weird he mainly talked about mainstream culture (Disney, MCU, etc.) rather than less well known pieces of queer media. And there were quite a few videos I didn't watch because there were so many of them (not sure how I didn't suspect that he was a content mill). Some of his videos were incredibly intriguing (because he stole good writing) while others were boring, so there was a lot of inconsistency.

I'm incredibly pissed at this man, and it's hard not to be pissed at myself. I didn't watch every single video by this dude, but I did watch enough. I think that I have a lot to examine about myself when it comes to picking up racism/misogyny/transphobia. Especially when he dressed up all his points to be "progressive" and "academic." I didn't pick up on things like "bad vibes" from this man. I'm not really sure what bad vibes even look like? I also didn't pick up on the fact that his writing style constantly changed. Even with all the strange shit, I still gave him the benefit of the doubt because he was queer and that was way too trusting and that's something I need to work on.

As for the misogyny thing, especially when it comes to queer women and trans/AFAB people. He said a lot of blatantly lesbophobic, biphobic, and transphobic things while downplaying the experiences of everyone who wasn't a cis gay. What James was saying about women in his videos is how a lot of people talk about queer women in the queer community. Especially in fandom spaces. Misogyny is so rampant on the Internet that it can be hard for me to pick up on it as a queer woman. So many people talk about how lesbians want every female character to be gay or how bisexual women are "fujoshis" constantly trying to fetishize gay men.

I hope this makes sense, but it feels like I'm being gaslit when it comes to misogyny because of how often I see it. It's hard for me to tell if I'm being oversensitive or if someone is actually being misogynistic to me. So many progressive men that I trusted have been misogynistic to me and that can be a lot. James was someone I trusted and defended. I even recommended him to people. It's something I'm still disappointed in myself for doing, but I'd like to think I've grown as a queer person since watching his channel. There are so many great queer creators out there and I definitely need to make a recommendation list in the near future.

[fictionkinfessions]

As a Lara Croft kinnie, I CAN'T FUCKING STAND MY FANDOM.

I don't know if it's a case of a small minority of "fans" being the loudest or what, but I can't even fucking touch the fandom because people are whining about "oh the show's too woke" or "Lara looks too manly, waaah!"

DIDN'T WE ALREADY GO THROUGH THIS SHIT WITH HORIZON FORBIDDEN WEST??

Why can't people be fucking normal about female video game protagonists?! It's not that fucking hard! Be fucking normal! I don't want to be around anyone who's a whiny, entitled asshole who complains because the protagonist looks "too masculine" for them or whines because the protagonist possibly isn't straight.

News flash, women can look masculine. And denying that is both misogynistic and transmisogynistic at the same time.

Also the fact that these same "fans" take an issue with Lara possibly being queer (from my understanding it's not 100% confirmed but it was hinted at). I just. I can't with this fandom. This is why I left the fandom. Because of this toxicity.

I fucking hate this fandom. Again, maybe this is just a case of a small minority being the loudest, but I don't want to find out. I'm so sick of this. I'm sick of seeing this in the Tomb Raider fandom, in the Horizon fandom, in the Star Wars fandom, etc., etc.

Don't you people (you people being directed at the so-called "fans") have anything better to do with your time? I guess not!!

I haven't seen the show yet but I did watch the trailer and it looks amazing so I'm going to watch it and enjoy it and these fuckers can cry about it.

I'm just. So fucking done. This is one of those medias I will gladly enjoy alone with just my mom watching with me.

- Lara Croft (Tomb Raider)

[justanisabelakinnie]

“Just because she’s independent and single doesn’t mean she’s a lesbian, you’re being stereotypical” shut the fuck up shut the fuck up SHUT THE FUCK UP.

As if every single female character doesn’t already have to be attracted to men and center men in their attraction. And now the second we headcanon a female character who doesn’t have a romantic relationship with men as a lesbian suddenly we’re the bad guys?

Lesbians get no representation ever but oh I get it, female characters are allowed to be strong and independent and not need a guy to be fulfilled and all of that crap you spew in the name of feminism, so long as they’re still attracted to guys that is.

God forbid a female character is actually independent from and fully de-centers men by not being attracted to them at all. God forbid lesbians have an ACTUAL CHARACTER to see themselves in to remind us that we are not “incomplete” for not liking men. But y’all don’t care about that, I already know. It’s not forcing independent girls to be lesbians and it’s not “stereotyping” you guys just see lesbian as a dirty word, and you see us as perverted, gross, forceful, man-haters, or less than women because your identity is wrapped up in liking men and you center them at every turn, straight women will always complain about female characters being lesbians with “why can’t she just be independent” meanwhile y’all exclude us from conversations with your endless jabber about boyfriends and crushes, lol fucking jokes.

The truth is lesbians are the embodiment of what womanhood looks like without the centering of men and that threatens y’all somehow, so the second a female character is seen as a lesbian you come out with the pitchforks screaming “nuh-uh, she’s STRAIGHT!” It’s not the “independence” that is the problem, you’re just mad and offended by female characters not being available to men or depending on them to find love and be happy, that’s the real problem that you pretend is the opposite.

And don’t pretend that you treat canonical lesbians any better either, because when we do get them you erase their sexuality by calling them straight or bi and writing fics about them being shipped with male characters they have no chemistry with(because they’re lesbians), or making them aroace(because if they can’t be into men then you’ll make sure they’re not into women either), you don’t give a shit fuck about independent women and even less of one about lesbians, you just see a woman not being attracted to men as not fulfilling their proper role as women because you still define womanhood as revolving around men even when they are “independent” and thus you need to “punish” them somehow.

So, disrespectfully, fuck off, and don’t come after us lesbians with our headcanons about characters as lesbians with “but but but can’t she be strong and independent without being a lesbian?! Can’t she still be straight!!! I can respect her not getting with a man but I still need her to like guys please!!!” Because you WILL get embarrassed and you WILL get your feelings hurt.