When I was a kid my Favorite Thing Of All Time was Sailor Moon.
(It still is. That is beside the point.)
The amount of tangential learning that spawned from my love of Sailor Moon was immense. I learned to use the internet, learned HTML, learned about geology and astrology and astronomy and mythology. I learned about Japan. It was easily Baby’s First Exposure To A Multicultural World.
I also learned there was MORE SAILOR MOON than I was able to watch. Episodes, entire seasons, I’d never seen. Bits from the episodes that I had seen that had been cut.
I was in elementary school when my best friend Lindsay showed me a picture she’d printed of Sailor Uranus (who hadn’t yet appeared on US TV). “She looks just like me!” she’d said. And then she’d whispered conspiratorially, “She’s a lesbian.”
“Woooooow.” I said, “What’s a lesbian?”
Over time I learned a LOT about the stuff that was in Sailor Moon that was being kept from me, and it was my first introduction to both queer media and homophobia and censorship. That kind of introduction quickly cemented my opinions on both.
It basically meant that I first leaned about gay folks as Something Accepted In (The REAL Version Of) My Favorite Thing and I fist learned about homophobia as The Thing Keeping Me From Getting To Have ALL Of My Favorite Thing.
I was Mormon, raised by parents who voted Bush twice. I was also a gay rights activist (in halting, embarrassing, misinformed but well-intentioned ways) by the time I was finished with 6th grade. Common sense had wiggled its way into my psyche through a silly kids show and my love for it before my parents or religion could get there first.
I feel really bad for the Russian kids and Chinese kids who aren’t going to get this episode or get a censored/edited/rewritten version of it.
I hope they find out what’s been done, and I hope their anger is as righteous and petty as mine was.
I am eternally grateful to Rebecca Sugar and Cartoon Network for putting the onus on those countries to do the censoring, so those kids have something to get mad out. I’m so glad they didn’t go “Well, Russia is gonna cut it, so we shouldn’t do it at all.” I’m glad we weren’t denied this because someone somewhere wouldn’t like it in their market.
Sometimes a censored show is a Trojan horse for the idea it censors, but you have to give them something to censor first. I’m so sad Russian kids don’t get to see this show as is and feel immediately safe and loved. I hope they find out they were meant to. I hope they feel safe and loved somewhere, even if it’s not where they currently get to be.
I hope there’s a kid in Russia right now telling her friend, “This is Sapphire. She’s a lesbian.”
amandla
2087
titsay
dailybridgerton
origamiaround
turnnoffyourmind
