strangetomato | 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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"Heterosexism" is a curious thing- even by having the word exist is a form of it; it's still implying (or flat out saying) that heterosexuality is the "norm, even though a "norm" in sexuality is a laughable concept at best. ("Heteronormative" is another concept that irks me to no end: if you're raised with the expectation that you'll fall in love and marry, why is it *hetero* normaltive if you marry a person of the same (or trans) gender? It's just f-ing normalitive, isn't it?! [granted, this is the same thing that pisses me off about "white trash"- it implies that the same behaviours are acceptable and expected in other races, but how dare a white person sink so low]).

Ugh, too many digressions. Sorry.

I haven't shown too much of the world at large in my story yet, because I've been focusing on the family. But, I've already shown Vid as being a bit heterosexist. He loves his nephew, and always looks out for him, but he's shown a fairly rigid idea of gender. (And all in one sentence! ::dork::)

Like you, I'm a fan of a certain degree of hermaphroism in aliens. (I especially wanted to explore that to become a better trans-ally- it still bothers me that situations like admission to the Michigan Women's Music Festival still gives me pause. My 1st reaction was, oh course let them in! they're women! But then I started thinking of the activities there, and how I would feel seeing a penis in that environment. I was torn- she has the right to keep her penis if she wants to, and I would be find dating a woman who had made that choice. But there are times I simply do not want to see a penis (which is most of the time, frankly), and it feels like a loose- loose.)

I'm sure as the story grows, I'll have characters that are less accepting/ jerks for whatever reason, but there's too much damn hate in the world already, and I'd like a bit of shelter from it (queer poc here). I'll let it occur naturally, but I'm not going to go out of my way to engineer it. (ex. Vid- wow, it seems like I'm picking on him, eh?- has never really been comfortable that Pascal's ex/best friend Abheijet's a full time drag queen. It just screws with his head on so many levels, among them the idea of his brother dating someone who owns a bra.)

I've done the searches for art as well, and I've found a lot of good stuff at getty images. Why not invite your co-worker to help you find more variety?

The younger of the 2 boys (not related) that I sit for is, at this moment, "pretty gay". He's never expressed an interest in boys (and in fact has stated that he plans to marry me), and loves a lot of the traditional boy things like cars, and trains. I also have a pic of him at school in a purple princess dress and a huge cheesey smile (his folks have a copy of it on the fridge), and we had a mani-pedi day when I painted his finger and toe nails yellow at his request. (And, I've caught him being a bit of a bitch to other kids a few times). His dad is a bit weirded out by it, but as a whole his parents are just letting him be himself, knowing that the things he loves at 4 may not matter when he's 24. And really, what's the difference to a 4 year old between dressing up as a pilot and as a princess? I've only ever discussed it with his mom, and neither of us came out and said, "yea, he's probably gay"- mostly because I wasn't sure how she'd react. Though I did say he'd be fine either way, he's a great kid and insanely cute- he'll have to beat everyone off with a stick, anyway.

As far as critique goes, I'd have to go back and re-read, since I don't think anything's caught my eye in a negative way. Honestly (wow, is it on my brain lately or what?) the Ripp/Stella arc was a leap *away* from heterosexism. I think it counts for a lot that you didn't go on the offensive and refuse to hear her, instead choosing to really look at yourself and your work.

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.)

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.

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.

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.)

A whole lot of isms, but mostly heterosexism.

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