this may be too controversial for some of yall but not everything by lgbt content creators has to be the absolute pinnacle of representation and gay media is allowed to be just as fucking shitty as straight media can get. gay content creators dont magically make better content just bc they’re gay and they should have the freedom to produce as much hot steaming gay garbage as they want because god fucking knows there’s a lot of hot steaming straight garbage out there
^^ Absolutely 100% agreed!!!
LGBT+ content creators have the right to be just as flawed as anyone else. They also have the right to create what they want as much as everyone else! They go through so many obstacles on a daily basis in their respective career fields. They don’t need Tumblr’s ungrateful and impossibly high standards rammed down their throats too.Tumblr’s desire to seek out the next pure unproblematic uwu symbol of representation puts lgbt+ content creators in a situation where their golden pedastal can become a guillotine in the blink of an eye.
yeah why don’t the stupid homos just accept everything we throw at them
See? This is what I’m talking about here on Tumblr. You all don’t know how to chill. I never said you had to accept everything thrown at you. Everything deserves critique. You can like something and still note their flaws. You can dislike something and still note their good points. But the problem with Tumblr is that the moment something is deemed problematic, it’s over. it’s done. even if it’s created by fellow members of the lgbt+ community. You all damn know how hard it was for them just to get this far and get their content published, created, or even seen because of how unfair the industry is. Ya’ll know that but you vipers will still attack LGBT+ content creators like they’re the devil for not being perfect.
I’ve seen a black gay webcomic creator get nothing but smack from tumblr for having a white main character and his story not being “black” enough for ya’ll. How dare he write what he wants to write instead of dedicating his life to helping all black people 24/7?! I’ve seen a latinx lesbian writer get doxxed because she dared to feature a lesbian couple in her story that had realistic problems in their relationship. It was deemed homophobic by Tumblr for not putting the couple in a completely pure and good light to emphasize how wonderful being gay is 100% of the time. I saw another webcomic creator who put lesbians, blacks, gays, bisexuals, pansexuals, latinx, and many other under represented people in their comic, but they didn’t have any notable trans character representation so they were suddenly “canceled” by tumblr. Like tumblr’s standards are so high. Here, you gotta got go 100% or don’t do anything at all. And in a society where LGBT+ creators don’t have much in the first place, tumblr makes them scared to even try less they face your “righteous wrath”, causing even less LGBT+ content to be created.
What I’m trying to say is, I get it, it can be discouraging when what you’re specifically looking for isn’t in the content you’re digesting. But how about ya’ll
1) give lgbt+ content creators some slack because it was hard enough getting here anyways
2) if they did something problematic, you can explain it to them like actual civlized people instead of…ya know..being tumblr and literally ruining their lives
3) rethink your priorities and consider that maybe actual living breathing LGBT+ creators are more important than LGBT+ characters????
I’ve seen a latinx lesbian writer get doxxed because she dared to feature a lesbian couple in her story that had realistic problems in their relationship. It was deemed homophobic by Tumblr for not putting the couple in a completely pure and good light to emphasize how wonderful being gay is 100% of the time.
This is possibly what drives me up the wall the most. The idea that queer and lgbt+ creators can’t explore shit that happens in relationships because we have to somehow always show our relationships as perfect. Like friend let me write about abuse in LGBT+ relationships because that’s part of my experience. It is also what I have witnessed and demanding that all representation be perfect and pure allows assaulters and abusers to get away with things because it denies queer and lgbt+ folk the language to talk about problems.
I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the queer character I’ve been most attached to are the ones who are
the opposite of role models. They were charactersdealing with self-loathing, addiction, mental illness, and desperate attempts to perform “normal.” Sure, sometimes I want happy escapism… but even THAT tends to get torn to shreds in tumblr land. (GOD the tedious crap I’ve seen about queer romance to make sure your trans lead isn’t fetishized or desexualized in any way…)
One of my favorite trans series was taken down completely, never to be archived or discussed again, and part of me suspects its because the series was ordained “impure,” and purged. Which sucks, because it means that the only proof I have of this series existence is copies on my hard-drive and crummy print-outs.
And it’s like great, my favorite series, GONE.
1. Also – and here’s a REAL fucking shocker – people can fucking disagree about what’s ‘problematic’ and still not be the fucking Devil.
You – general “you”, any given individual or group – are not the fucking ordained goddamn Authority on what is Okay or Bad. Nobody fucking voted for you. No, not even if there’s a lot of you that don’t fucking like it. You do not want to go for that argument, bub, cuz that argument gives a fuck of a lot of ground to the large amount of people in the godsdamned world who don’t like us.
You do not fucking speak for Queer People. I do not speak for queer people. Nobody fucking speaks for queer people. There are going to be queer people who disagree with you about whether or not something is Awesome or Bad, even on a representation scale (especially on a fucking representation scale).
You are going to end up disagreeing with other people of good faith and good intentions about things being good or bad and you will be wrong sometimes. And they will be wrong sometimes. And sometimes we will never even really know who was wrong or right, and sometimes you will BOTH be wrong and sometimes you will BOTH be right.
Welcome. To the fucking. Human. Condition.
But my point is not only do people need to quote-unquote “give some slack” to queer creators?
We need to fucking embrace and engage with the fact that your decision is not binding and just because you think there is a ~*PROBLEM*~ (just because I think there is a problem!) with something, that doesn’t actually mean your opinion is objective (because those don’t fucking exist) or that it represents All Queer People Ever (because fuck you) or that someone disagreeing with you means You’re A Better Queer Who Cares More About Representation Than Them.
It means humans fucking disagree. And when it comes to “opinions on a piece of art”, humans can fucking disagree and it can not be morally important.
1a. This is usually the point where someone says “but X is psychologically harmful to [people of #category]!”
And I say, welcome to competing access needs. Because as someone with PTSD I can tell you flat that the current state of this discourse shit is hugely psychologically harmful to me! And to other people I know with PTSD and anxiety disorders!
And spaces where Universal Sisterhood and Women In Solidarity are sometimes harmful to women who have been abused by other women! And spaces where this solidarity ISN’T offered are harmful to some women who’ve been isolated and disconnected from other women!
And so on.
And you can’t actually make that one simple. You cannot erase the people whose access and other needs are different from yours. And they will exist, even in the same community. That’s why it’s important to actually fucking stop and remember that You Don’t Speak For All [Whatever] People, and that people can disagree on the merits of something – people can have different needs – without automatically being Wrong or Evil.
And especially when it comes to people who are struggling with mental illness, who are struggling with self-loathing, with being a pathologized and vilified population especially those who most often have to struggle with huge amounts of isolation (like mentally ill people, like neuroatypical people, like physically disabled people, like queer people, like trans people), where often the internet is the only way to get community at all because GUESS WHAT in small town prairie-ville there just ISN’T ANOTHER ONE?
The people you’re hurting with purity shit are usually the most vulnerable among those populations. And they’re definitely the ones least able to stand up and go HEY ASSHOLE, EFF OFF. Someone whose mental illness already has them convinced they are tainted beyond redemption etc etc is not really likely to be able to go “hey I need that portrayal of my sexuality/my mental illness/a life similar to mine that you just declared Evil and Forbidden it helps me deal with things it helps me feel like maybe I’m NOT worthless beyond help.”
They’re much more likely to go “oh god this is proof my mental illness is right.”
(1a – i: wait, you say, this is true the other way around! and I say, you are correct! See also: COMPETING ACCESS NEEDS. I fucking spent my late teenage years and early 20s neck deep in the fight to normalize the idea of content notes, the idea that people were ALLOWED want to be forewarned about content, that this was actually a bit more important than ~*pure artistic integrity*~, that mental illness was fucking serious and prevalent in the community and some basic fucking manners like flagging “as an author I choose not to warn!” was basic social courtesy to your fellow human beings. We who were doing that had a LOT of shit flung at us, a LOT of harassment flung at us, and it was hard. fucking. going. That I’m now having to sit here going NO OKAY YOU DON’T ACTUALLY GET TO DEMAND THAT EVERYTHING THAT MAKES YOU UNHAPPY NOT EXIST BECAUSE THAT’S ALSO FUCKING UNCOOL would make me despair of human nature if studying social history for over a decade hadn’t done that ages ago. But the long-and-short important part is: what we CAN fucking do that’s pretty important is give people the tools and communication and INFORMATION needed to protect themselves. Conflicting access needs mean you cannot make a unified “safe space” – but consideration means, you CAN say “this is a space for digging into the dark heart of human emotions, but this over HERE is a space for AVOIDING the dark heart of human emotions!”)
2. Artists do not owe you their labour. Especially if something is being produced for free, and you don’t like it? Fuck off and do something else.
No person owes you their labour. They do not owe you A Story You Feel Is Representationally Correct. They do not owe you their time, their energy, their soul, their words, their drawings, their anything.
This is not a contractual fucking relationship where by daring to Make Art any individual person has a ~*moral obligation*~ to live up to your standards, regardless of what those standards are.
I have every right to say to GRRM, “I think the way you write women is shitty.” And he has every right to say to me, “I don’t care.” Or even to say (SEE POINT 1) “I disagree with you.” Do I, as an actual woman, know more about what I’m talking about than he does? Probably. On the other hand I know women who find his portrayals deeply resonant and important so see also point 1: despite being a woman I don’t actually Speak For Women.
I have every right to write a long essay explaining why I think the way he writes women is shitty. And people who read it have the right to agree with me and not buy his books and not watch the TV show based on those books and write their own essays on how upsetting they find the TV show. And other people also have the right to disagree with me.
And at no point does any of this actually require GRRM to stop making the art he wants to make and start making the art that I want him to make because artists do not owe you their fucking labour.
You don’t owe them attention or praise; they don’t owe you their fucking labour. It’s really fucking simple. You are not entitled to the labour of anyone, even anyone in your community. The creator in @punkyhime‘s example gets to make whatever fucking kind of webcomic he wants.
This is triply the case when someone’s offering their art for free. Don’t like it? Go do something fucking else. If you feel like it, sure, you can drop them a line that says “it would be really awesome if you made X kind of art” but you know what they also get to go “I don’t really want to make X kind of art, so thanks, but I’m gonna do the kind of art I want.”
And sure, technically you’re free to get mad and tell them off and yell at them, but they’re also free to go “you’re being an asshole, I’m blocking you”. And if you’re fucking doxxing and harassing people it’s still doxxing and harassment even if you’re REALLY MAD.
(You don’t get to call yourself the good guy and do bad guy things. Your actions WILL speak for themselves.)
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Tumblr Exodus 