Glee rant about queer teens and PDAs, again

[rm]

People,

As much as I, too, would like to think Kurt and Blaine kissed in that hall, at that moment:

- Blaine is still freaked out because when he last tried to go to a dance with another guy he got the crap beat out of him
- Kurt has just realized that things at McKinley are as bad as they ever were.
- The school is NOT a safe space, especially when the rest of it is empty -- what seems to give them privacy also puts them at risk if they run into someone else who might be feeling violent.


I cannot emphasize enough how complicated PDAs are for gay teens and gay people in general. I cannot emphasize enough that even though things may seem, and even be, perfectly safe they won't necessarily feel that way to people because of their own experiences with violence or being warned about violence or whatever.

I am 38-years-old. I live in New York City. I have let go of same-sex lovers' hands in public places within the last ten years when I wasn't entirely sure it was safe for us to be holding hands because I didn't know the neighborhood or it was late at night and drunk people make me more wary or whatever. And dudes, New York Fucking City, not a high school in Lima, Ohio.

This is huge mileage may vary territory for everyone. I'm totally okay with your "they kissed in the hall" head-cannon, but really worn out from the "Blaine sucks for not touching Kurt at x, y, or z moment" stuff and the "it's totally safe for them to be kissing!" assumptions and the "it must be evil FOX not giving us more gay kisses" theories.

This is complicated. This is complicated for gay people. This is complicated for US television. It's just complicated.

Please just let it be complicated.

And particularly for my straight readers, please, please, please take a moment to think about what it would be like to always be doing the math and then imagine what it would be like to do that math at 16. When you've already experienced assault. And you have one good thing and you're terrified that if you show affection for that thing in public, it will get it destroyed (and to be extremely fucking clear, by destroyed I mean murdered).

Being out and proud does not stop you from doing the math.

Comments

[skelody.livejournal.com]

That's a good canon-only analysis, but when considering the attitudes of content producers, it becomes more important to consider the motivations behind their choices. Are there lesbians in this episode because the writers recognize that gay women exist, or because they want to titillate heterosexual men? Is this masculine male character expressing his distaste at feminine things because they want to critique femme-hate, or because they think "male" and "feminine" are so contradictory that it's funny? Are the male couple not-engaging in PDA because it's only realistic, or because they don't want to push their luck with the gay smoochies?

I don't watch Glee, I know very little about it and have no investment in these characters. Maybe there are scads of scenes where queer characters make out in private, which would definitely suggest public-standoffishness-due-to-realism. I wouldn't know! But with just this information I think it is important to examine the situation with a broader view.

/incoherent