Love, Simon comes out today in America.
Since there are strangely enough still people crying about how we shouldn’t support Love, Simon because the book it is based on (Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda) is written by a straight woman.
Sit the fuck down cause guess what time it is? It is time for my unnecessary opinion! Lemme tell you why this entire thing bothers me so much.
It actually started a while before I found out there were LGBTQ+ peeps shitting on Love, Simon. A similar thing happened in the Check, Please! fandom, which is a HAPPY mlm webcomic.
“Gay people? Happy ending? Too unrealistic!”
Honestly, I was so pissed. I remember talking about it on the Gay af debate app (a group chat filled with other LGBTQ people to talk about more serious issues in the community, as a result of the Pulse shooting). The same thing is happening with Love, Simon.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not denying that Becky is straight and that she will probably never fully get the Gay Experience, but there is still a difference between Becky, who worked with LGBTQ youth and who decided to write a happy book for them in the hopes they could find support and happiness in it, and straight people who think homophobia doesn’t exist anymore and go “is Love, Simon still needed in this current progressive time?”.
Hell, I don’t want to spoil too much because I really encourage all of you to fucking watch this movie and to support it, but straight people who think that homophobia isn’t a problem anymore are in the actual book! And guess what? It is shown as a problem and their ignorance actually results in some homophobia because guess what straight people, homophobia still exists.
“His parents are soooo supportive it is so fake! It is not realistic.”
Listen, I am truly, truly sorry that you were given a reason to believe that. This world still sucks a lot, I am not denying that. But there are very supportive parents out there (mine included) and one of the goals of this movie is showing teens that it does get better, and hopefully it will show straight parents that there’s nothing wrong with their kid not being straight. But also, it shows that even those supportive parents still make mistakes that can hurt their kids (mind included). Again, I don’t want to spoil much, but Simon even confronts his parents about subtle homophobic jokes and so on.
This movie needs to do well, okay. The media influence the public opinion and this movie shows how a cheesy gay romance is not that different from a straight one. It normalises homosexuality, and since y’all are still yelling about homophobia, isn’t that what we want. We want to show to an audience that we are here and queer and happy and we deserve it.
Looking back in history and LGBTQ portrayal, it fucking sucks. That’s all I can say, okay? It sucks. Homosexuality was not always permitted on television, but there were always the sneaky gay characters. They were the psychos. They were evil men stealing innocent husbands from their loving wives. And then it eventually got better, but most stories about LGBTQ people were still the typical: “I’m gay and I wanna kill myself.”
And somewhere around 2013, it started to change. LGBTQ characters became more common. If you’d told me 5 years ago that we’d get a big commercial LGBTQ+ teen movie, with the same promotion and leverage as typical straight YA adaptions, I wouldn’t have believed you. And now it is happening. Yes, LGBTQ representation is still not ideal, but it is changing.
I have read so many posts of: “Man, if I were younger and we would’ve had positive LGBTQ content, I’d be so much more confident/my parents would’ve understood better/I would feel safer/I’d know I’m okay and that there’s nothing wrong with me.” Or: “Wow, I wish straight people would use more LGBTQ characters in their works!”
I read posts about how we need more happy LGBTQ content so that we can normalise it for children and to show the world that LGBTQ people can be happy and don’t always have to be portrayed as the sad or the mean ones (so side-eyeing you, Heathers 2018).
And I also think it is kind of sad because most of those haters are actually LGBTQ and if you look deeper into this, it basically means that this community is so used to all the shit that the moment we get some happiness, we turn against it because we’ve come to a place where homophobia etc has been normalised and I think that’s even more sad.
As if after years of being thrown under the bus, we finally get the opportunity to crawl out of that shithole and we choose to stay because that shithole under the bus is all we’ve known and that’s what we’ve gotten used to.
Don’t get me wrong. That is also a problem created by straight people. I am not saying that all the evil started in the LGBTQ community, you know, like straight people do.
But really, you won’t support happy LGBTQ content because it is “too unrealistic”? I have great news for you! If you want to watch stories about how awful being gay is, just watch most of the media content that already exists! So much self-loathing. So much hate. So much pain and bullying and death.
Besides, straight people have so many unrealistic scenarios, it is kinda weird. Happy mlm content is unrealistic, but a woman falling in love with a bee isn’t?
Well, it is a “straight bee” so it doesn’t matter anyway.
Also, this movie has to succeed in order to show Hollywood that there is indeed an audience for LGBTQ rom coms. And idk man if Becky being straight is such a big problem for you, just think that if this movie succeeds, the chance of LGBTQ authors getting full blown movies is bigger.
Look at Wonder Woman and Black Panther. Like, Scarlett Johansson has been Black Widow for ages and no one was going to make a Black Widow movie because “women aren’t into superheroes so a female superhero won’t do” and then Wonder Woman not only smashed the box office but that movie also single handedly saved the entire superhero franchise and it opened the doors to move female-led action movies. And Black Panther got shit as well because uhm “an all black-movie? who’s gonna care???” and it totally annihilated the box office records and it shows Hollywood that black magic is magic and that there are indeed people willing to see more diversity in big movies.
And last but not least, if you are still not convinced, then please support this movie for the actual LGBTQ people who have put their heart and love into this project. Support the LGBTQ crew. Support the LGBTQ actors. Support the LGBTQ artists on the soundtrack.
For the love of god, watch Love, Simon.
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