When You’re Instrinsically NSFW
Awwwww...
SALLY AVERT YOUR EYES! YOU'LL BE TURNED TO SALT! VIIIIIILE! SIN! SiiiIIIIIIIIIiiiiN!
So about a month ago there was a Huffington Post*…post that’s been the talk of the town. Now, I don’t really watch Modern Family (maybe seen two episodes), and a lot of people are pointing to one of the men being characterized as really uptight and adverse to public displays of affection, but if that were the case, how is less offensive that a character is SPECIFICALLY WRITTEN to conveniently avoid showing something regarded as controversial on television, but which would be such a ho-hum part of coupled life that its absence is conspicuous? Not to mention that ‘tetchy’ and ‘uptight’ are part of some unflattering gay stereotypes. Also others bring up the fact that the couple weirdly doesn’t show affection in private either. Shying away from showing a same gender couple demonstrating normal non-sexual affection is on the same continuum as forcing people back into the closet.
The fact is, a lot of people regard same sex displays of affection as intrinsically more jarring, sexual or inappropriate than the same acts performed by opposite sex couples. This is probably an echo of a long history of calling queer people deviants and perverts. I hesitate to identify myself as bisexual** because then whenever some people look at you they just think SEX SEX NAUGHTY HOT SEX. But you have to do it or else you’re just presumed heterosexual. You know, normal, and not particularly kinky unless you decide to perform a knot demonstration at the company picnic.
I know a lot of my friends –even my more progressive friends– wouldn’t blink at the top photo of my Davefriend and I pecking, but would do a bit of a double take at Jeremy Ames and Taka Ariga doing the exact same thing. I admit that I do it sometimes, when I encounter same sex affection when I’m not expecting it, and I’m working to stamp it out, because double taking at people going about their business is rude.
I think my surprise is partially because deep down I have some ingrained voice telling me it’s unusual which is dangerously close to not normal. I certainly don’t want to be in the same intellectual galaxy as those who wrote in to the Washington Post to gripe about this picture even being shown. When gay marriage was legalized in D.C., the Post reported on this big news story on the front page, and yes, included this big, color photo of the two men celebrating the decision. Aside from the overt homophobia, and visceral horror, at something so tiny (and kind of boring even — I’ve kissed my grandmother that way), I noticed a couple remarks or thoughts that I’ve heard from people that nominally support gay rights.
One was, keep it on the inside of the paper where I can avoid it, or essentially ‘okay, you have to report on it but do I have to SEE it’. This is a cousin of ‘don’t flaunt it’. This is a cousin of ‘keep it in the bedroom’. This is a cousin of Bill O’Reilly screaming “WHY DON’T YOU SHUT UP ABOUT YOUR SEX LIFE” at a gay teen on his show talking about how he was bullied after coming out of the closet. This is just enforcing the closet. Subconsciously, people equate just living their lives with a sort of exhibitionism. Dave and I aren’t seen as rubbing anything in anyone’s face. We’re taking a snapshot at a party. I doubt anyone would read anything sexual into it, because it was a peck. The object isn’t arousal, it was me showing Dave that I think he’s neat and I’m happy with him. But Jeremy and Taka are perverse, I guess. If only there were a place to shut them away, where we wouldn’t have to be aware of their nasty, over-the-top pecking. Maybe a closet? People who say ‘I don’t have a problem with gay people, I just don’t want to see it because gross, yuck, keep it awaaaaaay,’ mean that they only have a problem with identifiably gay people. Oh, I see, much better.
The other remark I saw was a woman complaining about her children possibly seeing this ‘disturbing’ image. This could be another care of equating the same act with dirty, dirty sex in one case, and normal, chaste affection in another. Sometimes, though, I wonder if it’s an echo of the previous generation’s bigoted equating of gay men and pedophilia. Either way, a lot of people, even nominally progressive ones, feel a need to keep identifiably queer people away from their kids, because queer people are intrinsically not ‘family-friendly’. This is willfully ignoring reality. QUEER PEOPLE HAVE FAMILIES. Children have gay parents now. Children need to have their own real families affirmed and reflected in the media, not made invisible and naughty and something to talk about in soft voices. Even beyond the children we** raise, what of the children and youth that belong to our community as one of our own? When I hear WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN in regards to the supposed ills of gay marriage, gay adoption, allowing gay people to think they’re equal, I think WHAT ABOUT OUR CHILDREN. If you ask any queer person how they felt growing up, they talk about some measure of bullying and traumatic experiences, being rejected by their own parents or silently wondering if their families hate them from inside their closets. Queer-identified teens are two to three times more likely to commit suicide than their straight peers. Disproportionate amounts of queer youth are kicked out of their homes and turned out on the street. There is far more concrete damage caused to children from a society that regards them as intrinsically nasty and unequal, than from seeing two men kiss.
To a lot of people, Jeremy and Taka’s kiss seems more like a display than mine and Dave’s, more like flaunting, and even progressive people are made uncomfortable, even if moments ago they pecked their opposite sex partner goodbye. Some will even demand to be protected from it. It’s a sort of “benign” discrimination a lot of people engage in, and see as justified and harmless. Examine your feelings, though. Is what you’re asking fair? And why are you asking it? Kissing doesn’t need to be a political act, if society doesn’t make it so.
*Note: Normally I avoid HuffPo due to their need to swaddle a child rapist in the finest silks and serve him soft cheese and caviar round the clock.
**I identify as bisexual, but I am monogamously with Dave at the moment.
