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

[smjoshsims.livejournal.com]

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.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

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.

[ikichi.livejournal.com]

That's a fantastic compromise. Even if there were an even number of het elders, how many of them would be divorced/widdowed and never remarried? The couple-centric bit is another good point.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Yeah, once she said it, I totally agreed. We just hadn't thought of that because we were more focused on showing them happy and active, and mostly those images were of couples.

I did manage to find some that were better, I think.