LGBT – Page 2 – Wis[s]e Words

let me have a turn

Published on May 31, 2022Leave a comment

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.

“You can imagine what it smells like”

Published on September 19, 2021Leave a comment

“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.

Love Live has always been queer

Published on December 20, 2020Leave a comment

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.)

Judith Butler says trans rights

Published on October 13, 2020Leave a comment

Alona Ferber’s interview with Judith Butler in the New Statesman is a thing of beauty. You can feel the frustration of Ferber here, trying to get Judith Butler to agree with her transphobia and failing miserably:

AF: One example of mainstream public discourse on this issue in the UK is the argument about allowing people to self-identify in terms of their gender. In an open letter she published in June, JK Rowling articulated the concern that this would “throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman”, potentially putting women at risk of violence.

JB: If we look closely at the example that you characterise as “mainstream” we can see that a domain of fantasy is at work, one which reflects more about the feminist who has such a fear than any actually existing situation in trans life. The feminist who holds such a view presumes that the penis does define the person, and that anyone with a penis would identify as a woman for the purposes of entering such changing rooms and posing a threat to the women inside. It assumes that the penis is the threat, or that any person who has a penis who identifies as a woman is engaging in a base, deceitful, and harmful form of disguise. This is a rich fantasy, and one that comes from powerful fears, but it does not describe a social reality. Trans women are often discriminated against in men’s bathrooms, and their modes of self-identification are ways of describing a lived reality, one that cannot be captured or regulated by the fantasies brought to bear upon them. The fact that such fantasies pass as public argument is itself cause for worry.

AF: I want to challenge you on the term “terf”, or trans-exclusionary radical feminist, which some people see as a slur.

JB: I am not aware that terf is used as a slur. I wonder what name self-declared feminists who wish to exclude trans women from women’s spaces would be called? If they do favour exclusion, why not call them exclusionary? If they understand themselves as belonging to that strain of radical feminism that opposes gender reassignment, why not call them radical feminists? My only regret is that there was a movement of radical sexual freedom that once travelled under the name of radical feminism, but it has sadly morphed into a campaign to pathologise trans and gender non-conforming peoples. My sense is that we have to renew the feminist commitment to gender equality and gender freedom in order to affirm the complexity of gendered lives as they are currently being lived.

It shows the lack of intellectual depth in the socalled “gender critical” movement and how much of it is just a mask for transphobia as well as old fashioned homophobia. The resulting outbursts of terfy anger on Twitter after this was published only confirmed this. What was supposedly an intellectual hero of these people was quickly subjected to the Two Minute Hate. It’s rare to see terfs self own so spectacularly.

Transphobia has consequences

Published on July 25, 2020Leave a comment

Sales of J. K. Rowling’s books in the US fell twenty percent short of the industry average:

Last month, sales in print books in fiction overall rose 31.4% in the U.S. from May, according to figures from NPD BookScan, with fiction titles in adult, young adult and juvenile sectors all seeing similar double-digit growth. The author of the “Harry Potter” series, by contrast, saw her print book sales in the U.S. rise just 10.9% in June. “Harry Potter” sales — including licensed titles not authored by Rowling — rose even less, just 7.7% for the month. While the BookScan figures do not account for other points of sale — like eBooks, sales to libraries and direct publisher sales — they do point to a remarkably sudden and sharp drop in print sales for Rowling’s books.

It seems that despite her habit of suing people for pointing out her transphobia, enough people have cottoned on to hurt her sales. Once again proving that the vast majority of people do not have any truck with transphobes.