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QUILTBAG Thread of Flagrant Homoeroticism

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Apple Cider, on 24 Apr 2015 - 08:49, said:

"Privilege" to "pass" as straight as a bisexual person is just another arm of heteronormativity, FYI. It's not a privilege to be mistaken as straight, it's just a very different part of living in a straight world that bisexual people have to deal with that is different from how gay people have to navigate the world. Please do not say that people "reading" me as a straight woman because I mention a boyfriend or have dated men or had sex with them is a privilege especially due to how misogyny intersects with this.

 

Yes, you're absolute correct that it's just another arm of heteronormativity! Similarly, don't suggest that it's not a privilege to have the option of engaging in an opposite sex relationship with all the legal and social approval that entails, which seems to be implicit in your current argument about bisexual erasure. Being mistaken as straight is, as you say, not a privilege. However, having the ability to engage in opposite sex relationships is a profound privilege, and it's why many gay youth do go through this bargaining period.

That's precisely why it's an erasure of the gay coming out experience to suggest that depictions of that struggle with heteronormativity can never be shown.A stronger critical apparatus for approaching bisexual erasure would recognize this and allow for fictional representations of gay coming out stories where the power of heteronormativity leads to situations like Bobby's, because it's a real situation that occurs.

A major factor in bisexual erasure is the inability to distinguish between this bargaining process gay youth frequently face and real bisexuality. To the extent that you are arguing that this bargaining process cannot or should not be depicted in fiction, your efforts to combat bisexual erasure are counterproductive because they participate in that blurring. Instead, a less brittle and more robust critical apparatus to combat bisexual erasure would need to recognize and distinguish between these two discrete phenomena, rather than arguing that the gay coming out experience should itself be erased.

I am arguing that both coming out experiences like Bobby's and the experiences of bisexual people are deserving of fictional representation. Admitting that gay people struggle with heteronormativity in their coming out process does not erase the bisexual experience. Rather, it more clearly distinguishes the challenges of the bisexual experience from that challenges of the gay experience. Both exist as queer experiences, and depicting one does not erase the other.

 

Big McLargeHuge, on 24 Apr 2015 - 03:09, said:

I would just push back a little bit on the reality of the 'straight privilege' that is gained by being bisexual. I feel that you are right in that yes, I could date a woman, go out in public, and be assumed to be straight. I have that privilege. But can't many single gay people also go out and be assumed to be straight? Is that a privilege that's worth discussing?

 

Thank you for your thoughtful response. I also do feel like we're very close to agreeing, to be honest. Personally, I absolutely do agree that it is a privilege of a kind that single gay people can go out and be assumed to be straight, and that this is a privilege worth discussing. Like with the issue of being "mistaken" for being straight versus having the privilege of the option to engaging in opposite sex relationships, this is another privilege of passing that comes with its own negative aspects.

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This is also just a really good argument for the need for more queer narratives in fiction, so that every single one doesn't bear the burden of being a monolithic representation of an incredibly diverse range of experiences.

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This is also just a really good argument for the need for more queer narratives in fiction, so that every single one doesn't bear the burden of being a monolithic representation of an incredibly diverse range of experiences.

 

Yes, absolutely. Again, I think the problem here is not the specific story, which is messy but it's one that resonates with me. The problem is that there aren't also more queer characters already to make this feel like one version of a coming out story instead of the coming out story.

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Could it possibly be an erasure of potentially BOTH kinds of story because straight writers lack the understanding or nuance that makes this hard to slice? Because Bobby HAS had relationships with women and we have NO way of knowing if they were "failed" in the way a gay man would experience or if they were actually relationships he enjoyed and that he'd also like to be with men too? 

 

Is this a way of approaching this without dragging you into why you're being incredibly condescending to me? Because I think you're asserting a lot of stuff that I never said, like how THIS is ONLY bisexual erasure, only that this FEELS like it from my perspective as a bisexual person but I am seriously having a hard time remaining 100% calm about the whole line of discussion how it's a profound privilege to engage in "opposite sex" relationships when you're really lacking a concrete understanding how me also being a woman impacts that. So I'll leave that be. 

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I think it's weird that we're still calling her Bruce Jenner. Apparently she doesn't actually have a new name yet?

 

(may I suggest an unpronounceable symbol?)

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I grew up calling a woman in my neighborhood Gay Bruce, her full given name, so it doesn't feel weird to me.

And I don't know why, but it rubs me the wrong way when I see people asking when she's going to change her name. She having a hard enough time, in case it wasn't apparent from the media treatment. Just let her do her thing at her own pace!

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The Obergefell arguments today were just breathtakingly ignorant. The respondent argued for a literally medieval view of marriage, completely divorced from emotional attachment or intimacy and instead centered around power and convenience, and then argued on a completely imaginary definition of marriage where it doesn't bestow any dignity or higher social position on the married parties.

The sheer ignorance of the history of gender and sexuality in the repeated references to a millennia old tradition of marriage dating back to the Greeks was frustrating, too. I don't think I've heard so many patently wrong things stated by even the justices in any oral argument.

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The Obergefell arguments today were just breathtakingly ignorant. The respondent argued for a literally medieval view of marriage, completely divorced from emotional attachment or intimacy and instead centered around power and convenience, and then argued on a completely imaginary definition of marriage where it doesn't bestow any dignity or higher social position on the married parties.

 

To be completely fair, for most of the medieval period, marriage as an institution was mostly an ad-hoc process meant to make a couple that was already one physically and mentally be one spiritually and legally. It was only with the rise of state power near the end of the Middle Ages, on towards early modernity, where marriage became more about power dynamics and subjugation. It's just another of the things that money ruined, really, but I almost think that a medieval priest still would have had a better opinion of free marriage for all sexualities than a modern conservative, for all that the latter hearkens back to the former, because the latter never seems to talk about love.

 

But yeah, those Obergefell arguments were unreal. They were a bizarre pastiche of impressionistic opinions about marriage, cobbled together into a chimera that perfectly fits an unexamined belief of what marriage ought to be. I'm surprised you could stand to hear the whole thing.

 

 

EDIT: Also, Christ... I'm reading some of the ancient Greek stuff in those arguments. Hey, you know what else for which there's no precedent in ancient Greece? Female citizenship. Marriage between a man and a woman had to have a legal dimension in Athens, because otherwise the woman would literally cease to exist, in the eyes of the law, once she reached adulthood and left her father's house to be married. Two men, both citizens, wouldn't need that, and the ancient Greeks were always loathe to make laws about "private" matters unless totally necessary. Meanwhile, read Plato and decide whether marriage between a man and a woman or an affair between two men is more valued. Guess which is treated as an often-inconvenient necessity and which makes the couple "more blessed than ordinary mortals"?

 

Historical arguments for or against the nature of marriage are all garbage. Marriage has always been whatever a society has needed it to be, and the problem now is that half of our society needs it to be inclusive and half "needs" it to be exclusive. There's no reason to invent precedent for that. Angerrrrrr.

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Well, the Bruce Jenner interview was pretty much exactly as bad as you would expect

Maybe I have a darker imagination, but I expected more of a gross circus. Jenner hit some solid points that showed a decent cultural awareness beyond his (using the male pronoun as he still was as of the interview) own personal experiences, which was cool, like specifically calling out the disproportionate targeting of trans women of color.

 

Sawyer's questions weren't the greatest, but I get it. She was giving voice to the kinds of ignorant questions most people would have. 

 

It's not going to change the world, but it could have been truly atrocious, and I don't think it was.

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Maybe I have a darker imagination, but I expected more of a gross circus. Jenner hit some solid points that showed a decent cultural awareness beyond his (using the male pronoun as he still was as of the interview) own personal experiences, which was cool, like specifically calling out the disproportionate targeting of trans women of color.

 

Sawyer's questions weren't the greatest, but I get it. She was giving voice to the kinds of ignorant questions most people would have. 

 

It's not going to change the world, but it could have been truly atrocious, and I don't think it was.

 

Honestly, I've given it a few days since my initial, highly pessimistic, highly emotional reaction and have quite turned around on it. There were some missteps (as there often are) and sometimes the thing resorted to cliche (But no one knew that this Bruiser wanted to do something utterly forbidden - wear a dress etc) but it could have been far worse, and has given me the opportunity to clarify and educate among my own peers, none of whom came away with a blisteringly offensive image of what trans people are going through. I'm not about to run out into the street and sing its praises, but perhaps in the long term we'll look back and see it as a positive thing, on the whole.

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Ireland today becomes the first country to decide on gay marriage by popular vote (it requires a change to our rather old fashioned constitution, so must be put to the people). I've not seen people this energised by a referendum or vote ever i think. Fingers crossed for a Yes. Yes is ahead in the polls from earlier in the week, but things have gone askew with polls before, and you never know with the fear of god being put in people.

 

 

 

(Are these two not related though?)

 

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Also worth noting that the polls have pointed out that if young people don't actually vote as they say they will then the stronger older contingent of No voters entirely has the power to swing it. So of course we're all badgering our friends to actually do the damn thing instead of generally agreeing it should be done.

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Ya, i'm hoping the social media buzz translates into people turning up to vote! If there is a "i'm voting so i can tag myself at the voting station on Facebook" turnout then maybe facebook has some uses after all!

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Yeah I've heard that Facebook was doing that as an experiment and it worked quite well so hopefully that works in our favour for this.

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Man, I'm envious. It's been a long time since I've had the opportunity to vote for something that feels like it matters.

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Ireland today becomes the first country to decide on gay marriage by popular vote (it requires a change to our rather old fashioned constitution, so must be put to the people). I've not seen people this energised by a referendum or vote ever i think. Fingers crossed for a Yes. Yes is ahead in the polls from earlier in the week, but things have gone askew with polls before, and you never know with the fear of god being put in people.

 

 

 

(Are these two not related though?)

 

1432208076148ae6548fafe4ff305f46143623e7

 

I absolutely support the right for Mario to marry Skinny Wario. Good luck, Ireland!

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Hot damn. Results are still coming in about the election but I haven't heard any constituency voting No. I don't know what other people's sense of Ireland is, but I was worried that No could win or that Yes would just scrape a win out of sheer complacency. But we really fucking did this. I'm so glad that we're not only going to pass this, our country has just shouted a clear message about this that makes me hopeful for future changes. I'm glad I got to be part of making this happen too.

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