Strange racists and homophobes on the internet seem to have access to an alternate way cooler version of TV than me. "every white character on TV is in an interracial relationship" "every show has a gay couple in it" "main characters keep having to secretly be bisexual and nonbinary" "every show has gratuitous full frontal nudity" like damn promise?? What channel???
as a black gay person real like where y'all be finding this stuff pass the name
for real though, those DO NOT WATCH OR YOU'LL CORRUPT YOUR CHILDREN lists put out by conservative christian family groups is where I find all the stellar tv shows. Like, shit I didn't know half of those existed, thanks for finding them for me, gonna go watch 30 hours of gay tv now!
I think I know how this works.
For personal context, before I went to the '98 Burning Man festival, one of the things I'd read from a couple different journalists was that "everybody" runs around naked. Which, fine by me, I'd already spent a lot of time in clothing-optional spaces, I'm not fanatic about it but it's nice.
So I got there early and set up a public shade structure on one of Black Rock City's main roads and spent most of each afternoon just watching the crowds go by. I don't remember seeing more than one actually naked person the whole week. I think a topless woman passed by my intersection maybe every half an hour, sometimes once an hour. So why in the hell were people, normally pretty smart and observant writers, coming away with the impression that everybody was naked?
Then I remembered an unrelated passage from Joel Garreau's great book about the history of the outer-ring suburbs, Edge City. Mall developers told him flat-out that they tried to keep the crowds in their malls less than 5% black. Not because they themselves were racist, but because they had determined, experimentally, that if more than 5% of the people in the mall are black, the median white shopper will wrongly describe the mall as at least half black, as mostly black. And not a few of them would describe it, at 6% black, as a mall where "only black people go." Why?
Because, emotionally, they were still upset over the last one when the next one came into view.
Same as the journalists describing Black Rock City as all naked. Same as the right-wing religious culture warriors describing television as entirely mixed-race and gender non-conforming. Not because it's even vaguely true, we know that, but because they haven't gotten over their discomfort over the last one by the time the next one comes along. The anger, not the stimulus, is the part that's continuous, so their mind lies to them that it's "all" the thing they can't get over.
Similar effect for the presence/proportion of women in things, by the way: https://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/human-nature/perception/how-17-equals-496-the-amazing-multiplying-women.htm
Because, emotionally, they were still upset over the last one when the next one came into view.
this has rewired some neural pathways for me
It's interesting to see this post a second time bc the first time my response was only, "Checks out. Ugh." But the second time, looking back at my responses to things throughout life, I obviously experience the same goddamn thing. All the time! We all do, to some degree.
I'm not talking about gay and black people or interracial couples in media and society, etc etc, but like... idk, mundane stuff like fandom antis, right? It's a small population, but it's so incredibly grating on fandom enjoyment, that it feels like some fandoms are completely overrun. "Everyone in that fandom is a hater."
Or, oh, far less mundane example — homophobic comments!
I see ONE person in a reddit thread be homophobic (or a few if it's a large comment section, whatever the equivalent of 5% would be), and I'm thinking "Oh, they HATE us hate us over there." Bc I'm also, emotionally, still upset over the homophobic comment I read last week when my browser loads this next one. (ADHD probably doesn't help lol. Last week can easily feel like yesterday or even five minutes ago.)
The fact that I didn't even remember/notice being upset in all the intervening time between then and now is irrelevant. The fact that I read 20+ threads between then and now without a single peep of homophobia is also irrelevant.
The brain doesn't really care about small details like "facts."
It felt afraid/threatened then, and it feels afraid/threatened now, and it's starting to develop a certain ~sense, a subconscious wariness, about the experience of going on reddit.
(Which... that wariness likely makes it hyper-vigilant and more likely to notice homophobic comments it might have otherwise skimmed over, reinforcing the experience.)
Thus, over 15 years, I have become convinced that Reddit is informational (esp in the age of Google becoming useless), BUT is also irredeemably homophobic, racist, sexist, etc. etc. despite the fact that I mostly curate my experience and stay off egregiously unpalatable subreddits.
Some things feel threatening for good reason. Racism, homophobia, misogyny are scary bc they can portend real harm. (Even fandoms with too many fans willing to harrass and death-threat others can result in real harm.) It's good to know how to deal with that fear, but the fear isn't unwarranted.
Other things, like seeing a black person at a shopping mall, you know, doing their shopping... or seeing a somewhat broad-shouldered woman in the ladies' room going about her business, you know, going into a stall or washing her hands... these things are threatening bc someone has conditioned others to consider these things threatening.
Who did it? Why? What did they stand to gain from your fear?
Generally — money, power, and control on a scale that the casual pleb racist/transphobe doesn't get so much as a whiff of.
Unfortunately, these aren't questions people are asking themselves so... we continue to try to integrate through education (history, science, critical race theory) and through exposure in non-threatening contexts (sesame street, will & grace).
Idk what's so threatening about topless women in public, nipples are generally quite dull and soft and can't hurt you, but whatever it is, perhaps we can import more European films to finally free that nipple, idk.
