Imagine being a kid in school. Your teacher comes up with an idea for class picture. Every student will draw pictures of their friends.
Everyone starts drawing enthusiasticly, and can’t wait to see what they look like in the drawings. When pictures are ready you notice that popular students have more pictures than rest, but nobody has done a drawing of you. The teacher notices that too, and asks if someone would do your picture. To your horror the class clown takes the job, and comes up with a caricature of you. Others are laughing, but you’re not. You feel awful. The teacher notices that. and asks again someone to do a drawing of you. One of the ‘good students’ starts drawing, but the result is forced. It’s just a drawing of a generic child wearing a shirt of same color as you a wearing. There’s no spirit, no soul in it. You start sensing that the class is geting frustrated with you. They want to be done with this. You ask quietly the teacher if you could do a drawing yourself.
After school your classmates confront you. Why did you have to make such a big deal out of it? The first picture was funny. The second picture was just fine! The drawing you did yourself wasn’t right, do you think you are that good-looking? There were other kids who got only one or two pictures of themselves. Who are you to demand special treatment? Maybe there would have been a picture of you if you weren’t such annoying baby, nobody likes you anyway, and nobody’s going to if you keep on being like that, you don’t deserve a drawing!
This could be story of bullying, but it’s also about how I see portraying LGBTQ+-people and PoC in mainstream entertainment.
Thanks to Fandoms and Feminism for inspiration!
This is a great metaphor.
This is the most accurate fucking post I’ve ever seen in my life oh my god.
(1/5) i know everyone has their reasons for why they fell in love this show and how important it is to them but i wanted to share the impact it had on my life and how exactly BBC’s ‘only time an audience is exposed to gay content is on tv’ proved to be absolutely true. In my country, homosexuality is criminalized and i literally don’t know any queer people IRL apart from the fictional characters i encounter & heteronormativity has been ingrained into my blood.
pearlrebs-deactivated20170202:
Watching Sherlock, being introduced to tjlc and identifying strongly with both john and sherlock did two things in my life: 1) even tho i’ve seen gay characters before, it was the first relationship that slapped my face and made me understand that the LOVE John and Sherlock share is just the gradual progression of profound friendship. I realized in retrospect that my best friend and I behaved exactly like johnlock and fell out with too much unsaid between us and a terrible heartbreak
that made no sense to me because i didn’t even entertain the possibility that i could have loved her, I didn’t think such a thing could happen until i had this realization and it was too late, which is why i relate to sherlock in tsot and the continuing angst SO much. It made my life make sense. And 2) for the first time i found characters in ‘mainstream media’ (cuz sherlock is popular here) who really taught me love has no gender or any boundaries whatsoever.
And i’ve realized since then i like girls and identify as queer. Bonus : Ultimately, they’re telling such a hopeful story. It not only validated my entire existence, which up to this point has been me being confused & unsatisfied, constantly questioning what the fuck was wrong with me for not being into guys the way I was into girls, even tho it’s the ‘default’, normal choice, but it also made me truly BELIEVE it doesn’t mean i won’t find happiness in life just because I’m queer
And i promised myself the day johnlock becomes canon, i’m going to come out to my family. Johnlock, Moffat & Gatiss and BBC are literally my heroes and this show has done so much for me. I know I’m not alone but I just wanted to say, this is probably what they intended to happen and it is happening. Things are changing and I’m so proud to be a part of this fandom. I can feel just how important this has come to be. ~~sorry if that was intense!
This is such an incredible story, and this is exactly the kind of thing I think of when people say “It’s just a TV show it doesn’t matter” like of COURSE it matters. It has helped people like you and like me realize who we are and it’s given people hope that the world can be a better place where gay and bi and trans characters and people can be happy and safe and fulfilled. Thank you so much for sharing this with me, I hope things get better in your country and that if you do come out your family and friends will give you the acceptance and love you deserve.
so I have a similar, if less beautiful and a bit trashier, story,
but anyway,
Johnlock helped me realize, in a roundabout way, that I was trans. Like, I was unemployed for a bit and had time on my hands so I got back into BBC Sherlock stuff, and one day I was looking at Johnlock fanart on Pinterest, which led to me looking at other gay art and photos (not lesbian gay, just dude gay, which in retrospect should have been a clue that I was a gay MAN, but I digress) and having the gay feels. Looking through the “gay” tags on Pinterest led me to an article or something about being genderqueer/non-binary, which led to me looking into it more, and I was suddenly like, Oh my god that’s me!! Now, that only lasted about two weeks before I was like, nope, I’m straight up binary transgender. But, for me personally (not everyone – non-binary identities are real and valid), I think discovering the “genderqueer” identity allowed me to ease myself into the idea of being trans, which I had always been of course but like, never really considered an option for me? Cuz there’s almost no information or representation for trans guys out there, and I had just never considered it…
So anyway, through the power of Johnlock and internet train-of-thought, I realized I was trans (and also very very gay). If not for this particular situation, god knows when I would have figured it out. It may well have been years.
So anyone who thinks LGBT (or any kind of) representation in media isn’t important is dead wrong.
God bless TJLC
When you watch Torchwood there is a warning at the very beginning that some scenes may offend or disturb people, so if you allow your children to sit and watch it with you that’s your responsibility, it’s not ours anymore. We kissed, we held each other, we lay on top of each other in bed… and there were lots of complaints about that. Nobody complained that I was shot in the head four times, there were burning people in ovens, that I was stabbed by a mob of 50 people hundreds of times, and I was hanging dripping my blood in a pit. So that’s what confuses me, because you’re not complaining about gay sex, you’re complaining about two men kissing. And it’s 2011. And people say, “Well why should we have that on television?” Because the BBC have to represent the greater public — and there are gay people out there who pay their television license. For people to complain, that’s your prerogative — but you know what, none of them turned it off! They were just embarrassed because it put them in a position where they had to explain things to their kids or their family which probably should have been explained a long time ago.
John Barrowman.
Barrowman, everyone.
This is why I love him, and why I will always love him.
(via thedoctorandthewoman)
The fact that people complain about sex, while never complaining about violence is so very revealing about our society.
(via threebeerproblem)
IF YOU ARE COMFORTABLE EXPLAINING “COUNTRYCIDE” AND “CHILDREN OF EARTH” BUT NOT SAME-SEX RELATIONSHIPS TO YOUR CHILDREN
GET THE ACTUAL FUCK OUT.
(via armydoctorpeterpotter)
This is EXACTLY what my problem was with Abbington when she complained about the presence of homoerotic fanart involving a character played by Martin. It’s WAY easier to find pics of Martin in naked/hetero scenes, or either of them with a gun, than it is to find Johnlock fanart. Barrowman nails it perfectly: nobody’s complaining about the violence; they’re complaining about the gay. And secondly, it’s no one’s job but a parent’s to control what their kids see. Bless, Barrowman. Bless.
(via silentauroriamthereal)
YES YES YES YES YES YES, ALL OF THE ABOVE. My children have asked me about John and Sherlock specifically, because I talk about it so damned much. And I simply say they’re in love and I wish they’d be together. And my children, bless them, have never flinched at the idea of two men being in love. They just agree they should be together if they love each other. We listen to my Johnlock mix of music, and my daughter asked me about certain songs, and I say it just reminds me of them because it’s about two people who really love each other a lot.
Kids should understand that love is love. If you teach them anything else about same sex relationships, it’s planting a seed of bigotry.
(via anigrrrl2)