Straight-shipping Miss Pauling and homophobia in the TF2 fandom (spoiler alert: it’s not homophobia (most of the time))
Gay Miss Pauling? That’s awesome! Congratulations, TF2 fandom!
However, I feel I need to wave the flag of Pairing Pacifism over the TF2 fandom yet again, because wow, you guys are yelling so loudly I heard it all the way over in the Marvel fandom.
The thing is, it doesn’t matter who said what or how you define canon. There’s a very high probability that Miss Pauling is canonically gay – it’s not 100% because it wasn’t put in a canon comic, but it’s certainly much higher than before we heard anything about her sexual preferences from an official source – but it doesn’t matter in a fandom context because people can and will ship whoever they want.
Homophobia! people cry. Erasure!
No. That’s not how it works, for two reasons:
1. Representation happens in the canon, not in the fandom.
Canon and fandom are not equal in terms of minority representation. Fans shipping Heavy/Medic is not gay representation; Valve pairing up Heavy and Medic would be gay representation. Remember when SJWs claimed shipping Soldier/Demoman erased Soldier’s canon racism and homophobia? Spoiler alert: it didn’t.
Likewise, homophobia and erasure are not fans shipping Scout/Miss Pauling or whatever, it’s Valve not stating Pauling’s sexuality in the actual comic. In fact, if Miss Pauling is a lesbian and the writers/artists have known this for some time, as implied by the “we’ve never called it out” as opposed to “we just right now decided,” why did they deliberately make every single lady in the comics antagonistic to Miss Pauling?
“Comedy,” they say, but why is that funny? Why is it funny to Valve that their only supposedly-canonically gay character is denied even the chance of a love life? Spy got Scout’s mom, Soldier got Zhanna, but every lady Miss Pauling might ask on a date is antagonistic to her.
Valve is taking the cheap way out by saying, “Miss Pauling is gay; there just aren’t any nice ladies for her to date,” because nothing prevents Valve from creating a female love interest for Miss Pauling. Valve could even just state her preferences – they could have done it when they wrote Miss Pauling’s dating ad back in 2012, addressing it to “a woman” instead of using the gender-neutral “someone,” a cop-out suggesting they’d already decided she was gay three years ago but didn’t want the audience to know for sure:
That is homophobia and erasure!
Fandom shipping is not representation. Word of God is not (enough) representation. Representation is Miss Pauling saying she’s gay in the comic. Representation is Miss Pauling finding a girlfriend and kissing her in a non-sexualised, non-male gaze way in the comic.
2. Fandom is 99% emotions.
And here’s the other thing. Fandom is actually mostly not about the fan-thing. Fandom is about people. Fandom is escapism and coping mechanisms and projecting and imagining a better (or worse, depending on your preferences) world. Fans often love characters as if they were real people, experience all the same physiological responses to their favourites as they would to a family member or a romantic partner. Fans become emotionally attached, sometimes very powerfully, not only to characters but to pairings, involving themselves in these pairings the same way they do real-world interpersonal relationships.
And that’s why people shouldn’t be yelling homophobia! and erasure! at the straight-shipping Pauling fans as a group. These fans have had six years to identify themselves with Miss Pauling, ship her with their favourites, make fanfiction and fanart for their OTPs, buy commissioned art for hard-earned money, become emotionally invested in their chosen pairings, and now suddenly they’re judged as horrible people if they don’t immediately break up their ersatz-relationships because a writer working for Valve decided to say something now which should have been said six years ago.
Imagine a couple in the real world spending six years together, perhaps having children or building a home, and then one of them realise they’re not sexually compatible and have to end the relationship. Do you think there won’t be any hurt feelings? Their partner will be happy for them that they’ve finally discovered their true self, but simultaneously their partner will be devastated because they love this person and don’t want everything they’ve created together, all the emotions and time and energy they put into the relationship, to be in vain. Maybe the relationship, and the friendships it inspired, helped them through some bad times in their own life and they’re reluctant to abandon the security it offers. But now it’s the end of that, and they’re hurting and in denial and saying ‘we can make this work, I still love you.’
Imagine this, and then imagine complete strangers coming up to them on the street while they’re trying to deal with ending one of the most important relationship in their lives, and yelling at the grieving partner: homophobia! erasure!
That’s not a nice thing to do, people. Please understand that there are some members of the fandom who are upset about this and expressing their frustration, not because they hate gay people but because their OTPs, which they spent six years building up, are now inviable. They would have been equally upset if Pauling had been paired with a male character who wasn’t their favourite, but at least then they wouldn’t be accused of homophobia on top. Tumblr always presumes the worst of everyone and is super trigger-happy about accusing people of horrible, reputation- and life-destroying things, and it’s almost never justified in the end.
A little empathy would be nice, is all I’m saying.
And to the people straight-shipping Miss Pauling: it’s okay. You’re not bad people for having a straight OTP. But you have to stop arguing it’s not relevant to the canon because Gabe himself didn’t proclaim it, etc., etc.. Word of God is not full representation (put it in the comics, Valve!) but it is a step forward, and you shouldn’t yell at the fandom to take a step backwards instead. Just let people know that you acknowledge Miss Pauling’s Word of God sexual preference (it’s progress! small steps, but change is happening!) but choose to ship her with [character] instead because you’re emotionally invested in this particular pairing. It’s okay for you to be upset because your could-be-couple at one stroke became a couldn’t-be-couple, and I understand and empathise with your frustration.
I’m also happy for the people who are almost never represented in popular media and are now incredibly excited to be recognised by an official source. Good on you!
In conclusion, please remember: Not everything has to be canon to be important to you. Not everything has to be important to you to be canon. Fandom should be large enough to embrace all of us.
janainaart
germansingergirl
tangentwithtanner
discoholicmusic
prguitarman
annaxmalina
