loudest-subtext-in-television:
One of the many reasons Johnlock is so important and why I simply MUST believe in tjlc:
Tagged some of my personal favorite Johnlockers.
(This article talks about the homophobia generation gap that makes it more difficult for older people to come out.)
This is a really important point and why recent criticisms of TJLC have literally made me nauseated: there are real, actual people (not just celebrities) who are older and deal with a LOT more internalized oppression, and it is NOT the case that you could authentically represent these people while making it obvious to everyone that they’re gay: in real life, it is not obvious to everyone that these people are gay. When every gay story on television is obvious to everyone from the start, it alienates queer people who can’t relate to that.
The BBC report identified a need for late-in-life coming out stories, and stories about people who are not obviously gay, and for good reason: not only do queer people who have already come out late in life deserve to have their story represented, but there are closeted people who aren’t getting any younger who NEED to see a story that shows them a happy way out of the closet. Understand this is NOT hyperbole: the clock is ticking on these people having a chance for a happy life. A story about someone who doesn’t seem to be in the closet very long (in terms of a show) or doesn’t seem to have truly, truly struggled with their orientation does not resonate with those people. They don’t see themselves in that character, and they do not feel that they could take the actions that character takes: they only perceive that it’s not as difficult for that character as it is for them, and they feel more alone. To them, the gay community is behind glass and they can’t see a way to the other side. Fast and obvious representation is not representation for these people.
John Watson, on the other hand, will resonate with a ton of those people, precisely because he says he’s “not gay” and he seems straight to most people. If that VERY AUTHENTIC, VERY NUANCED portrayal gives even a handful of people the courage to come out of the closet and quit living their lives in quiet misery, that is nothing but GOOD. To suggest otherwise is APPALLING.
So when people twist themselves in knots trying to find some way to say that canonical Johnlock would be regressive, it actually makes me sick: if they had their way, only a very narrow spectrum of queer experience would be allowable “representation” (if you could even call it that), and older closeted people — the people who, in real life, deny being gay and most people assume to be straight — wouldn’t deserve representation because, well, someone just doesn’t like it for nitpicky ideological reasons. This is exactly the same marginalizing bullshit I pointed out in the queerbaiting section of the Softly, Softly meta: it’s saying that you only deserve representation if you’re queer enough, and queer in the right ways, and those goalposts move depending on whomever has decreed himself the arbiter of appropriate queerness. If your life experience falls outside their standards, well, fuck you I guess! That’s what you get for not being gay enough! That’s what you get for not being out enough, soon enough!
Meanwhile, actual queer people are killing themselves or otherwise dying closeted. And if someone doesn’t realize that those people wouldn’t identify with the queer characters currently on TV; if someone can’t understand that queerness on television is almost always depicted as too easy or too straightforward for these people and alienates them; if people don’t realize that the only alternate these people can currently relate to are utterly tragic depictions; if someone seriously thinks John and Sherlock’s relationship isn’t gay in the right way, on the right timetable (i.e. someone’s own personal timetable); then there is literally nothing we can say to convince them, because they’re lacking in basic empathy and logic. They genuinely would rather that the world conform to their personal quirks and demands than see actual queer representation on television — and they genuinely think that queerbaiting (what the show will amount to if TJLC isn’t true) is somehow better. So they wring their hands on the internet and attack the people who want their stories represented, or else care about seeing those stories represented. Alright.
To put it bluntly: it’s fucked up and disgusting, and the reason why I finally went on an ignore spree today. Before today, I had never ignored anyone unless they had sent me multiple harassing messages. But throwing entire subsets of the queer population under the bus, demanding that we neglect their representation in favor of the same tired kind of queer representation that has been alienating those people, all in the name of some arbitrary standard of purity that changes from person to person, makes me genuinely fucking livid. It also makes me livid that people are continually trying to mindfuck queer people into thinking that implicit representation is enough, and that they’re somehow oppressing themselves by wanting explicit representation. I have zero respect for that. Zero. I cannot respect anyone who makes that argument with a straight face, and they’re too far-gone to be productively engaged with. They can stay in their hateful lane and run their mouths and roll around in their Jenga tower of flimsy pseudointellectual constructs, meanwhile the majority of the queer population (as evidenced by the BBC research on what the majority of LGB audiences want) will be perfectly happy when Johnlock becomes canon, and actual human beings will feel less alone in the world.
It’s that simple. If Johnlock becomes canon, then actual human beings maybe won’t kill themselves or die closeted. That’s worth all the haters in the world — and thankfully, there aren’t that many haters: there’s just a handful who lack the self-restraint to keep from stirring shit every other day. Seriously: if Johnlock becomes canon there will be more happiness in the world, full stop; no one’s life is going to be worse if Johnlock becomes canon, Jesus fucking Christ. The only negativity we’re going to hear on that day is these people bleating their same tired bullshit. So I’m done with it, they’re on ignore.
For perspective, I still get literally half a dozen or so messages per day from people who are newly convinced of TJLC based on meta: a single day of that already outnumbers the hate blogs. I have heard from literally thousands of people who are happy as fuck that Johnlock could become canon, hundreds of whom have expressed to me how much it would mean to them personally because they’re queer and it hasn’t been easy for them. A handful of people who have elected to lose the thread of reality and wander off into a mirror maze of confused semantics based on clumsily-skimmed Tumblr posts are nothing, absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things.
Everyone can make their own decision about whether they want to engage with people who have literally set themselves up so they cannot be pleased by anything and have proven they don’t actually understand what TJLC is, but if anyone wants the comfort of hearing it said: it is a completely rational and acceptable decision to put them on ignore and focus on the positive.
—
About | Meta Masterlist | Tags | FAQ