Petition for fandoms to start referring to slash ships as ‘wholesome’ instead of ‘sinning’ because mlm relationships are not sinful
my ships are all sin how dare u say this
I am a bi man and to have the love I feel for other men playfully called ‘sin’ contributes to internalized homophobia as well as societal homophobia, considering it is the very same language used by conversion therapy and to uphold homophobic laws
I don’t disagree with the original post but once AGAIN I would like to point out the self-protective nature of the “sinning” narrative. It’s defiant and reclamatory. “Yeah, I’m a sinner, and so? What are you going to do about it?” Maybe it seems unnecessary in tumblr circles, where queerness is a badge of honor. Tumblr isn’t the world, however. This is a legitimate coping mechanism and it disturbs me to see people calling it “internalized homophobia”.
Important thing to consider here.
Women and queer people (obvious overlap there) are constantly told that they are sinful for having any kind of sexuality at all. Denying that and emphasizing the wholesomeness of their sexuality is one way of defending themselves, but it is a long long road where every feature of their sexuality must again be defended. “Yeah, we’re sinful! So what? I’m sinning right now, watch me. Keep your bible out of my bedroom” is another way to fight back.
This is not all that different from the devide between LGBT people that are constantly emphasizing how normal LGBT people are, and queer people who are proud of every weird and freaky aspect of their gender and sexuality and make zero attempts to justify their existence as ‘normal’ because ‘normal’ is a terrible concept.
Does that mean every single shipper who ever called their ship a sin did so in a way that reaffirms the right to live free from the concept of sinfulness? No. But we need to at the very least consider that that is part of the narrative around sinful ships and not condemn the language whenever we see it.
But the thing here is that I can use something that has been used against me to empower myself. As a mlm I could and I have.
But straight people calling us sinful is just homophobia. Plain as that.
Straight women can (and do) reclaim words that had been used against their sexuality, but should leave us alone.
1. The slash community has a LOOOOOOOOT of queer writers and readers. In some communities queer shippers outnumber straight shippers by a large margin.*
2. Straight women that describe their shipping as ‘sinful’ can also be reffering to the fact that they read and/or produce porn. In which case the
“Yeah, we’re sinful! I’m writing porn right now! So what?” is a response to the sexist idea that “women shouldn’t read porn”, not a response to homophobia.
3. It is possible for straight people to rejecting concepts like ‘virtuous’ and ‘normal’ and celebrate sinfulness and strangeness as part of their position as allies to queerness. You may think that is an inappropriate form of allyship, but not everyone does and it’s certainly not right to assume that the motivation of these straight people is spreading homophobia.
Obviously, it is possible for people to create a ‘shipping as sinful’ narrative in a homophobic way, but that is certainly not always the case and we also need to consider queer shippers, feminist shippers rejecting sexist pressures, and complex situations where
“Yeah, we’re sinful! So what?” responds both to sexism and homophobia from a position of both self-empowerment and allyship.
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* It amazes me how LGBT activists keep ignoring how queer many shipping communities are. Could it be that blatant queer sexuality being celebrated publically interferes with their goals of presenting the LGBT movement as white, middle class, christian, married and easy to integrate into civil society? Could it be that labelling shipping communities ‘straight’ makes it easier to distance themselves from all the queer sex being written about by queer people?
QueerAnarchism 