you know, before this tumblr “sensitive content” shit even hit the fan i had seen a post about smirnoff making lgbt/pride labels for their vodka + advertising for it…. and none of their labels or ads included a same gender kiss, despite having a man and woman kissing on one of the labels and using a m/f couple for most if not all of their ads
and like, who really cares – marketing alcohol to a marginalized community that has historically been plagued by and died from addiction isn’t exactly radical – but it really drove home my own complex feelings towards kissing/hugging/holding hands with my partner in public.
i’m terrified of gay pda. i didn’t used to be so much – i would kiss and hold hands with my girlfriends in public and tell my friends who were all plenty supportive and ready to defend me should anything go wrong. i still had that underlying anxiety about gay pda since lgbt people have been, you know, beaten and murdered and heckled for it. but i was young and in love and learning to live my truth
then my family found out i was gay. i was outed against my will at 16 when my mom found out the woman i was hanging out with was my romantic & sexual partner (because she read my texts). it was hell. she was furious, and refused to believe it, and alternated between calling me slurs, trying to rationally explain to me that i was not actually gay, and trying to dissect “why i didn’t feel good enough about myself to date men”.
eventually it devolved into beating me. eventually she took away my phone and my computer and any means of communication with my friends who supported me and moved me an hour away from anyone i knew and enrolled me in a different school. i suffered so badly i became suicidal and her abuse became more severe than ever.
when i finally graduated she kicked me out. i moved in with my father, who kicked me out less than a year later. by the time i was barely 18 i was working full time, couch surfing, had no car or license or savings, and began using drugs and alcohol to cope.
how am i supposed to be proud? how am i supposed to just unabashedly exist as a lesbian when i have been so severely punished for my identity i have post traumatic stress disorder and struggled for years with addiction, trying to find the courage to keep living at the bottom of a bottle?
you see two women kiss when a show or movie or ad wants to be titillating or divisive or sexy. you don’t see gay women in engagement ads or holding their children or falling in love. i am surrounded by wholesome and normalized images of heterosexuality that only remind me of how much of an unloved freak i am.
you can’t deprive lgbt people – especially young lgbt people – of content that normalizes their experiences. it’s essential for us to not only thrive but to just fucking survive. if i didn’t have lesbian friends and mutuals and a network of gay support – most of which is online, and on this gdforsaken website – i may have ended up just stifling my identity & my truth just to stay alive
i remember finding a lesbian wedding blog a few years ago and absolutely bawling because there was a wholesome, beautiful future for women like me.
homophobia (and biphobia, transphobia, transmisogyny) doesn’t end at acts of violence against us – for many of us it’s a part of our day to day lives. sure, maybe no one at the target will beat me for being a lesbian – but i don’t want to be stared at. i’m terrified of being heckled. i don’t want to ever put myself in a situation where people know i’m gay and could hurt me.
the other day my girlfriend and i took an uber together – when i got in she told me how beautiful i looked and squeezed my hand. i smiled at her and said nothing. when we got out, i begged her to never be affectionate towards me again when we’re in a stranger’s car. we don’t know them – they could take us anywhere. they could hurt us.
my own family hurt me – what’s stopping strangers?
gay victims of homophobic abuse NEED our identities to be normalized in any way they can be. all LGBT victims of abuse need that. casual allyship, “public support”, and rainbows only go so far.
if you support us so much stop being so ashamed to show the world people like us existing. if you support us actually raise us to the level of normalcy and wholesomeness cishet people are on. stop giving us scraps, stop avoiding publicizing people like us, stop quietly supporting us while you make it clear you’d rather not offend homophobes and transphobes and transmisogynists than visibly honor and represent our existence.
this doesn’t just come at the expense of LGBT survivors – it comes at the expense of LGBT youth. censoring and avoiding gay and bi imagery (and trans bodies) and our existence will only push the youth of our community back into the closet – no matter how many rainbows you put on your products, or how many one-line throwaway “gay” characters you put in your shows and advertising for asspats. normalize our existence.
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