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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Well, I don't have Sims 2 on my work computer, but that's not a bad idea. ^_^ Maybe I should have.

xD!! It would've been totally cute!!

Your aliens are more plants, so it works as far as I can tell. With mine (and I'm assuming M_U's, since Percy was abducted as a teen and later got pregnant the old fashioned way) while the species mix well, sim males need "accessories" to be able to carry a child to term.

The pollen bit makes sense- especially since sperm and eggs are more similar than dis- (I think?) and testicles and ovaries start out the same bit of smooshy flesh, but my thinking was that the male sims simply had no place to hold a fetus until they were abducted an supplied with one.

Yeah, as

naughtydolphin said, Australia now has 18 weeks, but that's not transferrable to the father (unlike Norway), and it is a lot less than here. Sucks.

I am here until maybe the 30th of June, so I get to see National Day and some summer stuff. YAY. And it is great here :D. I will be sad to go, but it means I want to return.

This needs to be the next sim storytellers challenge. Summer's coming up, schedules should be relaxing a bit. :D

I don't know why, but the Curious family always seemed "Jewish" to me. ::random::

Ah, gotcha.

(And with regards to your marriage example, average ages changes on location. It's common to still live with roommates in your 30's in the NYC metro area, and of my friends, I've only had 1 marry before 30.)

I thought of that, too. I just assumed the center was trying to avoid using anything copywrited. (And even original sims falls under EA's copywrite).

Oh goodie, I hope I can express my opinion without making things confusing. It is hard for me to make an argument regarding this topic in particular, more so if I have to do it in English.

Frankly, that woman is waaaay to sensitive. In your place, I wouldn't take her words to heart, because seriously, the fact that she's "offended" because you didn't include gay couples in a poster for a Senior event reeks of politically correct nonsense. Or, as I like to think, trying too hard to see the "glass half empty".

Did you include a mexican elder in your poster? Or an elder with special educational needs? If you didn't, and following that woman's mentality, I shall be offended too and consider you a "Canadianist" and a "Not-Special-Needs-Ist" because your poster does not represent my country and the people I work for.

Really, people can get offended by anything if they try too hard to see the wrongs on ANYTHING around them.

I understand that the LGBT community has fought for a long time to enjoy the same rights and privileges of those of us who are heterosexual. Heck, I used to make fun at the DSM-III, (Manual of Mental Disorders) because it included homosexuality as a mental disease (not anymore). I'm glad for the battles they have won in the recent years and they deserve to be heard and included by the governments and society in general.

I'm all for the inclusion of the minorities, like people with special educational needs. That's my job, after all, so I know how hard it is to make people accept those who are different. You have to break huge barriers of ignorance and fear to motivate the society in general to understand and accept them.

But that doesn't mean all the minorities HAVE to be included everywhere, even if the situation or circumstances do not require that. For example, your poster was focused on the elder community in general. Period. You were not considering the race, beliefs, sexual orientation, political views, special needs, etc. of ALL the elder people in the world. I'm afraid your poster would be HUGE if you had to include all those groups of people.

TL;DR: It is good to be aware that there are people who are different from the rest of us. It is great to promote the acceptance of minorities. But there's also a fine line between acceptance and open-mind, and just plain stupid PC. In this case, I think this woman crossed that line and her comment was out of context.

Now, as for Sim Stories, I've really enjoyed the way you've developed characters like Beau and Frances. You know why? Because they are BEAU and FRANCES and not just GAY 1 and GAY 2. Their sexual orientation is just another of the many different characteristics that make them unique, not the only one. It'd be pretty boring if you only focused on that side of them. It's just like how you handle Ripp's horny side. Sure, he thinks with his "woo-hoo" at times, but he's also concerned about his insecurity issues, his relationship with his brothers, etc., etc., so there's more to him as a character than just being a walking libido :P.

In my case, I admit I don't write homosexual characters. I'm aware of that and I know that will make me seem like a heterosexist, but there's a reason for that. i was born in a very chauvinist country and I grew up in a very traditional family with strong beliefs against homosexuality. You don't want to listen to the discussions I have with my paternal family when we touch that topic O_o.

I like to think that, despite my deeply traditional personality and education, I'm also an open minded person. It hasn't been easy to learn and understand the existence of gay people. That, I have to admit. When I first learned about it when I was 14, I was very confused.

I also don't know many gay people, and most of them are online friends. So, I haven't had direct experiences with their community. It doesn't help that in Mexico, it's very rare to see a gay couple being openly affective in public.

Hence, I don't write about gay characters frequently, because I don't want to stereotype or disrespect them. I'm afraid that my ignorance in the matter would make me write something unrealistic that could upset them. The same applies for any other minority I don't know much about.

I actually want to include a sim with special educational needs or disabilities for a long time, but I'm hesitant too, even if I DO know about the topic. Words are powerful weapons, and I don't want to hurt or offend someone if I'm not careless. What I'm doing with Johnny is a very tentative trial, and I'm afraid of screwing things up.

But be sure that when I finally develop a character from a minority, I'll try to make them as complete as possible. Their special situation will just be one of the many traits that will make them unique.

While I do tend to "warn" for lgbt sims, when they're around, I do also tend to "warn" for straight sims, when they're around. And sometimes I just don't "warn" at all. :P

But in all seriousness, I do wonder if maybe those warnings, my own and others, are very real ingrained conflict-avoidance? I know you said you like to avoid conflict too, but I really do wonder how much of it that is? I can only speak for myself, and I know anecdotes don't count for much, but even living in one of, if not the, most liberal state in the U.S., I'm used to issues of sexuality being buzz words for starting huge fights. I'm also from a religious conservative family, like to the point that my grandmother told me to my face that gay marriage was equivalent to murdering someone on a church alter. And even for something as important to me as gay rights, it's also something that life has taught me to be careful about choosing my battles over, which I know hurts a cause I claim to support, but at the same time supporting that cause could get me disowned by a huge portion of my family, and I don't think I could handle that.

While I do intend my warnings to be tongue-in-cheek, I guess part of it might be a carry over from real life. And it's got me thinking. And I do wonder for how many people that's true for? I don't know.

Of course, the whole point of the comment being not to not point out that "warning" for gay sims is pretty icky, but rather that it might not necessarily be a case of latent homophobia or heterosexism (like I interpreted your comment to mean; if I'm wrong, I'm sorry), but rather it might be a latent defense mechanism. Even though the response might be the same, the underlying cause could be different and that should be kept in mind? Because the solutions for both problems are going to be different. If that makes any sense. I don't know, I'm rambling. :(

Of course it just might be a carry over from other fandoms where your warnings really are expected to be as long as your story. Warning: Gay sims, straight sims, sex, no sex, colors, bad words, nice word, words, punctuation, clothes.... :x

I don't have much to add -- most of what I would say would merely be echoing other, more articulate comments above. But I do want to say I don't think your poster, as you describe is, is heterosexist as much as perhaps heterocentric. Photographs of opposite-sex couples do not, inherently, say "This is normal and anything else is not normal."

The lack of available clip art depicting elderly same-sex couples does reflect a heterosexist bias in society, but your poster, taken as an individual thing, isn't heterosexist. At least not in my opinion.

Just as an aside... I can imagine the same criticism being leveled at my icon, for instance. To someone who doesn't know that Pixel and Bean are siblings, it looks like an opposite-sex couple about to kiss. Should I change my icon to avoid being targeted as heterosexist? :P

Since I'm a big supporter of same-sex marriage and I have that hack in my game, I tend to set up the Sim world as more accepting of homosexual couples. There will be a few Sims who don't like it, but those are more rare in my Sim world than in the real world.

Example: I made Tank Grunt gay, he's always been gay but never really let Buzz know. When Buzz finds out, he's shocked but more like a "why didn't I know my son better" feeling than a homophobic feeling. Buzz is more upset that Tank seemed to think he had to hide his sexual preference; there's some internal reflection I had in mind where Buzz basically comes to the conclusion that his son's choice in partner is a good one and it's more important to accept that than to lose his son over the issue. The boys thought they had to help Tank hide his gayness, because they thought Buzz would freak out. I'm really trying to go for character development for Buzz.

I seem to have a lot of same-sex couples in my game. Tank/Frances, Hector Tech/Tim Broke, etc. My favorite alien Anther Punnett has two mommies. I love that the game is set up so Sims start out with no sexual preference and that other Sims seem to not care about homosexual couples.

I never put warnings in my legacies, but I think the whole warning thing started back on simsecret when someone made a secret about a legacy saying that is used ~too many gay sims~ I noticed legacies put the warning a lot more since then.

I have to agree with you there; I work with special needs people, and I see a huge lack of them being portrayed in images. Still, I don't get hugely upset. The way to change things is to be an example yourself and share with people you know so they might change the way they think, hopefully for the better. I can really only influence my small sphere of the world.

What annoys me more is when disabled people are so rarely depicted in the media, it's either 1. they're in a wheelchair or 2. they're complete idiots. Not a good sampling of actual disabled people. The girl I work with - you wouldn't really be able to tell she has a disability until you interacted with her a bit, or she said something like, "I live in a group home" or "this is my (developmental therapy) tech."

Disabled does not equal wheelchair or complete retard. Same applies for sexuality: majority of a population is heterosexual does not equal heterosexism. Like it's been discussed already, people can find something offensive in just about anything.

Well, that is better than nothing. At least up to par with most countries in Africa now, according to this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave :p

Glad you're enjoying yourself! The national day is pretty spectacular to a foreigner, so I've heard. If you're near Oslo you need to go in to the city to see the parade.

That's pretty awesome.

LOL. I was probably being heterosexist by thinking "marriage" in a generic way! After I typed out my question it hit me, "that character's probably anti-gay marriage" (ie part of the "we don't want your stinking marriage" faction).

I'm seriously considering it.

I just have to word it the right way, though.

I think it's a great idea.

I've also been thinking about the big flurry of Sims 3 viral marketing and how we should do a challenge for SST members to do stories that take on the Sims 3 advertising content in the game (like sweet little Mr. Humble). It would be fun, and a nice antidote to the whole thing (which I'm not really a fan of at all).

We need to revive the SST comm. For real this time (and not just for a permanent account).

I have to agree with you there - it was another world, another time - People are more "enlightened" today about such things, but when they were younger one had to be carefull.

Ok, I'm working on some new challenge ideas RIGHT NOW.

I'm definitely going to make a "we welcome sims 3 stories" post, too.

I like your idea. It's going on my list (definitely slated to go up right as sims 3 starts sinking in).

(oof, I felt your jab there *snicker* Yeah, I'm a whore and would have "sold out" storytellers to gets me a paid account. I have no shame! NONE!! *is teasing*)

*sings* The mods are back in town.

We need to have a meeting (in a post or in chat), and see what Lamia says about it all, get some new routines in place.

(*snicker* Hey, it was tempting. I cant argue with that. I'm glad we didn't really have to make a choice. It saves us from looking like dickheads.)

Do you have a new haunt for chatting? My aol thing is on my other computer so I'd need to get it set up on the newer machine or find a new chat haunt.

I'm up for a modly chat (or even a locked post).

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A whole lot of isms, but mostly heterosexism.

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