I figured out why Iâm so very irritated with what theyâre doing with Lenaâs plotline and why it is incredibly hard for me to feel bad for Lena about all of this, despite me liking Lena - the real Lena, the Lena from before this season.
Itâs the fact that Iâve been were Kara is.
Because the whole secret identity thing is a thinly veiled metaphor for being gay. Itâs a part of who you are, but you donât necessarily wear it on your sleeve, so itâs up to you, thanks to societyâs standard, to be the one to tell others. Itâs seen as your responsibility to tell the people you care about.
And Lenaâs behavior is the grossest straight behavior. Acting like youâre owed someoneâs identity, blaming them for not coming out to you earlier, acting like you would have been oh-such a great ally from the get-go and they ought to have told you earlier.
If youâre gay, you may have encountered that type of straights before. And it is violently upsetting, because you donât owe anyone your identity.
It is your choice when and how you tell someone.
You may tell your family first, like Kara told Alex, you may excitedly tell your oldest and best friend first, like Kara told Winn.
You may make new friends whom you will tell earlier than older friends, perhaps because they share this with you, they too have a âsecret identityâ - like Kara very early-on told Nia the truth, because Nia too hid superpowers.
Lena is that straight friend you made relatively early into figuring out your own sexuality, while still settling with it and only having told your closest friends and family. Very slowly, Lena and Kara grew closer and closer and itâs hard... when you make new straight friends, it is incredibly hard to find that âright timeâ to tell them, or how to tell them, and even when you are so sure that they are not going to react in a homophobic way, there is still that small sliver of fear and doubt that wonât go away until you actually come out to them, but it may cause you to delay it, push it away, to be safe, just a little longer.
The fact that then a third party chose to forcibly out Kara in front of Lena and Lena stayed silent, waiting, until Kara indeed came out on her own account... and still Lena acts so entitled, itâs horrible to watch.
Had Kara never told her on her own account, had Lena exposed that she had learned it already and confronted Kara like that, beating her to the punch, maybe just maybe Lenaâs ire would be more justified.
But Kara told her the truth.
Kara came out to Lena and instead of embracing that, instead of embracing her, instead of being a good friend, Lena decided to punish Kara for not coming out earlier and push her away from her and essentially going âhow DARE you not believe in what an accepting ally I would have been! I will now show you what a miserable ally I am by using your very identity against you and for my own gainâ - which she absolutely does, when she uses Kara to get Jâonnâs brother, when she manipulates Kara into stealing Lexâs journals, when she uses Kara to get into the Fortress of Solitude. And okay, that last part doesnât necessarily work with the metaphor at hand, but I feel like it still needs mentioning, because on top of feeling entitled to Karaâs secret, Lena was more than happy to exploit it for her own gain.
Youâre never entitled to anyoneâs identity, no one owes you all aspects of their self, regardless of how close you are.
And when they then, on their own, decide to share that part of themselves with you, you donât get to act like a brat, because you think you should have been told earlier.
When? When was the right time? When would have been the moment Lena would have been pleased with, would not have held it against Kara...?
If this was about any other type of like... If this was about a lie directly concerning Lena, I would be so understanding, because yes, Lena had been hurt in the past by people lying to her and manipulating her and I would understand. But it wasnât; it was something incredibly delicate and incredibly personal that only converned Kara and absolutely no one else.
This was not a lie. Not telling someone everything about your own identity is not a lie. You are not a bad person or a liar for being in the closet, you are not a traitor or manipulator for not coming out to someone sooner. You do not owe anyone your entire, whole truth.
And I absolutely loathe that they took Lena into that direction. They made her callous and self-centered when she had been so bright and good before, caring so much about her friends. This feels like the writers were just looking for a flimsy excuse to make Lena the villain because A Super and A Luthor have to face off as rivals for ~drama~. Itâs so tired, itâs so overused and itâs so incredibly forced in this instance.
Having Lena embrace the fact that Kara told her own her own, having Lena be proud that Kara chose to share this part of her, having her actually see what an act of trust this was and have them be friends, that would have been the refreshing, interesting take. Their friendship was so good and so much fun to see and it was also very refreshing from the usual Lex-Clark dynamic weâre used to when it comes to Supers and Luthors.
If only writers would value healthy relationships and good friendships over unnecessary drama...
