Strange Tomato (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
strangetomato) wrote2009-05-14 10:52 am
strangetomato) wrote2009-05-14 10:52 am
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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.
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.
no subject
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