strangetomato | A whole lot of isms, but mostly heterosexism.

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A whole lot of isms, but mostly heterosexism.

Given that this Sunday, May 17, is the International Day Against Homophobia, it's interesting that I was recently called out for being heterosexist. To my face, by a lesbian. I was pretty embarrassed. (Not that it would be any better to have this pointed out in another way, but I felt pretty careless.)

I had designed a quick little poster for a community Seniors Appreciation Day event, and all of the clip art used on it (yeah, go ahead and laugh at the clip art, but my job isn't as a designer - there's no time or money to make it nicer) featured elderly male/female couples.

In my defense, I was lucky to find anything that showed seniors being happy and doing anything besides sitting on a couch at home (no joke - many of them actually featured graveyards). We wanted dancing and eating and having fun AND elderly people, and I barely found that. There's literally nothing that tackles ageism AND heterosexism. It seems like you can only tackle one of these issues at a time (though there was a little racial diversity in there, I'll give them that much).

It's amazing how easy it is to be heterosexist. Unlike homophobia, you do it by default, by doing nothing. I like to think I'm pretty good about this stuff, because I actually think about it most of the time and even point it out to other people when they say something that assumes the world to be straight (you get mixed results when you suggest that someone's baby might actually grow up to be gay, let me warn you, true though it may be). So if I can do it by accident, then you can too. If you're constantly vigilant about it, then I salute you, but it can be tough to get it right all the time.

To relate this back to sims, it's got me to thinking about portrayals of LGBT characters in sim stories, just like any other media. I've read some interesting articles and posts on this topic recently (relating to different fandoms, but same difference), and it really is worth considering. I try to write about characters first and foremost, and so they have flaws and make bad decisions and all that, but I do try to be conscious of the messages my stories are sending, whether intended or not.

As for homophobia, I did make a very conscious decision to include that in my sim world, as much as I love the idea of a world without it. My sim world simulates the world I live in, and that includes most of its problems too. Also, there's no way to examine something if you ignore its existence, and I'm very interested in exploring gender/sexuality in my characters. It's something of a theme in my story, I suppose, if you want to put that much weight on it (which is probably a bit of a stretch).

So how do you feel about this as a creator or reader of sim stories? Feel free to discuss it in the comments, if you like.

Also, go ahead and critique the way I do things in relation to this topic, if you want to, so I can further consider and examine them. I know I could always fall back on "it's just a sim story," but I don't actually believe that excuses me in any way. I'm putting content out into the world, so I'm engaging in the way things are portrayed, even though it's a small and very specialized audience.

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The thing about the term normal is that it doesn't mean what a lot of people think it means, at least in this context. Normal means usual. Some people have this connotation that it means 'good and right', but that's an interpretation I personally am trying to dissuade people I know from. Unusual is not bad. It's just different.

Other things that are not normal: genius+ IQs, extreme height, AB- blood. Nothing wrong with any of those things, but they do all fall outside the norm. I know precisely one person with AB- blood (that I know of). He's not normal in that regard; he is quite unusual. I know someone who has an IQ over 180; he is not normal in that regard. I know someone who is 7'1". He is not normal, except perhaps in a group of basketball players. (He does not, btw, play basketball.)

I hear what you're saying about any of elders there being closeted if they *were* gay, but consider this: One of the things that irks me in the community is the invisibility of older LGBTs. Everything we have today, is because of their sacrifices, and every time I hear someone bitch about someone older than 30 being in the club/whatever I want to smack their ungrateful selves.

Personally, I wonder why the clipart "needs" to be couples in the first place- as if people have no value if they're not in a relationship. (I'm not blaming Strange, it's hard to find things depicting elders as people). And it's worth exploring why when we see a male and female in an activity together we assume they're a couple instead of one of the dozens of other relationships they could be.

(warning, I don't follow the strip you mentioned, though I have seen it once or twice)

But if Mo is anti-marriage isn't her negativity focused on MARRIAGE regardless of what gender combo is being married? And if that's the case, how is it heterosexist? And couldn't Jezanna just tell her to stop being MEAN (in general by pissing on their friends parade) then try to drag some ism/ist into it?

I agree that if someone were to fly into a rage or something it'd be perhaps just slightly inappropriate, but I've never actually seen that happen. What I have seen happen essentially boils down to, "Hey, if you don't tack a 'please' onto that 'stop stomping on my fingers!' then I'm just not going to listen." which I think isn't very cool.

I also agree that to some extent when you're trying to explain things to people who are just starting out on this, and whose knowledge of oppressions is thus understandably simplistic, it can be hard to get them to listen when you start using words that to them means, essentially, "Bad, evil, puppy kicker!" I like "problematic" and variations on that theme for that very reason. It's not so loaded, it doesn't make people instantly go into defensive mode, but it still gets the point across that what they did/said upset you. I think we basically agree. :)

I have a similar rule. I have to be able to explain (within the confines I've already written) away a male pregnancy.

Though I don't care about preg4all. If I had it, I'd probably end up with a baby boom of epic proportions and I don't want that.

You're right, it does mean usual. But in cases of gender and sexuality (and man, do I hate having to use the term "sexuality") we as a species have no real idea what usual is and isn't. We only know what's usual in the context of the societies we've formed, that sometimes- I'm not saying always- retrains behaviors into what they find more acceptable. How different would our concept of normalcy be if the concept of "no sex expect for procreation" had never existed? How many cultures acknowledge more than 2 genders?

Your "abnormal" examples are better than most because there is a non-arbitrary constant to measure them against. This is harder if not impossible to do with socialisms (let's pretend it's a word, because I can't think of the real one); you can't "force" a culture to be 7'1" (without eugenics), you *can* pressure/force a culture to "be" straight.

I think NSFW is pretty much all the warning that should be needed, yeah. I'd add that, for myself, if I'm going to be dealing with something in the story that could bring up unhappy or traumatic memories for some people, I chuck on a trigger warning, too, because for me that's just the basic work needed for not being a jerk. "Don't be a jerk" is a pretty good rule for me.

(I am now trying to think of what gentile could be "translated" to. I totally love the idea of Llamish, though!)

Your aliens do research their spawn recipients before pollination, yes?

If not, they're kind of undermining their ultimate project (preserving their species) if they give spawn to sim folk who don't really want them (and would not properly care for them).

(my aliens don't worry too much about the spawn being in "good homes" they just want the best genetic combos in the end, so casting the net wide is the best bet)

I've joked about the very same thing.

Pixel_and_bean and I did something kind of like that back in the day (while we were both doing the GUCCI--group uglification challenge). We were annoyed by terms like "buttsex" (or the horribly spelled, "buttsecks") so we made a point (for our own amusement) of noting what type of sex was being had at all times. My favorites were "pussysecks" (used to refer to hetero sex) and "fistysecks" (could be for anyone--how inclusive!!).

Your goal should be to write a story where the warning is longer than the actual work.

And personally, I don't know why warnings have to be on stuff at all, but I will compromise and use "NSFW" if there are pictures of an adult theme.

IQ is pretty arbitrary, too, IMO, but that's a different argument.

My point stands, however. It doesn't really matter why the norm is currently heterosexuality... social, biological, some mix of the two, whatever the reasons are. It's still the norm at this time, because that's measured on observation, not cause. You could argue that self-reporting may be somewhat unreliable but it's the only way to measure something like this, and based on those standards, a large majority of people identify as heterosexual... hence, the norm.

I probably should've included blonde hair there as a good example of something that can be a normal thing some places and against the norm others, because it would've made the point that 'norm' is also flexible.

But using my examples, norms can still change. Normative IQ ranges have changed. So have heights. Blood type's actually a good one because normal's different in different places, though I think AB- is universally rare.

However, for another cultural norm, I note that it's the norm in US culture to get married sometime in your 20s (perhaps stretching to early 30s). People who get married younger or older fall outside the norm... but how people react to that can be very, very different. There can a bit of prejudice involved... young marriages are often thought of as being prone to failure; women who don't marry in the normative period are sometimes still called 'old maids'... but it's not viewed as negatively as it used to be. It changes, over time.

And that's the other thing that's important to this discussion. It's not just a question of how usual it is. It's also a question of how people view it. Homosexuality could remain unusual but be accepted anyhow. If it were, maybe people wouldn't even think about whether or not any given depiction had a variety... because the non-het couples wouldn't stand out anymore anyhow.

Whew. I think maybe calling you "heterosexist" is a bit of an overreaction in this situation, but if I was constantly discriminated against at the level that gay/bi/trans people are an a daily basis, even if it isn't on purpose, I'd probably be way more sensitive to this kind of thing. I tend to just not think about it- which means that I generally don't make a big deal over homosexuality, whether positively or negatively, and I think that obsessing over it (whether positively or negatively) can be more often be harmful than helpful. But it DOES need attention, if only to get to the point where we don't even pay attention to it any more. Does that make any sense? We just have to find that happy medium where a person's sexuality is no big deal, but people of all sexualities are fairly and commonly represented. But, ultimately, I'm more upset that there were so few images of happy, healthy elderly people (of all genders, orientations, races, etc) for your use. It does seem like most depictions of old folks are somewhat morbid or just plain boring. I have hope that this will change as a significant bulk of the population (in Western countries at least) ages in the coming years and major industries realize that their target demographic is suddenly a lot older than they used to be.

As far as homosexuality and TS2- I'm happy that they left it up to the player in the first place, you know? Like not all Sims have to be hetero but you have an option to do what you want with them on that front. When I first started playing, nearly all of my Sims were hetero because that's my "default" setting and I just never thought about it (I was obsessed with breeding the little pixels, and the easiest way to do that with a vanilla game is make everyone hetero and have them hump like rabbits). I was so darn happy when I discovered that there are mods out there that set the gender preference for you, because now I have a far more realistic population AND I still don't have to put any thought into it. It's just weird to me to consciously think, "so-and-so should be gay/straight/whatever". The only time I change what has been randomly set is when I've gotten too used to thinking of a certain Sim in a certain way thanks to reading good stories or previous play sessions (Pascal and Nervous, for example).

I'm still not totally into the same-sex preg thing. To me, sperm + sperm or egg + egg =/= baby (although supposedly there is a lot of research being done on that egg + egg thing). Supernatural alien pollination, supernatural botanical self-fertilization, adoption, or surrogate pregnancy = baby. In other words (like meetme2theriver), unless there's a good supernatural reason for it, I prefer for my non-hetero Sims to have children in some way besides pregnancy, and (including supernatural) there are lots of options to choose from. I'd feel very differently if WooHoo was the only option. But it doesn't bother me when others choose to do something different with their game or in their story. Not everyone chooses to address the issue in the same way, and some choose not to address it at all.

As for the marriage thing, well, I'm actually holding out for a "joining"-for-all mod. If civil unions and marriage are truly equal in all but name (as they are in TS2), then I see no problem having all consenting adults be allowed legal civil unions and leaving the whole "marriage" thing up to the religious institutions. You want to be declared man and wife in your homophobic church of choice? Fine, but you have to get a civil union certificate from the courthouse to make it official. Yeah, I know that's not a popular opinion, but I get so tired of some religious conservatives acting like they have a patent on the term "marriage". I say we let them have it and maybe then we'll have a better chance of keeping church and state separate, yes? I know there are other countries that do this, so why does my beloved US of A fail so hard at basic civil rights sometimes?

Warnings like that annoys me too no end O_0

I can understand a warning for some things, specially for age restrictions and work places (like violence, nudity, adult topics), but I simply can't understand the reason in warning for gay/lesbians in any kind of story (adding M-preg in sim stories too!! that makes me so mad!!)

"Your goal should be to write a story where the warning is longer than the actual work."

That would be so awesome.

We should start up a community for that exact purpose, people writing sims stories with warnings longer than the story.

That might be a fun challenge for the simstorytellers community.

Hmm. . .thanks for the idea.

They've recently (as of this week!) announced they're bringing paid maternity leave in, here in Australia. The earliest will be next year, but it's coming, and it will be government funded.

I agree - I'm just saying that what a thing to pick a bitch-fit with your friend about. You aren't going to change the clipart, you aren't going to change the majority of /elderly/, conservative thinking - so why shoot the messenger? That is what I hate about gay youth today. As if they have nothing better to do that baw about the irrelevant. Which, frankly, if they have to make up lame crap to be upset about, they should BE SO LUCKY. That no one is trying to demean them or hurt them, so they can whine about being vegetarian and why microsoft doesn't depict hip, older people in their clipart - just wow. Shut up and be thankful, jesus christ.

tl;dr learn to pick your battles, young people. This isn't one of them~

Actually, the woman who pointed this out to me was definitely not a youth. In fact, she's pretty close to being a senior herself, and is in a commited relationship. So she was literally speaking out about her own reality not being represented.

As for your overall statement here, I don't really agree. Yes, I think things can be taken too far and maybe the issues that get focused on aren't always the most important ones, but I see nothing wrong with people speaking out against things they object to (even excessively). That's how things change.

The problem with the couple thing was that I couldn't find anything with one elderly person that wasn't sad or inactive and there was also a noticeable lack of larger groups. The implied messages in the clip art was rather sad. It was as if seniors can't have friends aside from spouse or family.

In the end, I kept one male/female couple dining together, a man and a woman dancing (separately - the original version had them dancing romantically), and two women drinking coffee/tea together. I think it'll do.

Edited 2009-05-14 20:40 (UTC)

Yeah, once she said it, I totally agreed. We just hadn't thought of that because we were more focused on showing them happy and active, and mostly those images were of couples.

I did manage to find some that were better, I think.

Was she a member of the senior center? Cos that does change things, for argument's sake.

Idk - I'm gay and from my personal experience, being hyper-critical of everything from my perspective has never been conducive to anything, ever. Additionally, I live in Los Angeles, so I see over PC bullshit every single day. None of it seems to be an active solution to the problem that is heterosexism/homophobia or any of the other myriad things liberals and conservatives alike get up in arms over. I think questioning things is a valuable part of the human experience, but to me it just reeks of pretentiousness if you do it outside of an academic setting. Someone being opinionated at Starbucks isn't going to change the world, it's just going to annoy the hell out of everyone else.

I just don't see this (clipart) as a cause to champion. I think that society, North American in particular, needs to reexamine what they think/feel about "relationships", definitely. But I don't think change is going to happen at a senior center. Nor do I think the woman who spoke to you - as many good intentions she may have had - should have been so self-entitled as to accuse you of something with REALLY no personal-info to back that up. You are NOT heterosexist in the sense that you, when deciding to depict a relationship, always go for the heterosexual ones.

Though, each to his own, I guess~

This question is completely off topic of the homos, etc, but: Why did you choose to use clipart? You could have made a bunch of elders in game at a party and printed that picture out, you know?

It's a tricky topic to discuss without someone being offended, but most delicate topics are. Are there disabled people, fat people, people of different ethnicity also pointing out how restrictive the view is of the poster? Is it just elderly, slim, healthy white people that are allowed here? Is that what the poster is advertising? I highly doubt it.

I think making the jump from two old people dancing to being "heterosexist" is a bit of a big one. If you're looking to find exclusions or being offended, you'll find it. Most people I'm sure will hardly notice the clip art, or it will just register as old people dancing without any political agenda attached.

In regards to my sims, I usually let the game decide what their preferences are. In a legacy, I don't change what they are at all (I like that testingcheats option that tells you what their gender preference is), I have hacks that lets everyone get pregnant, so it's not an issue. I also like to let them choose their own partners, because it's about them, not me! For stories, adult sims I create usually have their preference picked by my, in game sims I use have what they came with. Teens and YAs are more fluid in their preferences, because experimentation is normal. But I usually let them decide what they want. One of my characters at the moment is starting to feel confused about her feelings for her (female) best friend. Said best friend constantly farts hearts for her, though my character doesn't know that, of course.

In another one of my stories, gay acceptance was a big deal, and it's a current plot that has making a fertility potion that will enable anyone to get pregnant available to everyone. I've also added alien, lycan, plantsim, vampire, etc acceptance struggles into the mix as well. That also means there's some who are against it, and that does come into it too.

I like sim stories to reflect reality a bit, both the good and bad.

hah that's a great idea :)

It was focused on the marriage, but her arguments were just getting petty. (To her credit, when her live-in gf proposes, Mo turns her down but they stay together). Too much of what she was saying started to sound like, "Yuck girls marrying" instead of "yuck, marriage!"

Normally, I think Jez would have just told her to shut up, but this character is the intellectual feminist. I think Jex was just trying to beat her at her own game. I would have just told her to stop being a jerk and be happy for her friends.

Mo was being an ass, though. Even though Clarice was her first lover, C. and Toni have had the longest running relationship in the comic, and can do whatever the hell they want.

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A whole lot of isms, but mostly heterosexism.

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