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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It's amazing how easy it is to be heterosexist. Unlike homophobia, you do it by default, by doing nothing.
The problem is when you (general you) get accused, directly or by insinuations, of being discriminatory/homophobic, by someone who doesn't know you, for doing nothing, as not being constantly mentioning it.

For example I live in Miami, and there's a huge LGBT movement here specially in some areas (not so much in other parts of fl tho). I have lots of gay/lesbians friends and so does almost everyone I know. Same I see with my daughter and her friends, who are in high school, where they have a strong lgbt acceptance in general too.

Of course there is always close minded people between adults and bullying between teens, but in general for us its a pretty normal matter, so on that sense, mentioning it too much may sound slightly discriminatory too. (and I mean, mentioning, as in it pointing it out for being a difference, not as in normally talking about the topic)

As for sim stories, guess what each one lives and sees in RL influences the way of writing and personal take on the characters. I personally enjoy a bit more of fantasy and surrealism on a sim story (and all stories in general, for that matter), but for me for example, a high number of same sex couple on a game isn't that unrealistic either (I just have to go to the beach to actually see high numbers of same sex couple in RL anyways).

Firstly, this topic is very, very interesting.

Secondly, the lesbian is very very fresh for calling you heterosexist- which I didn't even know existed but I am aware of now. It's weird that by simply not choosing to include a same sex couple you suddenly become a villain since that's the norm EVERYWHERE- and you can't hurt people's delicate sensibilities by showing a same sex couple, EVER. (And plus, how could they expect you to show a same sex couple using old people? Don't they know that gay people don't age?!?!

As a creator and reader of Sim Stories, I don't think about it, to be honest. I see characters as characters, I don't think about their sexuality. For example, Franny is FRANNY, when describing him I never mention that he's gay. It's just not important to me. I can see why people would notice if NO ONE was gay though.

On a random note, I always roll for my Sims sexuality using ACR- even if they're legacy heirs. *shrug*

Interesting topic, soul.

Yeah, I'm speaking more about heterosexism than homophobia there. I can be heterosexist be simply not including any reference to LGBT in something, and thus rendering them invisible. Or saying something that portrays heterosexuality to be the default. I don't see anything wrong with someone objecting to it. It was totally in her right to point out that I was negating her existence by not including her, I think. It's just not always easy to keep on top of those things.

I see what you mean about it being a non-issue for you if it's a part of your everyday life, but I assume you don't go around and never mention it, right? That's the difference. It obviously comes up on it's own in casual reference, like mentioning someone's boyfriend, etc. That's different than the example of the poster, I think.

And yeah, mentioning it too much. I'm not sure about that side of it, but I suppose it could make people uncomfortable to make a big deal of it, but to me it's like feminism in that people feel the need to make a big deal about it until is actually a non-issue, and we're not quite there yet (society as a whole).

I don't see anything wrong with people choosing to populate their sim world however they want either. It's a great way to explore those things for themselves and to make it reflect their reality or a reality they would like to see.

I do feel a little uncomfortable about the tone of some of the portrayals of gay sims in legacies and stories at times (more legacies than stories), I must admit. I'm wary of insensitive portrayals, where it's obviously a novelty and the butt of a joke (I'm not too fond of the whole "lol buttsex" thing, for example). I'm not saying there's no room for humour here, but some of it does feel disrespectful to me (and that's a personal reaction).

Edited 2009-05-14 15:03 (UTC)

Glad you think so. I thought it was pretty interesting (especially being on the side that's being criticized this time).

Yeah, well she's one of those Level 10 feminists (where I'm still working on enough exp. points to get to like Level 4 or something like that :P). That's the crowd I run with these days, so my awareness level has gone WAY up.

It's not so much that I was a villain. In fact, she wasn't nasty about it at all. She said something like, "these are pretty heterosexual images" and went on to talk about ways to cut down on the heterosexism a little. I was just thrilled to find pics of elderly people dancing, so I hadn't even thought about it (and neither did my boss).

You do bring up an interesting point there. I'm not sure it's a good idea to show obviously gay couples on the poster either, because then it would instantly be read as a "gay event" by most people. She actually suggested showing a more mixed group that was less couple-centric as a compromise. It does make sense because the older we get, the less men there are. The event will be mostly single women, either way.

How nice to be young forever. LUCKY. XD

I think your approach is a good one. You can see the characters sexuality without ever mentioning it, and that avoids the whole issue of treating it in a certain way. I like to directly refer to it because I like to explore it in my writing and have the characters explore it too, but that does leave me wondering if I'm ever being insensitive about it. I'm sure someone could react that way. There's almost always someone who won't like what you're doing.

I do that too for all sims born in-game and all the townies/NPCs. Anyone who doesn't need to be one way or another for the story is left to chance.

Thanks. I like a good discussion every now and then.

Hm. This is a really interesting topic, I think. Like you said, it's so easy to fall into the trap of simply not considering a certain group in our everyday actions.

However, I think the person who called you out was kind of out of line. Unlike homophobia, heterosexism is more just simply not thinking -- there was obviously nothing intentionally offensive about your community poster! I think in this case, a simple, "Gee it's a shame that there aren't any same-sex couples on the poster" would have sufficed.

That being said, I also think a lot of people get way, way too worked up about their groups not being properly represented. Obviously it's important to have people of all different races and backgrounds represented in popular culture, but at the same time, it's simply not possible to represent every social group ALL of the time. In a situation like this, it just really doesn't seem like that big of a deal -- it's a poster for a community event, not a TV show that continually ignores the existence of homosexuality.

I think it's good that she mentioned it, but I definitely wouldn't call you heterosexist. Yes, you overlooked sexuality this one time, but you're usually very aware of it. I try to be, but I do definitely default to heterosexism most of the time, which I'm trying to work on.

Haha, I'd be totally cool if my son/daughter ended up being gay or bisexual or anything like that. But I'd also probably worry about it too, especially depending on where he/she grew up. If I were where Ale is, I probably wouldn't even think about it, but I grew up in a very conservative area and I know what it can do to kids growing up. There's actually a documentary that was made about Jim Wheeler who went to our high school and was an artist and a poet and also he was gay. He ended up committing suicide a few years later.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_in_Bold

http://www.jimwheeler.org/

Since then, things have definitely changed. In my Freshman year of high school, they instated a Gay-Straight Alliance which has really done wonders for the school. So things are getting better, but it's still good to keep talking about sexuality and gender and heterosexism.

I do think, at the end of the day, the best way to approach gay characters is to approach them as characters. They're people first and their sexuality should not be their defining trait.

That's actually why I love how you write. There's so much variety and everyone is written in ways put their character and their habits above their sexuality. Franny is Franny. He's not the token gay. Same with Beau or Ripp or Jaxy.

I'm flip flopping here. I'm not sold on the "heterosexist" thing. So if you don't go around making sure you've gone to great pains to include any and every race/religion/gender/sexual orientation. . .see where I'm going with this. . .then your automatically "anti" or "ist" toward the one you forgot?

It's like you have to get pre-offended at everything to make sure you don't accidentally step on a toe you may not have even known existed.

And in the case of the poster you were making, did the woman who brought up the "heterosexism" stop to think that maybe the old folks coming to the event might be offended by same sex images? (yes, I realize in the great utopia we all strive to live in, they shouldn't but let's be realistic) It's kind of a cop out but when you're dealing with folks of an older generation, they just might not be that open to seeing two little old lesbians partying down. AND, there's a time and a place for "speaking out" and making a statement on a poster for an old people shin dig just might not be the right place to wave the gay rainbow flag.

I guess that take on it (the choose your battles thing) comes into play with sim stories. If I wanted to make a statement, I'd write a story that did just that. But when I'm writing sim stories, I don't want to have to work that hard, to educate readers about real world issues. And, let's be honest, most folks reading sim stories aren't the ones that need preached to anyway.

I'm also in smjoshsim's "I don't think about it" camp. I don't think about a sims orientation until something in game makes me think about it. I will admit that once I've type cast a sim as one persuassion or another it's weird for me to see them any other way *eyes Pascal Curious*.

(this whole topic got me to thinking, too, that you just don't see a lot of sim stories where the "wrong" side of an issue is shown as "right"--like a character that will NEVER change their stripes--even a die hard "I hate X" character always comes around a bit. Makes me kind of keen to write a truly non-sympathetic main character, someone you really dislike but who you still want to read about).

I don't think I have too much to say on the topic of real life heterosexism, except that yes, it's very, very easy to be so without even thinking about it, because of the society we live in. Also, absolute constant vigilance is difficult unless you care really, REALLY deeply about something, and while you can strongly support something you're usually not at that level of REALLY deep care unless you're part of the offended group yourself (as such I'm probably quicker to notice sexism than heterosexism, etc).

And yes, depictions of elders actually living life are kind of hard to come by, I can certainly see your problem there. Grey hair = almost dead, RIGHT? Ugh.

As for sims, well... I do have some same sex couples in my game, and I'm trying to have more, but I very often fall into the trap of most of my sims being heterosexual - purely because I love breeding them together so much. :p I really like pairing sims together and seeing how their offspring turns out, and well, if the sims are gay that's not going to happen. I could use that pregnancy-for-all hack, but... I don't know, it just makes things a little too unrealistic. Reproductive abilities is the one big thing that really IS a significant difference between males and females. Also, if all men could have babies, that would make alien abductions less awesome.

I don't know what it is about me and my obession with breeding sims, I just like seeing the genetics mix, I guess, in a bit of a mad scientist manner. I don't even like most kids very much in real life (this is very often a fault of their parents, though), and don't know if I ever want any of my own. :p

I kind of agree and disagree with this? Like, I definitely don't think I would have called Strange heterosexist just because she didn't think about homosexuality and equal representation this one time, but the poster itself probably does come across as heterosexist.

And I agree that yeah, it is impossible to represent every single group, but I can imagine that if you belong to a minority that is constantly not represented it will eventually get to you. I think the poster DOES matter - even if it's not a HUGE deal. The little things are meaningful.

Also, what I'd really love to see is homosexuality dealt with in cartoons or kids television. I know that seems sort of random, but it's really something that you don't get to see and it'd be nice for kids to be presented with openly gay characters to relate to. :\

Also, mostly unrelated, May 17th is also my country's (Norway) national day. Hee.

Your whole country is gay? I didn't know that. :P

The date is actually the date the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses.

Oh man, I know people like to complain about how things were better 'back in the day', but knowing that we're beyond things like that makes me believe that we are still moving forward. :3

I was more thinking that there are probably a LOT of groups that aren't represented in culture -- for example, in the United States people of Asian and African-American descent are usually represented in most instances, but homosexuals as well as Native Americans, people of Middle Eastern and Indian descent, etc. are often not represented. It seems to me that you'd be hard-pressed to find something that represents EVERYONE at all times.

To me it just seems like more of a "choose your battles" kind of thing. While I'm sure it must be irritating to feel like you're not being represented on a community event poster, there are bigger fish to fry -- your example of homosexuality in cartoons and children's programs is a great one -- and I just feel like there are some things you just have to let go. Aside from white males, almost everyone faces prejudice or misrepresentation or lack of representation in American culture, and things would probably get out of hand if everyone was constantly challenging everything that they saw.

Does that make sense? I've been writing papers for school for two weeks now and my brain is absolute mush so I'm not sure if I'm even explaining correctly what I'm trying to say. I wasn't meaning to say that it doesn't matter at all that there were no same-sex couples on the poster -- just that maybe that something like that isn't the kind of thing that is worth getting upset over.

It might as well be - I read today that Norway (along with Iceland and Sweden) are on the top of some list US "researchers" have made over countries with the most children born out of wedlock. No kidding. It's a whole 54%, zomg!!! (Never mind that a LOT of people choose to coinhabit instead of getting married, which in most cases is pretty much the same thing, even legally.) But yes, my country is a heathen godless state of fornication and bastard children and - as of last year - legal gay marriage, so it only makes sense that the national day is on the official Gay Day. ;)

Seriously, right. Fuck that.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and declare that things were definitely NOT better back in the day.

For starters, I'm pretty fond of being considered a person. *arches brows*

So if you don't go around making sure you've gone to great pains to include any and every race/religion/gender/sexual orientation. . .see where I'm going with this. . .then your automatically "anti" or "ist" toward the one you forgot?

It's like you have to get pre-offended at everything to make sure you don't accidentally step on a toe you may not have even known existed.

This is what I was trying to communicate, but you did so much more eloquently. :)

This may not be a popular opinion, but oh well:

Expecting people to go out of their way to make sure that everything they do depicts some percentage of (insert minority here) is just overwhelming PC bullshit. That's doubly true when it comes to a situation wherein the person in question is working with someone else's source material. If anyone out there is 'heterosexist' (and how I hate that term, let me tell you), it's the makers of the clip art...

...but like it or not, heterosexuality is the norm. That's what you call it when a large majority is one way and not the other. And that means that if you're depicting a small group or working with other people's source material or doing something on the fly, it's quite likely that you just aren't going to get a diverse group for that particular depiction.

If it were a pattern in someone's behavior (always white always straight always pretty whatever) then calling them on it is one thing. But as a one-time thing? My reaction would be to tell the person to stop being so sensitive.

My biggest problem with the notion that all depictions must include some minorities is that it tends to reduce it to "Make sure all the different people are there", which emphasizes the 'different', aka 'not like us'. Doing it over time is more natural and tends to shore up the idea that 'they' are actually a part of 'us'. Which is, I believe, how it should be.

To bring it to Sims stuff: I tend to let ACR and my Sims decide who is attracted to who. I leave turn-ons at their default (except for tweaking in existing relationships). I let ACR or heart-farting pick the gender and lightning bolts pick the person as a rule (though for story reasons I sometimes do something else). In short, I tend to let it work how it does in the real world... what people like is what they like. I did deliberately make the decision to generally have my populations blind to gender preference (including installing the same-sex marriage hack) because in general I'd prefer to just have it work that way, but for story reasons I'd put in homophobia or worries about it if I felt it were appropriate to the setting (and, in fact, I have). I don't go out of my way to make sure some percentage of every generation or whatever is gay, or that some percentage of my townies are black, or whatever; I let randomness take care of it. I even make custom townies pseudo-randomly (pseudo- because there are some things I tend not to do, like skin 4 green-eyed blondes with perfect untweaked face 1 templates named Viktor Chen). Diversity is good; artificially mathematically-derived diversity is silly.

Hee, yeah I think most of it is just nostalgia anyway. I do kind of think it's a bit sad that kids would rather play on the computer than go out and play (although that's not really true in my house - Em and Dan are almost always outside when the weather is nice), but for the most part I think we're moving on to a much better place.

Also, I just read this and it was awesome: http://www.shorpy.com/node/6128

Totally agreed on that. Minor annoyances like horrible mobile ringtones aside, nothing was better back in the day.

Hee, yeah I gotcha. I know it would be next to impossible to represent every group or anything like that. I don't think Strange should HAVE to do it either, because well... it'd take years and nothing would get done obviously. So I'm sure the poster is fine and that after awhile it's just getting nitpicky. But I can also understand why the other person who wasn't being represented (especially if this is something that happens A LOT) would speak up and say: "Hey, you forgot about me."

And yeah, there are bigger issues, but I don't think that takes away from some of the smaller things either. And it's always good when someone makes aware of something that you honestly just hadn't thought of. So I think it's good that the lady spoke up, but yeah I definitely would never say that Strange is heterosexist because... she's really not. Just talking to her you can tell that she is very aware of sexuality and representation and all that good stuff.

Exactly. It's not that she shouldn't have said anything about it, but maybe the way she brought it up could have been a bit politer since there was obviously not any bad intentions behind the poster.

Oh man, I kind of hate cell phones. Like, I think they are useful and sensible, but I HAAAATE when you're talking to someone and they check their phone or they start texting. It's the worst.

For some reason this made me want to dance.

Let's all move to this heathen country.

One of the things that I find genuinely upsetting in Sims 2 fandom is when sim stories and legacies actually put up warnings for gay sims. As if it were exceptional. As if it were Other. I don't think anyone's doing it out of genuine malice - like you say, it's so unconscious that even people who have had a lot of space to work on this mess up, because it's part of the culture right now, and it's so subtly beaten into our heads every day of our lives that we don't even register what we're doing until it's pointed out. (And then we do the Oh-Shit-How-Did-I-Not-See-That!? dance.) That's the magic of kyriarchy!

The conflict-avoidance is strong in me, but I often think I should leave a comment saying something like, "I hope you're going to warn for heterosexual sims, too," and I think I have to suck it up and start saying something. I mean, it's not a huge thing, in the scheme of things, but it's the little grains of sand that add up to a beach that stretches on for centuries, you know? The little things are what inures us to the point where the big things, the horrific things, have a place to happen.

Personally when I started out on my own story I pretty much went with, "It's a happy fluffy utopia where no one is a jerk!" because I just didn't feel like dealing with it in my happy melodrama fun time. But as I kept going I slowly realised that, nope, it's not going to happen that way. Because there were little things, little hints, and as I dug deeper it became so much more messed up, more like out here. It's like background radiation that seeps into everything and affects my people in such seemingly small ways, but it's constant, and it adds up, and they fight against it admirably, but it wears them down. It makes them brittle. I don't know if I'll ever tackle it head-on in the story itself, but it's there, in the background, informing everything.

...Anyway. I think I've only commented here once before, because, uh. I'm sort of intimidated by you because I think you're pretty neat. I just wanted to say thank you for opening up such a discussion here, and to wave my little "Me, too!" flag.

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A whole lot of isms, but mostly heterosexism.

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