#both act like mostly conventionally attractive individuals are not for some reason?

[kaizokuou-ni-naru]

The Voyage So Far: Wano (Part Two)

east blue (1 | 2) || alabasta (1 | 2) || skypiea || water 7 || enies lobby || thriller bark || paramount war (1 | 2) || fishman island || punk hazard || dressrosa (1 | 2) || whole cake island || wano (1 | 2)

okay so the wano flashback is possibly my favorite in the whole series for a whole bunch of different reasons, and oden as a character is a big part of why. honestly, i think he’s great. he’s wildly entertaining and ridiculously likable, just like a folk hero should be.

i care about oden and the akazaya nine a lot. they have one of my favorite found family dynamics in the whole series, up there with the strawhats themselves- a bunch of thugs and castoffs who wound up gathering around this one wildly charismatic moron and deciding to be stronger and better for him. 

i think they really feel like a family, in these little moments we get of them just interacting and messing around, and it only makes later events- oden’s death, the twenty-year separation, kanjurou’s betrayal- hurt all the worse.

on god it is the funniest thing on earth to me that this is how oden and izou wound up on whitebeard’s ship. 

the roger pirates!! i really really like the roger pirates!! i love that there’s this entire predecessor crew who are both absolutely fucking fascinating from a lore perspective and who are just all individually really good characters with really fun relationships. the dynamics we get to see just in this brief part of the flashback are absolutely delightful. i think the fact that i would read a whole series just about the roger pirates is a testament to oda’s character writing. 

there’s a specific sort of tragedy to the roger pirates, and i think it really hits home in their last few pages in this flashback. by all appearances, they were a crew just as close-knit as the strawhats are. they cared about each other a lot- that ship was their home.

and then their captain died, and they just- fell apart. 

awhile back, in my sabaody post, i talked about how we get to know roger first as a story and then as a character by getting to meet characters who knew him personally. to the rest of the world, roger is a story, a name to curse or a height to aspire to. but for shanks and rayleigh and crocus and buggy and all the rest of the roger pirates, he was their captain. 

the whole wano flashback, possibly more than any of the others in the series, really feels to me like a story being told, a folk tale being passed down, which makes sense, since it’s canonically framed as oden’s diary entries. and i think that framing device just adds so much to the atmosphere of this entire section of story, the feeling of myth and legend to it. 

i honestly really like how oden’s death is handled. i have trouble articulating it, but it’s so much, so over the top, so heavily set up and foreshadowed- a legendary death for a legendary man, if that makes sense.

toki’s prophecy is one of my favorite motifs in this whole arc. wano is all about a country that’s been trapped and dying for years and years, holding out desperate hope for salvation. toki is the one who gave them that hope. she doesn’t try to tell them that everything will be okay, she says it will be dark and the darkness will be long, but the dawn will come, and even though she gave her life to do that, she did it smiling. 

without toki, the wano arc never would have happened, because there would be no future to fight for. 

this panel is the header on my favorite op discord server and sometimes i just scroll up and stare at it. it’s so good. 

this entire sequence, starting from luffy law and kidd’s entrance, is probably my favorite in wano arc. it’s the turning of the sides, the daybreak after the darkest hour- these three show up, and then jinbe, and denjirou reveals his true colors and it’s revealed all the rest of the samurai left before orochi blew the bridges, and it turns out they haven’t lost a single step to kanjurou’s treachery. it just feels so good to read, after the prior hopelessness of the akazaya and the tragedy of the flashback.

i really like how the akazaya nine are absolutely ready to roast each other at any and all times. that’s how you know they’re best friends. 

i think i mentioned it back in fishman island, but one of my favorite things is the strawhats just being absolutely cheerfully, chaotically destructive. every time we get to see them wreck havoc while nonchalantly bickering with each other it puts a huge smile on my face.

i think ulti and page one are very very funny and i like their dynamic a lot, it’s a laugh riot. i also like that oda lets luffy seriously fight a woman here!! i’m serious, we don’t see enough no-holds-barred fights between men and women (conventionally attractive women, specifically) in this series, so i’m pleasantly surprised when it does happen. 

i do appreciate wano’s ability to continuously raise the “holy shit!” quotient without it ever really feeling like a twist just for the sake of the audience. like, i don’t know that anybody saw kaidou killing orochi coming, but at the same time, it feels like it does make sense, given what we know about kaidou, for him to do this.

my heart goes out to momo, honestly. he’s only eight, and in that time he’s lost his home and family and his whole world when he was thrown twenty years into the future, and he has the weight of his whole country resting on his shoulders. he’s borne up admirably under that stress, starting from zou and building up to this point.

i LOVE kin’emon’s speech to kaidou about luffy SO much. kin’emon’s come a long way from being a mostly comedy relief character in punk hazard to here, where he’s shouting down an emperor. i really like this progression- kin’emon doesn’t change, exactly, but the side of his character that is revealed in wano is very likable and admirable. it goes back to something i’ve mentioned before, about how one piece’s characters are very rarely one-dimensional.

kaidou’s dragon form is extremely cool, and so are most of the panels where it appears- it’s extremely striking, especially in panels like this, where he’s silhouetted against the moon.

i love... the ripple effects of luffy just being himself that spread throughout the world of one piece, and i think this is one of the best examples. luffy befriended coby all the way back in chapter two, mostly by accident, and now, nine hundred and some chapters later, that’s what leads to drake joining the strawhats’ side. because drake is friends with coby who says luffy is trustworthy, so when drake is stuck with nobody else to turn to, he turns to luffy. 

moments like this really reinforce just how much the world and story of one piece is built on relationships between people, and i really like that. i like that instead of necessarily being built around abstract ideals or morals, characters’ actions are, more often than not, motivated by either specific personal goals or by their relationships with other characters. it feels much more true to life.

i like the loss of kiku’s arm, because it showcases exactly how serious the fight is on both sides. it both shows that kaidou is fighting to maim and kill and do whatever it takes to win, and that the akazaya are fully prepared to take whatever he throws at them. kiku gets back up smiling after losing her arm. neither side in this fight is even close to backing down, now or ever. 

i genuinely can’t believe how long it took me to talk about yamato, so let me just say: i love him so much. part of this, i’m sure, is my personal bias towards any and all kickass queer characters, but part of it is just- he’s so cool. he’s ten feet tall and carries a club about as big as he is and tanks explosions like they’re nothing while also bickering with luffy and falling out of ceilings and generally being like... stupidly lovable. 

i just like yamato a lot. 

a thousand chapters in, and every strawhat but robin has had a moment where they declare luffy is going to be the king of the pirates, but honestly, i think nami’s might be my favorite yet. nami has always been a person who acts at a distance, not one inclined to direct confrontation and putting herself in danger-

and yet, when it comes down to it, when faced with a choice between death and disavowing her captain’s dream, even when assured by usopp that she would be fully justified in lying for her life, nami chooses luffy. even in the most dire of circumstances, all of the strawhats know luffy is going to be the king of the pirates, and none of them would ever deny it.

i kind of alluded to this back in my dressrosa post, but i really like the development of law’s new dream being discovering the meaning of the will of d. it just feels like a very good and natural progression for his character, given he’s the only holder of the will of d who we’ve been shown is consciously aware of it and what it might mean. and in general, i like seeing him having something else to work towards after doflamingo’s defeat.

i’ll end this by just saying i am so desperately curious to know what is in that book, and what yamato knows about the will of d, about the dawn of the world, about laugh tale. 

guess we’ll find out, huh?

thanks for reading through to the end!! i had a lot of fun putting these posts together, and writing them up was a really cool way to be able to compile my thoughts headed into chapter 1000 and beyond. i can’t wait to see where oda takes us next. 

[justasmallbloginabigklainefandom]

Final paper

Representation of queer women in the television show Glee

For Naya Rivera

Introduction

Representation of queer people has gotten better in the last few years, in both quantitative and qualitative ways. Yet, there is often still a discrepancy between the representation of queer women and the experiences actual queer women. It still happens that queer women are overly sexualised, lack depth or that they are marketed towards men as fanservice through the usage of the male gaze (Smith, 2018). The main reason for all of this is that queer women in mainstream media are often created by men.

According to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary (n.d.), queer is defined as “of, relating to, or being a person whose sexual orientation is not heterosexual and/or whose gender identity is not cisgender”, but in this paper, we will only focus on portrayal of female sexuality of queer women. For this paper, I will look at the agency of queer female characters in the television show Glee. With agency I am referring to the subject being able to act in a certain narrative (McAdams & McLean, 2013). I will try to figure out how the audience reacts towards the portrayal of queer women in Glee.

There are two reasons why I chose the television show Glee. First, despite its many flaws, it is my favourite show. Second, Glee has always been a frontrunner when it comes with queer representation. Glee has a total of 23 canon queer characters (Glee Wiki, n.d.). Three of them are women in the main cast: Santana Lopez (lesbian), Brittany Pierce (bisexual) and Unique Adams (transgender). As stated above, we’re only looking at the sexuality aspect, so Unique will be left out of the analysis. Through a close reading of the series’ portrayal of its characters, I ask this question: “How does Glee allow an enjoyable queer viewing experience?”

Theoretical background

The representation of sexuality has become more prominent in television in the last few years (Kidd, 2014; GLAAD 2005/2020), but it is still portrayed in a heteronormative way to show that heterosexuality is the norm (Avila-Saavedra, 2009). Since women are also still underrepresented and often badly represented, it is interesting to look at queer women in general (DeCeuninck & Dhoest, 2016).

Queer women are often represented in function of male fantasies and they are often sexualized and can normally be described as conventionally attractive (DeCeuninck & Dhoest, 2016). This is due to the male gaze. Mulvey (1989) describes the male gaze as an act of depicting women and the world heterosexual view that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the male viewer. Mulvey writes that the women displayed have two roles: one as an erotic object within the story and one as an erotic object for the audience. There’s a third component that places women as an erotic object for the men behind the camera.

But Mulvey writes from a heterosexual perspective and that does not always capture the experiences of queer viewers (Gokcem, 2012). It is argued that the “gay gaze” (man to man or woman to woman) is more about understanding that there’s a homosexual act on screen and acknowledging that act (Snider, 2008; Gokcem, 2012). It’s less about the sex appeal or objectification of the characters. Evans & Gamman (1995) even claim that there’s no such thing as a “lesbian gaze” when it comes to good lesbian representation, but that it’s more about lesbian imagery that is created by lesbian filmmakers for lesbian consumption. To them, subcultural codes are the reason that even objectifying imagery of women is still different than the ones in the male gaze.

Subcultural styles can be seen as coded transposed into the specific context of youth (Murdock & McCron, 1976). Murdock & McCron speak about class differences, but this view of subculture can also be applied to the queer community. Huq (2006) says that the term subculture carries implications of the oppositional and unofficial. Both writings speak about youth, and not all queer people are young, but when it comes to media, youth can find solace in specific subcultural media.

Within media, agency is important. Agency can be defined as the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices (Barker, 2012). In narrative theory, this means the degree in which a protagonist is able to affect change in their own lives or influence others in their environment (McAdams & McLean, 2013).

Glee’s background

When it comes to the quantity of representation, Glee has always been a frontrunner (Marwick, Gray, & Ananny, 2014). It has shown a wide variety of serious topics in the show. Glee has characters of different ethnicities, gender identities, sexualities and economic classes. Glee also has characters in a wheelchair, it has characters with down syndrome, and it has characters with mental health problems.

Unfortunately, the quality aspect of representation in Glee is less than ideal. There is racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, and a strive to be well-abled and neurotypical. I am not talking about what happens within the show (as in, characters facing hatred from other characters), but by the way the show is written by its creators. Artie, the character in a wheelchair, constantly wishes that he could walk and he’s seen dancing in several dream sequences[1]. Queer characters could only kiss in “special episodes”, while their straight friends could make out anytime and everywhere[2]. A male character speaking out for himself is portrayed as heroic, strong and inspirational, while a female character speaking out for herself is portrayed as annoying, complaining and bossy[3]. Glee also portrayed heteronormativity by presenting its queer characters mostly as suffering while aspiring to fit in a heteronormative worldview, but also as happy and self-confident (Dhaenens, 2013).

An explanation for these underlying microaggressions can be ascribed to the fact that most people on the creative team of Glee were straight white men and when a woman did write a script, produce or direct, they were always working together with straight white men. Same goes for people of colour working in the Glee crew. They also had less episodes to work on (IMDb, n.d.). As a result, Glee often reflects a male heteronormative worldview.

Methodology

For this paper, I will take a closer look at Glee and its queer female characters. I will describe the three queer female characters and I will give some background. While describing the stories, I will look at how much the characters were allowed to exist with agency. Apart from that, I will also talk about certain fan reception towards storylines about the sexuality of these women and how they were allowed to express their sexualities.

I do have to point out that a lot of discussion is from archival material, since these storylines all happened in 2012 and 2013. I have spent time tracking down old blog posts and articles written by fans, but many have been lost due to domain changes or due to the deactivation/changes of blogs. I am aware that it is a huge methodological fault to purely rely on my memories, but Glee has ended years ago and people who once actively participated in discussions surrounding these characters have moved on. The posts that I have found were either difficult to find or they’re recent and written after the show. Not all posts are in-depth analyses. Sometimes they’re memes, but they still express the opinions of fans.

Analysis of Glee

I will split this section in 3 parts. Each part is about a certain character.

Santana Lopez

Santana Lopez got introduced in season 1 episode 1 “Pilot” as a background character. During the first season, she was portrayed as a girl who had sex with every guy in school and she actively sought out this sexual attention. In season 2, things started to change for Santana when it comes to her sexuality. In season 2 episode 4 “Duets”, Brittany and Santana are seen making out for the first time. At first, it wasn’t supposed to be a real storyline, but Naya Rivera, who played Santana, advocated for this relationship to become real and not a throw-away thing (NayaMitchell, 2011).

This changed Santana’s character from a heterosexual man-hunter to a deeply closeted lesbian. Her relationships with men became a way for her to hide her sexuality and Santana had to deal with a lot of internalised homophobia. This followed her all throughout season 2. This change was seen as abrupt by certain people and as a result, some people felt like they couldn’t get emotionally invested in the relationship. Others were happy to see female sexuality become a topic, since beforehand, Glee mostly focused on male sexuality (Marwick, Gray, & Ananny, 2014).

           Season 3 showed Santana’s sexuality developing. In season 3 episode 4 “Pot O’ Gold”, Brittany and Santana decided to date, but Santana wanted to hide the relationship. Unfortunately for her, she got outed by Finn Hudson in season 3 episode 6 “Mash-Off”. The episode afterwards, “I Kissed A Girl”, dealt with the repercussions of the outing, but this episode was heavily scrutinised by fans and critics and even after the show ended, fans discussed how badly it was done (see Appendix for screenshots).

The episode tried to make Finn look like a hero by outing her and Santana even thanked him for it. Santana also sung the Katy Perry song I Kissed A Girl, which is a song that treats women kissing other women as a joke and a party activity for drunk straight women. Santana sung that song with a straight character named Rachel Berry, who appropriately sings the lyrics “I hope my boyfriend won’t mind it!”. Brittany barely spoke in this episode and Santana’s coming out to her parents got brushed off easily as something irrelevant that happened off-screen. A scene of Santana standing up for herself towards the other cheerleaders got cut and was only released after the end of the season (MrRPMurphyExclusive, 2012). Overall, Santana became a background character in her own coming out story, so that the narrative could focus on the straight boy who outed her (lesbianstana, 2018).

There is only one scene in the entire episode that focused on Santana, which is the heart wrenching scene where she comes out to her Abuelita. This scene is the only one where Santana gets to express her emotions to what has happened to her and this part is often regarded by fans as the only good part of the episode. There is a big reason why this scene stands out: it is written by a queer woman named Ali Adler, whereas the rest of the episode was written by a man named Michael Hodgson. Ali has written more media about queer women and she puts the narrative on them and their story. This scene focuses on Santana expressing and overcoming her struggles and not on Finn being the hero.

After this episode, Santana completely embraced her identity. For the remainder of the show, Santana was open about being a lesbian and she had relations with four other women and she ends up with Brittany. Santana’s confidence has helped a lot of young women feel comfortable with themselves, since it showed them that there is nothing wrong with liking other women. Her relationship with Brittany gave people hope (Marwick, Gray, & Ananny, 2014). This is especially true for women of colour, since not only did Glee show a confident lesbian, but also a confident lesbian of colour. Naya Rivera was aware of how Santana’s journey has impacted people and she said that she’s very proud of it (NayaMitchell, 2011).

Brittany S. Pierce

Brittany got introduced in season 1 episode 2 “Showmance” as a background character. She is also the dumb blonde with a lot of funny one-liners. Brittany is bisexual, but as a viewer, you never see or hear anything about her discovering her sexuality and coming out. She is the only of the 4 main queer character who does not have a storyline about sexuality and the struggles of coming out. Just like Santana, Brittany’s portrayed was very sexual in season 1, but she also mentions attraction towards women easily. This can be interpreted as a portrayal of a woman who’s very accepting of her own bisexuality, but it can also be interpreted as a thrown-away joke. It looks like Brittany’s comments about women are there to spark laughter.

In season 2, her attractions towards Artie, a boy, and Santana, a girl, becomes more fleshed out. In season 2 episode 18 “Born This Way”, she says that she thinks that she might be “bi-curious”. The word “bisexual” was barely used in the show and when it did, it was done in a very negative way[4]. Brittany referred to herself as “bi-curious” “a bicorn” (instead of a unicorn) and “bilingual” (not knowing what it actually meant)[5]. There is never a big revelation. The other characters in the show just know at one point that Brittany is bisexual.

           After Brittany and Santana break up in season 4 episode 4 “The Break-Up”, Brittany falls in love with a boy named Sam. This relationship was not very well-received by Brittana (Brittany and Santana) fans and it felt like they were made fun of in season 4 episode 9 “Swan Song”, when Brittany talks to Sam that she does not want to date him to prevent a group of angry lesbian bloggers to hate Sam and turn violent. This felt very invalidating towards the feelings of queer women who found strength in the Brittana relationship (see Appendix for screenshots).

This relationship led to some debate within the fan community about Glee’s representation of bisexuality. Another problem of the Bram (Brittany and Sam) vs. Brittana debate was the fact that Brittany was suddenly allowed to express her attraction towards Sam way more than to Santana. The Glee Equality Project (2012) made a chart of how Brittany was allowed to kiss boys within the first episode of dating them, or even before dating them, but Brittany and Santana only kissed after 9 episodes of dating and after a fan campaign advocated for a kiss. Glee showed a big double standard in Brittany’s bisexuality and this led to anger (see Appendix for screenshots).

As written above, Brittany and Santana end up together in the end. Even though Brittany was not seen struggling, it was meaningful to have a happy ending for her. Heather Morris, who played Brittany, talked about the impact after the show’s end and how the Brittana relationship eventually helped people (FlyingHippopotamiSpy, 2015). Just like with Santana, watching Brittany be confident and comfortable helped young women realise that there’s nothing wrong with liking girls, or liking girls and boys. Brittany’s happiness showed that her sexuality did not prevent her from having a happy ending, which impacted viewers.

Bonus: Quinn Fabray

Quinn Fabray was introduced in season 1 episode 1 “Pilot” as a main character. Quinn is straight. Fans disagreed. Many people noticed that there was chemistry between Quinn and Rachel and people started liking them as a couple. Faberry (Quinn and Rachel) was one of the most popular couples in the show even though the characters were straight in the text of the show. That is due to the fan reception and fan work surrounding Faberry. As of July 2020, Faberry is still the 3rd most popular couple on the fansite AO3 (Shipping, n.d.). Fans often advocated for the characters to at least not be straight and Dianna Agron famously said: “Quinn could always go gay” (breakmelove, 2011).

           During the show, there were little scenes[6] and pieces of dialogue[7] that indicated to Quinn not being straight, so that is why people latched more onto Quinn and not onto Rachel. That is why I’m only writing about Quinn in this paper. People believed that Quinn was heavily queer-coded. Queer-coding is “to be implicated as having or displaying stereotypes and behaviours that are associated (even if inaccurate) with homosexuality or queerness” (Kim, 2007, p. 157). It is often seen in a negative light, but more recently, queer-coding is also used to find positive subcultural codes in a text. That is what happened with Quinn.

In season 4 episode 14 “I Do”, Quinn gets drunk with Santana and the two of them have sex. When this got announced, fans were interested, since it seemed like they were finally going to acknowledge fans’ interpretation of Quinn. Yet, in the episode, it became clear that Quinn sleeping with Santana wasn’t out of attraction towards women, but more for experimentation. This led to disappointment and it also happens a lot that relationships between women are portrayed as not serious. This “heteroflexible” depiction makes women loving other women seem ‘bad’ and ‘guilty’ and ‘naughty’, basically like it’s a sneaky party trick to put more focus on the hot lesbian outcome (Jackson, & Gilbertson, 2009).

People also felt betrayed by the show. They felt like they’d been queerbaited, since the support for Quinn not being straight was already very apparent by this time. Queerbaiting is “a tactic whereby media producers suggest homoerotic subtext between characters in popular television that is never intended to be actualised on screen” (Brennan, 2018, p. 189). This has a negative connotation, since it feels like people are being lured in by false promises. Despite the negativity, there was also some positive news from women who liked to see it and found it enticing (Hogan, 2013) and still saw it as a sign that Quinn is not straight, despite her saying that this was just a one-time experiment. To this day, people still don’t believe that Quinn is straight (see Appendix for screenshots).

Discussion and conclusion

To answer the question “How does Glee allow an enjoyable queer viewing experience?”, I looked at the show and fan reception. The answer is that Glee allowed an enjoyable queer viewing experience when the characters had agency and happiness. The happiness led to a feeling of acceptance and belongingness for the viewers.

The stories surrounding the queer women in Glee have ups and downs. The flaws in the representation can be attributed to the fact that queer women weren’t a prominent part of the Glee crew. Yet, both Brittany and Santana have a happy ending: they’re alive, in love, and married. Fans seemed to enjoy the storylines when the characters have agency. When that agency gets removed (Santana’s outing not being about her, Brittany not being able to express her bisexuality without double standards), the storylines are not as well-received, since fans want to see the characters succeeding within the context and narrative of the show. Fans actively root for their happiness.

           An interesting finding is that not many fans reacted towards the fact that Brittana consists of two hot femme cheerleaders. This wasn’t expected, since a lot of writing on bad representation revolves around the focus on the male gaze. This unexpected finding can be due to the fact that the relationship was treated fairly and not as a joke. Brittana did start out as two hot girls making out for fun, but it grew into a developed relationship. Another explanation might be in the faulty methodology: maybe I just never saw existing criticism and I didn’t have the time to ask people about it.

           The representation of these characters have helped people and they also found a community, so the idea that subcultural media is correct. After all, fan’s interpretation of Quinn can show that subcultural codes are seen in media. Finding those codes also impact queer viewing of Glee. Even though it wasn’t always perfect, the characters have had a positive impact on representation for queer women. Especially for young people, Brittany and Santana were some of the first representation of teen female characters on mainstream television.

Afterword: in memory of Naya Rivera

This is not part of the paper, so you do not have to grade this and I don’t see it as part of the word count. This is just information that I think is important to share. Naya Rivera, the actress who played Santana, died on July 8th 2020 in Lake Piru in California. She was 33 years old. She drowned while saving her son’s life and her body was found on July 13th 2020. I am very sad about this news and I found it kind of hard to write this paper afterwards. I don’t believe in the afterlife or the whole “this person is looking down on you” stuff, but this was written in her memory and I hope I made her proud with this paper about her influence.

Even though it has been five years since Glee ended, many fans are very shocked and upset by this news. People, including celebrities who grew up with Glee, have shared stories of how much Santana meant to them and how Naya’s portrayal made them feel okay with themselves. Loads of (former) fans have expressed how much Santana’s portrayal has helped them with acceptance. Santana was not a perfect character, but she was a milestone for representation. Naya was not a perfect person, but she will forever be remembered for how much her sheer determination to handle Santana’s storyline respectfully has helped young women everywhere.

Naya Marie Rivera

* January 12th 1987 - † July 8th 2020

Cause I feel that when I'm with you It's all right I know it's right

~ Songbird Glee version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJUgLEtA-74

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Kim, K. (2007). Queer-coded villains (And why you should care). In T. Budd & L. Dexheimer, (Eds.), Dialogues@RU, (p. 156-165). USA.

lesbiansantana (2018, May 23). Anonymous asked: Can you break down all the problems with I Kissed a Girl? I'm genuinely curious. [Tumblr post]. Retrieved from https://lesbiansantana.tumblr.com/post/174189446619/can-you-break-down-all-the-problems-with-i-kissed

Marwick, A., Gray, M. L., & Ananny, M. (2014). “Dolphins are just gay sharks”: Glee and the queer case of transmedia as text and object. Television & New Media, 15(7), 627–647. doi:10.1177/1527476413478493

McAdams, D. P., & McLean, K. C. (2013). Narrative Identity. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(3), 233–238. doi:10.1177/0963721413475622

MrRPMurphyExclusive (2012, August 12). The Santana “Coming Out Scene” [Video]. YouTube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpjZZx5F8JI

Mulvey, L. (1989). Visual pleasure and narrative cinema. In L. Muvley (Eds.), Visual and other pleasures (pp. 14-26). London: Palgrave Macmillan

Murdock, G. & McCron, R. (1976) 'Consciousness of class and consciousness of generation'. In S. Hall & T. Jefferson (Eds.), Resistance through rituals: Youth subcultures in post-war Britain. London: HarperCollins.

NayaMitchell (2011). Naya Rivera Talks Lesbian Storyline, Fans, Guest Stars, Graduation on Glee [Video]. YouTube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGRPTMKZa90

Queer (n.d.). In Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary. Retrieved from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/queer

Shipping Wiki (n.d.). Glee. Retrieved from https://shipping.fandom.com/wiki/Glee

Smith, A. (2018, August 10). 'Oral sex – and no scissoring!' How the lesbian gaze changed cinema. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/aug/10/oral-sex-and-no-scissoring-how-the-lesbian-gaze-changed-cinema

Snider, C. (2008). Queer persona and the gay gaze in Brokeback Mountain: Story and film. Psychological Perspectives, 51(1), 54-69. doi:10.1080/00332920802031888

The Glee Equality Project (2012, December 6). Reaction post 409 “Swan Song” [Tumblr post]. Retrieved from https://glee-equality-project.tumblr.com/post/37381267319/reaction-post-409-swan-song-in-this-episode

Appendix

Santana’s outing

keepholdingontoachele (2011). Just noticed the “Here’s what you missed on Glee” voiceover saying that. [Tumblr post]. Retrieved from https://keepholdingontoachele.tumblr.com/post/13547911507/just-noticed-the-heres-what-you-missed-on-glee

justanarchiveinabigklainefandom (2011). Santana coming out. [Tumblr post]. Retrieved from https://justanarchiveinabigklainefandom.tumblr.com/post/13783395882/nayasexual-tenacitysuperbrains-it-wasnt-a

thelesbianladydi (2017, May 28). It has been 2008 days since…. [Tumblr post]. Retrieved from https://thelesbianladydi.tumblr.com/post/161161858089/it-has-been-2008-days-since-santana-lopez-was

lesbiansantana (2018, May 23). Anonymous asked: Can you break down all the problems with I Kissed a Girl? I'm genuinely curious. [Tumblr post]. Retrieved from https://lesbiansantana.tumblr.com/post/174189446619/can-you-break-down-all-the-problems-with-i-kissed

(see link for the full 9 reasons that led to this summary)

 Brittany’s bisexuality

proudlyunicorn (2012, December 6). Brittany and Bisexual Representation: A Gleenalysis. [Tumblr post]. Retrieved from https://proudlyunicorn.tumblr.com/post/37353682285/brittany-and-bisexual-representation-a

glowinthedarkparades (2012, December 6). Can someone please explain…. [Tumblr post]. Retrieved from https://glowinthedarkparades.tumblr.com/post/37318713323/hummelsmytheanderson-can-someone-please

glowinthedarkparades (2012, December 5). Why is the Brittana fandom going apeshit? What’s happened? [Tumblr post]. Retrieved from https://glowinthedarkparades.tumblr.com/post/37292738950/why-is-the-brittana-fandom-going-apeshit-whats

iheartbrittana (2012). “… All the dreams …. [Tumblr post]. Retrieved from https://iheartbrittana.tumblr.com/post/37241910228/all-the-dreams-we-had-for-brittana-as-a-couple

The Glee Equality Project (2012, December 6). Reaction post 409 “Swan Song” [Tumblr post]. Retrieved from https://glee-equality-project.tumblr.com/post/37381267319/reaction-post-409-swan-song-in-this-episode

gleerant (2012). Bram, Brittana, and issues of visibility. [Tumblr post]. Retrieved from https://gleerant.tumblr.com/post/36943266496/bram-brittana-and-issues-of-visibility

(full post is too long to screenshot)

 Quinn’s queercoding/queerbaiting

diannaaagron (2020, July 5). The world if glee writers made quinn fabray a lesbian. [meme]. Retrieved from https://diannaaagron.tumblr.com/post/622846421520023552

blaineanderdumbass (2020, June 9). Can you believe quinn…. [Tumblr post]. Retrieved from https://blaineanderdumbass.tumblr.com/post/620457887277498368/can-u-believe-quinn-was-meant-to-be-str-i

justasmallbloginabigklainefandom (2020). Me, in 2020: …. [Tumblr post]. Retrieved from https://justasmallbloginabigklainefandom.tumblr.com/post/617643961118507008/me-in-2020-anyway-lucy-quinn-fabray-was-not

justasmallbloginabigklainefandom (2020). Quinn fabray: *exists* …. [Tumblr post]. Retrieved from https://justasmallbloginabigklainefandom.tumblr.com/post/617643867261550592/quinn-fabray-exists-me-there-is-no

inimitabler (2018, Feb 3). You know what bothers me the most about faberry?. [Tumblr post]. Retrieved from https://inimitabler.tumblr.com/post/170475507292/you-know-what-bothers-me-the-most-about-faberry

diannaagrn (2020). #it’s her she’s gay. [Tumblr photoset]. Retrieved from https://diannaagrn.tumblr.com/post/614675450454736896/its-her-shes-gay

Footnotes

[1] 1x19 “Dream On”; 2x10 “A Very Glee Christmas”; 3x11 “Michael”, 4x10 “Glee, Actually”; 6x06 “What The World Needs Now”. Kevin McHale, the actor who plays Artie, is abled and a trained dancer. The role for Artie was not written as a wheelchair using character.

[2] 2x16 “Original Song”; 3x05 “The First Time”; 3x13 “Heart”

[3] Too many episodes to source.

[4] 2x14 “Blame It On The Alcohol”; 5x02 “Tina In The Sky With Diamonds”

[5] 2x18 “Born This Way”; 3x02 “I Am Unicorn”; 3x12 “The Spanish Teacher”

[6] 1x15 “The Power of Madonna”, 3x14 “On My Way”, 3x15 “Big Brother”

[7] 3x13 “Heart”, 3x14 “On My Way”

[theevershipping]

Most Sensible Voltron End Game Ships:

Note: this doesn't mean I don't LIKE other ships, but logically, given that Voltron is a CHILDREN'S CARTOON, these ones make the most sense story-telling wise. Here's why.

Hunk/Romelle:

I start here because I think this will likely be the least controversial. They set up in the first ep of S7 that Romelle and Hunk clearly think alike. They also set up that even though Lance is attracted to Romelle initially, she soon actually annoys him. On the other hand Hunk finds Romelle's thought processes to be so like his own that he acts she's like his own personal God-send ("It's like, I think it, you say it!") Likewise, Romelle seems to rather enjoy her interactions with Hunk, and the way he supports her curiousity. For once Hunk gets to be the one "in the know", and Romelle likes and appreciates the way that he interacts with her.

I know there's a lot of talk about doing right by an LGBTQ+ rep character, but I think the "Nice guy who's really smart and awesome but happens to not be conventionally attractive" rep deserves to get an attractive girl who he really does genuinely like and connect with and who genuinely likes, connects with, and respects him.

Lance/Pidge:

Although we are all understandably wary of trusting anything the writers say at this point, they have pretty much said that they do have an end game for Lance and it's not Allura. While I'd personally love to see a Klance ending, it seems pretty clear that Lance and Keith are both being set up to be straight--Lance shows attraction to basically every conventionally attractive female, and Keith/Acxa is a thing (and a reasonable thing, which I will get to next). So..

Lance and Pidge: first off, Pidge constantly points out and makes fun of Lance's crush on Allura, and at times even seems annoyed by it. She definitely doesn't show any sign of caring about the romantic interests of any of the other characters. Although it's been subtle, as Pidge's priorities have clearly, and rightly, been elsewhere, there's been some hints from the beginning that she's certainly paying attention to Lance's love interests, and is maybe jealous and just covering it up by making fun of him--which is pretty age appropriate, and typical of girls with older brothers: She's more comfortable approaching him on guy level and expressing her annoyances (unconscious jealously) through teasing him and, in the process, attempting to dissuade him from said romantic pursuits.

The writer's stated that Lance would get what he NEEDS in a relationship, not what he WANTS. Pidge is not girly/feminine in an aesthetic sense (what Lance thinks he WANTS), but she's perfectly pretty--it's not like Lance wouldn't be attracted to her once he gets passed his old-school markers of attraction based purely on conventional outer symbols of femininity (I.e. If he saw Pidge a few years older and in a dress, he'd almost certainly have a different reaction to her). Pidge does have an abundance of qualities that Lance NEEDS in a partner.

Pidge and Lance balance and trust each other. They have from the very first episode of Voltron. If you think of the first episode as establishing our main and most relatable characters, we really enter the story through the trio of Lance, Pidge and Hunk. Keith and Shiro--who they are and how they're involved in what's happening--are mostly mysteries to us in the first ep. In the typical trio story set up you have the main male character, who represents ego, in story structure, and you have his two best friends, who represent his ID and Super-ego. Often the Super-Ego character is female, and the ID male. The function of the super-ego is to check, regulate and correct the impulses of the ego, which the ID often supports/supplies. The super-ego, basically, is the one who thinks things through, when the ego doesn't want to, and the ID can't. Pidge is the super-ego.

What Lance NEEDS is someone who he both implicitly trusts and who can be the things he isn't in such a way that it helps him to grow, while still having his partner see him as an equal and having respect for the qualities and strengths he has as an individual and that he contributes to the balance of the relationship.

Allurance shippers will say "Allura can be those things too!" But she can't, because she is not and never will be his equal. She is a 10,000 year old Princess from a race of people that are vastly more evolved than humans. She was raised to rule a planet and take on the burden of the universe. No matter how much she might LIKE Lance and trusts him as an ally and a friend, that quality of equality and challenge that actually attracts confident and capable women to men does not exist between Allura and Lance--which is why she was attracted to Lotor.

The contrast between how Allura reacts to Lotor and how she reacts to Lance is a great representation of what creates actual romantic attraction vs. friendship compatibility: Lotor is her equal in his own right and can challenge her to see and grow beyond her pre-conceived notions, while having enough similarities that he understands and fits into the world she comes from and will return to (that of Galatic leadership and responsibility). Allura and Lance do not have that kind of shared reality and the ability to build together as equals that comes with it.

Pidge and Lance, on the other hand, start from the same place--they're kids who were smart and capable and followed a dream, and who have taken on the unanticipated responsibilities and adventures that came as a consequence of following that dream. They constantly demonstrate that their gut instincts are aligned. They do not have fundemental differences in terms of values and unconscious life expectations, and those things matter when you're talking endgame, because endgame means when two people are grown ups and they have kids and grow old together--that real life stuff.

Allura and Lance might have a minor romantic arch, in fact I suspect they will, because they will need to in order for all both Allura and Lance to fully realize they're not compatible. This will also force Pidge to become conscious of her feelings for Lance. From there we can from there spring board into Pidge/Lance and back into...

Lotor/Allura:

So, I'm not at all surprised we didn't see Lotor or Haggar in Season 7. It would have been too easy. We needed the stakes to be much higher, and the only way to do that was to bring the Galra threat to Earth, which couldn't have happened with Lotor as Emporer, or even with Haggar in charge--she's a much bigger schemer than just blindly chasing those lions across the galaxy like all those dumb male Galra meatheads want to do. Also, it gives her time to realisticly retrieve Lotor, fix him physically, and in the process develop some sort of relationship that would lead to them trusting each other enough to come back (allegedly) on the same side in S8.

I don't want to speculate on the plot of S8, and I won't. But I think that plot stuff aside, Lotor has to come back for the sake of Allura's character development.

ALLURA IS A RACIST. She is not malicious (just like most racists aren't malicious). But she seriously discriminates against the Galra just for them being Galra. She has a reason, no one can deny that--Just like someone who gets beat up by a gang of white guys has a reason to be wary of groups of white men, and they might take the trauma of the experience to the degree that they unconsciously start to demonize white men as a group... The trauma creates predudice because the brain is looking for a way to protect you from the trauma that just occurred. So it notes visual markers associated with the trauma, and when it later sees those markers it gets triggered into a state of flight/fight in order to (ideally) prevent you from reexperiencing the trauma associated with those physical markers. It's an evolutionary imperative--it's why we all jump across the room when we see a spider. But this primal imperative does lead to discrimination against groups of people. In my example, being fearful of groups of white men after being the victim of a gang beating is understandable, but is still a PREJUDICE based on their physical likeness to individuals who committed terrible acts, when in reality those physical traits have nothing to do with the terrible act.

It seemed like Allura was making progress with her predudices because of her relationship with Lotor, but Lotor is half Altean. He had to prove to her several times that he was "civilized" and even more knowledgeable about aspects of Altea than her. She fell in love with the Altean part of him. The literal second that she was given reason (by an ALTEAN stranger) to believe that he'd done something terrible and “GALRAN”, she instantly jumped to betraying him without even listening to his side of the story. This act proves that she didn't ever actually consciously see and acknowledge her predjudice and the irrational assumptions it causes her to make, she just was able to temporarily over look the Galran in Lotor for the Altean. So, Allura still has some major self realization to do in this department.

Next, the rash actions of the Paladins destroyed what could have been peace in the universe. Lotor gave them the option pretty much up until the end to stop and think things through even after they betrayed and attacked him. But at the end of S6 it's pretty clear it's Allura calling the shots on whether or not the team listens to Lotor or fights him. And we all know what happens:

She lets her emotions win. She prioritizes her anger--at herself for trusting a Galra--and she completely fails to care about (and likely think through) the bigger picture. Rather than realizing that the new emperor of a civilization that has been systematically enslaving the Galaxy for 10,000 years is trying to give agency back to planets, to create peace, harmony and a universe that works together to fulfill the needs of the whole, she doesn't even listen to him, she just attacks. With Lotor gone, of course the empire will fall and divide to the various generals of power. If Team Voltron had stopped and thought for 5 seconds about that they maybe would have realized that leaving Lotor in that rift was the most selfish and childish thing they ever could have done, humanitarian principles aside even. How many more worlds besides Earth suffered and will suffer for ALLURA'S emotional reactions that stem most deeply from PREJUDICE?

To be clear:

ALLURA believed the word of an ALTEAN she did not know, over the HALF-GALRAN she had fallen in love with, all because she FEARED she was wrong to trust someone with GALRAN blood: "You're more like Zarkon than I could ever have imagined," she tells Lotor. NOT "You're more like Honerva (AN ALTEAN) who began this whole mess by experimenting on quintessence and what happened when one combines it with their own life force and then became so addicted to it that she went crazy and enabled terrible things to happen to innocent peoples and planets." Nope. Even though in all honesty that comparison would have been more accurate, it didn't occur to Allura to accuse Lotor of being corrupt like his ALTEAN mother. What she says to him is essentially, "You're corrupt (and thus more) like your GALRAN father."

So, in order for Allura to grow into someone who is actually mature and responsible enough to lead the Voltron Colition and bring peace to the Galaxy, she's going to have to see the serious error in her actions, and the root prejudice that actually lead to them. And Lotor will be the one to make her see it.

From the moment the Paladins take Lotor prisoner he points out that Allura is discriminating against him based on species and parentage. It's pretty clear that this is set up to be their arch--Both of them are deeply flawed and magnificently gifted individuals who were born and raised to rule worlds, if not whole galaxies. They both have let their personal fears and flaws get in the way of what they could achieve together. In Allura's case the fatal flaw is predudice. In Lotor's it is lack of trust. He should have told her about the Altean colonies, but, rationally feared that he couldn't trust her to hear him out--irony being, if he'd brought it up privately and volunteered the info she probably would have reacted differently. However, Lotor has never had anyone he's trusted or who has trusted him, so he doesn't know that is how trust works. 😢

These two are designed to point out each other's flaws, and help them to correct them (not to make up for them, but to truly help each other change as people by, essentially, calling each other on their shit.) When they do that--Allura facing her racism; Lotor facing his lack of knowing how to actually trust someone fully--then the fatal flaws that lead to the ending of S6 (and the subsequent inter-galactic crisis that the simultaneous betrayal of these two baby-rulers, has caused) will be obliterated, the fatal flaws cured. Allura and Lotor will then be capable of resuming creating the new era of peace they were attempting before, but this time they will succeed because they will have learned to have real transparency/trust, rather than letting their unconscious fears be reasons to mistrust each other when they need to trust each other the most.

Lotura is a ship that is about real equality combined with real consciousness of self and other in relationships. Neither will be able to mature as characters until they see the flaws in Self that their initial (immature) love brought out in each other; the completion of the circle is then conscious change from seeing these flaws, and then forgiving themselves and each other for them. Only then can they can move into a mature love, which will allow them to bring out the best in each other without being blind to the flaws in each other and themselves.

Real love is seeing and dealing with both the good and bad, not ignoring one in favor of the other (this always backfires, as Lotura's first arch demonstrates). And that is a super valuable relationship lesson, that, in a show for kids, is profound and important. Love is seeing and accepting all of your partner and working together to change the things that need to be changed--not getting mad at each other, refusing to listen to what your partner has to say, deflecting with things like "your just like your dad," and subsequent retaliations that take the couple further away from the real issue, like Lotor does when Allura finally hits his weak spot and his basic response is "oh yeah, well your dad sucked too!" And from there it's all just them both being so hurt that reason is lost. That is the state of immature love.

Lotor and Allura are the only two characters who are each other's equals. They are the only two who can call each other on their shit effectively and who can help the other to change and grow. Their arch is about learning how to do that consciously and maturely. How to trust instead of doubt. How to see through the limitations of ego fears (Allura's prejudice, Lotor's not knowing how to trust) and to consciously choose loyalty to each other and to a fully shared vision. Without doing so, neither of these characters can transform from being in their immature Prince/Princess state to being ready for the mature King/Queen state.

Okay, Next...

Keith/Acxa:

I keep seeing posts where people are saying that this came out of nowhere... frankly, you all need to go back and rewatch the series. Keith and Acxa first meet in season 2 inside the guts of a Weblum. Even though it's clear to them from the start that they're on opposite sides of a war (thank you space suits) they still work together to survive and don't abandon each other even when it might benefit them to do so--they demonstrate immediately that they have a similar honor code/value system.

Every time these two encounter each other, despite remaining on opposite sides, they always help each other in this way that shows they both are in wonder about it--they don't know why, but something, some sort of "I owe you" that can't ever seem to be repaid no matter how often they help each other, is just in affect between them. Obviously, this continues to mount in S7.

So, why can't they just be friends? Well maybe they can, but I don't think that's where this is going...

For one thing, Keith is clearly drawn to his Galran side. He wants to be with the Blades of Mamora more than Team Voltron for a long stretch of time. Then he meets his Galran mom. Keith never got along well with other humans, as is established all over S7. He does get along with all these Galrans.

Those of you who know psychology know, we pretty much always marry some variation of our parents. Keith has a Galran mom who he likes and loves a lot. Acxa fits his mommy archetype. And, she's a half-breed like him--she knows what it's like to not fully belong to any one people.

Plus, as stated and well established in canon, these two just can't help but constantly save each other. I think more than ANY ship possibility, this one is obvious, and would totally make end-game sense.

So...

Shiro/???:

On the one hand, I'd love to see everyone all happy and paired up living happily ever after, but think it completely fits all of Shiro's character development to end up alone.

S7 firmly establishes that as a person, Shiro's ambitions/dreams matter more to him than the emotional needs of his partner, Adam. That's okay, there's nothing wrong with that, but, as a personality trait, it's not going to make for a happy long term relationship. In relationships you need to be willing to sacrifice things for your partner--not everything, not all the time--but you don't have the right to make serious decisions that affect you both without giving weight to the other person's needs. Shiro makes it clear that Adam's feelings don't matter to his decision to go on the Kerberos mission. That's not good partnering.

Adam, on the other hand, demonstrates a much more partner-oriented approach. He knows this is Shiro's dream, and because he loves him, he put his own wants/fears aside to support Shiro going on his first mission. He doesn't want to stop Shiro from being happy, but, when he tells Shiro that if Shiro goes AGAIN, Adam won't be here when he gets back, he's realizing that he's got to let Shiro understand that he can't be the only one in their relationship caring about the other's feelings. Adam needs a partner who will give the relationship serious weight in serious life decisions. Shiro demonstrates through his actions that he does not value the relationship more than his ambitions.

Shiro is a great team leader, but that doesn't necessarily make him a good life partner.

So, if Shiro ends up realizing this about himself and choosing to not have a romantic partnership, there is a really valuable lesson and story line there:

In American culture there is a lot of pressure to pair up. We are taught from childhood that real happiness hinges upon being partnered--at the end of every Disney movie the princess and prince finally get to be together forever and this is how we know they will "live happily every after". But not everyone is suited to relationships--and that has nothing to do with sexuality.

Shiro is gay, but that doesn't make him intrinsically more suited to long-term relationships than being straight makes anyone suited to long term relationships.

The LGBTQ+ community seems to be offended that Shiro isn't being represented in a relationship, but honestly I think they're being done a great service--Shiro is being understood as human rather than as his sexuality. His sexuality doesn't make him who he is. Being honest with himself about whether or not long-term relationships are actually something he is built for, is important for everyone to think about, and it's maybe especially important for LGBTQ+ kids to have a role model who does think about this.

One of the dangers of being LGBTQ+ is that people unconsciously reduce you to being a label--and you are so so much more than that label. Your sexuality is just one facet of Self, just like being straight is just one facet of Self for straight people. The pressure to be in a relationship as "proof" of your "identity" is very real for young LGBTQ+ kids, and the fear of leaving a relationship once you find one is far more intense because you fear your options are limited and you might not find someone else of your sexuality/who accepts your sexual-identity. So, LGBTQ+ kids are more vulnerable to staying in relationships that they've outgrown as a result of semi-conscious societal pressure to both pair up and to "prove" their "identity", and to fear that they might not ever find another relationship.

Shiro being the rep for the LBGTQ+ community teaches kids that you can be any sexuality/sexual-identity, and it doesn't change anything else about you--it doesn't change that you're smart and skilled and capable of being a space pilot, it doesn't change that it's perfectly possible and okay for a relationship (or even long term relationships in general) to not be right for you, it doesn't change your ability to be a good team leader... it doesn't change or mean anything else about you any more than a straight person being straight does. It's a facet of Self, to be weighed against many many other facets of Self.

...All that said, if they do somehow make it canon that Adam miraculously survived and he and Shiro are end game, that could be a great character development arch too, as long as it involves Shiro acknowledging that if he's going to resume being in a relationship with Adam he has to make decisions WITH Adam, and respect that Adam's emotions and needs matter equally to his own. If Shiro isn't willing to chose the truly rational emotional well-being of his partner (I mean Adam was reasonably scared that Shiro would die in space) over his own ambitions, he's not compatible with Adam. And that's okay too.

And, lastly:

Zethrid/Ezor:

Here's another rep for the LGBTQ+ community. In contrast to Shiro's story line, which may end up with him consciously deciding that committed relationships aren't as important to him as other parts of life and is happy being alone, we are now being introduced to a relationship in which two women who have worked together for a long time are discovering happiness through exploring their romantic connection. From what we've seen in S7, it looks like Zethrid and Ezor are experiencing a deeper trust and intimacy as a result of their new relationship.

I think it's great for two characters who are largely portrayed as villains/secondary shades-of-gray characters to demonstrate to people how relationships can change your priorities. Zethrid and Ezor seem to have made each other the first priority, rather than the ever-convoluted mission. They're still in the middle of this war, but now they care most about looking out for each other, rather than prioritizing the Galra Empire or Lotor. They are finding meaning in what they've fought for through their love for each other. I think they will be taken on an arch that is the opposite of Shiro's, in which they increasingly discover that their relationship and love for each other matters more to them than the military ambitions that may have once fueled them as individuals. ❤️

In conclusion:

While I think this is clear, in case it isn't, I am not bashing on ANY ship in this post, I'm just explaining why I think these ships are the logical end game ships for good story telling.

If you are so inclined, I'd love to hear your thoughts presented in a respectful and legible manner. ❤️

Thanks for reading, I know it's a long one. 😅

[thejennyroc]

Learning to eat in America

Corey Miller-Williams // Illustrations by Miranda Price 

I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about what I eat.

Sometimes, as a thought experiment, I try to imagine what I would do if I didn’t live in America. If I instead lived somewhere where I didn’t have to worry what other people thought about how I looked.

But I can’t really imagine that place, and since I don’t have any idea what a truer, more independent me would think, I can’t decide what I should do when given the choice between a resounding “fuck the man” and a quiet acceptance of my place.

I am not targeted by body-shaming and misogyny to the extent of some women. I am white and within a socially-accepted weight range, which makes my life much easier than it does for other women.

I’ve still learned to keep a tally of my faults. Recently added to the list once again after a brief departure is my stomach, which sticks out more than it should in proportion to the rest of me. In the past, whenever I’ve felt overwhelmingly aware of this, I would go online and look for workout routines and diet restrictions that I wouldn’t maintain for more than a few days.

As a result of my tours of the “fitspo” side of the internet, I have acquired quite a bit of useless information. For instance, the hourglass figure, defined by a curvaceous yet somehow still slim silhouette (which I have decided must be mine if my appearance is not to disgust everyone around me), is only the natural body shape of around 8 percent of women.

These women’s bodies store most of their fat in the gynoid region — the breasts and buttocks — while avoiding the legs, hips, and stomach. Whether you are born with this body type depends on genetics and random chance, making it unattainable (a word that has come to fill me with dread) for most women.

However, according to the sites I frequent, this figure can be yours! With a combination of rigorous exercise, balanced eating, and patience.

None of these activities interest me, and as I sleepily scroll through yet another article with the hope that it will reaffirm my self-pity and finally allow me to call off my quest for a better body, I find it unfair that I’m not one of the chosen 8 percent of women whose bodies fit this mold by design.

I find this more unfair when I realize that the “balanced eating” aspect of my newfound lifestyle means eating mostly legumes and soy products, leaving little room for anyone who isn’t a tofu-loving nut to find joy in this exercise of restraint.

It makes me feel like this: I never want to eat again, and yet I simultaneously crave a giant bag of chips.

I am at least somewhat convinced that this specific reaction is an American phenomenon, as the United States conditions its residents to seek food — particularly fatty or sugary foods — as comforts to ward off misery and boredom.

As an unofficial expert in sadness-eating, I can verify that this method very rarely produces the desired results, particularly if one is warding off feelings about the shape of their body.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the United States wastes almost 300 kilos per capita of food per year, more than the net food production per capita of some countries. What food we do eat is mostly fats, sugars, and sodium, with very few vegetables or other foods with significant nutritional value.

But this is all old news.

We’re aware of the problem, but we still can’t solve it, in part because its causes go beyond our own nutritional preferences. Societies need individual people to participate in preserving their norms in order to continue functioning in the same way.

That isn’t to say that women can solve our body image issues by changing the way we look. Low self esteem related to body image isn’t straightforward. Once one defect is removed, the mind latches onto another.

If I opt out of overeating, it’s to opt into something much more valuable: beauty, which, as far as I can tell, will make me like myself more and make others more inclined to like me. Why can’t I just buy into it?

Because dieting is shameful, especially for women, as it’s assumed that we’re only doing it for our looks, which is not permissible. Beauty is supposed to come preinstalled, but working towards it is vain and selfish. People who don’t have it shouldn’t start acting like they have it, because they haven’t earned the status that comes with beauty. And while you’re dieting, you’re not participating in the culture of overeating, but you also don’t fit the beauty standard that you’re aiming for.

This is the most disheartening part about trying to change your body: it takes a long time, and while you’re doing it, you’ve temporarily opted out of both norms.

And if you opt out of those norms permanently, what support system is there for you? For all its claims of attempting to diversify the concept of beauty, the body positivity movement is overwhelmingly skinny, white, and conventionally attractive. Leaving a culture of unattainable and racist beauty standards only to enter a culture of unattainable and racist beauty standards in which people don’t carefully cover up their cellulite isn’t the kind of change we’re looking for.

So maybe the only reason we continue to accept this culture is that we have no alternative that is truly pushing for a radical change. In which case, what will make us happy? Compulsively eating large amounts of food, knowing that it will have a detrimental effect on our psyche? Depriving ourselves of food and engaging in vigorous exercise, only for the joy of carefully watching our bodies for any sign that we’re slipping back into old habits?

Do we even want to work for a world that we’ll never see and can’t imagine? What if that world isn’t any better?

That sounds like a ridiculous question. “Of course that world will be better,” you say! But maybe what I’m most terrified of is acceptance.

If I accept my body, that means that I never get to be any of the things that I’ve waited to be. All of my goals are inextricably tied to my appearance: I want to be a beautiful college graduate, I want to be a beautiful grad student, I want to be a beautiful feminist and fight against societal standards that won’t actually impact me because I will be beautiful. It’s gross, but it’s true.

Achieving my dreams means something much different if I have to achieve them looking as I do now.

We don’t want to resist the structures that make us feel this way, because these structures work in tandem to ensure that there is no answer that will make us happy. Our current situation clearly isn’t working. The traditional American diet is affecting not only our physical health, but our mental well-being.

It is impossible to participate in both facets of society at the same time. But we also don’t want to accept that this is just the way the world works, and that most of us will never be beautiful in a way that translates to heightened social status and fewer unsolicited remarks from strangers.

I’d really love to say “fuck the man” and never worry about my body again. It would just be so much easier for me to do that with a flatter stomach.

[stardyng]

Sexism in the LGBT Community

Sexism has an extremely negative effect on the LGBT community, and the effects are typically hard to discern since many manifestations of misogyny target queer men. Horizontal homophobia, cultural homophobia, internalized homophobia, the biphobia and transphobia in and out of the queer community, the straight-acting culture, the fatphobia present in the community, the femme and bottom shaming both in and out of the community and many other straight-on-gay and gay-on-gay discrimination can be partly or mainly created in reason of sexism, for reasons explained in other sections..

However, the biggest manifestation of sexism in the LGBT community is the way that some queer men, gay men to be specific treat women, which is extremely problematic to say the least. More so specifically, the sexism that comes from gay men can be almost as problematic as the sexism coming from straight men and it’s clearly only halting and slowing our movement down. To be honest, it’s no surprise that gay men can be as misogynistic as straight men as we were all born in a biased world trenched with a certain amount of hatred for women which is completely unavoidable and happens nowhere and everywhere at the same time and that causes for people to adopt the attitude that the world has on women and continue perpetuating it, and women and gay men are no exceptions to this rule.

One of the most concurrent ways it manifests itself is through disgust, especially of the female genitalia. It’s generally just about how some men exaggerate their lack of sexual attraction towards women, which is forcely accentuated to the point that it becomes disgust. For example, many gay men childishly rant about how disgusting, horrible, reeking, smelly and ugly they find the female genitalia to be with many gestures involving vomiting added to the rant and some go as far as to call women ‘’fishes’’  which is a reference to the smell of a woman’s genitalia, use a multitude of misogynistic words, expressions and slurs, put actions or words related to women and femininity in a bad light and sometimes even call each other  ‘’she’’ and her’’ in a negative and discriminatory way. These moments of denigration however just form an excerpt to a much bigger problem.

There’s also the other side of the table where some gay men harass women in a sexual manner. Generally, that sexual harassment comes in the form of them touching women in a intimate way without the consent of the women in question. Body parts that are often touched without the woman's consent often tend to be the women’s breasts, butts, hair, etc. This is especially harmful to women’s security, especially when, much like with some heterosexual men, these gay men validate these actions. Some call it a joke and say that the women harassed shouldn’t take it so sensitively which inherently puts the blame on the woman and dismisses the claim, but mostly, these men will validate their actions by saying that it’s not harassment in reason of the fact that they aren't attracted to women or their bodies, and that they are instead gay.

The last main display of misogyny in the gay community would be the judgement that a lot of gay men give to women and their appearances which is often not seen as a problem because gay men are portrayed to be by everyone as people who can advise women or what to wear, how to style their hair or how to walk fiercely. Of course, these are stereotypes but regardless, these stereotypes are false seeing as most of these ‘’advising’’ gay men don’t even act as if these women as actual human beings let alone take the time to converse with them. Regardless, these men can talk about women’s bodies in the most controlling, condemnatory and objectifying way in extreme details while getting away with it. Fat-shaming, slut-shaming and degrading and condescending comments are common in these remarks and some advice are simply just gay men asserting their authorities over women by telling them how to become more feminine and conventionally attractive by putting them down to an extreme level.

These gay men whom are generally feminine are extremely critical about women since they harbor expectations of women, and like their expectations of men, they are widespread. They have a bar set for women to look absolutely enchanting and iconic which would match with their idealization of womanhood without flaw. If they don’t fit into that ideal, they are ‘’trash’’, ‘’rats’’, ‘’hoes’’, ‘’sluts’’ and ‘’bitches’’ It’s often reflective of feminine gay men’s idolization of pop divas, where these women stop being humans to them, and are either trash or goddesses, which is where this type of misogynistic language started becoming concurrent, but this became especially problematic when that judgement and language soon founds it way to apply to all women.

There are many reasons that gay men can be misogynistic, and it’s not only because gay men are exhausted of gay stereotypes and tropes being perpetuated by straight women, or them being constantly fetishized by straight women as it’s mainly in reason of illicit jealousy and envy. They are envious and jealous of straight women in reason of the fact that they have an extremely bigger pool of men to choose from. The fact is, most of the men they are attracted are straight so they will often enter situations when that leads their hopes being crushed. Yet they still repeat this mistake again and again because there’s a bigger amount of straight men than there are gay men, so some gay men become very hateful towards women, or even become bitterly disgusted. So things like women’s looks being scrutinized by gay men, or women and their genitalia being put down are caused by this jealousy. However, it’s also because some gay men, especially young adults ones tend to learn from each other, and spend a very little amount of time with women so they forget how interaction with them goes, and forget what’s allowed and what’s not allowed, and as their surrounding perpetuated a desexulization and degradation of women, they started to participate to it too.

One of the most surprising things about all this is that these gay men actually escape the deserved criticism to their actions and then in the rare times where women speak up about the misogyny that’s coming from some gay men, these men will either get extremely defensive and brush these comments off completely, silence these women, or these women’s arguments were buried underneath an exaggerated amount of homophobia and constant dehumanizing slurs, so much that they were no longer valid criticism. Regardless of the reason, ignoring how women feel and their opinion without even just reflecting on ourselves is nothing but foolish.

Speaking about ignoring women, our community has done just that for many decades. Just look at the number of gay rights organisations led by and created for men compared to ones led by, or inclusive of women for starters. As a community, we have to realize that while we are oppressed because of homophobia, we have privilege as men, regardless of our sexual orientations or our gender states that women simply do not have. Instead of using our privilege to put down, harass or attack women, we should use it to help progress the feminist movement and fight against misogyny and bigotry based on gender especially in our community so that we can at the very least create another safe space for women. To get informed about(typically by women) and to talk and create conversations about women’s issues and rights like wage inequalities, abortion rights and domestic violence is also incredibly helpful.

Before that, we have to individually stop encouraging and perpetuating these sexist actions, and instead act as allies to to the feminist movement especially when feminism not only exist for women, but for gender minorities, racial minorities, sexual minorities and other oppressed groups since it’s breaking down our patriarchal system. That however doesn’t mean that gay men are entitled of having feminism protect and help them, but that gay men are the ones who have a duty to help progress this movement that encourage equality on all fronts. So we as a community should be fighting alongside women instead of asking for equality and not giving it to others. Being gay and feminist should truly not be a surprising or rare concept.