Hi! I love your meta, especially Destiel. I just came out to my mom as bisexual, and I was trying to explain to her why canon bi!Dean and canon DeanCas is so important to me, and so important as representation for the LGBTQ community. I am not eloquent with words like you are, so I don't think I got my point across very well. How would you describe the importance and value in canon representation in media, whether supernatural or other TV shows/movies? Thanks and have a lovely day!
Hi!
Congratulations on coming out :D
I didn't mean this to get long but it kinda did so under the cut!
I mean...I’m not really an LGBT+ blog, I’m just someone who loves stories and fell in love with the love story between Cas and Dean and then fell into learning more and more about the LGBT+ community through tumblr and my general feeling about life in general is that everyone should be free to do as they choose and be who they are as long as they don't hurt others so... I’m not the ideal person to ask regarding really the value of canon representation in media as I’m literally just someone who loves stories rather than an active member of the community or an activist / journalist.
However, I do have STRONG feelings about equality and all love being valid and how it is such a positive thing that representation for ALL kinds of people is getting much better these days, though there is still a long way to go.
Could we imagine a female doctor even 5 years ago? A heard of hearing love interest for Sam? That SPN might even show us, shock horror, a male queer couple who are gruff hunters and their queerness having nothing whatsoever to do with their story and they are badass big strong “manly men” who DON’T DIE?
So yeah, I may not be the best person to really delve into this but it totally has all my support, I’m just someone who loves their love story for the love story, has no issue with it being between two men (albeit one isn't even a guy anyway and the other has been bi since the pilot so there literally isn't an issue anyway storywise so the only issue is a homophobic one and that can fuck right off).
I’ve personally never sat down and thought about my own sexuality really until I came on tumblr and it led me to think hey, I wonder what I am, other than that I really like sex with men, a lot, but wouldn't be adverse to sex with a woman, I just never really had the opportunity or thought about it... but I do think I’m probably aromantic, which I never even heard of before but makes so much sense and has really helped me face it, knowing I’m not a freak or just horrible sometimes when my husband is being super clingy and needy...
Learning about these things in a space that is comfortable and open and shared with the world is SO IMPORTANT. I’m so much happier for knowing this about myself and I could have spent DECADES thinking horrible things about myself it I wasn't aware? I imagine this is how people who have no representation feel like when they realise late in life that they are queer. It must be so hard, representation can really help people realise things about themselves that they never even contemplated because no-one ever told them it was an OPTION!
I grew up in an International school, therefore I have NO PRECONCEPTIONS of race, stereotypes or thinking people who look or sound different are weird. This is how stuff like this works, seeing kids of different races, genders, sexualities, backgrounds etc on tv would help so many people grow up thinking that this is totally normal and open their eyes to so much more.
It is people who grow up in a closed environment who are homophobic/racist etc a lot of the time because the natural reaction to DIFFERENT is to be SCARED by it and therefore be AGGRESSIVE about it, that’s the way humans work, so we have to make things seem less different, less strange, more common and more normal in order to be less scared and aggressive about it.
That’s why it’s important for me. The more we see it the more it is acceptable.
Just like how women can now show their ankles whereas in the 1800s that was scandalous, how we are now much more used to seeing two people of the same gender holding hand in the street or kids playing with smartphones... it’s just a cultural shift that needs to take place organically but sometimes it needs a SHOVE in the right direction because bigots and people who don't want change are at the top and they need to be shown they are on the wrong side of history.
Anyway yeah we just this morning had a thread that may be much more useful and of interest to you here regarding the canonisation of Destiel and why it has to be textual and visual based on what we have had from the other canon romantic couples on the show:
