Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans & genderqueer matters
Them: Hello, I’m sorry, this is going to sound weird but please give me a chance. When you were eighteen, did you have a childhood friend named Carli that you lost contact with after you left to go to college?
The start of a short science fiction story told entirely through text messages, written by @Azure_Husky.
Scrum is a short documentary directed by Isabelle Alan about trans people playing rugby and the attempts to bar them from doing so.
I like the attitude of one of the woman players when told about the possibility of playing with a trans team mate. That at first she was like, no, no way but shortly realised that it’s the twentyfirst century and just had to get herself over it. That’s how most normal people respond; it may all seem a bit scary or weird in the abstract, but when confronted with the reality of it most people soon just accept it? Not everybody of course, there is a loud minority of assholes who want nothing more than to drive every trans person from sports and public life in general, but they are a minority.
The whole issue of how the transes are invading our sacred womens sport is such transparant bollocks, isn’t it? Whenever you see some crybaby cis woman whinging that her place was stolen, it’s always some grade a loser who never stood a chance in the first place. Best example was the skateboarder who as it turned out came in 34th out of 36 in the competition she complained about, with even eight year olds beating her. When the only way you came claim second place or higher is if there’s only two riders, it’s hilarious to blame it on trans women. Stop whining, git gud.
The truth is that there very few trans people competing on a level that matters, that the very very few elite trans athletes are not noticably or at all better than their cis competitors and that all of this is just another moral panic to pave the way for trans genocide. Even if being a trans woman gave you an advantage over cis competitors, so fucking what? Nobody is going to transition just to medal and so like with the bathroom panic, you’re left with the idea that some cis bloke will just pretend to be a trans woman. As if any cis male athlete good enough to compete with top female athletes isn’t better off just joining the regular mens competitions.
As with a lot of transphobes’ obsessions, the thin veneer of ‘feminism’ painted over it barely hides the reactionary core behind it. Ultimately transphobes seem to believe men are so much better at everything than women, that any random bloke can just waltz into an elite female competition and win. That core belief that women are frail, vulnerable creators which need to be protected and sheltered in their own spaces from the violent male world is at the heart of what we call terfdom, the fear that men are so much better than women that they would even make for better women. You can call it many things, but you cannot call it feminism.
Here’s a simple story of what happened when a young, uncertain on whether he was gay and what it meant, thinking about self harm, called his local queer bookstore and found a community eager to help him:
And SHE, this 50-something lesbian talks to this stranger on the phone. And a LINE FORMS BEHIND HER. Every customer in that store knows that call, knows that feeling, and every person takes a turn talking to that man.
That story comforts me so much to this day.
Joe also told his story to the queersplaining podcast, going into some more detail. A heartwarming story even if, as the podcast host notes, he shouldn’t have had to call a bookstore to get somebody to listen to and help him.
“British comedian does a bit on trans people” is a phrase that normally strikes fear in the heart, but Joe Lycett here is funny without punching down.
What I like about it is that it’s neither making fun of trans people or the idea of being trans, nor doing easy dunking on transphobes, but that Lycett takes the time to explain these concepts in between the humourous bits. Most of the humour here is aimed at the commercialisation of Pride and how much of it only focuses on the “g” in LGBT at the expense of the other letters and how some of these letters, like trans people feel under attakc by the right wing press, but not as much as they are under attack by “my mum’s friend, Linda”. It’s well thought out and sympathetic and it’s so rare to see this. Going through the rabbit hole of Youtube recommended clips of Channel 4 comedy panel shows and stumbling over this was a very pleasant surprise.
At the end of a long thread full of examples of Love Live being explicitly gay, Andrea Ritsu asks:
When the “gay subtext” begins to take up more space than what regular text is there, maybe it’s time to reevaluate exactly what something has to do to count as “gay” to you.
Love Live has always suffered from its reputation as being aimed at male otaku looking for waifus, which to be fair, is part of its fanbase. But those are far from its only fans. In Japan, the fanbase is split roughly equally between men and women. Overseas, it’s likely that female outnumber male fans, with a large part being queer fans, drawn to the series especially because it’s hella gay; take a trip through the AO3 archives if you want proof. As Andrea’s thread shows, this appeal wasn’t coincidental. Love Live was queer from the start.
Which is why it hurts when even a mostly positive article about the franchise at Anime Feminist has paragraphs like this in it:
Both groups have attracted legions of adoring fans both in Japan and around the world, and you probably won’t be surprised to learn the core target demographic is straight men. Our birthday party for Nozomi painted a different picture, though. There were some men in attendance, sure, but a little under half of us, including the host, were women—and queer to boot.
This paragraph is representative of the article as a whole, which consistently reiterates that Love Live is aimed at straight male otaku but that suprisingly, it has gotten a large female/queer following nevertheless. Reading the article, you get the impression that the queerness in Love Live is a) accidental and b) a subversive reading of the franchise. This does a disservice to both Love Live‘s creators and its queer fans. To its creators because it implies that none of them knew what they were doing. To its fans because it implies they’re intruders in a fandom not actually meant for them.
We should get out of the mindset that any queer content in our Japanese anime is there only by accident, especially when there’s tonnes of evidence to the contrary. Demoting all queer content as “subtext” there for enlightened western fans to discover is a bit insulting to the original creators. It also reinforces the idea that any queer content is invalid, not real. With Love Live in particular the queerness was baked in from the start and has been only made more explicit as the franchise evolved.
Similarly, if you insist a franchise is aimed at straight men, than any fans which do not fall into that category are not legitimate fans. We should get rid of the idea that things are strictly “for men” or “for women” when we rightfully mock that idea when talking about pink screwdrivers or over the top macho moisturisers. Companies have their demographics to aim at, but that doesn’t mean we should indulge them in that crap. If only because it omits those who are neither male or female, but as said, also because it invalidates those fans you decide are the wrong gender to enjoy something. (As a personal aside, it’s also annoying if you decide all the things you dislike about a franchise is because it’s aimed at people like me. Lesbians can enjoy pinups too.)