I see your false equivalency.

Furthermore, on the note of this post:

Yesterday, an interviewer in a national publication essentially suggested Charlie Bradbury, the only recurring queer character on the show, should convert, by saying they ship this lesbian with a male character, Castiel.

This interviewer then decontextualized the joking "heh yeah” of an actor the queer community trusts--for the most part, and erased his disagreement, his then adding no, Charlie wouldn’t, and by extension, she shouldn’t.

That left much of the queer community feeling very upset and abandoned by someone we trust. We felt alone again, isolated, distanced from someone we value as an idol and a person. Some of us were compelled to wonder if he even cared about us after all, and it made us a little aggressive, asking him.

The relief that swept through many of us was palpable, when he confirmed our trust was not misplaced, because no, he does not agree Charlie should convert.

Yet, people are, as we speak, talking about how they’d like to convert Charlie, to ship her with Castiel, following the oppressive, erasive institutional lead, in order to void both a single queer character and a queerbaited pairing being romanticized in subtext for several seasons. They see no problem with this.

They are then comparing this to the phenomenon of people shipping Dean with Castiel--of calling for the queerbaiting of this ship to cease with a textual resolution that allows these characters to stop repressing for the sake of institutional heterosexism, claiming that Charlie is repressing being straight, as though that is ever a thing. As though therapy exists to convert straight people.

To this I say:

Note how our queering Dean did not commence in a manner with institutional strength behind it. Note how “straight-washing” happens on a hugely powerful, publicized, socially acceptable and even societally condoned scale. Note that straight people are oppressing queer people, and erasing us, and our allies, is part of that--part of the way they isolate us and make us feel unwanted so we will, as mentioned, convert. Note how that’s the difference, the stark difference; most rebellions against that oppression, any facet of it, are never equal to it.

Note how people who compare these with any seriousness are full of shit, and every time they ignore that conversion therapy goes beyond the therapist’s office, that it’s a society-wide thing that includes homophobic propagandizing via media representation (to which queer people show the finger, by demanding ‘baiting result in text), they’re on the side of conversion therapists. And if you agree with them, you’re walking that line too.

Note this, please.

selfihateyouithink

deansdamnation-blog

Anonymous asked:

I'm all for representation, but I'll never understand how trying to redefine Dean as bisexual is any different than straight people trying to force gay people to be straight.

deansdamnation-blog answered:

PREACH IT BABE

Now before people freak the fuck out, not all bi dean people are like this. But there are so many saying that dean is lying about his sexuality and that he’s just not stating his true feelings

YOU are forcing your desired sexuality on a character. Yeah, they are fictional and feel free to write fics and whatnot, but as soon as you start telling other fans that they are wrong, we have a problem.

Let’s get one thing all cleared up. Dean is canonically straight. That doens’t mean he won’t come out as bisexual later on or that he did or did not give men romatic looks. It just means that right now. Season fucking 10 Dean Winchester has said that he is straight.

Quite trying to throw your ideas on me.

literally no-one is forcing you to view dean as bisexual

we just want you to fucking acknowledge that him denying his bisexuality when and only when he is under some form of attack does not and never will make him straight, and saying it does is homo- and biphobic as hell and completely ignores the very real experiences of queer people everywhere.

selfihateyouithink

“I’ll never understand how trying to redefine Dean as bisexual is any different than straight people trying to force gay people to be straight.”

I can actually answer this, using the question in my answer, as much as I really shouldn’t have to, because if you don’t understand the radical difference between these two things--that is, conversion therapy versus queer people claiming queerbaited characters ARE queer (if only in subtext thus far, and not in a way that counts as representation YET)--in terms of real oppressive power dynamics, you barely even belong in a conversation about queer representation.

The former is different because of the latter’s acknowledged undeniable existence. Because straight people force gay people to be straight. Because every time you look at a character, you’re working under that forced foremost assumption that they’re straight, whether you admit it or not, because that force has indoctrinated you with thinking that straight is always but queer must prove itself to you. Because your brain, using that force, is working against queer people being real, normal, and abundant, actively, using bullshit reasons the culture forcing us to be straight has given you in order to discredit just how very queer reality and fictional representations of such are. In order to feed the dominant heterosexist culture, you have been taught to believe straight is and belongs everywhere, while queerness doesn’t and couldn’t and shouldn’t*. (*And honestly, even in shows with queer representation, the framing usually supports this, so you have to work extra hard watching media to see it. Only shows like Queer as Folk, in my experience, normalize queerness enough for you not to have to work to understand that it is normal. And even that show doesn’t normalize bisexuality, pansexuality, acespec and arospec ones, etc.)

By saying, “You have to admit Dean is bisexual, looking at the evidence,” we’re trying to combat the bullshit you already have in your brain. By forcing us to say he’s straight for any other reason except “straight is how he’s read because of heterosexism but the subtext clearly says he is bi” or “he’s still technically straight to the GA so he’s not representation”? You’re just spreading that bullshit further. You’re using the tools the straight people forcing gay people to be straight gave you, to erase, invalidate, discredit, and ignore us–and by doing so further compel us to be straight in order to be able to feel any sort of seen or understood or accepted, exactly as they intended, on every universe, even. beyond. ours. All we’re trying to do is make you stop for a second and see how wrong that is, by pointing out that visible and verifiable queerness exists in a place those tools taught you it couldn’t, because it does.

THEY threw their ideas on you. The straight people who force us to be straight, who insist that everyone is because they want them to be, whose conversion therapy is actually much more widespread, and nearly complete in its being inescapable, than just the dangerous psychiatric practices officially given that name. They’ve been stuck on you for years. We are merely trying to scrape them off of your eyes any way we possibly can, so you can see the super queer world beyond them.