#slippery slope idefk

[stannisbaratheon]

Coverage of the wedding of the then Duke of York (later KING GEORGE V) to Princess Mary of Teck (later QUEEN MARY) by the The Illustrated London News, July 1893. (1) Cover on 10 July 1893. (2) The wedding breakfast at Buckingham Palace: the royal table. (3) The congratulations after the wedding ceremony. (4) The royal party at the opera, Tuesday, July 4. Left to Right: Duke of York, Princess May, Grand Duke of Hesse (ERNEST LOUIS), Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (PRINCESS AUGUSTA OF CAMBRIDGE), The Czarevitch (later NICHOLAS II OF RUSSIA), Queen of Denmark (LOUISE OF HESSE-KASSEL), Princess of Wales (later QUEEN ALEXANDRA), King of Denmark (CHRISTIAN IX). (5) The presents on view at the Imperial Institute. (6) Departure of the Duke of York and his bride from Buckingham Palace. (7) The marriage of HRH the Duke of York, K.G., and HSH the Princess Victoria Mary of Teck: the wedding ceremony in St. James’s Chapel. (8) The Duke of York receiving an Address from the Lord Mayor at the Mansion House. (9) The Bridegroom’s procession to the Chapel. (10) The marriage ceremony in the Chapel Royal, St. James’s.

[kyanve]

Weird Representation Nostalgia

Okay, somewhat embarrassing personal “why representation matters” from someone who has since figured things out as demi/gray-spec-pan/idefk I’m not here to argue which terms I’d use are valid or best suited.

I grew up in a Christian household that was more moderate when I was younger, but still kinda leaned conservative, and while there were a lot of things they were open minded on, there were still some problems.  My parents would outright verbally fight toy store employees trying to “correct” me buying “boy toys”, I learned D&D at like, six, I was technically encouraged to read up on/learn about things including other religions and all even though it was always couched in a “so you can learn to think/choose for yourself and see why the clear choice is Christianity”....that last one backfired but it’s a story for another time.

They did, and still do, buy into the idea that homosexuality and non-blatantly-obvious-intersex-condition transgender is some kind of weird sin against god, fall for a lot of dumb slippery slope things/”it’s perversions and people being perverted”, etc..  

(I MAY end up coming out to one of them before the summer’s out, but hahaha between them and living in rural Arizona I am definitely in the closet offline.)  

My first exposure to homosexuality outside of church rhetoric was Mercedes Lackey and the Mage Wars/Heralds/etc. series.  (I also was encouraged to learn to read young and to sit there with novels and dictionaries as soon as I was stubborn enough to try.  That also probably backfired, honestly, considering, well, this story.)  

I actually did come out of those books thinking about it, and sitting there pondering the disjoint between Vanyel and Firesong and all that and the rhetoric I was raised with, and how the rhetoric I was raised with was kinda cartoon-villain-ish and “Oh, this is a thing, these are people that happen to be attracted to/involved with other people same-gender but otherwise have relationships like anyone else” made a shit-ton more sense.

I haven’t read them in years, I have no idea how well they hold up as representation goes, but damned if those books didn’t actually pretty well help before I had any good resources on making me question and reject the Church Rhetoric “well be polite and kind to them but NEVER CONDONE THEIR SIN THEY CHOSE TO DO AND IT’S AN AWFUL AWFUL THING YOU SHOULD TRY TO CONVINCE THEM TO GIVE UP ON AND COME TO JESUS”, long before I hit high school/college and, well.

Ended up in situations where not fitting in with the local Baptist idea of “good Christians” meant that even though I was still at that point Christian, I was ostracized and attacked as “clearly a Satanist”, and my best, most reliable friends and the people who had my back were a bunch of neopagans, LGBT, atheists, and an ACTUAL Satanist.  A set of stupid fantasy books were what taught me to just not bat an eyelid and go “oh, okay, people, not creepy pervert sinner abominations” at my bi roommate and the lesbian down the hall who used to poke her head in to check how I was doing when shit wasn’t going well.   

Aaand also meant that when I realized I was, while usually disinterested, just as okay with the idea of going out with a girl as a guy etc., there was a LOT less freaking out than there probably would’ve been without the Gryphons And Talking White Horses being a thing from a fairly young age giving me a less screwed up frame of reference to start from when I DID start finding actual resources and meeting other LGBTQA people.  

I give a lot of credit to Valdemar/Mage Wars because there just.  Wasn’t much else.  Like seriously for a lot of my life that was the only thing I read and watched and could find that addressed the issue at all that wasn’t pastors talking up hellfire and damnation about it.  I honestly am glad that it was as big a part of my childhood as it was and had the impact it did because it HELPED, even if it was only one thing.

And this is why I will be deliriously happy to see things like not only “where was this fictional female character when I was 10″ (I’ve teared up watching Adventure Time b/c Princess Bubblegum alone would’ve done WONDERS for my childhood complex about ‘pink and feminine’ being the ENEMY and that’s not getting into things like ATLA and Steven Universe), but also anything in fiction that addresses LGBTQA and other ethnic groups as PEOPLE.

It makes it a hell of a lot easier for kids who ARE growing up with restrictive/prejudiced ideologies to start seeing the minorities as PEOPLE rather than weird caricatures, it makes it a hell of a lot easier for kids figuring out who and what they are to see THEMSELVES as people and not freak out about it as bad, and it makes it a whole lot easier for people who grew up in those places to finally meet a real person in the minority category and maybe see Person Like Beloved Fictional Childhood Character rather than “Weird Demonized Monster”.