I’m seeing it happen a lot again as Pride Month gets into full swing so here’s a reminder:
Someone having a queer headcanon for a character, that is not the same as YOUR queer headcanon for that character, doesn’t mean They Hate the Specific Queer Subset of Your Headcanon; it usually just means they’re connecting with the character on a slightly different but still very personal wavelength.
Someone seeing a gnc character as something other than binary trans is not an attack on trans people - there ARE people who do it for transphobic reasons, but the majority of people who read characters as “the gender the mainstream says they are, but a little to the left” are doing it because they are alsothe gender mainstream media lets that character be but a little to the left, many being trans themselves and desperately looking for “permission” to be gnc and still be their actual gender.
Someone reading a character who is implied to be some flavor of not-straight as bi and shipping them with an “opposite” gender character is not erasure, it is a bi experience. Yes, there are people who do this for homophobic reasons, but most are just trying to write an experience like their own.
People sticking fictional characters on queer flags is usually not “cishet people reducing queer rights to ships”, it’s usually queer people trying to see themselves in their faves. Just because some people handle it that way (and for that matter some of the LGBT+ people doing it are assimilationist suckers for rainbow capitalism) does not mean that it is inherently trivializing.
Finally, fictional characters are not praxis. Shipping is not activism. Trans headcanons are not activism. If your activism begins and ends at trying to find The One True Progressive Reading of a fictional character, your “activism” is garbage and WORSE than a waste of time because YOU, in fact, are the one trying to take toys away from other queer people.
Some of you on this hellsite will swear you’re not exclusionists until you’re blue in the face and pay lip service to ace and mspec and genderqueer people, but when you can wrap it up in fictional character discourse and talk about “representation” (usually in venues where that is NOT a relevant discussion to be having) you make it painfully clear that you think the only groups Queer Enough to Be Worth Representing are binary trans people and gold-star gays and the next time you feel like starting internet drama with ANOTHER QUEER FAN about their headcanons I want you to step back and think long and hard about who you’re actually helping with that
If you can’t tell the difference between “I think this character is queer, but in a different way than you think this character is queer, but your version is cool too” and “omfg what’s wrong with you fucking sjw [slur] that character isn’t a [slur] get the fuck out of MY fandom” that’s what we like to call a You Problem
Making leisure spaces hostile to other queer fans will ALWAYS be more queerphobic than headcanoning Blorbo F. M. Shows as ace even though they have a popular gay ship
Again, if you hear “be kind to and stop immediately assuming the worst of the other living, breathing queer people in your hobby space; don’t go starting WWIII with them over which queer reading of your blorbo is The Most Correct Progressive One, they deserve a place to unwind as much as you do and this is NOT that consequential” and you internally translate that into “let cishet queerphobes trample all over you in your own leisure space” you are not as anti-exclusionist as you think you are
ALT
