literally just some guy

For example, writing/headcanoning all bitchy single women as lesbians CAN be lesbophobic, but "bitchy and single" was used as classic Hollywood Hays Code era lesbian coding, so plenty of sapphic actresses and writers used that as their sneaky way to represent themselves. They had to make a choice between "problematic rep" and "no rep whatsoever." A queer woman looking at a character with that coding and saying, "oh, she's queer like me!" isn't a bad thing.

Problematic queer tropes should be engaged with and deconstructed critically, not blacklisted as "this is always hurtful and never positive and nobody is allowed to interact with it because it's Offensive."

like, you don't have to exist in a sort of wretched penitent state of injury and longing towards Problematic Queer Representation. you can just say, hey, fuck it, ursula the sea witch was a big fat drag queen and she was also balls-out evil and that's extremely cash money of her and i'm into it. you can say, yeah that gay man on screen is a mincing effeminate little fairy and that does it for me, he's hot and i love it. i want to be like that. i want to get with that. you don't have to be This Traumatized To Ride. you don't have to crawl through the fucking desert, repenting.

it's better to engage with media critically--that is, with an academic focus on means and motive--than to dismiss it entirely, yeah. but also your relationship with problematic queer media doesn't necessarily have to be complex, to come with caveats, to involve introspection and the delicate dissection of the self out in the operating theater of the internet.

very common misconception! gorb just likes staring at things, especially things that are lit up or on fire! if he wasn't a sweet beautiful baby boy i might be inclined to say he's a fucking idiot!