rhodanum:

lauralot89:

I recall being in a conversation with a gatekeeper once (the sort of “monosexual is a homophobic term!” “MOGWAI means kinky people count as queer!” “asexuals don’t belong in the queer community!” type of asshole) and they said of a fictional character: “He’s definitely gay.  Totally gay.  Maybe bisexual.  Queer at the very least.”

That’s when it clicked for me: Gatekeepers honestly think that any sexuality beyond straight and gay is just Gay Lite.  Bisexual is half-gay, asexuality is, like, 0.05 percent gay, and just identifying as “queer” is a quarter-gay, maybe.

This is why they lose their shit so badly whenever someone thinks a character is bisexual and not gay, why they accuse others of erasing their representation.  A bisexual is just half a lesbian, so how dare you try and water down our portrayal in the media!  Asexuals are such Lite Gays that they might as well be straight, so don’t you dare take away my representation with your ace headcanons!

Never mind if the source material itself is ambiguous.  If it’s not gay or lesbian, it’s not real representation.  If you don’t want real representation, you’re siding with the straights.

It’s such a pathetic and limited way of looking at the world.  I’d feel sorry for them if they weren’t such jerks.

Some do this in relation to trans headcanons as well. They’ll go into one hell of a performative outrage against TERFs and other assorted bigoted shits… and then have a fucking meltdown when a young trans man on this site says ‘I headcanon this character as a demisexual trans boy’. This person got dogpiled by dozens of the usual suspects involved in the most virulent anti a-spec discourse, all of them shouting ‘she’s a lesbian!’, ‘lesbian-only!!!!’ The fact that all of this was over headcanons about the goddamn moon in the sky just made me cross myself and go ‘these people are the future of the community? I fucking weep for it, then.’ Honestly, someone can post all they want about how ‘TERFs are Bad’. it becomes mere performative drivel when one engages in pretty damned TERFy bullshit in turn.

Also, he’re as example of this particular dogpiling in action re: a bisexual headcanon. Notice, again, the usual suspects involved and the rejection of any headcanon other than gay. But sure, sure, m-spec people and a-spec people and trans and nonbinary and agender people are ~*~totally valid~*~ and other meaningless buzz-words tossed round like candy for placation. Valid until any of the aforementioned groups want to work at seeing themselves represented by identifying with a character and having personal headcanons for a character whose sexuality and gender are never black-on-white stated in a give canon.