A whole lot of isms, but mostly heterosexism.

[strangetomato]

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.



 

Comments

[snootcb.livejournal.com]

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?

[cameoflage.livejournal.com]

Mm. I do agree that having unisex civil unions with the legal rights of marriage and then giving the term 'marriage' over to churches would solve the problem... but the issue with that is that people would still say 'marriage' most of the time in casual discourse (since already-ingrained culture is damn near impossible to force changes upon), which would probably undermine that attempt at separation.