Opposition Research

Anonymous asks:

Why is it okay to headcanon canonly straight and cis characters as being LGBT+? I mean, i do it but sometimes i see posts on my dash that goes like "this character is straight, stop saying he's bi!!!"

goodpositivitylgbt:

I’ll try to explain the best I can my thoughts on this, because I’ve never actually seen anyone on my dash supporting such a viewpoint.

Because when you headcanon an cis and straight character as LGBT+, you aren’t majorly detracting from the representation of cis or straight people. 

Straight people have representation every where. Turn on tv. Look in a YA book. If there’s a not-straight (or somehow by an even smaller chance, not cis) character, chances are they’re a side character. If the lead seems to be interested in the same gender, it’s often not explicitly stated, or it’s q*eer baiting. 

The little representation that I know of usually doesn’t have bisexual people in it, looking at your example here, or if they do it still has the chance of running the “I don’t like labels” routine, and I can’t think of a single mainstream show or book that has a canonically pan, ace, ply, or aro lead (with maybe the exception of Deadpool as if I recall he was stated out of the movie that he’s pan and I think Reynolds wants it to be more blatant in any future films). 

Who does it hurt to headcanon a straight character as something else? Absolutely no one. If a straight person is that upset about it, they can just look to any of the other plentiful amounts of straight characters out there. Heteromantic heterosexuality has tons of representation. The same goes for trans headcanons- nearly every character in mainstream media that I can think of is cisgender, it detracts absolutely nothing from cis people to headcanon a character as trans. 

On the other hand, it detracts a lot from LGBT+ people to try and make out a not LGBP+ character as straight, or a trans character as cis. Because we aren’t the mainstream always socially acceptable group to portray. Trying to interpret an LGBPA+ character to be heteromantic and heterosexual, imo, is like saying “Yes, you have this character as representation. However, this character’s LGBT+  identity makes me uncomfortable, so I’m going to believe they’re completely cis and straight because you can’t really stop me.”

Of course, no one is mandated to agree with every LGBT+ headcanon. But there’s a difference between not agreeing with it and just shrugging it off- or even blacklisting it if it really annoys you that much- and expressing legitimate annoyance with people for using that character to find comfort and (fan created) representation in.

Short answer: It’s ok to headcanon cis and straight characters as being not cis or not straight because doing so doesn’t try to detract or put into question representation from an under-represented group, and can bring comfort to LGBT+ people. Headcanoning LGBT+ characters as not being LGBT+, however, does detract from an under represented group.

Followers, feel free to add on with more info or reasons if you like, or to correct me if I’ve said something incorrect here.

@goodpositivitylgbt I think it’s also important to touch on the idea of a headcanon being inclusive vs exclusive.

The idea of ‘This character can’t be [x] because they’re [y]’ is based on the idea that there is a single authoritative version of the character, and we’re all arguing about what that authoritative version is. A lot of the time, this isn’t the case, and people making headcanons are simply reinterpreting the character as one of many possible variants given the text of the work(s) they appear in.

That said, the people who talk about how someone can’t be [x] because they’re [y] do have a legitimate gripe from their own perspective. There is no other character like Garnet. There is no other character like Lisa Simpson. There is no other character like Toby Ziegler. (I may have dated myself with those examples.) We talk a lot about the quantity of characters, and that’s important — but what we don’t talk about is the fact that the quality of each individual character matters. There are almost certainly some straight people who have a favourite character, see a popular LGBT+ headcanon for that character, and feel like that interpretation has become the authoritative one, which threatens their identification with that character.

The reason this is threatening to that person, however, is because they believe only one interpretation of a character can be valid at the same time. The people who argue for the straightness of a headcanon LGBT character don’t want to feel like their specific interpretation is being taken away from them, and the people who argue for the straightness of a canonically LGBT+ character are usually reactionaries trying to erase what few LGBT people exist in media out of spite.

So the problem is very rarely the headcanon itself. A lot more often, it’s how people interpret the headcanon as excluding all other possibilities for that character.