This is a backup of Queeranarchism.Tumblr.com. —- Due to the back-up process this site currently includes almost everything I have ever reblogged, so click the text 'posts by queeranarchism tumblr' in the menu option if you want to go directly to posts I have written myself.
“Shiro is gay, you can’t make him bi/pan for your ships” discourse drains me, because no one has issues doing that to someone canonly straight. Shiro is ambiguous. As a bi person this is actually making me feel ill, like, how often is it bi/m-spec gets used for mlm/wlw ships, but now that it’s m/f it’s suddenly “using” the orientation? Like, I know it’s not a personal attack on myself or really my orientation, but the way it’s presented makes me feel so horribly bad. – VTS 1/?
Because it’s like, “you have to be woke to have this ambiguous character bi/pan and do it for the right and pure reasons”. I don’t ship Shiro, I don’t ship in Voltron at all. He’s a hot buff Asian man and I want him to be bi. There’s nothing woke with what I want, I just really think Bi Shiro is nice. I don’t feel used, nor like my orientation is being used if bi Shiro is used for something like shallura. But people are getting mad, saying he’s gay or nothing. -VTS 2/?
He’s ambiguous and it’s transformative media, why is this happening? Why is this coming from a pro-ship/anti-anti circle? I’m at the point where I want it off my dash because I’m starting to feel gross for just being bi again. I’m only valid if I’m with guys is a thought coming in, and it’s not a personal attack, but… Gods does it feel like it. M-Spec identities are used to make straight characters available for the same sex/gender. -VTS 3/?
But then opposite and it’s wrong. It’s like kicking m-spec out of pride for having a “straight” relationship, that’s exactly how it feels. It literally makes me feel the same thing, and the same discourse over queer politics and shit, over a ship. Over a fictional character. Hell this debate goes on for REAL PEOPLE and it’s horrible. Like, stop, please. Why are people like this? Just leave it alone, stop attacking people, is that really hard to ask? – VTS 4/4
Because, and this was blatantly clear with antis and less so with anti-antis for how they used to present themselves (they’re a little more honest these days), it’s always about ship wars and identity politics. Everything else that is added on top of it –like tumblr’s beloved biphobia– is a bonus to gain the upper hand.
Don’t let it get to you. You have total free reign on headcanons, and whatever hung up they have with those is their problem, not yours.
“Don’t let it get to you. You have total free reign on headcanons, and whatever hung up they have with those is their problem, not yours.”
The fandom rule has always been ‘you do you.’ You can write/draw/ship/headcanon anything you want, and no one can tell you it’s wrong. Because fandom is not representation and it was never supposed to be. You can play around with any character’s gender and sexuality as much as you like; you can change their ethnicity and religion, you can do an AU from a different time period, you can turn them into a wizard or werewolf or android.
Fandom is people’s thought experiments: “What if?” What if Shiro was bi? How would his life have been different? How would others have related to him? How would his lived experiences be different from gay!Shiro or straight!Shiro? What if Shiro thought he was gay but then he fell in love with a woman, how would he react to that? What if I ship Shiro with Keith but Keith was a cis woman? What if Keith was turned into a cis woman through magic/science, how would that affect their relationship? What if Shiro was a trans man? What if, what if, what if… And then you go explore that ‘what if’ and see where it takes you, and hopefully you’ll produce some good fiction or art and maybe you’ll learn something about yourself in the process.
What antis conveniently ignore so they can feel powerful by policing other people is that minority representation pertains to mainstream media only. Fan creators headcanoning a canonically straight character as gay is not lgbt+ representation; it takes actual lgbt+ characters on screen to achieve representation, which is why lgbt+ activists have been campaigning for decades to put them there. And it follows that, if headcanoning a straight character as gay is not representation, then headcanoning a gay character as bi or even straight is not non-representation. You can’t remove a character’s canonical representation by headcanoning them differently. If Shiro has been shown to be canonically gay, then he will remain canonically gay no matter how you choose to portray him. You cannot make him canonically not-gay by asking “but what if he were bi?” It just doesn’t work that way.
It all boils down to fandom’s internalisation of American Puritanism, where sex is TERRIBLE and TRAUMATISING and must be STRICTLY POLICED and ONLY PERFORMED IN THE SANCTIONED MANNER. You can tell by the fact that no anti has ever argued against AUs of winged telepathic alien magical android werewolf 1850s steampunk mail-order bride Shiro whose lived experiences must necessarily be so radically different that the character technically isn’t even Shiro anymore, but bi!Shiro in an m/f relationship is ALARM ALARM ALARM THE PENIS IS APPROACHING RESTRICTED TERRITORY. If you can erase everything that makes a character who they are except their sexuality, then the problem isn’t the fact that you’re reimagining the character, it’s that fandom puritans go OMG SOMEBODY CALL THE SEX POLICE as soon as genitals are involved and may potentially touch some other genitals.
Tl;dr: There is absolutely nothing wrong with headcanoning Shiro as bi, you’re not taking away anyone’s representation, and antis were never about protecting lgbt+ people or they wouldn’t have attacked your headcanon in the first place.
This addition was already awesome and then I got to the “ALARM ALARM ALARM THE PENIS IS APPROACHING RESTRICTED TERRITORY” and I just had to reblog.
QueerAnarchism 