#some of you only know how to analyze things through a VERY specific queer lens that matches your own personal experiences and it shows

[alexkablob]

not to wade into discourse about shows online which I swore to stop doing but I think some of you need to recognize that not every piece of media is about you, and that focusing only on the themes that you personally identify with while erasing the ones you don't is Not Great

[olderthannetfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/749218521745145857/while-i-love-some-queergay-whatever

“Kissing on the forehead isn’t necessarily romantic” makes sense if we are talking about a work of media that is made in a time/place where that was a common thing between same gender platonic friends.

But are you, anon? Or are you talking about like, a piece of Western mass media from the past 50 years? Or are you talking about anime — because if anything, kissing is even more loaded in Japan than it is in the West, especially if there are other people around. (Lots of people in anime fandom love to use “but Japanese culture” arguments to no homo, but are banking on no one reading them actually knowing jack shit about Japanese culture — because it’s almost never true or based on any real Japanese cultural difference, there’s just making shit up. It assumes people will take for granted anything that frames Japan as “foreign and inscrutable and impossible for Westerners to understand” which is just Orientalism tbqh)

Just saying, because I almost never see this shit said about like, a novel from 1820 or something from a culture like, say, some Middle Eastern countries where men kissing other men platonically is a thing…. and almost always see it said about current media from a culture where kissing on the forehead would be seen as something you’d likely not do to a platonic friend of the same gender.

You can’t “impose your cultural norms” on something from the same culture as you lol, or something from another culture that has the same norm! And an (for example) American assuming that modern American media plays by the rules of modern American culture and seeing it through that lens, doesn’t necessarily mean that American is unaware that different norms exist in different cultures. But like… it just makes sense to analyze a current American show for American audiences set in America in the modern day through the cultural standards of 2020s America and not, say, Bangladesh or Namibia or 1850s America.

And on another note, if you were as much of a fan of “queer readings” as you claim to be, you’d know that they often have little to do with authorial intent. In fact, it’s often specifically about reclaiming media that didn’t have you in mind as the audience.

(Seriously, I really doubt you have read many of those queer readings, bc if this bothers you so much, the stuff queer studies academics and cultural critics see as “gay subtext” in old Hollywood movies — hell, the stuff that gay, bi and sympathetic-straight directors and actors and writers often very much INTENDED as gay subtext in those movies — would make your brain explode.)

Anyway, we’ve all been in fandoms where there’s a ship some people insist has a ton of subtext but it’s just two guys sharing a scene occasionally and they just WANT to believe it’s there when it isn’t, and it can be annoying sure if there are so many people insisting this that it’s inescapable and becoming fanon that affects the fic about the ships you like, or if they’re pushy and sanctimonious about it. (My current fandom has a group of people who insist the only reason other people don’t see all the “subtext” for their random rarepair is racism or something, and then ignore how much textual stuff they have to deliberately leave out or misinterpret for their reading to “work” lol. Like scenes where their starry eyed expression is directed at a different character and that’s obvious in the actual episode but not in their selectively edited gif set or meta post.) But that is not the same as doing that with KISSING ON THE FOREHEAD ffs. And also, let’s not pretend that slash (or femslash) shippers are the worst offenders, like het shippers — and the broader culture — doesn’t constantly treat “a man and a woman interact” as meaning “they could/should be a couple,”

If you’re not bothered by that, but you’re bothered by when people do it with two men or two women… yeah you gotta ask yourself why that is. I have an idea why, and it’s not bc of your greater cultural open mindedness lol

--

[runninguplenorahills]

PERFECTLY SAID!! I agree 100%!!!!

What you said about how Mike’s and Will’s sexualities are being portrayed in different ways with different focuses is such an important point because it’s a big reason as to why people are against the idea that Mike is gay! They think that “Oh look, Will is gay and the way he is portrayed is completely different from how Mike is portrayed so Mike can’t be gay as well” because they, as you said, look at gayness through a lens of specific mannerisms which lead them to believe that there’s one “right” way to be gay which means that you can’t be gay if you don’t show those mannerisms or that in the case of stranger things, Mike can’t be gay because he isn’t portrayed in the same way as Will [who is confirmed gay] is.

You probably know these videos where people are restocking their fridge or snack drawers and it’s really satisfying because everything fits perfectly, right? Yeah, people also like to do that with other people. They love it when other people perfectly fit in a category based on their own biases and stereotypes. And whenever a person doesn’t fit perfectly/doesn’t align with their biases and stereotypes, putting them in the same category isn’t satisfying for them so they don’t. They’ll just put that person in a whole different category because based on their biases and stereotypes the person actually fits perfectly in another category and that’s satisfying again, so some people end up in categories that they don’t belong in.

Mike doesn’t fit the image of a gay man that a lot of people have due to biases and stereotypes and a lot of that comes from the fact that Mike is in a straight relationship at the moment. They think that Mike kissing a girl automatically means that he’s attracted to girls so putting him in the gay-category isn’t satisfying for them because based on their biases and stereotypes he doesn’t fit perfectly in that category and the fact that Will already is in that category while Mike is completely differently portrayed than him only feeds into that which leads them to the conclusion that Mike doesn’t belong in the gay-category. But because they think that Mike kissing a girl means he’s attracted to girls while they also see his attraction to Will/boys, Mike perfectly fits into the bi-category for those people so Mike ends up in a category he doesn’t belong in!!

What you said about how people project their own sexuality onto Mike is 100% true! Fictional characters have always been self inserts to people so it’s natural for people to even subconsciously project onto characters they like because that’s what characters are for to a certain degree. It’s why we make headcanons in the first place! [a silly example is how I always headcanon my favorite characters to love strawberries because I love strawberries]

What bothers me is how a lot of people just project, project, project and completely disregard what happens in canon!! Mike’s queer coding always had a very strong and clear emphasis on him not being attracted to girls and a lot of people just ignore that because it means that there’s something that separates themselves from their favorite character. So instead of analyzing the show through an objective lens they’ll analyze it through a subjective one so instead of going “this is portrayed like this, this is shown in that way, the cinematography emphasizes that what he feels is this, his facial expression hints at that” they go “I would feel like that, I used to do that because of that so he did that because of that same reason as well, I experienced that so he’s experiencing it as well” and while this is again, pretty much always done rather subconsciously, it’s a clear sign of how some people close off their minds for the sake of projecting themselves onto the character. They use their own experience as proof and in the process of that completely disregard what the show is telling us!

Again, not all people do that but it does happen and it’s very frustrating.

it’s rlly interesting to me that some people claim that mike’s sexuality/the presentation of it “doesn’t matter/isn’t a focus for him, his focus is just Will,” and that Will’s sexuality is the one w the big focus when it’s actually presented as the opposite?

To be clear, I am NOT saying that Will hasn’t struggled with his sexuality or that it hasn’t been a core point of his character. What I AM saying is that Will’s sexuality has been framed relative to his love for mike more often than it has been to his attraction to men as a whole outside of mike/lack of attraction to girls as a whole, whereas for Mike, it’s very much been framed about his active attraction to men outside of Will and his lack of attraction to girls.

Like the claims that Mike is “willsexual and his sexuality isn’t a core point of his character” are very much missing quite a few pieces imo because if anything, Will is the one presented to us as “mikesexual,” with less focus on his attraction to men as a whole/lack of attraction to women as a whole. But the thing is, those scenes of Will with lack of attraction to men/general attraction to men ARE still there, will IS gay & is not just “mikesexual,” but those things are ARE there for mike, and they’re there even more often than they are for Will. We see Mike staring at dudes like Eddie and having a buff dragon poster whereas we see Will making a painting for mike specifically. It’s not that either one of them is willsexual or mikesexual it’s that they’re both gay but this gayness is framed/presented in different ways because Will’s had more time to come to terms with his sexuality than Mike has as a result of Will’s hypervisibility as a gay man compared to Mike’s invisibility as one.

Imo the idea that mike’s sexuality isn’t a core part of his character is one that ignores many scenes in the show and ignores many parts of mike’s character- just because you can’t or won’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Just because you’re looking at mike solely through the lens of Will’s experiences or through your own stereotypes and perceptions of gay men & what they “should” be like/using Will’s presentation and framing and experiences as a blueprint for all gay men in ST doesn’t mean that Mike’s gayness ceases to exist, just because it isn’t framed in the same way as Will’s doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

Like I said before: MIKE is the one who’s framed around his sexuality outside of Will more often than Will is framed around his sexuality outside of mike. I’m not saying that Will’s sexuality ISNT a core thing, I’m saying that BOTH of their sexualities are a core thing.

Like idk it’s just also interesting to me how many people reduce mike down to Will’s love interest & try and see him through a Will Lens and ignore his sexuality as a result. Some people are falling hook line and sinker for EXACTLY what “lessons” the duffers are trying to demonstrate/teach about invisibility and bias and stereotypes via mike’s character & how the people who are struggling the most are often overlooked/the idea that people who are drowning don’t look like they’re drowning.

And going back to the idea that “mike’s sexuality isn’t presented as mattering, he’s just focused on Will,” like damn ok ur rlly aligning with the exact same rhetoric that’s resulted in mike’s repression and neglecting of his own safety and needs, huh? It’s like how mike’s been so focused on Will and on the people around him & trying to make sure that they’re safe, but nobody focuses on HIM and how HE’s doing. It’s the same sort of “logic,” and it’s the type of logic that keeps people like mike invisible & results in him continuing to neglect his own needs. Mike is selfless and he IS focused on Will, but that’s also been harmful to him when he focuses on Will/his friends too much & not on himself and his own well-being. (See: quarry scene & jumping off in part to save dustin’s baby teeth)

[vaspider]

'only tenet of TERFism is transmisogyny' EXCUSE ME NO ITS ALL TRANS PEOPLE. They don't want any trans person to exist. What the hell.

Some people just gotta center their own suffering always, even when they're hurting other people by doing so. I've seen this a lot in younger queer folx of all stripes, this need to be the one that hurts the most, you know?

There's a reason the phrase Oppression Olympics exists, and it's because it's a common behavior or phenomenon in oppressed communities. I see it in the disability community, too.

What I think is important to understand when we talk about how trans people suffer under transphobia is that different groups are targeted differently. I'm not the first person to say this, of course.

Now, like, this is very rough sketchy stuff, and each person's individual experiences will vary, but in my general experience, the rough breakdown of the way in which transphobia lands on trans people kind of breaks down like this:

Binary trans women tend to suffer under a lens of hypervisibility. Everything they do is seen, analyzed, and torn apart. Their struggles are generally the ones centered in the arguments of allies, "allies," and transphobes. Even when trans women are the focus of helpful attention, that hypervisibility can cause exhaustion, because they need to perform perform perform, and be perfect, all the time. It's hard for trans women to just be without feeling like they're on camera, all the time. A lot of the time, they are on camera, because trans women's bodily autonomy and right to privacy are just never respected by transphobes (and often by supposed "allies" who feel free to ask the most invasive questions and get upset when trans women won't answer them), and even if they're not literally on camera, they're supposed to perform as the best examples of transfemininity, because if they don't, then they become the next 'look at this bad trans, all trans are this bad trans' example that TERFs point at and use as a broad brush to paint all trans women. If they're not perfect all the time and have a day where they snap at someone while someone is recording, or make a mistake, or anything, it has a horrible tendency to go viral. You can think of at least three instances right now off the top of your head, right? Right.

Binary trans men tend to suffer from hyperinvisibility. This comes from inside and outside the community -- a lot of trans men talk about being told they can't lead in community because they've 'got male privilege,' that their struggles are discarded, that they're talked over and unable to discuss the things they face, which means they don't get the support they need. Now, there are TERFs and transphobes who absolutely do focus their attention on trans men to the exclusion of or to the deprioritization of the oppression of trans women -- that's where we get Tavistock and Irreversible Damage and Fourth Wave Now and all the other bullshit which focuses on the idea that trans men are "transing the gay away," specifically "transing our butch lesbians" and "stealing butches." But again, generally speaking, trans men face harmful levels of invisibility where trans women face harmful levels of visibility. That's why transmascs in general have issues like lack of understanding even by supposedly trans-competent doctors as to how HRT affects our bodies, why trans men (and transmascs in general) report things like transphobes attacking them with transmisogynistic comments and assuming that every trans person online is a trans woman, etc.

Non-binary (here used as an umbrella term for all identities outside of binary man/woman, to include agender, genderfluid, non-binary, and infinite other identities) AFAB people tend to suffer from a different, very specific form of hypervisibility, unless they start to appear too masculine, and then they slip into hyperinvisibility. This is where we get things like "women and non-binary people" that codes all non-binary people as "AFAB people I can sort of squint and view as women," and people who fall into this category tend to get a lot of attention, a lot of derision from all sides of the spectrum. This is the "blue-haired tenderqueer" sneering that we get from both within and without the queer community, where there's an assumption that these people are just cosplaying an identity, that they're not really trans, etc. Having been in the visibility category and slipped into the invisibility category within the last, oh, year or so, and having two binary trans women in my family to compare notes with, the experiences are unnervingly similar. The difference between the experience that those women have had and the experience that I have had is that according to transphobes, I'm a traitor to my womanhood and performing femininity wrong and taking on a fake identity to escape female oppression because I'm not strong enough to bear up under it, but too cowardly to become a trans man, or... something, whereas they're taking on a fake identity to sneak into women's spaces because they're perverts.

Non-binary (umbrella identity etc) AMAB people tend to suffer from their own very specific form of hyperinvisibility, unless they start to present "too feminine", and then they slip into the hypervisibility which affects binary trans women, but with a little different fuckery in which everyone just assumes they're a trans woman, and therefore they get misgendered by everyone across the spectrum of queer/non-queer/etc. Non-binary AMAB people are generally treated like they don't exist, and when they are spoken about, are often discussed in the context of 'they should just admit they're trans women or gay men,' or if they present 'too feminine,' are subjected to the same sort of horrific attention that trans women get.

Again, a lot of this is very simplistic, and doesn't add in a lot of other complicating factors like race, disability, class, etc. Trans men of color, for example, can run into a different sort of hypervisibility because as they move further through their transition, they begin to be seen in the world as a man of color. It's not really mine to speak on beyond that, but I don't want to neglect saying 'this is really really simplistic and there's more to it than that' over and over.

I really hate breaking it down this simply because it feels like creating another binary (our society does like a binary!) for non-binary people, but like, I can't really talk about my shared experiences with other trans people without putting some framework around it. Someday, I'll be able to do that without categories. Wouldn't that be awesome?

I think we do our entire community a huge disservice when we talk about transphobia as if it's a single snake trying to take bites out of only one part of the community, and not a many-headed hydra, able to attack us from multiple different directions. I also think that focusing on one form of oppression keeps us from forming meaningful solidary and coalitions; the more divided we are, the easier it is for the people who literally want us all to stop existing to pick us off one by one. We see this all across the queer community and it's only ramping up as the attacks on our community escalate from without; people tend to turn on the ones closest to them when they get really scared, and to blame the person standing next to them for the pain they're suffering. It's the "close enough to hit" phenomenon, and it's why we see ridiculous things like "bi women make cis men think that lesbians can be won over," rather than acknowledging that bi women aren't the ones causing that: cis men are the ones causing that. The bi women in that case are close enough to hit. Transmascs are close enough to hit. Trans women are close enough to blame for the problems of transmascs, which makes it possible for TERFs to lure transmascs in and attempt to detransition them, subjecting them to gaslighting and manipulation and then using them as sock puppets.

TERFs do focus a lot on transmisogyny. They focus a lot on transmisandry, too. Debating which one is more prevalent and 'worse' not only misses the point, because transmascs and transfems face very different and totally rotten attention from cis society as a whole, including cis queers. We need to like, not do that anymore: we need to give each other the space to talk about our unique circumstances, but we also need to work harder on looking at each other through a lens of solidarity and trying to see that our struggles are different but not unrelated, and that if we keep downing on each other like this, we're not going to get anywhere except in a much more difficult situation as the people who don't want any of us to exist keep picking us off.

[ohgaylor]

i have many thoughts on the lavender haze discourse that i won’t get into here. i simply want to analyze some thoughts about her quote. but i first want to emphasize that it’s worth recognizing we haven’t heard the song yet so we don’t entirely know how she’ll explore the topic. and as such, i think it’s too early to be frustrated with the situation or to point fingers at anyone (on any side of the debate) because we simply haven’t heard the song yet, so we can’t be sure what it will be about, particularly given her quote about it. and i’ll get into why.

first of all, as is often the case with Taylor, she may likely be saying one thing publicly (referencing her 6yr relationship, rumors, etc) only to have the lyrics point in an entirely different direction. (as was sort of the reverse case with Betty, where many people instantly interpreted the song through a queer lens before she suggested it was written from a male-James’ perspective.) i’d argue that Taylor often allows for this ambiguity and even encourages it surrounding her art (is pronouns, tropes, etc) it’s something she has long done throughout her career.

so with that said, before i address her quote about the song, it’s important to note two key definitions that have to do specifically with lavender and relationships:

lavender haze — a slang term coined during the '50s, referring to being in love.

lavender marriage — a male–female mixed-orientation marriage, undertaken as a marriage of convenience to conceal the socially stigmatised sexual orientation of one or both partners.

note the first definition, which Taylor has explicitly referenced, is purely positive in its description of the status of said relationship. it’s a time of joy and optimism. Taylor alludes to as much in this first half of her quote…

Lavender Haze is track one on Midnights, and I happened upon the phrase “Lavender Haze” when I was watching Mad Men and I looked it up because I thought it sounded cool, and it turns out that it’s a common phrase used in the 50s where they would just describe being in love, like if you were in a lavender haze then that mean that you were in that all encompassing love glow and I thought that was really beautiful.

again, a very positive description of said love. not a care in the world. just pure love.

well, then things shift in her quote. she takes a deliberately different direction by suggesting that the lavender haze is state of one’s relationship that is fragile and is worth protecting. she says that if this love is found out, that people will weigh in on it and ultimately bring it down. so she must do what she can to protect the real stuff.

that’s not only extremely queer coded if you ask me, but also this shift instantly caught my attention because it doesn’t necessarily have to do with lavender haze whatsoever. but more so with the definition lavender marriage, as you’ll recall from above. here is exactly what Taylor said in this second half of her quote…

And I guess theoretically when you’re in the lavender haze, you’ll do anything to stay there, and not let people bring you down off of that cloud and I think a lot of people have to deal with this now, not just like quote unquote “public figures” because we live in the era of social media and if the world finds out that you’re in love with somebody they’re gonna weigh in on it, like my relationship for 6 years we’ve had to dodge weird rumors, tabloid stuff and we just ignore it and so this song is sort of about the act of ignoring that stuff to protect the real stuff.

quite a specific perspective wouldn’t you say? again, it has nothing to do with the simple definition of lavender haze, of blissfully being in love.

but rather, i interpret this as her articulating a much more nuanced closeted relationship, where dodging rumors is a reality (skeletons in both our closets plotted hard to f*** this up), where this relationship is worth protecting in every possible way because if people we to discover it, they would bring it down (something happens when everybody finds out, see the vultures circling, dark clouds, love's a fragile little flame, it could burn out, whispers turned to talking and talking turned to screams, our secret moments in a crowded room, cynical clones, hunters with cellphones)

i simply think it’s fascinating this secret love motif is ever present in her work.

we know Taylor loves to take a common phrase and give it a new meaning, or simply to twist its meaning with a sense of literary license she proudly holds as a songwriter. perhaps this is a case of that, where she is aligning herself with lavender-esq relationship terminology deliberately, by using a decoy of lavender haze for a lavender love that is far more secret.

because afterall, every bait and switch was a work of art.

for reference: all my analyses; mad men dialogue / scene / overall context

ps. i think it’s worth navigating these spaces with delicacy. we can’t assume what exactly it is she meant by “weird rumors”. because seconds later she mentions “tabloid stuff”. we simply don’t know much yet. i think it would be beneficial for everyone involved on any side of the debate to refrain from going at others and instead wait until we hear the song before we judge the situation.

pps. i’m not suggesting that concealing one’s relationship is an exclusively queer experience. certainly many celebrities encounter that. however, it absolutely is a reality within the queer many face. and given her track record and the continuous themes of her music, it speaks for itself. i am simply pointing out themes i see and addressing them through my lens.

[brawltogethernow]

a while back you said that you don’t think mj is cis, and that you have specific scenes informing that idea abt her.... do u mind if I ask what are the scenes? and what’s the gender diagnosis? 👀

I don’t have a concrete conclusion, just a vague impression and a habit of getting out my phone at five a.m. and texting my brother stuff like, “I feel like MJ would try out the label he/him lesbian but like, primarily on a personal Twitter account profile.” But yeah, she has two recurring traits that inform the bulk of this for me.

The first is her habit of inserting herself into traditionally masculine roles. I figure the writers were probably gunning for an exaggerated/comedic level of feminism. (It didn’t all age perfectly, but the other women of the cast were already written as feminist.) If you think speaking up for equal rights is cool, wait until you see...MJ try to singlehandedly destroy the gender binary? In practice you get this theme where MJ observes dubious male-coded behavior and then instead of going, “Stop doing that,” goes, “I am also going to do that.”

We see her take the reins of a date more than once on panel to literally go, “Wait, let’s do some very traditionally gendered date shit. And I am going to be the man.”

Physically taking Peter’s key to open his own door for him in ASM 136.

Playing out the ancient ritual of carrying his books for him in ASM 141. Both times she lampshades this as chauvinism and dramatizes the problematic subtext of how these are supposed to go down. In 1974 when these were published I’m pretty sure book carrying as a courting ritual was already considered a dated, cheesy trope living on only through media.

I wish guys pathologically trying to get the door had gone the same way, buuuut. Sigh. But personally, when dudes slow down our travel progress by stopping me and then making a big production of opening a door for me, I follow their lead by slowing us down even further and refusing to go through the door until after they’ve gone through, and when I’m with dudes who are not trying to do a gender at me I full stop don’t think about these behavioral habits unless a recent encounter has left me twitchy. But I don’t get a hit of gender euphoria from doing man shit, and MJ...might?

What other interpretation of this is there, really? Preemptively punishing Peter to get in ahead of it just in case he comes over weird and traditional on her, three in-universe years into their friendship? Nah, she’s literally just having fun with genderplay.

Also... Peter going along with it but very visibly not Getting it with a single bone in his body... RIP. Or not, because this read intensifies the ways MJ acts as a foil for Peter and Gwen by contrasting their traits.

Gwen’s way of addressing gender stereotypes, to have a point of contrast, were more along the lines of calling Peter a chauvinist when he tried to make decisions for her, and jabbingly cheerful reminders that she was a cute blonde girl and a science major.

The second trait is weaker evidence but still, like...noticeable? And less dismissable as a kink thing. That being MJ’s recurring tendency to parse emotionally complex situations happening to other people by zooming in on one of them and going, That one is the me of this situation and analyzing through that lens. Her pick is always a dude. If there are four women and one man, she’ll pick the man.

^literally recollecting her own sister’s divorce by her deadbeat husband, who if anything she should be comparing to their deadbeat father

SSM 96, ASM 259, ASM: Parallel Lives

This could just be the writers themselves overempathizing with men and discounting women! It’s definitely not deliberate. But also, there are lots of other women in this franchise, who don’t do this as far as I can think of. There are lots of women in these parts of MJ’s story who she is deliberately compared against, like, the Bechdel test is being passed.

And yet, most times I can recall where MJ compares herself to women are explicitly aversive, like how she’s terrified of ending up living a life like her mother’s.

Parallel Lives, incidentally, is wild, because it is simultaneously going “here’s how a man and woman met and got married👫” and dishing a condensed Mary Jane backstory that has every single “the one queer relative” marker. Young Mary Jane, inexplicably different from her family members in an ostracizing but decidedly stylish way, finds her mother and sister’s insistence she follow a normal path through life re: romance and relationships “suffocating” and generally existentially abhorrent. The only one willing to humor MJ is her unmarried aunt, though Anna's support is in the form of optimism about MJ’s potential within the expected romantic paradigm. Simultaneously MJ’s sister, whose trauma as a child of a bad marriage is identical to MJ’s, does hit all the life path checkmarks people expect to see from MJ. Okay. MJ’s main emotional conflict is literally: “A man: Is that my father, or is that me? (These are the only choices.)” ...Okay.

Bonus points granted for self-identifying by the gender-neutral nickname “MJ” over other nickname options that were available if she just wanted to ditch her uncool two-part first name. (Dubious for obvious reasons but we know her father calls her “Janey”, for example.)

Off in some other area of the great gender blob, MJ performs femininity with deliberate, studied exaggeration, and has clearly sampled what she likes from the chocolate box of womanhood and thrown out the rest. Citations: Literally every scene she is in from her introduction up until at least the 90′s Clone Saga.

What does any of this mean!? I dunno. Smells genderqueer tho.

[komoryriku]

Queering KH Part 3: A JoshNeku Aside

An Example In Practice

If you already feel like you understand queer coding then you can skip this but I wanna play here for a minute x). KH as a series is rather subliminal in its queer coding, which makes sense since it was originally released in 2002, which meant its gay story would need to be highly censored. As such, I don’t wanna just jump in without giving you a clear sense of how to decode a queer text and what you’ll wanna look for when queering a text. So let’s do something super fun and easy as fuck. Let’s Queer Joshua! As if he doesn't do that himself already lmao

Joshua Kiryuu is one of my favorite characters- ever lol he is so shameless in how gay he is. But I’m getting ahead of myself here, let’s go back to how we’re gonna decode Joshua as gay. 

So Joshua Kiryuu is a- character in The World Ends With You (TWEWY), a game developed by the same team as Kingdom Hearts, and creatively produced by KH’s Nomura Tetsuya himself. Spoilers ahead btw.

Just from looking at him, he isn’t necessarily gay coded. He looks like your stereotypical angelic bishonen but as I said before, that doesn’t mean anything in Japan. Only an American like me would look at this guy and say “This asshole is one dangerous twink” lol. What you should know about TWEWY however is it is a very contemporary fantasy story about dead kids in Shibuya receiving game instructions from (gay) reapers in the form of memes on their cell phones. This may be a stretch, but Nomura’s KH team already has to keep in mind how things come off to American audiences, especially with a game like this so targeted to teens. As such, I suppose it could be worth considering that Joshua was designed to be so feminine looking, on top of everything else I’m about to drop, which would make him seem gay coded to American players. Him displaying feminine behavior in the form of constant wrist flicks sure wouldn’t go unnoticed in America either… intentional or not that’s top tier gay coding in ‘merica right there. But like I said, probably meaningless by Japanese standards.

Here is what clear coding IS given to us though: Joshua’s text.

Joshua spends a whole scene demanding he be given Pink for his code-color during this cute little kid adventure he’s a part of. A menial, fun little task for Kami-Sama in his off time lol.

Pink is also typically a feminine color. This is true in Japan as well, that’s why Eri and Kairi are covered in Pink, as they are femme and it is standard for a girly girl. In America, its also a gay code, though I can’t say for sure if that counts as one Japan. The fact that a male here is actively embracing Pink for his code color still signals a non-normative personality though. And they certainly recognized its place in romantic coded symbolism:

“Blue and Pink go together.” Blue being Neku. See below.

I love reappropriating heteronormative tropes for our own gay agenda~

Joshua insists on going into the tunnel with Neku, and flirts with him in doing so. Yes you heard me, he flirts. Serious or unserious, Joshua flirts with Neku. He says he could never live with himself if he let Neku go it alone, and proposes they “spend some quality time” together.

Shiki and Beat then make the flustered comment that they didn’t realize Joshua and Neku were a couple, embarrassing Neku but amusing Joshua who leans right into it by calling him “dear.” This coding might actually be too easy lol that’s almost just gay text in itself, really. The characters insinuate that Joshua and Neku are a couple, due to Joshua’s unabashed flirting with Neku, and Joshua never once shies away from it. 

Neku’s response might leave us rather unsure of his own sexuality or feelings about Joshua, but he hardly fights the assumption they’re a couple beyond angrily shaking his fist at how Joshua just embarrassed him. But even so, either way, Joshua never once gives us a reason to think he himself is not gay, even if he isn’t interested in Neku as a partner. (Play TWEWY so you can learn about how likely it is that Neku actually likes Joshua back though 8)). Joshua should be well aware of how gay he is coming off to these people so if he cared to follow heteronormative rules, he would’ve stopped by now if he wanted to. He clearly doesn’t want to lol. Near-explicit as this may be, it is still text that depended on the Blue x Pink coding of romantic archetypes to be discussed by the characters. The only thing working against the fact that Joshua is gay is that you could argue that Joshua is just flirting with Neku to make him uncomfortable… But even as Yoshiya-, a Lamb of a Boy, a Joshua with no godliness or memories of TWEWY, the meek version of himself, -Joshua is still trying to read Neku poetry as soon as they meet. Reading poetry to someone is typically a signal or code that this character likes that person.

If these two were a boy and a girl, there would be no doubt at this point that Joshua is highly attracted to Neku. Always remember that standard in coding. If it makes sense for a boy and a girl to be romantic based on the coding, then it should and surely will make as much sense for 2 boys to be romantic with the same coding. If Shiki were to read Neku a poem, heteronormativity would assume she likes him romantically. Now, remove that heteronormative lens. If Joshua were to read Neku a poem, queer coding should tell you that Joshua likes Neku romantically.

It’s simple math. Straight: a+b=c Gay: a+b=c Straight: Shiki + poetry = Crush on Neku Gay: Joshua + poetry = Crush on Neku

The only difference being that the gay equations go unrecognized most of the time lol. Shiki is also coded as a lesbian so I hope you can forgive me for just using her as a hetero example.;;

Just as blue and pink go together with male and female, so do they go together with male and male. Blue and Pink are still kinda heterosexual-based symbols though..

But you know what IS definitely a gay symbol? 

Rainbow.

As if there were any doubts left about where Joshua’s sexuality lies, he gave us the most damning symbol possible besides explicitly kissing Neku or screaming “I’m Gay”, censors be damned. After all Joshua’s fuss about demanding to be Pink in their group’s color coding, he sees a Rainbow pin and IMMEDIATELY demands to be the Rainbow Pin. MVP Chef Doi making the rainbow pin just for Joshua specifically is so sweet too<3

And that’s not even covering the subtext about Joshua in the rest of TWEWY, (I didn’t even mention the Ramen Date he took Neku on), or even in Dream Drop Distance (didn’t comment on the longing he expresses to be with his friends, to be with Neku again). These are just some of the most explicit codings I know of for him. Hopefully you can agree with me when I say in the end, despite how much straight players might try to dismiss Joshua as gay, it is honestly just easier to believe he is gay, loves being gay, and actively wants to be with Neku. 

So now we’ve gotten through the preliminary, back to KH. The reasonI had us do that is that Kingdom Hearts, while still very gay, relies a lot harder on subtext than Joshua gives enough of a fuck to bother with. So I wanted to exercise us in some easy coding that is much harder to get past a straight pair of eyes before going into KH in which trained eyes are a greater requirement for finding and analyzing the subtext in various places. Fret not though, because this is Kingdom Heart’s secret weapon: the overt gay is so well hidden that the straight people who would cancel the gay agenda simply Cannot see it. Cannot touch it. Cannot stop it. Thankfully, WE will have the tools and power to uncover the gay subtext within. Now let’s deep dive into Kingdom Hearts.~

See you in Part 4 for Dream Drop Distance fun~

[cait-el]

Keith Analysis Master Post

Hi, everyone! I’m going to be doing a series of posts in which I analyze Voltron: Legendary Defender using Keith’s character as a base. On my rewatch, I’ve been specifically focusing on Keith’s storyline, so I’m going to attempt to put everything that I’m projecting thinking into one cohesive storyline.

Before you get invested, I’m just going to say upfront that this will focus on Keith and Lance’s relationship both from what I’ve observed in the show and my headcanons as to where it’s going. These are my opinions! I’ll also include some analysis of the other characters where I see fit, but mostly it’ll be about my boy Keith.

And a quick moment for those who believe that this doesn’t need to evolve into a romantic ship – this is completely valid as well. Not everything has to be taken with a lens towards romance, and I understand that completely. This could be the story of a really strong friendship being forged, but for the sake of creativity and representation, I hope it’s more than that. Being bisexual and a huge ass nerd that is borderline spectrum-y (to use my mom’s words who is a licensed speech therapist who works with autistic kids on a daily basis), I tend to do a lot of projecting. My whole goal in writing all of this about Keith and Lance is so that I can see myself being the hero and so that I can see that it’s possible for people like me to find strength in what I view as my weaknesses. Representation matters more than anything. We don’t need to write books or tell stories about characters suddenly having a change of heart about systemic oppression. We need to write characters that defy these things with their very being, characters who are examples by doing rather than just listening. Okay, that’s my preaching for now. Thank you for coming to my ted talk, here’s seventy eight more hours of me talking.

Ready?? LET’S ANALYZE!

Pre S1E1 / Season One / Season Two / Season Three / Season Four / Season Five

Pre “Return of Voltron”

We’ll start with Keith before Voltron. It’s implied that he already knows Shiro, and that Shiro is like a brother to him (S2e1,8). We also know that Keith’s mother left when he was young, and he doesn’t really know her (S2e8, S5e5). Here’s how I imagine his life leading up to the rescue of Shiro in S1e1.

Keith was a loner kid. He’s smart, but he didn’t do great in school because he was always distracted, or just didn’t want to do the work because he thought it was pointless. He gets in trouble a lot for talking back or just not listening. Also, he’s obsessed with aliens and weird conspiracy theories (I mean you can’t blame him, his mom was a fucking alien spy and his dad probably told him a lot of ghost stories and stuff like that without telling him the whole truth.)

Keith met Shiro when he was pretty young, probably around 12 or 13. Shiro was about to graduate high school, probably on track to go to the garrison (18 or 19). They met because Keith was a loner and bullied a lot for being ‘queer.’ Mostly, he just didn’t like girls, and he didn’t know why. Shiro was there to talk about it because 1) he’s very accepting of everything, and 2) he went through a lot of stuff with sexuality as well. He let Keith tag along on his adventures with the older kids and kept him on track to join the garrison in order to keep him out of trouble. He always told Keith he was smart enough to be the best pilot in the world, and maybe then he could actually see the stars he was so obsessed with as a kid. Keith would talk to Shiro every time he had feelings for a boy, and Shiro would provide that voice of validation and support where Keith’s father could not.

Keith’s father wasn’t a bad man or particularly homophobic, he just grew up in Texas/the South and as part of a time period where being gay was an insult or a stigma, and he just doesn’t get it (think Burt Hummel from Glee). Thus, Keith has a really hard time talking to him about his dating life, which is fine. He’s got Shiro for that.

Then, Shiro leaves on the Kerberos mission, and disappears for a full year. During this time, Keith gets booted from the garrison and makes some…bad decisions. He has his first real boyfriend, and it doesn’t work out (they only date for a few months, but both were in the process of coming out, and both struggled with depression, so it just kind of fell apart. But that’s a totally different thing). He ends up becoming obsessed with the ‘feelings’ he gets form the land and tracking down alien signatures (throwback to his childhood obsessions before Shiro entered the picture) so that he can find Shiro. He needs his brother after the shit year he’s had.

[kelca13]

This is a good, complex question, and it’s one I’d guess most Jikook blogs have asked themselves. But I also think there are some conflations and overstatements of harm in some parts of this question, so I’ll try to go through all of my thoughts.

First, I do not believe that I, a very small blogger who writes entirely in English on a niche website, can out Jikook. And of course I wouldn’t want to, and neither does anyone in this blogosphere. What most of us are doing is discussing – and providing our own subjective interpretations of – actual content that BTS and Big Hit have chosen to release to us themselves. Rose Bowl was a featured moment. GCF-T was created and released by Jungkook. This is very different from, say, stalking a celebrity, taking pictures of them in a private moment, and then releasing those photos to prove something. BTS puts parts of themselves in the public eye, and that leads to media analysis and criticism about the things they publicly say, do, perform, and write. I do not think examining their work through a queer lens is any different than other kinds of media analysis -- it just comes with more preconceptions and engrained negative reactions attached.

It’s also not as though we can convince everyone just by talking about it; we’ve seen how the majority of the fandom reacts to these ideas. The term “delulu” is specifically applied to shippers/supporters, even though everyone theorizes to some degree about the boys (their friendships, their ideal type, the food they like, which women they may be dating, etc.).

And I think this question also misses the nuance of fan spaces. Fan spaces have always existed, and they are places for fans, by fans. Artists are not meant to be in fan spaces, and the content is not geared toward them.

For a non-shipping related example, think of how often the guys get called “baby” and “tiny” online. If you were to approach these very talented, very powerful, very grown men, would you use this same language? Probably not. That's the difference between shared spaces and fan spaces. I think the key is knowing when you’re engaging in a fan space and when you’re overstepping a boundary. Going on vlives and commenting about shipping, for example, is crossing a major boundary in my opinion.

As far as trying to prove anything, I can only speak for myself – but I purposefully avoid that kind of content. This blog does not exist to proselytize and to bring new followers into the religion of Jikook. I like talking about potential queer-coding and signaling and sharing my thoughts, because I find it interesting, but the point isn’t to invasively gather evidence to convince others about it.

Blogs are accused of doing this fairly often, and I think it’s because the shipper label already paints a picture in someone’s mind – and they come into this space with preconceived notions about what we do and how we operate. I’ve never labeled their sexualities aside from analyzing some pretty clear potential romanticism in their relationship. And all of the blogs I follow use plenty of qualifiers (“if” and “depending on their relationship” and “we’ll never know….”).

My last point: I personally believe that they are signaling to us on purpose. I think they’re including queerness in their art purposefully, with forethought. I think they hint about their relationship on purpose. I also think Jungkook hints about his sexuality, though that’s something I haven’t talked about as much – because again, I’m aware of the delicate balance between labeling someone’s sexuality and picking up the contextual clues they are purposefully giving. But queer artists exist, and they communicate who they are through their art and through the words they speak. I don't think it's wrong to try to interpret those messages. If I turn out to be incorrect in my interpretations, then that's okay.

I have developed my own code of ethics for how I talk about this. I can understand if it doesn’t align with someone else’s code, and that makes sense and I wouldn’t expect that person to be a follower of mine. But this is where I approach it from.

Hello. This ask may hit a few nerves in this platform and so I would like to begin by saying that I respectfully ask this question with the intention of starting an open discussion. So my question is, how are you (and many other blogs) so comfortable in speculating and publicly discussing, thereby risking possibly outing (a) gay man/men, without their explicit consent? I mean, it’s one thing to enjoy their moments by shipping them, as I’m well aware, is a culture far common in SK entertainment industry. But when you go as far as saying you are ‘supporters’, then, you are implying an assumption that they really are together, not as a ship, but as two men in a real life relationship. Please do not get me wrong, I am all for normalising queer love, which could very well be your intention, and a very good one at that. But knowing the dangers it may place them in, both professionally and personally, then why do it? Why go beyond shipping boundaries (enjoying moments, celebrating and loving their bond), and speculate to the point of (seemingly) attempting to prove them and possibly exposing them? Who really wins in the end if they’re proven to be together? Please do understand that I am not asking to fight, if there seems to be any abrasiveness in my writing, remember that it’s text and it’s difficult to convey my expressed emotions in it. It’s honest to god curiosity, and I would sincerely love an open discussion about it. Thank you.

Hi anon, thanks for the question.In my opinion it is impossible to talk about ships or to support a ship without talking about these issues, if the ship is a same sex ship and if you ship two people in a non-platonic way of course. Ships are very specific and you are clear from the beginning in what sense you ship two people, so it is impossible and in my opinion it would be foolish to avoid this topic if you ship two people as a couple, regardless of whether you believe the ship is real or just a fantasy, a desire that you have. Talking about the sexuality of those in a ship is not a topic that you actively seek to discuss, it is a topic that you automatically have to touch on, in order to give more depth to the bond that you claim to support.

how are you (and many other blogs) so comfortable in speculating and publicly discussing, thereby risking possibly outing (a) gay man/men, without their explicit consent? I can’t speak for other blogs or the reasons why other people discuss these issues, but in my case I do it because I see nothing wrong with speculating on the subject. A person’s sexuality is something normal, the problem is that we have been taught that speculating that a person is gay or lesbian etc., is something private, is something sensitive, even a bad thing, but ASSUMING that a person is heterosexual is normal. Both conversations are about a person’s sexuality so both should be normal.I have been clear more than once that these are my opinions, so they are subjective, I have never presented them as indisputable facts. Or as absolute truths. thereby risking possibly outing (a) gay man/men, without their explicit consent?This part I understand, but I’m not Korean, I don’t live in Korea and I don’t work for the press, what I say will most likely never reach the press, plus ship culture is not new, and has never been taken seriously by the media. Does that sound like an excuse? Maybe, but it’s the truth.

then why do it?

Because it is beautiful. Because it is good to celebrate a bond as special as the one they have. Because there is nothing wrong with it.Because we must learn not to be afraid of restrictions, stereotypes imposed by society. Because in this way we may help to normalise the conversation about these issues.

Having said all that, I can also see the…. hypocrisy? of wanting to prove? or at least wanting to normalize the possibility of them being gay and thereby somehow taking away their power to say so themselves. Although I am not an LGTBI+ person I can understand and imagine the frustration, anger that a person must feel when others take away your power or choice to tell the world that you are LGTBI+, on your terms, in your own way and when you want to, if you are still in the closet, of course.

[filmandlove]

Hedwig, Heteronormativity, and Challenging the Narrative through Queering

For today’s class, we watched Hedwig and the Angry Inch (dir. John Cameron Mitchell, 2001). We also took a look at the narrative of heterosexuality that was created only in the recent past and analyze the changing lens through which society focuses. It was an interesting discussion, though as a queer person myself I thought it lacked something. It focused a lot on the creation of heteronormative love as the norm and not as much as it should, I felt, on queer love. As much as we talked about the narrative surrounding the two areas, I thought we approached it from something of a heteronormative lens. However, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s talk about Hedwig!

This movie is based very solidly in the Greek ideas of love that I’ve been writing about (and somewhat dissing). The tl;dr for those who have not seen it is that a young transgender woman from East Berlin mentors a young rock star in the typical fashion of Greek pederasts and (sort of) finds enlightenment. I won’t say any more in case you want to watch it, but that’s a large basis of it. There is an exploration of Aristophanes’ idea that each person has a very specific other half, as well as the ladder of enlightenment – finding pleasure in the body, then imparting knowledge (especially of the arts) in one’s beloved, etc.

Now, I think the film was a good start of an exploration of queer love in a transgender frame, but I’m not entirely sure about the reading of the film that was brought up in class, which is that rather than Hedwig abandoning her womanhood and returning to the male state of being, she, or they, become something else. I do agree with the fact that this is a good reading in the sense that there is some evidence for this – Hedwig is referred to more than once as being more than a man or a woman – but I am doubtful that this was the intent in 1998 when the play first came out. Indeed, it was written by a cis, straight, white male (who actually directed, produced, and starred in the film version). As I said to one of my classmates after the discussion, while we may have the words and ideas to describe another state of being outside of the two gender narrative, I am not at all confident that a) the 1990s would have the foresight to carry this narrative and b) that a cis, straight, white man would be the one to bring that to the public’s attention. I do think that the film can be read in a much different way, in a world where Hedwig reaches enlightenment and does return to a state of male being, that is, maleness is the path of enlightenment. I think this might be a bit harsh, but I still believe that there is definitely a grey area here where I don’t think we can trust that John Cameron Mitchell was really that up on gender queerness to be able to give this to the world before anyone could really understand it. Perhaps...but doubtful.

I thought the discussion of the readings was good and enjoyable, and the focus on the “Boston Marriages” was especially interesting and exciting (a Boston Marriage was a Victorian practice of women getting married to each other before it was illegal, and it was often seen as wholesome, or considered the product of a very close friendship)! It’s amazing the things that there has been so much erasure of queerness in history (though not surprising). We talked a lot about the erasure and the changing narrative – where queerness today is becoming more accepted, especially with millennial practices of rejecting marriage more often, and also the fact that potentially 50% of millennials identify in some way as queer (a reference was made to an article that said that). However, I think it would have been good to focus on some of the other things that have been erased in queer history by the heteronormative governments and churches that started the narrative in the first place. If we know that things have been erased, then we have an idea of what those were.

As I write, I have to wonder if we could have a class that discussed queer love outside the framework of heteronormativity. While we are moving farther away from that, everything about queer is about othering queer people from hetero people. Even Sarah Gubbins said that queering is about othering. If we are making two separate spheres here, I think it might be impossible to talk about one without including a comparison of the other in some way. Well, right now we can talk about hetero love easily without referencing queer love. Think of all the rom coms that are still being made that, while potentially unproblematic in any way, still are very heteronormative. Then think about shows or movies involving queer characters. How many of those really exist in a framework where queer love is the norm and it isn’t in some way compared to hetero love? If you can think of any examples, please let me know. But even Hedwig makes references to the abnormality of the relationship between Hedwig and Tommy, especially when it is reported that he said that he didn’t know she wasn’t a woman when they were together, or something transphobic like that (I’m paraphrasing).

I think we are moving in this direction, but we aren’t there yet. We need more shows and movies that portray queer characters as a common fact of life, rather than just a token that gets thrown in there to meet that diversity criteria. We need to start talking as if queer love does stand alone from hetero love, because it does, and it deserves its own conversation outside of that framework.

[tobestclub-blog]

the bechdel test: a critique but also a rant about performative feminist allyship lol

NOTE: I wrote this 5 months ago, had some friends write back feedback and took a loooooong break from it. When returning I had recognized how much I have changed and learned since first writing this that I reacted with embarrassment. I made some little changes but overall I regret that I did not dive in further into this and wish I was more inclusive of marginalized folks that do not identify as female too. BUT I am going to publish this anyway - as an archive to see what my mindset/priorities were 5 months ago but also to not be embarrassed of putting out bad work (THIS IS HOW WE LEARN TO MAKE MISTAKES) I invite you to send any critiques or suggestions my way, and appreciate if you read it!!!!

The first time any of my profs ever talked about the industry being dominated by old white men was two years into the program. This was also the first time that some of my male classmates understood this or had ever heard of The Bechdel Test let alone the first time they had ever bothered to critique a film through a feminist lens.

The Bechdel test is a little survey used to measure the female presence in fiction (films, graphic novels, books). Created by Allison Bechdel, the queer goddess of my dreams (also the author of Fun Home, The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For and Are You My Mother? Graphic novels, MUST READS) her survey asks three essential questions: Does this story have 2 female characters? Do they both have names? And do they talk to each other about something other than men/a man? Below is the original comic she made about it:

Dreamy right? When this test came out people were obviously quick to analyze all their favourite films. Some that make it as expected: Mean Girls; Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny, Ghostbusters (2016); Mad Max: Fury Road, Tangerine. The ones that don’t make it as expected: American Sniper, Get Hard, Straight Outta Compton. Although the themes of these films align with their outcome of the Bechdel Test, it’s not the ultimate measure of what is classified as a feminist film. It’s good to revisit that it’s sole, simplistic purpose is to only measure female presence in fiction media.

There are many films that, despite their lack of feminist perspective, still unexpectedly pass the Bechdel Test. If you look at Avengers: Age of Ultron; 40 Year Old Virgin and American Pie 2. Looking specifically at Avengers: Age of Ultron, it just barely passes despite there being 6 major female roles. The only conversation that is held between them that isn’t about men is a brief interaction with a main + side character where they discuss the gender of a baby. Otherwise, all conversation between women revolve around men or are inaudible. In the case of these 3, and a lot of films that pass, they pass with the bare minimum with a quick exchange of a few lines.

Some films that have more of a female-driven narrative and theme like: The Eagle Huntress, Run Lola Run, She’s the Man don’t (despite these films having dynamic multi-dimensional female characters and working to break traditional gender boundaries/stereotypes).

The Bechdel test is just the tiniest bit of the huge world there is to feminist film theory and critique, and that isn’t a negative thing about it - that’s Bechdel’s point. It’s that most Hollywood films do not pass even the easiest and simplest of tests for female representation.

An example of its limitations is that Moonlight does not pass the Bechdel test. But the thing is – it doesn’t need to. It is a personal and intimate story revolving around men, but what makes it so important is that stories from this particular group (Queer black men) have never been told to a mass audience before (from my knowledge). And regardless, Moonlight actually does have feminist qualities in it, and I would even say it is a feminist film (despite its female presence not being the forerunners of the story). The few female characters in Moonlight are SO strong and dynamic (Marry me Janelle Monae!!!!) and the work it puts into to break down toxic hypermasculinity works towards a feminist rhetoric of gender equality imo.

I actually was inspired to write this because I was at a short film festival, and at intermission, a male filmmaker in front of me turned to his partner and said “Out of all 10 of the films that were shown, not a SINGLE ONE passed the Bechdel Test. That is ridiculous and obscene!” He went on to talk about non-feminist films and how he looked down on all the shorts we had just seen because of their failing grade on the all-mighty-feminist test (No exaggeration, The Bechdel Test is very much mistaken as this all the time – Exhibit A)

What really frustrated me about his comment was that he was so proud that he knew what the Bechdel Test and how much smarter and better he was than all these short filmmakers because he asked these 3 simple questions. Also, just a note that these were all shorts, which even the most feminist shorts I have seen have failed the test because there is so little time to introduce many characters. I was so frustrated because it was such a classic example of people doing their bare minimum to learn about something other than the male gaze. ~By answering these 3 objectives yes or no questions with absolutely no thought at all, you too can see films like feminists do!~ And don’t get me wrong, I think a lot of this frustration comes from the tone and confidence that was exerted when he said this stuff, and can definitely see it be a singular incident. But I have seen it in many many other people (men lol), and this is just this beginning (literally told someone in film last year that white cis men are advantaged in film and he had never thought about it before).

I think the worst part about writing on that experience is that I didn’t say anything. And so really, this is a part rant and dream of what I was able to say to him. I know it is not my responsibility to stand up for everything I believe in, but upon reading this recent article and listening to this podcast - I have been feeling extremely motivated and empowered to make whatever effort I can to spark a conversation and hopefully spark some change.

And if you have some time and energy after reading this post here are some questions you can ask people to ~open their minds~ up to feminist film critique:

What are the goals of the female characters?

Do these female characters work off of stereotypes and further perpetuate them? Or do they add to the greater – diverse female narrative?

What does this film say about female-female relationships?

Here are some Feminist Film Critics I like/are good reads: Laura Mulvey - Visual Pleasure and Narrative CInema, Barbara Klinger- The art film effect, and the female viewer: The Piano Revisited, Janet Walker - Psychoanalysis and Feminist Film THeory: The Problem of Sexual Difference and Identity, Patrice Petro - Aftershocks of the New: Feminism and Film History, Jane Gaines - White Privilege and Looking Relations: Race and Gender in Feminist Film Theory, Andrea Weiss - “A Queer Feeling When I look at you”: Hollywood Stars and Lesbian Spectatorship in the 1980s (message me for this one, I have it in print)

*I want to expand my resources of feminist film writing, especially those from Queer POCs and through that perspective, if you have suggests for me to add to the list please send them my way!!!!

And here is another simple test you can apply to other films as well: The Mako Mori Test

thanks for reading!!! luv, khanh

[obsidianarchives]

Jessie Blount

Jessie Blount (she/her) is a queer woman of color, an INTP, a Sagittarius, a sci-fi and fantasy nerd, a witch, and an incredible cook. Jessie works for a rad non-profit in Detroit, where she lives with her girlfriend, Nicole, and a beautiful Slytherin cat princess, Winnie. She spends her time learning survival skills for the impending apocalypse and collecting Harry Potter memes. 

Black Girls Create: What do you create? 

HUMOROUS YET RUTHLESS

I create primarily audio-based media themed around the critical analysis of my fandoms. I do this mainly through my podcast The Gayly Prophet, a queer analytical chapter by chapter reread of the original 7 Harry Potter books that I do with my co-host and good friend Lark. Our bi-line is ‘humorous yet ruthless’ because while I’ve been a fan of the series since before book 4 was out, there are a lot of deeply problematic things in the text. One of the biggest inspirations for the pod was Witch Please, a feminist analysis of Harry Potter by two “lady scholars,” which was great, but sadly went book by book rather than chapter by chapter.  While there are a ton of Harry Potter podcasts, there were not any that specifically looked at Harry Potter through a queer lens. 

On The Gayly Prophet's Patreon I create on-the-spot fanfic round-robin style with Lark and post various multi-fandom fanfiction that I’ve written. I also discuss my other fandoms in some of our other Patreon exclusive content, like our “Editors Cut” where we talk about things like time travel, or my biweekly link roundup, “Muggle Studies.”

BGC: Why do you create?

I don’t really consider it an option, more of a necessity. I didn’t grow up with a lot of money, and I struggled a lot with the reality of racism and feeling different than a lot of kids I grew up with. Books and television were my friends, not just as an escape but as a way of dreaming of what could be. This is what drew me to sci-fi and fantasy, but as a child of the ‘90s, I didn’t come across many Black people or women in the stories I consumed. Like a lot of hardcore readers, I dreamed of being a writer, of creating my own story that was as majestic and beautiful as my inner life that had the kind of people I knew, complexity, and strong and weird and queer and POC characters. I cut my creative teeth in fandom, writing a lot of terrible, half created fanfics to go with the poetry that I wrote in my teens. The Gayly Prophet is really an extension of this passion, of my belief in the importance of fun, deep, textual analysis with other people.

BGC: Who is your audience? What do you hope your audience gets out of your podcast?

When I envision our audience, I think of other angry BIPOC queer nerds like me who love a thing so deeply that we want to rip it apart. I think to love a work of art is to examine it from all sides, rediscovering that love but also questioning its limitations and highlighting its flaws. More personally, I hate talking about myself, a holdover of my not-great childhood and deep social anxiety. I’d much rather talk about and listen to people’s thoughts about books and TV and movies. I’ve never gotten tired talking about Harry Potter, as 50 episodes and dozens of hours of The Gayly Prophet can attest to. The gaps in canon are staggering, especially as it relates to marginalized people, and filling those in is something I’m never bored of. I want to have this dialog with our listeners, hear their thoughts and feelings and headcanons. It’s also a bit like group therapy. I talk a lot about childhood trauma and neurodiversity as it related to HP because there is so much built explicitly into the canon and discussing it helps me verbalize and process these things in my own life. At heart, I want our audience to not feel alone. I also want them to laugh because there can never be enough laughter.  

BGC: Who or what inspired you to do what you do? Who or what continues to inspire you?

I’m perpetually inspired by Black nerds, especially folks who are older Millennial/Gen X Black nerds. Being a Black nerd didn’t used to be cool and acceptable. I was a weird kid growing up, consuming sci-fi novels like water and videotaping the X-Files on my grandparents VCR. When I got to college, I was lucky enough to start digging into race and women’s studies, and I was particularly interested in how that relates and informs art and media. One of the biggest influences for me was “The Oppositional Gaze” by Black feminist theorist bell hooks, where she says:

Critical black female spectatorship emerges as a site of resistance only when individual black women actively resist the imposition of dominant ways of knowing and looking. While every black woman I talked to was aware of racism, that awareness did not automatically correspond with politicization, the development of an oppositional gaze. When it did, individual black women consciously named the process. Manthia Diawara's "resisting spectatorship" is a tenant that does not adequately describe the terrain of black female spectatorship. We do more than resist. We create alternative texts that are not solely reactions. As critical spectators, black women participate in a broad range of looking relations, contest, resist, revision, interrogate, and invent on multiple levels. 

I take this to mean that nothing I consume is merely passive escapism, nor do I accept the prevailing white supremacy of much of the media I consume. It’s a complex consumption for me, I love stories and pleasing aesthetics and music and well-written prose. But everything I consume I interrogate, I analyze, I think on the possibilities of what if someone like me was at the center of the narrative. This way of looking has parallels in fandom, in the embracing of Black Hermione, in shipping, in headcanons, in examining canon and discarding and adding at will. 

I also grew up listening to NPR and had this dream of having my own radio show where I just talked about books I loved. Podcasting is honestly a blessing in this regard because I bought a mic and invested in recording software and a website, and now I am living a dream that my sad teen nerd self could have only imagined.

BGC: How do you continue to be inspired especially in these specific times?

Joy and laughter and critical thought are, I think, the best way to survive these trying times. I spend a lot of my time thinking about injustice, racism, and our broken system, and it would be very easy to give in to the feeling of being crushed by a system that actively wants me dead. Thinking of silly Harry Potter puns or playlists for soft bi werewolves gives my endlessly running mind something fun to think on and makes the perpetual tightness in my chest ease a little, because, at the very least, my co-host Lark will laugh and then I will laugh and that’s something that I did, that I created. 

BGC: Why is it important as a Black person to create? 

Honestly, creating is what has gotten Black folks for generations through all the shit that America has wrung us through. There is a reason that anything good in American culture was either created by or made better in Black hands. Music, food, art, clothing, dance, acting, poetry, social change, sci-fi, even the best parts of Al Gore’s internet. And within this, there are countless Black women and Black queer folks who are nearly forgotten. Basically, everyone we know from the Harlem Renaissance was not straight. Disco and house music came from Black and Latino gay club scenes. Even ‘internet speak’ is from Black trans women and folks in the ball scene. It’s part of our culture to thrive in this world by creating something beautiful. 

BGC: Are there other creators that you admire?

My top faves are Black ladies in sci-fi. My number one fave is the late great Octavia Butler, I think everyone should read the Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. Janelle Monáe is out here living a peak queer nonbinary Afro-future nerd life, and I am so happy that young queer nerds get to grow up having someone like them (Janelle has not yet said what pronouns to use). Someone needs to give her all the money to make Afro-future sci-fi films. And, to paraphrase Issa Rae, I’m rooting for everyone Black who’s creating podcasts and writing fanfic and making YouTube vids and TikTok, especially the younger folks. 

BGC: How do you balance creating with the rest of your life? 

I work a full-time job that often has me working extra hours, so I don’t do as much for the podcast as I would like. Lark has a bit more relaxed schedule and TBH the podcast would not be half as good without him. My girlfriend is also very supportive, which helps so, so much. I schedule everything I do in Google calendar to make time for recording and the extra bits of running a podcast and having downtime.

BGC: How do you balance creating when you feel drained or exhausted?

I have depression, anxiety, and ADHD, so I am nearly always drained or exhausted. This is where clear communication and a shared calendar comes in. I know that if I work late at work, I need the next evening to recover and make sure to schedule recording sessions or podcast meetings spaced out from my work schedule. We do a lot of longer recording sessions on the weekends or the times where I have time off. We also record a lot of Patron-exclusive content that doesn’t necessarily require a lot of prep work or mental bandwidth, so for weeks where I am particularly low energy, I can still create something. And, lastly, we deeply stagger the time when we record to when the episode goes up, so if I’m in bad mental space and cannot do anything, I can take that time and episodes will still go out.

BGC: Any advice for new creators?

I think it can be hard to start a project because a lot of what we see is the finished product after years of work. You gotta power through it if you want to learn. And often people love it anyway. Someone might draw some fan art and see all the flaws, I see it and am like ‘Yes, more Black Hermione fan art, I love it.’ It’s ok if you have to take things slowly. Some weeks I only have an hour a week to knit or write or read for the podcast, because of real-life things. A lot of people who create all the time have, like, hired help or the unpaid labor of a spouse, so that ‘we all have the same 24 hours as Beyoncé’ thing is shitty creative advice.   

BGC: Any future projects coming up?

We’ve got some exciting things planned for our ‘Make Harry Potter Even Gayer 2020’ campaign, in which we are amplifying queer HP fanworks and merch by queer creators. We are in the embryonic stages of planning some kind of live event for the campaign, too. Folks should follow us on social media to be kept in the loop on that stuff as it develops! We’re on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @thegaylyprophet.