Boy bands are almost overwhelmingly cultivated around the easiest way to sell shit to young girls, which very heavily leans into societally dominant heterosexual love story narratives, which in themselves tend to focus on specific attitudes towards gender roles, presentation, and styles of attraction.
Bi women are not straight so we do not conceptualize our gender and attraction the same way a straight woman would because we do not function under the same societal pressures and dynamics. Ergo, the marketing around and content within the songs by many boy bands can be incredibly alienating to a bi woman audience even if they still experience attraction to men because we often do not experience that attraction in a way palpable to or even considered by those cultivating the public image of these bands.
Accusing Mara Wilson, a bi woman, of bi erasure, for sharing an amusing anecdote on her own experience, is ridiculous. But it is also an incredible disservice to bi women like myself who are more than acutely aware that we are (and always have been) a far cry from this media’s target audience – and it is, in fact, a demonstration of the effects of bi erasure that people so stalwartly align us with heterosexuality that we’re accused of erasing ourselves when we talk about our alienation from mainstream m/f-focused media.
Keep ace ladies in mind too, because this applies to me like whoa.
The other thing about the word “queer” is that almost everyone I’ve seen opposed to it have been cis, binary gays and lesbians. Not wanting it applied to yourself is fine, but I think people underestimate the appeal of vague, inclusive terminology when they already have language to easily and non-invasively describe themselves.
Saying “I’m gay/lesbian/bi” is pretty simple. Just about everyone knows what you mean, and you quickly establish yourself as a member of a community. Saying “I’m a trans nonbinary bi woman who’s celibate due to dysphoria and possibly on the ace spectrum”… not so much. You’re lucky to find anyone who understands even half of that, and explaining it requires revealing a ton of personal information. The appeal of “queer” is being able to identify yourself without profiling yourself. It’s welcoming and functional terminology to those who do not have the luxury of simplified language and occupy complicated identities. *That’s* why people use it – there are currently not alternatives to express the same sentiment.
It’s not people “oppressing themselves” or naively and irresponsibly using a word with loaded history. It’s easy to dismiss it as bad or unnecessary if you already have the luxury of language to comfortably describe yourself.
There’s another dimension that always, always gets overlooked in contemporary discussions about the word “queer:” class. The last paragraph here reminds me of a old quote: “rich lesbians are ‘sapphic,’ poor lesbians are ‘dykes’.”
The reclaiming of the slur “queer” was an intensely political process, and people who came up during the 90s, or who came up mostly around people who did so, were divided on class and political lines on questions of assimilation into straight capitalist society.
Bourgeois gays and lesbians already had “the luxury of language” to describe themselves – normalized through struggle, thanks to groups like the Gay Liberation Front.
Everyone else, from poor gays and lesbians to bi and trans people and so on, had no such language. These people were the ones for whom social/economic assimilation was not an option.
The only language left, the only word which united this particular underclass, was “queer.” “Queer” came to mean an opposition to assimilation – to straight culture, capitalism, patriarchy, and to upper class gays and lesbians who wanted to throw the rest of us under the bus for a seat at that table – and a solidarity among those marginalized for their sexuality/gender id/presentation.
(Groups which reclaimed “queer,” like Queer Patrol (armed against homophobic violence), (Queers) Bash Back! (action and theory against fascism, homophobia, and transphobia), and Queerbomb (in response to corporate/state co-optation of mainstream Gay Pride), were “ultraleft,” working-class, anti-capitalist, and functioned around solidarity and direct action.)
The contemporary discourse around “queer” as a reclaimed-or-not slur both ignores and reproduces this history. The most marginalized among us, as OP notes, need this language. The ones who have problems with it are, generally, among those who have language – or “community,” or social/economic/political support – of their own.
*writes I LIKE GIRLS on every other page of my journals so future historians don’t try to insist that I’m straight”
Future straight Historians: “we see several examples of her prioritizing a sisterly bond with the women around her, for example on page 12 she says ‘I like girls’ and throughout the text she references loving women and preferring their company. This is not to say she prioritized above her romantic relationships because on page 78 she mentions talking to a man one time in her life. It’s hard to know just how much she valued her sisterly bond with women due to this one reference of men and the ambiguity of early 21st century slang. For example on page 12 when she said she liked women, the passage continues ’…in a lesbian way. I want to kiss girls, they are so pretty, I’m so gay.’ Now it’s difficult to understand just what that sentence means. We know that in the early 21st century kissing on the cheek in greeting had gone out of vogue but the word gay, a word with an archaic meaning of happiness gives the contextual clues that perhaps she is references that old fashioned practice.
Going back to the nameless man that is mentioned once on page 78 for one sentance…”
“Now, given that she wrote on page 12, ‘Just to be clear: I’m sexually and romantically attracted to women exclusively,’ one may be tempted to read this literally, but we can’t rule out sarcasm.”
It may seem like @vilesbian is joking, but she really isn’t.
Straight people think that either you know you’re gay from childhood or something big happens one day and you Realize (and it is like that to some of course) but lbr for many it goes like
Let it be known that on this Bi Visibility Day of 2017, I hereby declare the pink robin to be the official bird of the bisexual community. Please update your official bisexuality guides accordingly.
This is a good article, and the art is from the author’s book cover, but I have to say, this makes it look like the “ideal” queer happy ending is riding off into the sunset on some kind of dinosaur and I am absolutely 1000% behind this.
Give your queer characters dinosaurs 2017.
i haven’t even read the article yet but i’m already reblogging because this made me imagine seebs and me having a picnic on a brontosaur’s back as it meanders gently westward and i am still smiling
i can’t stop fucking thinking about my english prof talking about the queer historical significance of the word “sweet” as a deliberate indicator of homosexual love and how that relates to both edward ii and gaveston, as well as hamlet and horatio. so, because shakespeare was likely totally knowledgeable about codes that queer men were using (cos like duh obvs), the inclusion of “sweet prince” at the end of hamlet is in all likelihood a completely deliberate indication that hamlet and horatio were in love
i’m???? so gay for literature and history lmao
my good sweet honey lord????
I WROTE A WHOLE PAPER ON THIS SHIT IN DOCTOR FAUSTUS HIT ME UP LITERALLY ANY TIME YO.
just moving along like everyone else 