I exist, and I exist in many universes. (Yet another rant about queer erasure)

shirozora recently posted about how default heterosexuality (particularly in the Disney property Tron) unnerved her in a fashion she couldn't examine too closely, and I put my finger square on the problem. From my comment:

I don't like the feeling that in some universes, I would not exist because I am bisexual, because in those universes, everyone is heterosexual unless they are the Designated Gay. In some universes, it is not canonically okay for some characters to be quietly and discreetly gay, or quietly bisexual, or quietly asexual, and g-d forbid anyone actually be TRANSGENDERED. And that is not okay with me. I would not want to live in such a universe, but it overjoys the fuck out of me to go around queering up these universes so WE CAN EXIST.

Some default-heterosexual universes don't have anyone who is Designated Gay. I wouldn't exist there. My sister wouldn't exist there. Most of you guys wouldn't exist there. My best friend might exist there, but he'd have never met me, because I wouldn't exist. Dreamwidth wouldn't exist. Large parts of LiveJournal wouldn't exist.

Having a wildly disproportionately small number of Designated Gays sometimes feels worse. It's harder to pretend that anybody who might be one of us is just quietly closeted and not coming out to be stared at and bullied and beaten and killed. There are a few of us, and they might represent some of us, but they don't represent all of us, and maybe we don't even like them. Albus and Gellert don't even get main-text, they get subtext and an offhand post-series interview mention. (And I don't like either of them.) Pretty much everyone else gets an opposite-sex relationship plastered on.

I exist. Some universes are better. Jamie Crawford exists, and so do Kurt and Blaine and Santana and Brittany, and Aral and ... and Ethan and his whole damn planet. Jamie goes around being loudly fucking fabulous and daring people to make something of it.

Silence = Death. If fictional people are silenced by their authors, then fuck yeah, we're marching right the fuck in and giving them voices.

31 tweets for 2011-5-6

In the last 24 hours, I posted the following to Twitter:

• Friday, 0017: @sassbandit Not sure about that. But apparently you often can mention filk to authors!
• Friday, 0018: RT @vmbrasseur: 2000 years of "any day now." SF gets the *best* billboards. #may21 http://yfrog.com/gz6b9bjj
• Friday, 0019: RT @StephenAtHome: It's the fiftieth anniversary of the first American in space. I believe 50 is the shutting-down-manned-space-flight a ...
• Friday, 0024: STFU, Conservatives: Statistics on Induced Abortion - bubonickitten: http://tumblr.com/xjv2emmyty
• Friday, 0030: RT @mamajoan: Vicious slander. It was a flan. RT @Metafrantic: . @JeanJAuthor A mousse once bit my sister! @DelDryden @mamajoan
( read the other 26 )

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