[ SECRET POST #3552 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3552 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 52 secrets from Secret Submission Post #508.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

07. http://i.imgur.com/nqMJEOt.png

[feotakahari]

Yeah, a lot of writers never say "bisexual" unless they mean "wants to have sex with both the male lead and his girlfriend." Buffy doesn't have a male lead, so Willow has to be "Gay now!" (I have seen so much bisexual hatred of that line.)

[(Anonymous)]

I'm hetero and I hate that line. I hate the words, the way she says it, and that she says it more than once. I kind of understand that they had a huge upward battle to have a character who wasn't straight but I don't understand why she couldn't be bi. It didn't make sense to me back then and it doesn't make any sense to me now.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know, man. If somebody wants to identify one way or another, that's their business. Obviously it's a little different for a fictional character but it seems like a reasonable enough choice.

[(Anonymous)]

+1

It's not that the other characters forced the "you're with a woman, ergo you're gay" thing down her throat. She chose the identity for herself. That makes it a valid choice, IMHO. It's not the same as characters who are consistently and obviously shown as being bisexual but the writers thrown out cliches like "we're not labelling..."

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah. I mean, I know someone who was married to a man before meeting a woman, and she has apparently said she didn't even know she was gay until meeting her. Does that make her bi? Maybe, but that's not how she identifies, so...

[(Anonymous)]

It's completely different for a fictional character. She wasn't written to identify as lesbian instead of bisexual because that's something that really happens. She was written that way because the straight man who wrote her didn't understand enough about lesbianism and bisexuality. Did she even consider the possibility that she was bi? I don't remember exactly but I greatly doubt it.

[kallanda_lee]

This is true. But, what a fictional character identifies as has a lot to do with the creators and their world views.

[(Anonymous)]

Hm. When I was with girls I identified as a lesbian despite having had a relationship with a boy before. I was pretty sure that I'd just come to realize who I "really" am. So to my bisexual self this seems pretty accurate.
It wasn't until I got together with a guy again that I started identifying as "bi", because somehow I AM living heterosexually now, and even though it doesn't really matter anymore (since I plan to keep this guy) I still feel that I want to retain something of my lesbian identity so I go with "bisexual". But... Idk... I find it kinda obnoxious when people try to insist it's something entirely different from being gay or being straight. because it's ... kinda just being both.
Sure, sometimes I miss the good times in the gay community in which I feel less welcome now because I have a man and a kid but seriously, I get all the hetero privilege instead so why complain?

[(Anonymous)]

When I was with girls I identified as a lesbian despite having had a relationship with a boy before. I was pretty sure that I'd just come to realize who I "really" am. So to my bisexual self this seems pretty accurate.

I really think it's this, right here. Willow was young and discovering herself; this was a constant theme in Buffy. She discovered she was attracted to Tara and to her limited awareness this pinged as "gay now." Also, Willow is definitely a monogamist, which is why the Oz returns episode was so incredibly painful for her. It confused her both emotionally and in terms of her sexuality.

[(Anonymous)]

But surely there's overlap between "bisexual" and "lesbian"

[(Anonymous)]

I was already out of college when Buffy aired, and well settled into the stereotypical hetero lifestyle that I'd been exposed to all my life (married and with kids). When Willow first got interested in Tara I was sort of thrown because, wait a minute, while I knew I wasn't a lesbian since I liked guys, the idea that I could be bi hadn't really occurred to me (bisexuality in general hadn't really been anything I'd ever been exposed to or knew much about) but there was Willow and she'd been interested in guys but now she was interested in a woman and wow… this was an idea I could get behind. So many feelings I'd had/been having made so much more sense all of a sudden. But holy hell, the discourse and discussion around her character were so anti-bi it was disheartening and I wound up shoving my realization about myself way, way down and it took YEARS to go back and accept that I was bi and not straight. So, long story short (too late, I know) I hears you OP, I hear you.

[atalantapendrag]

I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, it's hardly farfetched for someone to come out as a lesbian in college, even if they dated guys before that. On the other hand, her relationship with Oz was treated as being very serious - she was devastated when he left. And she pined over Xander for how long?

If she was a real person, or written by someone drawing from personal experience, I would let it slide, but it was written by a straight dude, so yeah, I question it. But at the time it was immense that she was with Tara at all.

[(Anonymous)]

Eh, I'm bisexual, and I get what you're saying. But it's not like I didn't go through a phase in my 20s when I suddenly thought I was a lesbian because I was 99.9% attracted to women at that time. Willow's sexuality seems realistically portrayed to me.

[(Anonymous)]

And I'm pretty put off by people's desire to paint her as bi. "Oh, so you've dated that guy and still care about him? You're not a lesbian!" yeah, right, no lesbian has ever dated a nice guy before realizing she's actually a lesbian, it's completely unrealistic. /s

[herpymcderp]

Yep. Bisexual erasure is a thing. It's pretty frustrating to see on either end, but I can't even think of a show where they've been allowed to have a bisexual male character. At least a few recent shows have decided that's an acceptable sexuality for female characters to have. Even things where the source material is like, "YEP. TOTALLY A BISEXUAL MAN HERE." it gets changed for television (thinking about the recent Constantine adaptation).

I guess we're only just getting to the stages where we can have gay characters who aren't played as giant jokes though, so maybe in the next ten years we'll have some more bisexual characters around.

[ibbity]

My bisexual ass has only watched a few episodes of this show, which were WAY pre-Willow-getting-with-girls, but the idea that being romantically interested in one gender for a long time and then discovering an interest in the other gender MUST mean that you're 100% gay is incredibly obnoxious.

[kallanda_lee]

I'm not bi, (though I actually was dating someone who was during the last 2 seasons or so, so that might skew things)- but it always just confused me.

I understand some people take a long time to realize they're gay. And her romance with Tara seemed completely natural - but here's the thing, so did the one with OZ.

I could totally buy "girl who realizes she's a lesbian even though she's been with a boy", it's just not the vibe I got from Willow at all. She sort of seemed to flow naturally from the one to the other, which is why it surprised me they insisted on gay over bi.

[philstar22]

You know, I used to feel this way. Then I talked about the show with someone who said they identified as lesbian now, but had identified as other things at other times. And they talked about their sexuality actually changing. So while I'm okay with the idea of Willow being bi, it doesn't bug me anymore that the show didn't go there. It seems like her sexuality on the show literally changed. She was straight and the she was gay. Maybe she was bi in that brief period where she was attracted to Tara but still missing Oz?

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you, OP. Not adding much to the conversation, but that always bothered me, too. (I was never part of the "Joss is God" cult, and Willow/Tara happened then.)

[(Anonymous)]

YES. THIS. I don't ID as bi but, since I still have more than a little opposite-sex attraction, I was really offended by this back in the day. And Willow and Tara make a cute couple and I think Tara's death could have been handled much better (or just not done) but it made me mad that all of those other romantic elements with Oz and Xander were suddenly non-existant because she'd coompletely switched. Those things could have been left alone and Willow's romantic end game could still be with another woman.

And, yes, I ship Willow and Xander. But I'm pretty much Oz. And as much as I like dude-meat, Willow is the kind of girl I'd take to dinner and a movie.

[(Anonymous)]

As a bisexual girl in the 90's who felt love I was growing up alongside these characters, what bothered me about this the most was Wish!Verse Vamp!Willow being portrayed as bisexual and then that turning into gay for real Willow. It felt very much like the stereotypical idea that only slutty evil people could be bi.

I did feel like Willow identifying as a lesbian for a while to make Tara feel more secure made sense, but the conclusion Joss came to that making her bi would take something away from the Willow/Tara relationship put such a bad taste in my mouth.

[cbrachyrhynchos]

Oh, I have a whole rant in a can about how shipwars and headcanon wars are not political activism.

1. It's trivial infighting. Gee, you've just spent an afternoon flaming someone with a few hundred followers? Congratulations.

2. The tools we use for media critique were never meant to be applied to fan interpretation or fan works. Central to feminist and queer media theory is how mass-market media serves to reinforce power structures. It's not necessarily applicable to individual fantasies, interpretations, or fanwork.

3. That works can be interpreted and reinterpreted in different ways is a big feature of how LGBTQ people engage in mass media, and has been since the fucking Wizard of Oz.

4. While people are pissing about ambiguities in interpretation by billion-dollar directors and showrunners, LGBTQ publishers are turning to crowdfunding to get explicitly LGBTQ works in print.

5. Organized mass-response campaigns need to be justified by more than just "my ship isn't canon" or "my ship isn't clearly canon." There's a clear difference in importance between Rowling being ambiguous or Zuke not liking your ship, and Orson Scott Card's participation in one of the most active anti-LGBTQ hate groups in the United States or John C. Wright calling the creative staff of Korra "termites" in need of extermination.

So people ship it differently or headcanon it differently? Grow the fuck up and get over it.

[(Anonymous)]

so I'm guessing this "not for" shit means we can't like a character if they're not exactly like us.

[(Anonymous)]

Eh, I can easily see both sides to this argument. I can understand the people who point to her love for/attraction to both Oz and Xander as proof that she was bisexual. I can also understand that gay women/men often have relationships with opposite gender partners before coming out/realizing their sexuality.

As to the OP's argument, I don't think Willow being confused about Oz's return is proof that she's bisexual. Willow was only just falling for Tara at that point so it's completely understandable that she was still having conflicting feelings because she'd barely even admitted to herself that she'd fallen for a woman. And even if she was no longer sexually attracted to Oz, that doesn't mean her love for him went away. She could easily confuse those lingering feelings for him as romantic/sexual even if they weren't. If people want to see her as bisexual, that's fine, but I don't think her conflicted feelings about Oz when she was just beginning to question her sexuality is proof that she's not a lesbian.

I also don't think Willow self-identifying as gay in canon means she can't be bisexual. Willow existed in a show written by a straight man and her relationship with Tara was introduced more than 15 years ago.

It would've been nice if Willow's sexuality was more clearly defined, but plenty of shows being made right now can't accomplish this. And even when we do get confirmed bisexual characters, they're almost never called bisexual in canon. They're always said to "dislike labels" or some such nonsense that lets the writers introduce bisexual characters without actually identifying them as bisexual.