Tag: queer erasure

alilovesgirls:

theonlylivingboyinnewyork:

pokemontrainerpav:

theonlylivingboyinnewyork:

Being in a room with straight people talking about straight things is so exhausting.

What the hell are ‘straight things’?

Marriages and mortgages and families and opposite sex attraction talk and talking about sex openly without being made to feel like you are making people uncomfortable and hearing straight people talk about how hard dating is for them and hearing straight people talk about how they are such victims and their lives are shit when what this really means is they aren’t married at age 22 and sexist crap that drives me crazy like traditional weddings and how great religion is and how the world is so lovely and kind and great because people don’t know what it’s like to be a minority and how straight people are like “this person is so lovely” when you know they are homophobic or listening to straight people say things are “gay” or talk about people who dress unconventionally (ie. men who wear dresses) as being weird or doing impressions of gay people or asking “why don’t you have a boyfriend?” judgementally as if it is just that easy or getting annoyed at you when you complain about how hard your life is because it’s easy for them cause they are straight and wouldn’t know the first thing about it or having to come out to people all the time cause they just assume you’re straight and getting weird looks like “tmi” or “you don’t look gay” or “I don’t care what you do in the bedroom” or having to hear straight people talk about really cute straight couples or really great romantic films or books about straight people or just watching people live super conventional lives and do really sexist old fashioned things just because no one is brave enough to question or think about anything… and worst of all knowing that if you were to say or talk about anything gay everyone would get uncomfortable and not join in on the conversation and wish you had said nothing… and then people will be like “you hardly said anything”, “you’re so quiet”, “you don’t talk much”, “are you shy”, “you’re boring”.

No bitch I’m gay and I don’t relate to nor am I really interested in any of the shit that you have been yelling to my face for the last hour.

THIS. OH MY GOD THIS.

Don’t forget the incessant talk about having kids that completely brushes off/invalidates the positions of a) not wanting kids or b) having kids by other means, ie. adoption, surrogacy, fostering, sperm/egg donation, polyparent families, etc. Anything outside the hetero norm of naturally conceived straight sex is seen as being lesser, not valid, not real. Bonus points of suck if the straights say this in the presence of or directly to the children themselves.

So I’m on chapter 8 of Into the Drowning Deep, and I have a question: did you mean to code Olivia as autistic? I’m autistic and I see so many of my own little ticks and quirks in her it’s astounding.

seananmcguire:

ladyrpgr:

seananmcguire:

I didn’t mean to code Olivia as autistic, no: Olivia is autistic, full stop.  She says as much a little later in the book, when she’s talking about her relationship with her parents (mostly her father) and some assumptions they made about her future before she was old enough to shut that shit down.

Excuse my ignorance – what’s the difference between somebody being “coded” and actually being it? I was under the apparently erroneous impression that they were basically the same thing, only coded being used exclusively for fictional characters showing real life disorders/sexualities/whatever. 

Frequently when a character is “coded” one way or another, it’s to get the schema of a group of people without actually having to commit to the realities of fictional diversity.

Example: Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory is coded autistic.  He does things that are stereotypical “autistic behaviors,” as interpreted by the mainstream media; he talks in the “ha ha funny” way that is often used for neuroatypical characters.

But.

The creators will not say that Sheldon is autistic, because then the fact that much of the show’s humor (”humor”) is at his expense would be visibly and blatantly cruel.  Look at us, mocking an autistic person for being themselves, aren’t we swell people ha ha ha oh wait.  So they basically say “no, he could be just like everyone else, he could be ‘normal,’ so when everyone is awful to Sheldon, he’s bringing it on himself,” while still writing the character using a set of schema and narrative shorthands that makes it very, very clear that we’re supposed to laugh at people mocking an autistic man.

(Sheldon is also an asshole.  You can be autistic and still be an asshole.  But consider how hard it is to have conversations like “knowing what dinner will be at 9am is important for my mental health because I have food insecurity” if you’re not allowed to say the words “mental health” or “food insecurity.”)

I saw something earlier today that pointed out that mocking people for behaviors we code as autistic–special interests, stimming, etc.–is an asshole move whether they have a diagnosis or not, and that is absolutely true.  But mocking the “weirdo” is still considered socially acceptable in so many circles, and that means that characters get coded as autistic, or OCD, or queer, or Jewish, and then never actually given that identity, all to make them “other.”

It’s the acceptable face of bigotry. It’s also why you have a lot of really intense same-gender relationships in mainsteam tv shows (Rizzoli & Isles, White Collar, etc.) that never turn romantic or sexual, because they want the numbers queer viewers bring, but they don’t want to lose conservative viewers. Before you think, ‘oh, but they’re just really good friends!’ remember that any relationship on tv betwen opposite-gender people is all about ‘will they/won’t they’ from day one (The X-Files, Castle, Bones, etc.) If you think this is an exaggeration, consider the amount of shit Elementary has gotten from trying to keep Sherlock/Joan platonic. It’s only okay to have queer-coded dynamics if you never intend to pay them off with actual representation. Some shows try to do this right, but are actively stopped by the network (Leverage) and others give representation, but then invoke the Bury Your Gays trope as the endgame (Buffy). Things are slowly improving. Both the Librarians and Brooklyn 99 have given us bi representation in the last year. But there’s a long way to go.