fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2244 ]

[ SECRET POST #2244 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2244 ⌋

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

01.

__________________________________________________

02.

__________________________________________________

03.

__________________________________________________

04.

__________________________________________________

05.

__________________________________________________

06.

__________________________________________________

07.

__________________________________________________

08.

__________________________________________________

09.

__________________________________________________

10.

__________________________________________________

11.

__________________________________________________

12.

__________________________________________________

13.

__________________________________________________

14.

__________________________________________________

15.

__________________________________________________

16.

__________________________________________________

17.

__________________________________________________

18.

__________________________________________________

19.

__________________________________________________

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 05 pages, 121 secrets from Secret Submission Post #321.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Uh...pretty sure the people aren't saying "rapists and torturers are being shown as bad people! WTF?!!!!!!!!" They're saying "People who don't agree with homosexuality are being portrayed as rapists and torturers! WTF?!!!!!"

Which I can kind of get. Not supportive of homosexuality =/= torturing rapist by a long shot.

That's what they are, though, at least in this episode. Those camps exist in real life, and the people that run them do those things. How is portraying something that actually happens and actually hurts people honestly a bad thing? I don't see them saying "all people who aren't supportive of homosexuality" are rapists and torturers, just that the people who run that camp are. (Not even going to touch the "supportive of homosexuality" part.)

How is portraying something that actually happens and actually hurts people honestly a bad thing?

I don't see anyone there saying that. They're saying the show did not do a good job of providing balance.

I don't see them saying "all people who aren't supportive of homosexuality" are rapists and torturers, just that the people who run that camp are.
I'm reminded of people who say "this doesn't exist in a vacuum" when a show does a poor job of showing diverse gay characters, choosing instead to only focus on queeny stereotypes. It's not a different concept just because ~~you~~ we find the unrepresented people in question just as distasteful (or nearly so) as what was provided on screen.

They're saying the show did not do a good job of providing balance.

That's exactly my point, though. What would be considered "balance" in that situation? The impression I got was that "balance" would mean showing the people who run the camp as something other than abusive and horrible.

It's not a different concept just because you we find the unrepresented people in question just as distasteful (or nearly so) as what was provided on screen.

I'm not even entirely sure what you mean by this. Are you saying that they should present homophobes as perfect reasonable people with perfectly valid opinions? Because they're not, and they aren't, at least to me.

No, balance is not saying "these people who run the rape and torture camp are also kind of OK!" Balance, in that situation, I think can best be summed up by a comment in the very thread you linked to:

Danielg342:I might have accepted how the show transpired if, say, the Austin detective was active in the case and turned out to be a religious man who disagreed with homosexuality but at least agreed the conversion camp was wrong.

Regarding the other line you quoted from me, what I meant was: The "vacuum/diversity of characters" concept that gets trotted out every time people are unhappy with the type of gay characters portrayed in media applies to all groups of people. It doesn't stop applying just because you find the group of people it's being applied to be distasteful as a whole.

I get that, but I guess I just don't get what that would accomplish? "Ok, let's show someone who thinks it's bad to torture gay people, but that still hates them." What exactly would the point be? Just to prove that there are homophobes that don't want to physically harm gay people? I would think that should be obvious, and I definitely don't think the show was trying to say otherwise.

I'm sorry if I'm being dense here, but I don't know what this vacuum/diversity of characters concept is since I've never heard it before, so I still don't quite get what you're trying to say.

I feel like the point you (and definitely the people on that site) are trying to make is that not all people who hate gay people are bad people, and what I'm saying is that yes, they are. Obviously it's a matter of degree, and someone who thinks someone deserves to be raped, tortured or even killed is obviously (does that even need to be said?) much worse than someone that just hates someone but doesn't want to cause them physical harm. BUT that doesn't mean that hating someone, or thinking they're not human, or somehow lesser than you, or that they don't deserve the same rights, is acceptable. Homophobia is no different than racism to me, and both are absolutely indefensible. Period.

All the wording, mainly coming from that Daniel guy, about a "political agenda" and how the writers only wrote an anti-homophobia story because "supporting gay rights is the in thing to do right now" and his "supporting homosexuality" and "disagreeing with homosexuality" phrasing, all just come across as bigoted and offensive to me. Either that or he's going waaaaaay overboard in trying to give the bigots the benefit of the doubt. Like this:

Danielg342: I also wonder how much of the show's fanbase are religious people who don't agree with homosexuality- they are not likely to agree with this episode's decidedly unbiased approach.

I'm assuming he means either biased or unbalanced there instead of unbiased, because otherwise it doesn't make sense, but the point is that it DOESN'T MATTER what "people who don't agree with homosexuality" think because THEY ARE IN THE WRONG. Media shouldn't cater them or present their point of view as anything other than what it is: narrow-minded, bigoted, and hateful. Like I said before, let's just pretend for a second that the episode was about raping and torturing black people. NO ONE (at least I hope not) would be saying, "Man, what if those people who don't agree with being black are offended by this?" And if someone did say that, the correct response to that would be "fuck those people, they're racist assholes, so who the fuck cares if they're offended?"

I know a lot of people hate him, but this reminds me of a quote from Bill Maher: "Don't get so tolerant that you tolerate intolerance." Some opinions are just unacceptable and indefensible, no matter what justification someone finds for them, and I don't think we should act as if both sides are equally valid when one side's views are so narrow-minded, hateful, and, well, fucked up.

I see. Everyone who doesn't think or believe just like you is full of hate. That's so fucking reductive. Because I can not like what someone does without hating them as people or thinking they're "not human."

I didn't specifically say that YOU think they're not human, but "not liking what someone does without hating them as people" is way too close to that "hate the sin not the sinner" bullshit that religious people use to justify their bigotry, and I'm just done. Hate (or, I'm sorry, "not like" or "not agree with" or whatever language you want to use) whoever you want, and I'll continue to think you're an asshole. Whatever.

Anon from just above

Also, I love how when SJer's arguments get thrown back at them, all of a sudden it's "I've never heard of that! What are you talking about?!" Maybe you're legit, but I find it really hard to believe you've never heard anyone scream "this doesn't exist in a vacuum! Blah blah SJ RAGE!" because they hate the way a show treats gays or nonwhites.

I don't know if you're the same person I just replied to, but I'm not even an SJ, and I didn't realize that saying "homophobes are bad people, and I don't care if they're portrayed that way on TV" made somebody one. But whatever, I'm done debating this.

No.

The reason it's not balanced is because the show created a world where people who are homophobic are also torturers and rapists.

No one is saying that the actions of the people in the show, as presented by the show, are acceptable or should not have been condemned. They're obviously fucking horrible. The whole fucking point is that the show presents them as completely and irredeemably horrible, which is unfair to people who are opposed to homosexuality, most of whom are not actually torturers or rapists. "Balance" would mean not making a dramatic choice wherein all people who are opposed to homosexuality are horrible, evil people who kill puppies and rape orphans. Where they are human beings making a variety of choices for a variety of reasons.

I mean, on the most basic level, it's simply more realistic and a more accurate and honest depiction of phenomena, and therefore, I would argue, much more powerful to depict it that way. But, yes, it's also more balanced.

The reason it's not balanced is because the show created a world where people who are homophobic are also torturers and rapists.

Aww, poor homophobes. How many shows and movies created a world where gay people were considered wrong/broken/sick/dysfunctional/deviant/perverts? Far, far, far more than there have been where the homophobes are torturers and rapists. I'm sorry, but I don't feel any sympathy for the homophobes. I just don't.

Like I said above, I realize that not ALL people who are homophobic are also torturers and rapists who kill puppies or rape orphans, and I really don't think the show was trying to say they are. I don't think anyone who watched the episode thought "oh, wow, ALL people who hate gay people are rapists who torture".

unfair to people who are opposed to homosexuality, most of whom are not actually torturers or rapists

So it's ok to hate gay people as long as you don't torture or rape them? I'm sorry, but that's not acceptable to me. Obviously torturing and raping them is far, far worse, but that doesn't make "just" thinking they're less than you or not human or don't deserve the same rights an ok stance to take. I DON'T GIVE A SHIT if something is "unfair to people who are opposed to homosexuality".

not making a dramatic choice wherein all people who are opposed to homosexuality are horrible, evil people who kill puppies and rape orphans. Where they are human beings making a variety of choices for a variety of reasons.

No one is saying they all kill puppies and rape orphans, but I do think they're horrible human beings. Just as I think people opposed to, say, interracial relationships are horrible human beings. OBVIOUSLY not nearly AS horrible as people that actually kill puppies or rape orphans, but still. And maybe I'm being a bit hyperbolic with "horrible", but seriously, if you hate someone for, of all things, loving someone you deem "inappropriate", you are not a nice or good person, and I really don't care if a TV show that makes people like you out to be villains offends you. As for their reasons, I don't care what they are. In this day and age, if you have access to a TV to watch the episode, and an internet connection to whine about the lack of "balance", there's no excuse to remain so astonishingly ignorant, and if you choose to, well, be prepared for people to think you're an asshole.

I just...is it really so controversial to say that being a homophobe is a bad thing? Really? What fucking decade is this?

da

thank you anon, you put it in words way better than I ever could

1) Being a homophobe is a bad thing, but it is a bad thing in a different way from being a rapist or a torturer, and it is not nearly as bad as either of those things.

2) It is not controversial that being a homophobe is a bad thing. It is controversial that creating something in which all homophobes are also racists and murderers is a good idea. There are two main reasons why this is so (note that neither reason is "homophobes are peachy keen and I love them"):

a) It is, in general, really bad practice to create things that make people who are your political opponents out to be one-dimensional caricatures, or to create propaganda which makes them out to be worse than they are. It is a bad idea for a whole host of reasons. In the general sense, it is just really shitty for the political discourse as a whole.

b) In this specific case, making something that is extremely unrealistic makes it both lesser as a work of art and less effective against the homophobes. A nuanced, realistic depiction is more interesting and also actually addresses the reality of homophobia. It's much easier for someone to dismiss something when it makes homophobes out to be cartoonishly evil. It doesn't serve anyone any good.

I'm not saying being a homophobe is okay. I'm saying that being a homophobe is not the same as being a rapist or a torturer, and that homophobes are not actually cartoonishly evil, and it's probably not a good idea to present homophobes as though they actually are universally cartoonishly evil, not because it hurts the feelings of homophobes but because that's not the way we should do things.

I actually think it would've been irresponsible for the show to handle it any other way. I think if they'd had a different homophobic character that was portrayed as non-violent and essentially harmless in the same episode, people woudn't have taken the horror of what went on at the camp as seriously because it would've given homophobic viewers the opportunity to just dismiss the people that ran the camp as fringe lunatics while the "lesser", more "realistic" homophobes who were maybe more like themselves would just reconfirm that their beliefs were ok, because hey, at least they weren't like those "bad" homophobes that tortured gay kids.

If they want to do a future episode about homophobes who are ignorant and misguided but aren't violent, that might be a discussion worth having, but it would've been out of place in this episode and I think would've lessened the impact of this particular story, which was an important one to tell. Those camps are incredibly dangerous, real things that exist and harm real people, and I think that the writers made the right choice in portraying them the way they did. And I don't think they portrayed it as extremely unrealistic as you said, they portrayed it the way it actually happened/is happening in real life, at least as far as I can tell based on all the accounts I've read. And in real life, there aren't always "slightly less bad" bad people to "balance things out".

As for the show presenting ALL homophobes as rapists and torturers, I didn't see it that way. This was a specific storyline where they were, but there have also been countless episodes where people who raped/tortured/killed were people who were abused as children, people whose parents got divorced when they were kids, people whose parents died when they were young, people who cheated on their spouses/significant others, etc. The show is about people who are rapists/torturers/murderers, and people who come from every single background imaginable and are a part of every group/demographic imaginable do those things on the show. I don't think the show is trying to say that ALL people who belong to a specific group or who come from a specific background rape/torture/kill, and I think most people realize that.

And the idea that all people having equal rights is considered a political issue, and therefore the show must be trying to push a "political agenda" or that it's "propaganda", is completely baffling to me. I see it as being about human rights and being a decent person, not any particular set of political beliefs, and I feel like pretending that both sides' opinions are equally valid is doing more harm than good when one side is actively hurting people. I just don't see how this is a difficult issue, at all.

Thank you for getting it.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #2244 ]

Re: But won't someone think of the poor homophobes?! RAAAAAAAAAGE

Re: But won't someone think of the poor homophobes?! RAAAAAAAAAGE

Re: But won't someone think of the poor homophobes?! RAAAAAAAAAGE

Re: But won't someone think of the poor homophobes?! RAAAAAAAAAGE

Re: But won't someone think of the poor homophobes?! RAAAAAAAAAGE

Re: But won't someone think of the poor homophobes?! RAAAAAAAAAGE

Re: But won't someone think of the poor homophobes?! RAAAAAAAAAGE

Re: But won't someone think of the poor homophobes?! RAAAAAAAAAGE

Re: But won't someone think of the poor homophobes?! RAAAAAAAAAGE

Re: But won't someone think of the poor homophobes?! RAAAAAAAAAGE

Re: But won't someone think of the poor homophobes?! RAAAAAAAAAGE

Re: But won't someone think of the poor homophobes?! RAAAAAAAAAGE

Re: But won't someone think of the poor homophobes?! RAAAAAAAAAGE

Re: But won't someone think of the poor homophobes?! RAAAAAAAAAGE

Re: But won't someone think of the poor homophobes?! RAAAAAAAAAGE

Re: But won't someone think of the poor homophobes?! RAAAAAAAAAGE