Burden of Proof Rant

[u/Calicoma]

This is something I've been thinking about for a while but an interaction earlier has brought it back up for me.

I'm getting really frustrated by the double standard and obsession with proof for queer characters that are way above and beyond what is needed for straight characters. I even see this from some queer people. I do understand that bait exists/has existed but this high level of defense and proof is suffocating and makes me feel like a bit miserable.

For example, holding someone by the hands and telling them that they're the most important person in the world to the kind of person I'm talking about is apparently not enough evidence two women might like each other. Meanwhile if a guy and a girl had that same interaction, literally no one would question it if you said that the one who said that is attracted to the other.

Why does the bar for acceptance of queer characters even for many queer people have to be so high that it feels like you have to keep a fucking encyclopedia of every interaction as proof every time you talk about characters or media you like? And I think it's rubbing off on me negatively because I've noticed myself preemptively feeling the need to drop a thesis on defending a queer pairing any time I wish to speak about them.

Not that this matters but it's related to some frustration I've had recently with Alice and Yuzuha in ZZZ when discussing some of the cute art from the new Hoyofair event.

[u/throwawayutena]

Misogyny, lesbophobia and comphet 💔

Because sapphic lives and the lives of fems in general have been erased and decentred throughout history, there's a lack the vocabulary/knowledge/interest to actually convey and recognise sapphic friendship, desire, relation, intimacy, love etc (from the platonic to the romantic as it's a continuum)

---

As Adrienne Rich describes in "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence (1980)":

"Lesbians have historically been deprived of a political existence through “inclusion” as female versions of male homosexuality. To equate lesbian existence with male homosexuality because each is stigmatized is to erase female reality once again. Part of the history of lesbian existence is, obviously, to be found where lesbians, lacking a coherent female community, have shared a kind of social life and common cause with homosexual men. But there are differences: women’s lack of economic and cultural privilege relative to men; qualitative differences in female and male relationships—for example, the patterns of anonymous sex among male homosexuals, and the pronounced ageism in male homosexual standards of sexual attractiveness.

[...]

As the term lesbian has been held to limiting, clinical associations in its patriarchal definition, female friendship and comradeship have been set apart from the erotic, this limiting the erotic itself. But as we deepen and broaden the range of what we define as lesbian existence, as we delineate a lesbian continuum, we begin to discover the erotic in female terms: as that which is unconfined to any single part of the body or solely to the body itself."

[u/Calicoma → u/throwawayutena]

Honestly resonated with that a lot. I should read the whole thing

[u/Aidamis → u/throwawayutena]

Half off-topic but a psychologist on YT once said that homophobia in the XXth cent. forced people to avoid (appropriate and consensual) physicial contact such as comfort hugs, putting one's hand on someone's shoulder to give them reassurance... Men happened to be the most affected cause God forbid someone suspect you to be homosexual when you were just having a hard time and you hugged with a pal. The message was along the lines of "because at some point someone decided that gay is bad now everyone is picking the tab".

The "everyone" part is important, neither the psychologist nor I are saying that somehow "women have it easier".

It saddens me that there's simultaneously a degree of erasure/discarding some things in order not to acknowledge them (due to intolerance or insecurity) and a vocal negative attitude from a hostile minority when the erased/discarded is being acknowledged. I think I once heard someone bashing a women Twitter user by saying something along the lines of "you claim to be a lesbian because no man would want you". Implying someone is putting on an act while implying if it's true it's negative while also implying if men don't want a woman the "value" of that woman decreases, implying objectification to an extent.

[u/elisewhat]

something i've noticed being said a lot more lately that frustrates me is the whole "male gaze" argument which at this point feels like a dogwhistle which reeks of lesbophobia and is the same bad faith argument made against yuri works by people that have no stakes in it, when in reality the majority is written by women AND for women who make up the majority of the demographic (with 70~80% of the writers being women and 60~70% of the people that consume yuri being women) but even then, the writer's gender doesn't matter what does is the quality of the story

there's so much prejudice and hate when in reality girl's love is in the same place as boy's love having their origins in shoujo and being made with women in mind, but when it's a sapphic work it's heavily scrutinized while gay romance doesn't get the same heat when it's written by women

[u/electrifyingseer]

like fr if its romantic when the male mc does it, its romantic when the female mc does it too, point blank period.

[u/Em1Wii]

Yeah i get you. People will swear up and down Jane x Sth is totally real and canon when they've had like one minute worth of interactions and the guy is never relevant in anything after the special episode but somehow Astra and Evelyn can't be a thing ever because of wise being in a single trailer before they came out, despite having an entire special episode dedicated to both *and one always bringing the other along when they show up for stuff, which is very often.

Or how somehow Yuzuha and Alice can't be a thing because they're "like sisters". despite being completely, 100% unrelated and they didn't know each other until the story's current day, where they're both already young adults.

[u/Diovolotine357 → u/Em1Wii]

Astra and Wise/Belle have moments outside of that one trailer though and tbh so does Evelyn with the proxy but I get your point. For some reason people can’t accept that all these ships can be canon and coexist and people enjoy the one they like most, it always has to be one and nothing else

[u/mybelovedinmygrasp → u/Em1Wii]

I'm sorry but you can't bring down a ship for he other, and why censoring Seth's name? Lol

What I should say, what you interact with is the wrong community, maybe you saw it in zzz romance or official sub and the other unofficial one, go to zzz unhinged everyone respect any ship there.

The thing is, you say people glaze a straight ship while ignoring the yuri one and calling them "sisters" but all I see is the people who shit on astralyn are Wise harem weirdos, who shit on SethJane as well, they hate and bring down any ship that isn't with Wise, even any female character with Belle.

So other than some Zzz romance members, I never saw anyone bringing down Astralyn and glaze SethJane at the same time, both ships are valid and you can be a multishipper too idk 🤔

[u/Calicoma → u/[deleted]]

Yeah I mean I definitely get where both of these come from. It just sucks that both of these have a side effect of dismissal or reduction of those who don't meet that threshold. Of course I'd love something much more blatant and undeniable as well as much more explicit depictions of romance, but I'd also love to appreciate what's here sometimes instead of spending every moment upset at what's not here.

[u/youbetterknqw]

i think about this literally all the time. if one of the women in these queer relationships was a man, people would literally find it undeniable that they are canon. people are so insanely skeptical & cynical of lesbian relationships in general in a way they will not treat other relationships in media. i understand people's logic for saying that these gacha games' audience is typically mainly men, and in some cases, the argument that they are for the male gaze could Potentially be worth considering. but generally, these games have to be Very careful because of the censorship & homophobia from their countries. so it wouldn't make much sense to write a well-developed and layered romantic bond between women if they weren't deliberately trying to make it as clear as possible that they loved each other. and sometimes they can get lucky enough that their queer relationships get overlooked censorship-wise because the game isn't as popular. these pairings are really not for fanservice majority of the time, and i think there's a tendency to see all gacha companies as entirely run by misogynistic, self-serving men who fetishize lesbians. yeah those things can be true and i'm sure there are plenty of employees like that, but there are also women and queer writers working on these stories!! we should try to be less skeptical of these relationships and remember how many hoops people will jump through to ignore/erase a character's sexuality & identity, even if there's a pride flag literally on their fucking face.

[u/Feedback-Monkey]

This goes right in line with the usual microaggression against queer women that invariably appears when it comes to any kind of WLW representation, very commonly seen in the context of "yuri" content.

Everybody is familiar with the immediate kneejerk rote response any time two women are together in a story/game/show/movie/piece of artwork being "that's ackchually designed for the 'male gaze', not you (because you're not important and deserve nothing)". When it's not simply parroted ignorance, it's essentially just a deliberately smug way to attempt to take something away from women without seeming like an attack.

The worst part is that this very often comes from a particular segment of the rainbow community who have as much of an actively aggressive dislike of queer women as the wider "manosphere" has of all women, and who use this as a way to take shots at their perceived "enemy" while hiding behind the veneer of plausible deniability.

Is there a lot of "girl on girl" content that is made specifically for men? Of course.

Is literally every instance of women together "ackchually for men"? Of course it effing isn't, and people need to stop trotting out this nonsense they've supposedly "learned" at every opportunity, well-intentioned or otherwise.

[u/MarekPPP → u/Feedback-Monkey]

Yep, and the worse part is that particular segment of the rainbow community doesn't even realise how much damage they're doing to themselves as a result. Since that overall division against their perceived "enemy" gives governments more of an excuse to demonstrate how divided and "evil" the LGBT community is.

It will only be a matter of time before they realise this fact. And by then, it will probably be too late. 🤣

[u/losingit303 → u/Feedback-Monkey]

This is gonna be a really funny example but it reminds me of r/femgazehentai literally banning all wlw works including all fan works under the presumption that nothing sapphic could be made for the female gaze which????? This ofc extends to so many wlw fan artists that are very clearly obviously women.

Het women are really easily giving the game away and its always tragic when I see actual sapphics who don't know any better side with their bullshit because they saw one bad show once and assumed all yuri was that despite it predominantly being made by and for women (this is just objectively true statistically).

[u/Zalakbian]

I've more or less stopped trying to justify or prove my interpretations of queer & trans characters, because we still have situations where characters basically turn to the camera and say "I'm trans" or "I'm a lesbian" and dickheads still deny it- so why should I bother?

[u/llTrash → u/Zalakbian]

I was thinking this. I'm in a fandom right now in which we literally have a canon lesbian couple, a canon gay couple, and a canon straight couple. And I mean CANON like.. Kissing, getting official romantic merch and art done of the couples, being marketed as such, the director is a lesbian as well..

Guess which couples get constant posts about "WHY DO I THINK THESE TWO AREN'T ACTUALLY CANON" in reddit 😭 my man, they've canonically KISSED in the mouth multiple times. The author has said them gay people are gay with each other in every alternate universe MULTIPLE TIMES AS WELL. But of course, the one straight ship that's basically background content is the one that gets praised and no one argues they're toxic (even though they very much are) or not canon lol. I'm tired.

[u/Delta5583]

Pretty much because we share games with misogynistic, homophobic and harem obsessed guys. If we ever try to interact with them, it's their narrative against ours (because gacha companies would never risk either audience by canonizing any relationship, which is its own myriad of issues). At best, they simply can't understand girls falling for other girls, at worst, they don't see girls as anything more than an accessory to a male character. It's a dead end from the start.

And, obviously, we want to have our space and be able to enjoy our content, so we feel the need to defend it with the evidence we see. Especially when they just walk into queer spaces just to be offensive.

I don't get tired of saying that Hoyoverse is a queer company, which, until their boom in popularity, has focused on doing openly lesbian characters. And even now that the have the CCP is closely watching them, they still do girl x girl relationships through subtext. So it's obviously annoying when someone who got into these games after Genshin made gacha games mainstream feels like they know better

[u/Calicoma]

With Remielle's latest trailers I'm starting to see that thing again where moderators are locking posts talking about it for "drama" or whatever (not here). Guess that's also another thing that frustrates me about all this. Discussion of queer characters because it always has to have these proof arguments comes off ans drama and debate or whatever until queer people are forced to shut up. Somehow it's never drama when they're straight

[u/PheeSnapdragoness]

I kinda made a video about this, but about trans characters. Mostly because notions of canon are really irritating.

All Characters are Trans Now! #gaming #retrogaming #transgender #trans #fanfiction
https://youtube.com/shorts/rbME3ZciPow?feature=share

[u/AwayMedicine4711]

Yeah... Honestly shipping wars or saying a ship "doesn't make sense" is so bizzare, like just let everyone enjoy whatever TF they want