supporting LGBTQ people: you're doing it wrong

[rm]

I thought this would cover all the fail going on as regards LGBTQ people, content and cluelessness in fandom. Then this happened.

So let's talk about supporting LGBTQ rights and what that actually means.

1. Know and think about your terminology. As garlicfiend notes in comments to an earlier post, when you go on and on about portraying "LGBTQ relationships," you're not necessarily making sense. What does a trans relationship look like? What does a bisexual relationship look like? LGBTQ people and stories are phrases that are going to serve you better.

2. Consuming porn featuring LGBTQ people does not make you an activist for LGBTQ concerns. It doesn't make you not one either. It, in fact, has no bearing on whether you are an activist for LGBTQ issues, although if you feel this makes your desires queer, it can be an impetus make you an activist for LGBTQ concerns.

In fact, let's talk about all the things that do not make you an activist for LGBTQ issues, and you should stop waving in people's faces to legitimize your failure to treat LGBTQ people fairly and reasonably:

- Only being able to name Brokeback Mountain when it comes to queer issues being featured in mainstream entertainment? (here's a list off the top of my head to work with - some good, some bad, all worthy of your awareness and thinky thoughts there on - Brothers & Sisters, Torchwood, Will & Grace, America's Next Top Model, Top Chef, The Next Food Network Star, Project Runway, True Blood, Six Feet Under, Doctor Who, Harry Potter, My Beautiful Laundrette, Fingersmith, Velvet Goldmine, Far From Heaven, Bound, Ellen, Queer as Folk, The L Word, Firefly, As the World Turns, Milk, Dirty Sexy Money, Kings, Billy Elliot).

- Refusing to understand why many LGBTQ people have problems with Brokeback Mountain either in and of itself or as the theoretical main representative of our relationships in the media.

- Making any claim that the LGBTQ rights movement was started by slashers or any claim that the main straight allies of the LGBTQ community are slashers -- actually, our allies ad supports are our friends and families and people who believe in a sense of fairness, whether they think we're cute or not. And yeah, some of them are slashers too!

- Having gay friends. Awesome. Now stand up for them. Also, as redstapler reminds us, lose the construction, "my gay friend so-and-so."

- Asking one LGTBQ person to represent all LGBTQ people. It's not fair and it's dehumanizing whether you're doing it to a friend, a sibling, me, Russel T. Davies, or a fictional character. Any act that assumes we're all alike, even if it starts with a fiction, dehumanizes real people.

- Really, really identifying with a gay character in a television show, even though you're not gay yourself. It's fine, but it doesn't help me. It's not enough. It's not activism. Everyone doesn't have to be an activist, but if you want to be one, you have to do more than this.

- Attempting to enforce gender norms on other people, regardless of their sexual or gender identity. These forms of rigidity hurt everyone and paint LGBTQ people as villains. This includes policing women for "niceness" when discussing these or any issues as opposed to encouraging people of all types of engage in civil discourse.

- Telling gay people they don't understand how much you're helping them.

- Telling gay people you support them, as long as they are nice to you and do what you want.

- Throwing other people under the bus for your particular interpretation of LGBTQ rights: this includes sacrificing transfolk, PoC, women and generally being an asshole about other civil rights issues.

- Being under the delusion that same sex-relationships between women are more socially acceptable and therefore it's just the men you need to fight for (gay men and gay women do, I will admit, can get some pretty radically different varieties of crazy fail from mainstream homophobic/fetishizing culture, but don't tell me my life is easy or unimportant because it's easier for you to find two-women fucking in mainstream entertainment than it is for you to find two men. It's not.).

- "I'm a gay man trapped in a woman's body/I'm a lesbian trapped in a man's body" -- unless you are actually a trans or genderqueer person, please stop saying this shit. Being a tomboy is not the same as being genderqueer or trans. Saying this shit doesn't make you cool or hip and it's not a good pickup line to use on queer people of any stripe. It's also a weak and nasty way to justify being turned on by same-sex porn. OWN YOUR DESIRES. You don't need to be cute about it. You don't need an excuse. You don't need a label.

- Supporting LGBTQ issues while using supposedly humorous qualifiers, i.e., "I support gay marriage if both the men/women are hot." No, actually, you're not funny or harmless.

- Saying slur words like "faggot," "tranny" or "queer" (when used pejoratively and/or as a noun (which is generally considered pejorative by default)) because you've heard LGBTQ people reclaiming these labels for themselves and you feel that gives you the right to use these words with impunity about others. You'd be wrong.

- being unaware of of the organizations out there that address LGBTQ issues and their pros and cons -- these include Lambda Legal, HRC, PFlag and GLAAD.

- co-opting what are literally life and death issues for us to get more of what turns your on on the screen.


Now, let's talk about ways to be a good ally and supporter to LGBTQ issues:

- Listen. (julesndairyland gives us a good piece on being an ally here.)

- from _peasant: "Don't assume that the person you are talking to is heterosexual just because you don't know what their sexuality is. And nor should you require them to prove their Gay Credentials(TM) before you'll listen to them - this stuff is personal and some people like to keep it private."

- betnoir also makes a really good point in comments: "Pay attention to how a gay person introduces their spouse/partner/significant other. If Joe says, "This is my husband, Mark," try to remember that. That's how they think of themselves. The least you can do is respect it enough to use those terms."

- If you see something, say something. That is, when you see people indulging in behavior that is homphobic, that uses slurs, that is dehumaizing -- whether it's telling a gay joke, using an icon that supports gay marriage only for the hotties, claiming to support gay civil rights in one breath while being racist in the next, etc. -- CALL THEM ON THEIR SHIT. You don't need to get angry, you just need to mention what you've been offended by and why.

- Give money or donate time to LGBTQ supporting organizations. Please especially consider LGBTQ causes that are less "sexy" or "mainstream" (two appalling adjectives, unfortunately needed to make my point about the problems we face both from the outside and on the inside of the LGBTQ community in terms of our own prejudices) -- these include organizations that specifically support PoC in the queer community, transfolk, and older GBLTQ individuals (SAGE).

- When you find media with gay related content you enjoy, let us know about it, and let the network or movie studio and other creators know about it as well.

- Meanwhile, drfardook reminds us: "Be able to name some queer people who are not actors or media personalities. The media provides the highest level of visibility but its hardly the only area where gay folk have been successful. At least an artist or writer. If you try a little harder you can probably think of a politician and maybe even someone in your own profession. Also, realize why its a bit challenging to think of out people who are outside of media."

- bifemmefatale reminds us of the importance of setting a good example, especially if we're parents: "Raise your kids right, if you have them. Don't let them say "fag" on the playground. DO let them play with gender roles without freaking out about it. Don't buy every damn thing in pink princess for your daughter and everything in GI JOE or sports motifs for your son. Let your son take dance if he wants. Let your daughter take karate. Talk to them about gay friends just as you do about straight friends. Set a good example of treating all sorts of relationships equally in your social circle."

- Participate in a protest.

- Write letters and make phone calls on gay rights issues to your elected officials.

- Fight misogyny. If being a woman weren't so often seen as weak or bad, lesbians, gay men and trans people would all face a lot less bullshit.


Let's also note, that LGBTQ people are not necessarily a gigantic monolithic mass of agreement on our issues, but listening to a range of our opinions if we say you're doing it wrong is only intelligent.

If you give me more good stuff (and I know you will) in comments, I'll add it to the above. It's way too early in the morning for me to think I've actually managed to be comprehensive here.

Comments

[griffen.livejournal.com]

Not quite on the fanfiction topic, but about being an ally:

If you're an ally, don't make excuses for legislative slowdowns on issues that are important to GLBTQ people. Don't excuse the current (or past) administrations for moving on things that are "important to everyone" first, like health care and global warming and torture prosecution, while GLBTQs wait, and wait, and wait some more for DOMA and DADT to be overturned and ENDA to be passed. If you're an ally, don't expect GLBTQs to be okay with waiting indefinitely for our issues to be addressed.

Allies support our causes. If you're trying to ignore or put off our causes because there's "something more important" to achieve legislatively or economically, you're not an ally.

(Sorry, just really pissed off at people who claim to be "allies" and then keep insisting that GLBTQs wait until Obama's second term, or even later, for any movement on GLBTQ rights. I run into this a lot on the "liberal" blogs like Daily Kos. It gets to me.)

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

This one is complicated, though. My girlfriend and I are very much more concerned right now with the economy and health care reforms. We expect progress on GLBTQ rights throughout this term as progress is made on those two fronts and are willing to cut the administration some slack initially, and at the end of the day we will hold the administration accountable for all of it. But we've discussed it many times and right now the hell of not being able to afford our necessary medical care is by far the biggest and worst issue for us. So I understand why some allies see those as priorities as well.

[sykii.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's not just allies. You hear a whole spectrum of opinions on timetables, ultimata and priorities from LGBTQ folks as well.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Jeepers, Canada must have every single problem in the entire country solved already, because we have equal rights, and that's what comes last!

[cleverthylacine]

A complete aside:

I agree with everything you've said and I am annoyed that some of the K/Sers are being such asshats.

At the same time? I never shipped K/S in the past because I associate William Shatner with my dad.

But I don't like Spock/Uhura because Uhura was my idol when I was a small child. She, unlike Chapel and Rand, never had a sad crush on a superior officer or defined herself through her relationships with men.

It made me very sad to see that nearly all of her character development in the new movie involved her having to take care of Spock's problems in some way and that we never saw her past or her background. He was her teacher at a frelling military academy; would we all be cheering for a black female cadet at West Point taking up with her instructor or would somebody out there have problems with that?

Replacing one of the white or white-portrayed males in the central triad of the canon with a black female is win. Doing it by making her the sex partner and emotional caretaker of one and the unattainable sexual fantasy of the other is fail. I would prefer canonical K/S to this, and it's not because I'm hung up on the ship--I think Quinto and Pine have great chemistry, but so do Pine and Urban. I don't like this change in Uhura's character. I don't think it was ethical for her and Spock to be in this relationship. K/S isn't much better but at least they're closer in rank, and it would be much more awesome to have canon gay than to have another example of a female subordinate taking care of her superior officer in bed as well as out.

And I resent the fact that she couldn't just be one of the three leads without having to be involved with one of the other two, just like I resented what they did to Dana Scully and the way Hermione Granger just had to end up with either Ron or Harry. I'm tired of having these kinds of concerns dismissed because I also like slash. :( I'm not one of the people who was behind the faily website you pointed out, but I do think it's important to realise that there are non-misogynist, non-racist reasons why someone might want that canonical relationship to go away. Uhura deserves so much better than this.

[yahtzee63.livejournal.com]

http://taraljc.livejournal.com/1366255.html

[cleverthylacine]

*sigh* "Let's talk" followed by a link to something someone else said... yeah.

First, I don't abuse Uhura. I adore her. I just don't support the canon pairing. I love her and want to see more of her as her own person.

And Uhura is not McCoy. She's not a white man. Ergo, it would be nice for her to get scenes where she's not portrayed as emotional caretaker of people who either are white men or can be read as such.

Also, it's not even true. We heard about McCoy's family, about his marriage, about his child. All we ever see of Uhura is her taking care of Spock and shutting Kirk down. Oh, and yes, she provides a piece of crucial info, which Kirk wouldn't even know about if he hadn't been watching her take off her clothes from under another woman's bed. Not like we actually got to see her SCORE that info.

You are talking to someone who is actually one of Uhura's fans from TOS onward, and someone who was not a K/S shipper before the movie (nor especially after, although more than S/U).

And neither you nor Tara are interested in addressing the military commander/subordinate/military academy issue, it seems, although at least she wrote more than a link.

I don't support Spock/Uhura because I want to see more of her, and more of her that is ABOUT her. I want to see her have a conversation with Rand or Gaila or Chapel that isn't about some guy. I want to see her do her job more, I want to see her past, I want to see her life. I don't want to see how she does or doesn't fit into Spock's life.

As for privileging erotic over romantic love, there's a whole double standard here that is a double standard for the same reason affirmative action is a double standard, and I'll give it up when it's no longer needed. I am fucking tired of seeing movies that sing love songs to the power of male platonic love and at the same time deny the possibility of heterosexual platonic love by over and over, time and again positioning any woman who is portrayed as being of equal importance to the male leads in a sexual/romantic relationship with one of them, no matter how many normal workplace/military ethics this would actually violate in the real world. I want more homosexual erotic love and more heterosexual platonic love. This is not because I hate women. It's because I want it acknowledged that female characters have other rightful places in fictional narrative than on someone's dick, dammit. (And I want more lesbian erotic love. Because it's nice to see women who aren't all about some guy.) It's a double standard and I'm not the least bit ashamed of it. There's an existing imbalance and I'd like to see people doing things that would correct that imbalance.

[garlicfiend.livejournal.com]

This is a really interesting discussion, which ends up being quite personal for me.

I don't really do fandom myself. As much as I like to stand back and watch fandom because they amuse me, it's never been something I've immersed myself in. My wife, on the other hand, has been a slasher for a number of years, being first involved with the HP fandom and now Supernatural. When I came out as trans, she found herself in a very uncomfortable position, because all political correctness aside, it's a very disruptive and traumatic thing when your husband of twelve years decides they are going to transition to be a woman. But being a slasher, she had simply accepted that of course she was a good accepting ally. It made it very difficult for her to own what were very natural human responses to the situation.

And maybe we should ask people that-- ask married slashers how they would feel if their spouse announced they were gay and were leaving the marriage? Would that be OMFGhawt?

One way in which fan-fic writers defend the darker material they produce (and I agree that it's a valid defense) is that it's just fiction. That nothing bad is actually happening between physical people. In the end, it's words on a page. But the same thing can be said about their GLBTQ support. Until they do something, make some physical real change in the world, it's all just words on a screen.

Off Topic: I notice that the leading letters in the acronym tend to get switched around depending on who uses it. I wounder how much it would confuse people if I started writing TBLQG to reflect my own identity, lol :P

[svollga.livejournal.com]

Great list!
I'm reading your posts on LGBTQ in fandom very attentively, as I have this idea of making a discussion board at our next Slashcon on this topic. Being a queer person who came to understand my queerness and LGBT rights after I got engrossed in slash fandom, I was very surprised and dissappointed to find that people who read and write slash fanfiction are openly homophobic and don't think they are controvercial. So I want to write an essay and/or present it in public, and your posts give me a good base to think about things.

BTW, on the list of media production: there are those film series, A Donald Strachey Mystery. I don't know if they count, as they were made for LGBT network, not for a mainstream one; but I think they are great, and am surprised they never get mentioned in the lists of LGBTQ films and TV series worth watching.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

there are those film series, A Donald Strachey Mystery.

Never heard of them! *googles*

[svollga.livejournal.com]

Well, it's based on the book series of the same name: crime mysteries, with the detective being openly gay (and having a very sweet partner), and crimes involving Albany gay scene. They rise quite a few LGBTQ issues - my favorite is Shock to the System, about the ex-gay conversion therapy. Ex-gay therapy absolutely creeps me out, but I like the drama of this story.

[genmaicha.livejournal.com]

Wordy McWord.

I'm learning to be supportive, and I keep making what seem to be common mistakes, like "my [label] friend" to legitimize the issue's personal impact on me, or appropriating or misunderstanding the issues in small or larger ways. I'm eternally grateful to everyone who has been educating because I have also come to learn how very much it is not the place of the oppressed party to educate. And even identifying under one or more of the letters in LGBTQ does not mean you aren't going to make stupid mistakes like that, as bisexual-me has painfully learned.

[gwyd.livejournal.com]

At least you aren't Christian Sirano being openly gay and anti-trans on TV and are making an effort. I had a gay man on a discussion board claim their are no trans activists and we are all passively riding gay coattails on the grounds that he was too lazy to look up trans activists. Logicfail.

My feeling is, everyone takes time to learn this stuff, including actual people in the community. Making a good faith effort is a lot better than stomping around being deliberately jerky.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I agree 100%, but do have one question. I recognize most of the things on your list of media, but Firefly? Other than one scene where it's (very briefly) mentioned (in Heart of Gold), I can't remember any queer content in that show, did I miss something? OTOH, Buffy did quite well (at least until Tara was fridged, but Joss Whedon fails almost as often as he tried).

[rm.livejournal.com]

The Companion has a female client at one point and it's not a plot point at all -- it's just a fact, and I thought that was so exceptional. Also, I felt it subverted gender-role stuff in Zoe and Wash's relationship in a meaningful way.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

*nods* now I remember that scene. I'm less certain about Zoe and Wash, while I quite liked their relationship, but it didn't feel particularly subservisve.

[rm.livejournal.com]

On its own, I wouldn't have listed it, but since we were talking about the show anyway, I thought it was worth mentioning.

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

Thank you for writing this. It articulates so many important things so well.

[virginhuntress.livejournal.com]

Will make a real comment to this later, for now... icons!

(Saw them and thought of you)

http://community.livejournal.com/mignolagraphics/47318.html#cutid1

[takenatwork.livejournal.com]

My husband has been paraplegic for 27 years. I can say that I have an understanding of what that means for my husband, but I cannot claim to have an understanding of the myriad of other illnesses and accidents that can cause a physical disability. And yet I sign petitions and write letters, I support disability rights campaigns, but I do this without full knowledge of what it means to be disabled. Am I wrong to support disabled rights when I don't fully understand what it means to be disabled? I know that's a sweeping generalisation to your much more articulate post and I hate sweeping generalisations, but I like to think that sometimes a simple support of an issue can be just as powerful.

[rm.livejournal.com]

The things you are doing are support. The things I am complaining about -- telling me my issues are less severe because I'm a gay woman and not a gay man; demanding I sign petitions about fan content in a film franchise or else I'm a self-hating queer: these things aren't support, even if (and that's arguable) they are well-intentioned.

[deusabscondidum.livejournal.com]

I love this list, and I have two things to add.

The first is that politics are not mutually exclusive when it comes to social concerns. Not all queer people are liberals. Not all conservatives are against change. People are allowed to be republicans and still be queer, regardless of whether or not others disagree with their choice.

Second is when religion is brought into the mix. I have come to learn over time that there are a whole lot of religious queers out there. Yes, a lot of LGBTQ people end up eschewing a faith they have been raised with because it does not suit their needs, but a whole lot of LGBTQ people have also either kept their faith or found another that fits their emotional and spiritual needs.

I notice both of these things during discussion about problems that relate to religion and politics. Talk about the 'other side' often neglects to take into account that there isn't necessarily a division with this.

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

...when you go on and on about portraying "LGBTQ relationships," you're not necessarily making sense. What does a trans relationship look like?

The more I think about this, the more it depresses me, I think. Because, you know, my relationships aren't bi or trans as such, but they're definitely queer, and the usual alternative ("same-sex") just makes me feel irritated and invisible.

Not a rant leveled at you, obviously. Just more of an argh that I wish was more commonly a part of the discourse.

[framefolly.livejournal.com]

A friend is one of the presenters at a panel at Writercon about Racism, Sexism, Homophobia et al in Fandom. She wrote a post soliciting examples of counter-fail, and one of the comments suggested your post.

Thank you for writing this, and also the "Oh Noes! There's Gay People In My Fandom!" post.

As a privileged sexual-normative person and fan, I have not been as aware and supportive of LGBTQ people, stories, and issues as I should be. It's been too easy for me to not realize that I'm not paying attention, and that is wrong.

Your post has made it a little harder for me to fail to recognize homophobia in life and in fandom. As a person and a fan, I will try harder to monitor my ass, call out discriminatory behavior and speech, and spread the word by referring people to good sources of information (instead of trying to "speak for" a cause that I am not [yet] familiar with).

Thank you.

(And if this comment is offensive, I apologize; and if you have the time and the inclination, I would very much appreciate being called on it.)