One day I am going to snap and go on a long, unhinged rant about the importance of retaining sight of the conditions under which a piece of media was produced when applying queer readings.
Not because I object to the queer reading (more! Give me more!) but because I object strenuously to giving artists and writers more credit than they deserve. Is something gay or was it created by people who think only male emotions and physicality should be taken seriously? Does the lead have the most chemistry with his rival because of sexual tension or because the female characters are badly written? Are they badly written or do they reflect societal assumptions you disagree with/don't experience? Etc, etc, from all angles, genders and directions.
It's far from the only example to irritate me, but in some ways I respect the average trans reading of Amuro and Char from Mobile Suit Gundam more than I do the average reading of them as gay for each other. At least the trans readings seem to be latching on to the ambiguity the writing carries towards how young men are raised to take their places as society's warriors and thus towards masculinity in general, rather than just the fact their emotional connection is deemed worthy of greater attention than any of the women in their lives.
The fact remains that both these facets have non-queer explanations rooted in the time, place and gender identity of the major creative figures. It's important to remember that, not because it invalidates any particular reading but because it's setting yourself up for disappointment to grasp for 'this is what they really meant'.
There's a high probability they didn't. And we have so many examples at this point of what happens when large numbers of people pin their hopes for queer representation on big, corporate stories that haven't a chance in hell of being allowed to go in that direction, or smaller-scale stories written by people who aren't inclined to provide that way. Not to mention that collapsing queer reading into queer expectation is so easily and obviously exploitable! How many 'first visibly queer' Disney characters are we up to now, exactly?
Which is without getting into the fine grain of what 'queer' looks like to different audiences and how all of this swings around in the other direction to complicate life for those genuinely trying to explore atypical gender and sexuality in fiction grumble grumble fume.
No, Gundam, Star Trek and quite a lot else painted with this brush have not been 'queer all along', despite providing so much scope for queer readings. There is an important distinction between those two things (e.g. queer content vs content that can be read as queer) and it frustrates me no end when people act like they're the same.
