okay, so i am speaking as a bisexual who has had to struggle with internalized biphobia. i am not making this post to call anyone out or say you’re a bad person if you’ve done this/are doing this. i’m saying this as someone who has been there, and knows that there is hard emotional work involved in reprogramming your mind and perception of things that society treats as lesser or invalid. it’s important emotional work, and something we need to do --- but i know there’s difficulty there.
i also want to clarify: i am not referring to characters that have canonically struggled with being in the closet and had straight relationships that weren’t fulfilling because they actually did later discover they were gay. that is not the same thing as what phenomenon i’m about to detail. gay and lesbian identities are valid and sometimes it takes time to recognize who you are, and I fully support characters that are canonically gay.
that said, some of you really do expose your internalized thoughts on bisexual / pansexual people when you take characters that have had canonical m/f feelings and relationships and erase them to make them gay only. it also kind of shows that some of you really only have stereotyped ideas and tropes of what these identities are actually like and how they live and what they do.
i’m not saying you can’t see characters that are straight passing and headcanon them as members of the LGBT+ community, or pick up on coded non-heterosexual attraction to others. i actually encourage people to look at the world less through a hetero-normative lens and become more accustomed to seeing all members of the LGBT+ as just constant and continual fixtures of society --- but people have a tendency to forget that identities beyond gay and lesbian exist under this umbrella.
moreover, i see people that do headcanon their muses (especially female muses) as bisexual get backlash for doing so because bisexual and pansexual identities are continually viewed as less valid in both straight and LGBT+ communities - and often accused as just being “horny” or “clout chasing” as well as “invalidating gay and lesbian and straight identities by existing”.
this isn’t a single fandom problem, this problem also goes far beyond the scope of fandom and into every facet of our real world society --- but it is a problem here regardless. characters that I often see face this type of erasure for the sake of gay only ships include:
korra and asami sato from the legend of korra: canonical bisexual women of color who often get rewritten by some fans as purely lesbian.
valkyrie from thor: ragnarok and marvel comics: canonically bisexual woman of colour, played by a bisexual woman of colour that is often depicted by some fans as a lesbian to ship her with....
carol danvers from marvel comics and captain marvel: this is a case of calling a character gay based on stereotyped depictions of a lesbian. if we expand the scope of carol to her entire history (which does matter), one of carol’s most important and relevant ships is with a man of colour, James Rhodes (Rhodey) - which is important both to the character as well as showing interracial relationships. (i also feel like if people were genuinely interested in depicting carol as a lesbian and not just wanting to ship her with valkyrie in a way that doesn’t feel “threatening” --- there would be a lot more attention to maria rambeau, who like rhodey, is a darker skinned poc... but both often get erased by modern carol fans to ship her as purely lesbian instead with a lighter skinned woc. i’m not here to lecture people on racism in fandom as a white person myself, i don’t have the right to make those claims --- it’s just something i’ve noticed.) with all that aside, the fact that carol has a history with men and being attracted to men doesn’t just go away because you want to ship her with a woman. her having also had/have attraction to men doesn’t invalidate your ship... erasing it for your ship does send a message of invalidation to bisexual and pansexual people though.
spock from star trek: on the line as carol, spock is also a character who has been depicted in both star trek timelines as being canonically attracted to women. be it sexually or romantically. even if it’s shown it’s never been acted upon in some cases or buried deep because of his own emotional baggage with his dual heritage. time and time again, spock has been re-written by fans to be purely gay so they can ship him with jim (and sometimes mccoy). acknowledging that spock has held attraction to another gender doesn’t invalidate his ships with men. if you view him as holding feelings for certain same sex characters (i do too), that’s fine --- but removing his past feelings for those ships does invalidate bisexual and pansexual people. i feel it important for me to include this one as i have contributed to this one in the past and i don’t feel good about it. especially recognizing that some of it stemmed from stereotyped tropes in my head over what gay men are like. see, i can check my own mistakes too. i’m not here to attack, just bring this to people’s attention.
john watson from sherlock holmes: this is another one i feel i need to speak on as i have also contributed to this a bit. i am speaking mostly for the bbc show, but i feel this applies to other areas of canon too: john watson is continually and canonically depicted as attracted to women. he has even married one, but many times (specifically johnlock shippers but not exclusively) - john is retconned to be a closeted gay man this whole time. john is very clearly depicted to be into women, and while you can very easily make a reading of closeted bisexuality --- there are some members of the fandom that choose to erase that entirely to invalidate or villify his past female relationships. that’s.... really gross and also goes into sexist territory a bit as well.
these are far from the only examples out there, but they are the ones i feel best illustrate what i’m getting at. again, i wish to stress: you are more than welcome to hc these characters as not straight --- but to erase and invalidate their history and experience is not good and biphobic and panphobic. this isn’t a call out, this isn’t an attack --- this is simply me trying to help someone get through their internalized phobias a bit easier than what i had to do and still have to do for my own identity.
so i don’t know who needs to hear this, but bisexual and pansexual identities are just as valid and not shameful compared to other identities. please stop acting like people who write characters as such are chasing clout or just ship horny, bisexual and pansexual people exist just like everyone else. lastly, please stop erasing or invalidating parts of your character’s identity for ships.
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