It should come as no secret to anyone who has read some of the things that I’ve written either here or on my personal blog that I am a gay cisgender man. I make no secret of it, very openly gay and it has influenced the opinions presented any time I write something that even mentions a gay person.
There is a reason why I was the reviewer chosen to write about the Queer for Fear series, it’s a factor that impacts how I view certain pieces of media and is an undeniable element of my life experience that triggers bigots in ways that you wouldn’t believe. For example: –
“It’s time you all just do whatever you do but stop making a big deal out of it. It’s not all about your queerness and I for one am so over seeing gay and other crap on every tv show, ads and posts like these”
This was a reply I got in the comment section of a news article about the recent decision by RL Stine to edit some of his books to remove certain bits of offensive language that he no longer believes he should have used. In this thread, I mentioned that they’re his books and therefore his choice what happens to them. In response the person who wrote the quoted phrase used that as a springboard to say they were tired of seeing gay crap on every show/ad/post etc… no one at this point had mentioned gay.
The only indication of gayness existing is the fact that my Facebook avatar is a photo of me with a rainbow filter on it that I’ve had since 2015 when Facebook had a pride filter. That filter, that spectrum of colours crudely slapped across the series of genetic mistakes I call a face was enough to get this kind of reaction.
So why am I telling you this? Because this is not about a single bigot in a single comment section, it’s about this insane idea that gays and the LGBTQIA+ community as a whole are pushing our lifestyles on people against their will by daring to just exist in a public space and how that makes bigots mad. When bigots get mad, especially those with some sort of power, that ends in horrible things happening to a community who are merely trying to exist in peace without hurting anyone.
America continues to get it Wrong
Look over to America, just for an example of how vile some of this stuff can be. Probably the most famous stupid bigot bill of the moment is the drag bans that basically are designed to remove a queer art form from the public eye. This is a bill that exists because it lets the bigots writing it be homophobic and transphobic at the same time, it’s like a two-for-one sale for stupid evil fuckwads.
The claim is that drag queens are overly sexual and therefore shouldn’t be around kids which is hilariously stupid on many levels because any queen performing for a kid would tailor their act to be family friendly… you know, like how Chris Rock doesn’t do bits about fucking his wife while promoting the Madagascar movies.
Oh and I’m not done, there are so many others, from bills in Florida to allow the Florida government to take trans children away from their parents if the parent provides gender-affirming care (which, for children, is always just letting them wear the clothing of their gender and get a haircut, MAYBE going on puberty blockers which are harmless and have been used by cis people for years!) to the bill in Iowa designed to end gay marriage by literally amending the state constitution to put it there.
These are just the first three bills off the top of my head, there are literally hundreds designed to attack the LGBTQIA+ community for the crime of not going so far back in the closet that they can have Turkish Delight with the queen back in Narnia… and that’s just in the US.
The UK is seemingly worse, especially for trans people who have to constantly deal with a media that attacks them, authors of witch books who can’t handle the fact that they haven’t written anything people actually care about since 2007 so they take it out on trans women who just want to take a piss.
Hell, not that long ago a government official claimed that a trans woman who she met in a bathroom said she was going to “Wipe my hands on my penis”, a complete lie that anyone with half a brain could spot in a second but it was made worse when the trans woman in question (YouTuber Sophie From Mars, fabulous video essayist) realised she was the person being talked about and pointed out that she’d said she was going to wipe her hands on her jeans.
Oh, and let’s not forget the murders because god damn, it’s impossible to ignore the number of times queer people are being murdered for the crime of existing. The most famous one right now at the time of typing (there’s a fun phrase to type) is Brianna Ghey who was a 16-year-old trans girl who was murdered on the 11th of February and when reporting started, people used her name and gender markers… up until they heard she was trans.
At which point The Times and other newspapers used her deadname and changed all the pronouns to male because The Times and most UK papers are transphobic sociopaths who deserve nothing but scorn for all of eternity. They don’t even deserve the dignity of being used as toilet paper, they’re already full of enough shit with the vile transphobia they print on a near-daily basis but this incident was… well, honestly expected because the UK press is horrific at this. Seriously, could do an entire piece about how shit they are at treating trans people in the UK but this piece is already long enough because oh boy, this train of bigotry just does not stop.
Then there’s just how the internet in general reacts to even the notion that someone might be queer in a piece of media they like (look at me managing to make this piece actually fit the theme of the site it’s on!). Remember when people lost their goddamn minds about a lesbian couple in Lightyear only for it to turn out to be a background moment that was about 4 seconds in total?
Hell, right now people are getting upset that Pedro in Shazam is a confirmed gay character, acting like it would be impossible for a teenager to know if they’re gay (but apparently totally fine with all the teens and preteen stories about straight romance, interesting choice of priorities there).
This happens every time a prominent film dares suggest a character might be anything other than straight, especially if it’s in a franchise of popular films. They’re not even making these characters be so obviously queer, they aren’t doing anything above glances and light touching and people lose their damn minds because they can’t handle it if someone is a little bit different.
Let me provide you with another fun quote that went around the internet recently.
“Transgenderism must be eradicated from public life”
That is a quote from Michael Knowles, a failed actor with all the charm of syphilis, who said it loudly at CPAC where cameras could put the footage out into the world. Naturally, people pointed out that this phrase heavily implies that Michael wants a genocide against trans people, something Michael Knowles has called libel so let me be obscenely clear here so as not to get Michael mad about being misrepresented… in my personal opinion, Michael Knowles would like trans people to stop existing in any way possible which would, by the actual fucking definition, be considered a genocide.
His attempt to cover that by replacing “Transgender people” with “transgenderism” in his sentence is a pathetic cover that no one with half a brain is falling for. Michael Knowles and the people who support him are, explicitly, making a call for trans people to die… all because they exist. This is not libel, this is stating what their words and actions are obviously intended to result in and if they do not like hearing that then maybe they could stop being genocidal fuckwads!
Notice, for the record, every issue that I’ve raised here is just because queer people are daring to step into the sunlight and take up just a tiny amount of space in order to exist. Drag has been around for centuries, but they want to ban it now because it’s popping up everywhere in media and making the conservatives uncomfortable. The bigots lost the gay marriage war, but they keep starting new battles because they know if they can just win one then they might be able to reverse the progress made.
Trans people just want to live in quiet peace and go to the bathroom and instead have to worry about either being murdered in parks by random people for no reason or have a mob of idiotic politicians pass laws that would force them to stop taking the medication that saved their lives… the alphabet soup isn’t forcing itself on you, you’re forcing the alphabet soup to go away because it makes you uncomfortable when you see it sitting there doing absolutely nothing.
I am over it…
This entire post started because of a single comment… “I for one am so over seeing gay and other crap on every tv show, ads and posts like these”.
I, for one, am so over having to see trans friends online terrified that they might not live through the week if the wrong person runs into them and decides to commit an act of violence.
I, for one, am so over public figures lying to stoke anger towards a community and then, when that community calls them out on it, acting like they’re the true victim.
I, for one, am tired of assholes like Michael “Someone should check my hard drive just in case” Knowles trying to hide behind colourful language and legal threats to pretend he isn’t calling for the genocide of trans people (which he claims he isn’t) when it’s clear what’s implied by his words.
I, for one, am so over having to think about this kind of thing all the time. I’m tired, I’m truly tired. Tired of the fact that every time there’s a visibly queer person doing anything whatsoever that all of a sudden they’re waving their sexuality in people’s faces or making a big deal of it… we’re not, we’re trying to live and we keep having bigots throw roadblocks in place and when we complain about it, we’re the bad guys. Enough, can we please just stop being dicks to people who are just trying to exist without hurting anyone?
In conclusion… fuck TERFS, homophobes and bigots in general.
