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panel-surfer · 5 months ago

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I feel like engaging with real world homophobia would make Batman / Superman slash much more interesting.

It's more inaccessible, though. You have to finesse with knowledge not only of one "Gay Community" but the multitudes of communities and Kinds Of Guy you meet in those communities, you have to engage with Bruce as a public figure vs. Clark as a relative unknown, you have to understand how homophobia and therefore homosexuality are defined in American mainstream culture, blah blah blah - but it's worth it, right?

So, Bruce Wayne is a rich beloved playboy billionaire in his 30s with liberal beliefs that funds and advocates for, while maintaining a veil of being a real fucking dumbass. Everybody would hate his ass. He'd probably not be known publicly as queer until "exposed" ala Peter Thiel, either intentionally or simply because he doesn't perceive his identity as queer as important for the media and public to know (because it shouldn't be, but we do not live in that world lol). Because he's rich and therefore no one can conceive of him experiencing homophobia, people would defend his public outing as their exceptional case to a social policy they otherwise never discuss, that is outing people for fun and profit, a staple of American culture since the 90s.

From there, most leftists and working class progressives would probably hate him, especially The Straights, who would attempt to characterize him as some kind of class traitor. You know, [queer business] failed, why didn't Gay Billionaire Bruce Wayne bail them out? [Homophobic politician] did [bad thing], why didn't Gay Billionaire Bruce Wayne use his money to save the day? And then, in the same breath, using Bruce Wayne's success to say that American culture isn't homophobic any more whenever a major discrimination case breaks the news, similar to how Republicans use characters like Ellen. This is an especially common strategy racially marginalized people have to deal with, the use of a single successful person as a model minority to discredit the idea of systemic racism - they do the same thing to The Gays. But overall, drawing from how liberals discuss Peter Thiel here, they'd be making bitchy comments about how because he's a billionaire, cis and conventionally masc - and especially because he doesn't show any social signifiers of being of the culture - Bruce Wayne is basically a straight man, regardless of whatever he must deal with, exactly like how they characterize Dave Ruben.

Meanwhile, conservatives would NOT be okay with a known queer man raising a handful of adoptive sons, especially not one of their billionaires, who they prop up as proof capitalism works, the American Dream is alive, blah blah blah. He'd be accused of depriving them of a mother, he'd be relentlessly pedojacketed, QAnon flavoured freaks and the Christian Right would be constantly on his ass calling in fake allegations to CPS. Especially after Jason Todd's disappearance from public life. Alfred would, inevitably, become part of all of this, as people knowing Alfred basically raised Bruce after Martha and Thomas died would be like "oh well Wayne was definitely abused by his butler and when men are abused they just become abusers, that's how homosexuals reproduce," 'cause Boys Beware style beliefs never actually went away, it's just less common for people with a college education to share them. Bruce would have to navigate a social impact upon his whole family.

And the thing is, in actual lived gay social life, you have to realize, Rich Gays are not perceived as being at all like us. The ones with social profiles are perceived as aliens who tap-dance for straight people. Ryan Murphy, Steven Moffat's bottom, Stephen Fry, all them wealthy hyper-visible Hollywood homos seem behave as if homophobia is something you can outwit with a sarcastic comment (like that West Wing Bible lecture scene), and that no one but isolated freaks who can't hurt anybody or achieve anything is really homophobic with their whole chest. Because they're so insulated by their wealth that they've never been denied housing by a landlord who'd "prefer to rent to families," or harassed with "girlfriend conversations" at work, nothing like that. It's understood that they can buy their way around the barriers created by discrimination, experiencing only meaningless slurring from people who do not know them.

They belong in the PinkNews world, where homophobia is someone saying something mean on twitter. You cannot imagine they had the same experiences coming out to their parents (especially not Bruce, who seems really distant from his parents, like they're just never around for some reason idk), going through high school (Bruce was home-schooled), or perhaps most importantly, trying to start adult relationships with a lack of education about what all anything is. A formative experience many gay men of Bruce's usual age have is navigating those adult power dynamics while vulnerable. There are other touchstone experiences among working class gays, like fear of potentially being kicked out of home or dealing with the social isolation of being denied family in a family-driven culture.

Finally, it's not like he can just show up at the club with his nips painted rainbow and be inducted into the community. My point in saying all of this is, there are layers upon layers of social barriers between Bruce Wayne and conventional queer life. So - if he's connected to a queer community at all, it'd be the insipid one of rich white people, where being queer means redecorating your fucking McMansion for the 10th time in one year, with a kitchen perpetually under renovation. Annoying Miniature Poodle Gays. And I just do not see Bruce Wayne hanging with Charles & Rudy, he's too much of a Debbie Downer and is simply not someone who can fake an interest in Christos Tsolkas novels.

Meanwhile, Clark Kent is nobody. Sure, sometimes he has his name on bylines and depending on when in continuity we place him he's been a TV anchor, but let's be real, if Clark Kent were outed there wouldn't be a similar amount of drama, not even close. If Superman were outed - well, Superman is already the subject of fearmongering and conspiracies among the stupid, the status quo would not shift for him. He might wear a rainbow cape during Pride Month or whatever and make a bunch of public appearances where he's like, "trans women are women, and an individual's right to their own body must be protected!" I kinda picture him as the sort of dude who'd volunteer a weekend at the AIDS Council without knowing who ACT UP were.

Because, hear me out, he's from a small country town in Kansas and absolutely would have grown up with the concept of City Queer vs. Rural Queer. So, for some context here, where I live straddles the line between suburban and rural. I have cow paddocks and a major mall both five minutes from my house (Australia is a place man). So when I'm looking for dick my Grindr is full of cowpoke lookin to yeehaw and people who just moved into the area from the inner city. These are distinct flavours of Gay, believe me.

The social consequences of being outed when your nearest neighbours are an hour away, when you're dealing with the severe social isolation of rural living - it's different. Ostracism in circumstances like that will make you insane. These are communities where the church exists as the center of social life. Baby Clark has access to Smallville, which is more of a population center, obviously, but the likelihood of him having exposure to and a concept of queer life while growing up in this place is low. Men who went through this often claim they were The Only Gay Person In Town, which is not actually what's going on, it's more that men are so extremely closeted and the consequences for interacting with a 15 year old, even if it's just to say "hey dude, you're not alone, it gets better, move out of this hellhole ASAP" are so extreme that no one is taking that risk.

Meanwhile, homophobic narratives are pervasive, and many rural queer people actually do internalize and believe a lot of these homophobic myths, like that city-dwelling homos never experience oppression, that they're all poppin party drugs and living at the club 24/7, that they are incapable of commitment and only want shallow sex, blah blah blah. Clark would have to unlearn a lot of that after his move to Metropolis and if his primary connection to queerness is Bruce, well... he wouldn't. Y'know? Shit, Lois is more likely to know actual working class, real life gay culture than Bruce Wayne. The distinction being, Clark can actually access and learn these things, but Bruce Wayne is always Bruce Wayne, sans some kind of weird disguise he can't access the same spaces and cultural institutions as Clark.

For what it's worth, I feel like Clark would come out shortly after the move to Metropolis and he'd seek out actual queer life, but you've met boys like that, who come from bumfuck nowhere into the modern world and have to unlearn all of the stigma that surrounded them throughout their formative youth. They tend to have the realest, most honest understanding of how discrimination actually functions, and I feel like that'd be in the back of Clark's mind especially as a champion of truth, justice and sloppy makeouts with the lads.

My point in saying all of this: Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne would be very specific Types Of Guy if they were indeed queer and together. Their relationship would be heavily influenced by that. They are in some ways opposites - Bruce likely believes queer rural people are redneck hicks with a lot of homophobic beliefs, the kind of men who sign up for conversion therapy, and Clark likely believes that Bruce is so insulated from real homophobia that he's simply never been called a slur, capable of understanding homophobia only in the pure abstract.

This is, in real life, the kind of fiber that in many ways can define a queer relationship. We do, in real life, have concepts of how out one is and where one is out, we navigate complicated relationships with each others' families, and it is not uncommon to meet someone in the community who simply has no ties to their parents. The concept of "having kids" is, for most gay men, this incredibly complicated ordeal, regardless of those photos of smiling men in their 30s wearing Mr. Rogers cardigans you see in lifestyle magazines (the Charles & Rudy Gays I was discussing earlier), and Bruce has like ten of the fucking things running around. That would be a big deal to Clark, who's from a background with no queer parents in a ten mile radius, where queer marriage may be legal (for now) but the church sure ain't likely to cater to they/them folks, not in these here parts.

As a final thought, when gay men criticize fanfiction as not representing us, it's because none of this stuff is ever really considered in how those queer relationships are written. There's this lack of awareness or interest in how a relationship between queer men is fundamentally different to a hypothetical relationship between two ostensibly straight men, as men who are not victims of discrimination and have not had their identities formed under oppression. It can feel alienating and invalidating to see media someone who is not like you has created to represent a fetishised, simplistic idea of you, the literary equivalent of that "lesbian" porn made for straight men that has no interest in any kind of emotional or social connection between the performers under the male gaze.

And in the case of Batman and Superman specifically, it's like... to be honest, you're missing so much of the potential romantic tension and meat by simply not engaging with this stuff. You have a rich socially isolated queer man who's never been able to enter the community due to his wealth, who would reject the rich gay community because I mean who wouldn't, hooking up with a country boy liberal journalist who moved from Gay Hell to a major city at 18-20 or so. There's so so so so much there. Flattening this into "it's just them 1:1 exactly as in the comics but they fuck" feels alien and unreal, like they had no sexual thoughts or self-concept before encountering each other and therefore have never lived as queer men.

This is not a "you should do it like this or you're homophobic" post, this is a "you could access these concepts to add humanity and drama to your writing" post.

btw I think this applies to basically all slash fic but am using Batman / Superman specifically due to familiarity with the characters.

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