S-Shippers Who Don’t Seem to Fully Understand LGBTQIA Issues Should Be a Bit More Careful About Their Assumptions (and they should have read the full post before they commented)
I got an “ask” today saying that some s-shippers were starting rumors that Tony is gay again. I reblogged a POST I wrote a while back because s-shippers have resorted to spreading this false rumor unfortunately many times in the past.
Long story short, Trish and her anon, in their attempt to defend spreading false rumors about Tony’s sexuality to keep the ship afloat took a comment I wrote quickly (when I reblogged the post) out of context of the larger post (which somehow I doubt they read) and pretty much accused me of being homophobic. Given that just a few days ago Jess felt harassed because someone implied in a post she was promoting white supremacism, should I be just as up in arms at this implication? Probably, but given who I am and what I have done in my life it just makes me laugh.
You see Trish, I’m bisexual. Yes, I’ve been in a monogamous relationship with my husband for nearly three decades but that doesn’t stop me from being bisexual. Most bisexual folks ultimately choose to settle down with someone with whom they express one aspect of their sexuality–but that doesn’t make the other aspect “go away.”
So at times I have been active in the LGBTQIA community, and I work with LGBTQIA issues all the time with students.
I don’t think there is anything shameful with being any variety of sexual orientation; consequently, I don’t think there would be anything shameful for Tony if he were gay. Which he isn’t because he really is in a romantic relationship with Cait even if you don’t want to accept that. (That doesn’t mean he couldn’t be bisexual, just that he isn’t gay.)
Obviously you and your anon were only interested in getting something from my post that you could take out of context and get upset about. This is ironic because you just did what Jess accused NSTs of doing in a recent rant against us:
“You are choosing to stalk our blogs to find something to get mad at and then you proceed to throw a tantrum over it.”
Jess called that behavior “not normal.” Oh the irony!
Anyway, if you had bothered to read my post you would have known that I said that even if it turned out that Tony was gay and s-shippers had evidence of his being so, “unless Tony is ‘out’ in my opinion it is not okay to spread rumors about his sexual orientation on social media.”
You see I have worked with young people for decades now on the very difficult process of coming out in a homophobic society. Having done so, I know that this is a very private thing that each person must do for themselves. No one has the right to “out” anyone else.
And although attitudes towards the LGBTQIA community have changed dramatically since I was a kid, I also know there is a lot of homophobia still out there. You would not believe the things some of my clients’ parents and relatives have said to them when they came out IN TODAY’S SOCIETY. And these are the people who supposedly love them.
Outing someone who is gay or spreading rumors that someone is gay who is not can still have many ramifications in today’s society. That doesn’t mean that being gay is “shameful” it means its a terrible shame that some people in this day and age still hold real prejudices against people because of their sexual orientation–and those prejudices can result in negative consequences for people who are outed or who have untrue rumors about their sexual orientation spread about them on social media.
You have no idea what could happen when you spread those kinds of rumors on social media in societies that are still homophobic (which is still probably all or nearly all societies). For instance, in the case that was discussed in an article I will be referring to under the cut, the plaintiff filed a lawsuit because a straight woman spread a false rumor that a man was gay because she wanted his girlfriend to break up with him. The rumor in fact ended up destroying the relationship. Spreading such rumors to keep a sunk ship afloat seems to me to be one of the least acceptable reasons for doing so.
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