[ SECRET POST #6348 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6348 ⌋

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


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 08 secrets from Secret Submission Post #907.
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

[(Anonymous)]

Willow Rosenberg is an example of a character who expresses attraction to both men and women on the screen - in fact, her significant love interests are both men and women - but she's canonically not bisexual and is canonically a lesbian.

Do you think she, like, doesn't exist? Or do you think she's not a lesbian and is actually bisexual? Or what?

[(Anonymous)]

Except that in her case, Word of God from the creators is that she's a lesbian.

If there's nothing in the canon itself/nothing said by the creators to indicate that a character who expresses interest in both genders is not in fact actually bi, there's zero reason to interpret them as anything other than bi.

[(Anonymous)]

OK so your position is that if you take Buffy and only look at the parts of canon up until the episode where Willow self-identifies as a lesbian - season 5 episode whatever it is - if you just look at Buffy canon up to those episodes, Willow as depicted in those episodes is unquestionably bi and it is objectively wrong to read her as a lesbian based on those episodes?

Because that's an absurd proposition. We know that Willow as a character has a depiction that is consistent with her being a lesbian, because we know that she is a lesbian. It is completely logically absurd to say that it's wrong to read Willow as a lesbian based on her appearances in the series before she is confirmed as a lesbian. And then, after she gets confirmed as a lesbian, the exact same depiction of the character immediately becomes incontrovertibly a lesbian. That's an absurd state of affairs.

To be clear about what I think is the case - up until the character is confirmed to identify as a lesbian, then it's reasonable to interpret the character either as a lesbian or as a bisexual. The confirmation of how the character identifies - either by the character themselves in text or by extra-canonical word of God - is what makes one of those readings textually wrong or right.

[(Anonymous)]

The trouble is that identification alone doesn't tell the entire story of a person's sexuality. We often choose identities that are at odds with our inner selves, because the way we identify influences how our community, society, culture, etc treat and perceive us. This means that people can, and often do, deny or disavow their own sexual attraction in order to adopt a social role.

[(Anonymous)]

Sure! But if that's what you're talking about, it's not our job from the outside to tell other people how to identify. It's up to people to come to those realizations themselves and they're the only ones who have the right and ability to make those decisions for ourselves.

To extend the argument, it's good to tell people that bisexuality is a real identity and a valid option. It's not our place to tell anyone they have to be bisexual, even if we might think that some people choose not to identify as bisexual because of societal pressure or prejudice.

[(Anonymous)]

See I'm a bit torn on this. Sure, what a person says they identify with should count the most but sometimes, the facts just really contradict this. Like someone who says they're asexual but also say they're sexually attracted to others and like to have sex a lot out of sexual attraction. Theyre simply are not asexual.

(Also reminds me of the dude in this comm a few years ago who kept insisting he was gay while recounting his relationship with his female fuckbuddy turned girlfriend turned wife. Sorry, but no matter what you identify as, you like to fuck women, you are attracted to them and you marry one, you're functionally bi.)

[(Anonymous)]

Yeahhhhhhh there's some point where a person's identification just doesn't make sense in light of the facts. But I just generally want to err so much on the side of letting people figure out their own identities. It is just so hard, and identities can be so complicated - we are trying to shove all of this complex reality of human sexuality and gender into a handful of boxes and so I basically believe in giving people a lot of latitude to take those boxes and figure out how to make them work for their own experience and sense of self.

[(Anonymous)]

+1000

[(Anonymous)]

I mean, if the character herself identifies as bi during the early parts of canon, then yes, it would be wrong to read her as a lesbian at that point in time because that isn't how she's identifying then.

[(Anonymous)]

My recollection is that Willow doesn't make any explicit statement about her identity until she says she's a lesbian. She dates Oz in seasons 2 and 3, they break up in season 4, she starts dating Willow in season 4, and then identifies as a lesbian in season 5. I don't think at any point she says she's bisexual. If I'm wrong, correct me.

The argument other people are making is that, up until she says she's a lesbian in S5E11, you have to assume that she's bisexual because she's displayed attraction to both men and women. My point is that I don't agree with that and I think (up until S5E11) she can be read as either lesbian or bi; after that, she's canonically a lesbian.

[(Anonymous)]

Willow always sounded like biphobic writing to me. It's not unheard of for gay people to have opposite-sex relationships or identify as another label before realizing they're gay, which I'm sure what was what they were trying to go for, but in practice it came off as awkward bi erasure to me.

[(Anonymous)]

It's not unheard of for gay people to have opposite-sex relationships or identify as another label before realizing they're gay

It is! Which is why insisting all such characters must be bi until confirmed otherwise is so silly.

[(Anonymous)]

Okay, so by that token, it's totally fine to interpret characters who have only been shown to have same-sex relationships in canon as being bi or straight, because people can identify as another label before figuring out what they are.

[(Anonymous)]

I mean there is SOME point where you can reasonably read from behavior to identity. But it takes a lot!

[(Anonymous)]

But it's also the case that many bisexual people feel pressured to "pick a side," or have enough adverse experiences from being out as bi that they go back into the closet. They haven't ceased to be bi; they've just decided that it's easier socially to identify as either gay or straight.

[(Anonymous)]

Yep, especially if they're in a committed relationship. The pressure to pick a side and the implications that you're going to cheat because you couldn't possibly be happy dating just one person of one gender are exhausting, so a lot of the time if you're in a committed relationship it's way less stressful to just ID as straight or gay.

[(Anonymous)]

Sure, I agree that happens sometimes. I am definitely not objecting to reading characters as bi or headcanoning them as bi. What I disagree with is that any character who ever displays attraction to men and women MUST be bi.

[(Anonymous)]

+infinity

[(Anonymous)]

But characters aren't people, they are written the way they are for reasons that we are meant to pick up on. If a character displays explicit attraction to more than one gender, the writing's intent is that we are meant to pick up on the fact that they are bi, unless later they have a canon realization that they're actually something else.

[(Anonymous)]

Sometimes, sometimes not.

It just isn't the case that writers always display that amount of intentionality in how they write characters! Sometimes characters evolve over time in ways that weren't intended from the start.

[(Anonymous)]

Exactly! By that logic, my lesbian sister must totally be lying about being a lesbian because she was married to a man for several years before getting divorced and exclusively having relationships with women after that.

Not to mention the fact that fictional characters are open to interpretation and different people are going to interpret them in different ways. This is especially true when canon itself does not definitively state the character's orientation and there's no word of God. And even if there is, other fans are not doing anything wrong by headcanoning/writing those characters as having a different orientation than the one stated. This is fandom; people can do fandom how they want as long as they aren't being dicks to other fans about it.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm about the same age as the characters and there were so many girls who had a straight relationship then a lesbian one and decided they were and had always been 100% gay (and of course this changed again over time - some were bi, some were lesbians, some went back to being straight, a couple turned out to be trans men). So it could be biphobic writing, but it could also just be something that was happening in real life at the time.

[(Anonymous)]

It still happens, especially among people who were raised in or live in conservative environments.

[(Anonymous)]

I can see that, and you don't have to like it. But that does not mean other fans are doing anything wrong when they talk about seeing Willow as lesbian or write her as a lesbian.