gavillain:

AHEM.

Gay male characters who are effeminate and/or have their gayness as a major component of their characterization/storylines are NOT automatically stereotypical or bad representation.

Like I mostly see this sentiment come from straight people but I see it from others in the LGBT+ community too (including other gay men), and I just think it’s such a wrongheaded way of thinking. Like gay characters where their sexuality is “no big deal” or who behave very “normal” or “mundane” certainly have their place. But I think lauding “NBD representation” as the gold standard is problematic because oftentimes these gay characters are written where their sexuality is kind of incidental, and that’s not something that’s done usually in the interest of quality representation as much as it is making gay people more palatable for straight consumption.

Because, the truth is, there are gay people of all varieties. Flamboyant flashy gay men, mundane gay men, gay men where their sexuality is super central to them, and gay men who do kind of put their sexuality on the back burner. And all of that is valid. But the fact that our media tends to promote certain types as being “stereotypical” or “bad representation” and others as preferable, when the one portrayed as preferable is the one that is most comfortable for straight people? That’s… kind of insidious in a way.

In media, stereotypes are about being essentialist and often times to sort of mock marginalized people and make them the butt of a joke. If a show/movie/comic/whatever has an effeminate gay man who is respected by the narrative and is a fleshed out character, then they’re not stereotypical. Gay men are ALLOWED to be flamboyant or effeminate. If a piece of media spends a lot of time focusing on a character’s sexuality as their primary plot, as long as they have other interests and other traits, that’s not a bad direction, and I’d personally GREATLY appreciate more stories that deal with actual issues that are unique to gay men.

Trying to box gay men in media into this one specific type of representation is just another type of closet, imo. Let gay men be gay men in the media we consume. And I’m also really fucking sick of people who aren’t gay men telling gay men how they should write gay men, especially straight men, but that’s a whole ‘nother topic.

donnapaella:

Why do people act like oppression dynamics never existed within the LGBT+ community before the whole ace discourse ?

A few exemples that we all already knows but apparently everyone is ignoring it: cis people, even non straight cis people, have a privilege over trans people. Or a white LGBT+ person is privileged compared to their non-white counterpart. Or a wealthy one is privileged compared to their poor counterpart. Or an abled one, or an NT one, or, or…

There are numerous examples: there are oppression dynamics within the Pride, and many people are going to be in the same Pride as groups that oppress them in some way, without the oppressor’s legitimacy being questioned.

So when you claim a “”“”“"cishet”“”“”“ ace (heteromantic ace folks I guess, and aroace folks probably) is your oppressor, because they’re not going to be targeted for liking the same gender (but they ARE targeted for another reason, y’all keep in mind I’m trying to respond to exclusionists’ logic), you’re basically saying “no matter if you face an oppression I’m refusing to see, you’re oppressing ME by not being like me so go away”.

And trust me, if we all had to do that, trans folks would dump all of our asses.

They don’t fit in the hetero world, they face oppressions that are their own (I’m not going to list them because there are many other great posts about it and if you don’t know about it you just decided to ignore it) but these oppressions intersect a lot with other kinds of queerphobia (omg Donna wrote queer in their post, I’m calling the police), so, they belong at pride, because they, too, need that place to be proud of their identity and they, too, fight heteronormativity with us.

Do some of them belong to groups that are privileged compared to some of other LGBT+ folks ? Maybe, depending if they are white, cis, rich, abled, etc etc. But, again, so do many of us all.

Like. If we’re going to talk about privileges within the community, we’re going to talk about them all.

My own stance is that we don’t know enough about ace identities to make exclusionism justifiable. There’s been barely any academic work done about ace identities and what has been done has had flaws due to the lack of understanding academia has for non-straight identities (one study also looked at “sapiosexuals”…really???). There’s a concept in environmental science called the Precautionary Principle, which is defined as “in situations where we lack scientific knowledge, pick the stance that causes the least amount of harm” and that’s what I think the community should be following at this time. Meanwhile, I expect that once academia catches up to where the LGBTQ+ community is at that we will know more and people who have excluded ace identities will start to walk it back as they have with bi identities when similar research was conducted about us.

cuntybisexual:

god okay at the gym today i was watching CNN and this stupid fucking white male anchor had a south asian guy as one of the guests or whatever, and they were talking about harvard’s discriminatory policy toward asian american applicants. basically harvard’s approach iterates that without the subjective personality metric, harvard’s campus population would be 43% asian, and thus the quotas, which cap the asian population at 19%, are necessary to preserve diversity. so naturally the south asian guy was talking about how racist this is. and the motherfucking white male anchor waxes lyrical about how he wants his white kids to be around black and latinx people so that they get a “diverse education with multiple perspectives”. as if asian americans don’t contribute to diversity! frankly this whole thing reeks of “asians are overpopulated so we need to rid the world of them” tbh. and naturally the south asian guy was like “wtf are you talking about, that’s quite literally racist against asian americans and it tokenizes black and latinx people as well” and of course the fucking cracker was like “you misunderstood me, you’re reading into this too much, blah blah blah”. when will white men die? 

full offense but this really is the model minority myth in action and it’s why i’ve always fucking said that the myth doesn’t just serve to impose positive stereotypes on asian americans. its primary function is to make invisible the racialized struggles of asian people so that white supremacist capitalism can usurp asian labor. 

not only do white people routinely erase the diversity of asian people, but they also continually try and erase white supremacist, colonialist, and imperialist brutality against asians. european countries colonized so much of south asia and southeast asia. europe + the US occupied china through spheres of influence. USA dropped two nuclear bombs on japan and interned japanese americans. the US killed numerous vietnamese civilians for the sake of imperialism. the US continues to exert an imperialist influence in the korean peninsula, in guam, in okinawa, in the philippines. britain fucking drained every last resource from india and enacted two genocidal famines in the region of bengal. winston churchill said that indians were worse than germans. britain then left the south asian subcontinent with a bloody partition of punjab and of bengal, effectively contributing to the bengali genocide of 1971. the US invaded iraq and afghanistan and destroyed both countries, it installed a dictator in iran. britain colonized yemen. france colonized lebanon and syria. USA, britain, france, canada, and its allies hurl bombs and drone strikes in pakistan, in yemen, in iraq, in syria, directly leading to the rise of reactionary groups within those countries, such as ISIS. the US has enacted brutal sanctions against north korea and has prevented korean reunification for its own purposes. 

and this doesn’t even begin to cover american discrimination against asian immigrants, beginning with the chinese exclusion act and vile xenophobia and racism against east asian immigrants. or how today, south and southeast asian immigrants face immense violence. or the resurgence in anti-sino bias. 

it’s so fucking easy to forget that asian americans actually do face racism to because white people are so good at pretending that every asian leads an easy life and isn’t racialized and that all asians look and act and think the same.

There were similar quotas in place, and the same justifications for
them, against Jews at Harvard in the 1920s-1930s. The whole “we don’t
evaluate for merit but for ~~personality~~” is a dogwhistle for
discriminating against whoever is getting the model minority myth
applied to them at a given time. It’s not a positive myth at all and it encourages discrimination, stereotyping, and violence.

puppetmaker40:

marvelsmostwanted:

Here’s a call script for your Senators and/or representatives – scroll down to “Tell your members of Congress: Condemn the Trump administration’s separation of families.” This is especially important if you live in a red state. Trump is trying to claim that the separation of families is due to a “law” enacted by Democrats – there is no such law. This is a Trump administration policy. It’s important for Republicans to know we don’t believe his lies, and that we know exactly who is responsible for this. Calling Democratic members of Congress helps, too – even if they already support keeping families together at the border, it will help to continue to encourage them to take action.

The bill is S.3036, the Keep Families Together Act. You can read it here.

Find an event near you: familiesbelong.org 

#FamiliesBelongTogether

One thing to add. Find out if your representative has children or grandchildren and ask,them how they would feel if it happened to them. Play to empathy