Homophobia, Racism, and the modern myth of the 'proof of sexuality' character
I'm not censoring the name on this one. You wanna be stupid, you better be tough.
The 'proof of sexuality' character is a concept that has floated around essentially since shows like Will & Grace and The Legend Of Korra made leaps and bounds in it being acceptable to show same sex relationships on screen. It is, as a term, meant to describe the idea that some gay characters are only given partners as a way to pacify/prove to the audience they don't intend on ignoring a characters sexuality, while still ignoring and not making queer characters story relevant.
This as a concept is fine. There are plenty of characters who fit it. So, why, then, is it as a concept CONSTANTLY used to bludgeon characters and relationships who BY DEFINITION do not fit the criteria? More than that: Why is it assumed this trope doesn't also occur to other marginalized relationships, such as interracial couples, when it very obviously does?
Spoiler: The answer is usually racism and homophobia. Shocker, its almost like I put it in the title or something.
Lets start with the obvious: Jay Nakamura being used as an example of a character who 'only exists to be proof Jon is gay' is LAUGHABLY racist. The entire plot of Son of Kal El is about Jay and his people being victims of colonization by a long-standing Wildstorm villain. He is the secondary protagonist, he drives the plot 80% of the time, and he has a fully developed backstory and cast of characters he is attached to outside of Jon. And thats NOT just in SOKE: Absolute Power, and later Secret Six, as a canon-altering event does not work without his existence as a load bearing beam. He is the exact opposite of this trope. His relationship with Jon develops Jon's character more than any other relationship he has outside of Clark and Nia. Jay's 'characterization' is not secondary, and his explicit romantic involvement with Jon could be omitted entirely and the story would play out nearly identically. So why say he's just a boyfriend?
Oooooooh. Yeah, that'll do it!
This is the answer to our first question. People often use this trope as a bludgeon against queer relationships they don't like because its a 'get-out-of-jail-free' card if you call out that their taste in what gay relationships they think should be canon is painfully heteronormative and focuses entirely on shipping two white (in this case, white-adjacent, as Damian much to my chagrin is often written by white authors as a white boy despite that objectively not being the case) male characters who often have meaningful romantic relationships with women merely because they stood next to each other or had a team up. The platonic idea of a 'gay' relationship, where you helpfully excise all their actual dynamics in order to ship two "normal" men with each other. It isn't actually criticizing homophobia: It is a fanon, 'woke' way of enforcing it, usually by throwing characters of color and/or culturally gay characters who's identities matter to the story under the bus.
And this is supported by the random stray at Jay's hair being pink, and Bernard having pink in one (1) outfit. I've talked before multiple times about how Jay's hair being pink is actually a test for the audience to see if they can see past their own western homophobic biases, one that this guy failed immediately. Good job, moron, you're afraid of a color.
Now what about our second question?
Well the simple fact is that 'proof of sexuality' characters DO exist for heterosexual folks. You take a character who is considered 'disposable' or irrelevant to the narrative usually due to a facet of her identity (often race and disability but sometimes merely the fact that she Is A Woman Who Does Womanly Things), and then you make it so she proves a male characters heterosexuality by allegedly dating him so that when he goes to have a more meaningful/developed dynamic with a man, it doesn't read as 'gay'. This is like... a lot of female characters and what their existence gets boiled down to. Especially in media marketed at young boys. Like comics. This happens to a TON of interesting female characters within DC and Marvel alike.
I think its interesting this user names Selina and Talia as examples of women who 'don't need' to be proof of sexuality because as much as I hate it... a lot of the time that is explicitly what they are used for in the narrative. Selina shows up in Batman stories half of the time purely to check off a box of 'batcat', and not to actually bring her multi-faceted character into the narrative for meaningful reasons. Talia and Bruce had their romance established within the span of what, one issue? (Something that makes the 'short time' Jayjon spent getting together allegedly being homophobia a kind of hilarious criticism?) Talia is amongst my top 5 favorite DC characters but its just a fact that she didn't get to be a person outside of Bruce first. And because of the specific marginalizations both Selina and Talia face, despite being his most prominent love interests, they are often happily discarded and disrespected by the narrative when the author wants to play around with Bruce being a playboy.
There is a trend within a lot of fandom, that is particularly bad in the DC fandom, that merely not liking a queer relationship means something is inherently 'wrong' with it, and that you can simply use critical terms that MEAN SOMETHING as a way to explain away why they should not be considered meaningful and why newer queer characters can be handily discarded. I don't stand for it, it is all bullshit. I notice when this disproportionately effects characters who are marginalized in other ways. I notice what types of 'queerness' are considered acceptable. You're not a crusader for gay justice- you're basically a frat bro in terms of your politics around gay people if you think like this!
Ending note: The idea that introducing new love interests to be in a relationship with is particularly offensive/lazy when it comes to gay people specifically is fucking stupid. Hey, dipshit, most characters in comic canon who are love interests were introduced as love interests. Because Love Interest is a narrative role that you can't just shove a protagonist into and expect it to be fine. That's like saying Lois Lane isn't a 'real character' and that the writers were being Heterophobic because she was created with romance in mind. You'd sound RIDICULOUS.
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