If you ever reblog a post where the punchline is “gay men should die for flirting with people” you are invoking Gay Panic Defense and you need to examine that. Full Stop. It happened with Tommy Kinard and now it’s happening with Scott Hunter.
“I’d shoot Tommy Kinard with a gun” 🤝 “Ilya kills Scott for asking if they’re open”
Using a real history of gay men being killed or assaulted and their attackers defending themselves in court by blaming the victims for being gay for a quick punchline.
wlep! I'm glad i haven't seen any of that putrid trash. however; if I may add a related point?
Shane is NOT experiencing GAY PANIC! unless he's beating on someone for 'being Gay AT him'.. he's experiencing normal panic. OR, he's having a gay awakening, or coming out to himself. He might be having internalized homophobia. Regardless, he's having a horrible time with queerness but: GAY PANIC is specifically a horrifying, legal 'excuse' to harm someone BECAUSE you thought they were gay, and you were scared.
Now that we’ve said it: yes, a big part of people not realizing they’re using Gay Panic tropes against gay characters is that they don’t know the legal definition of Gay Panic. Gay Panic was and is a legal strategy to get out of assault charges when the victim was gay saying that the victim made an advance of some sort and the accused acted out of an uncontrollable panic and it has been used relatively recently to downgrade murder charges into manslaughter charges. This is a real thing that happens to gay men (and trans women, as the Trans Panic Defense uses the exact same argument just switching out “gay” for “trans”). People making jokes out of this scenario don’t seem to grasp how real it actually is and when they’re called out on it, will hide behind their own sexuality as if that excuses the propagation of the ideas that gay men deserve to be hurt or killed if they make the mistake of flirting with the wrong person.
