The Wonderful, Sublimating, Incredible End of LGBTQ+
Did you like the title? I worked very hard on it. It’s what this writing is about, as you will soon see. It also talks about death threats, oppression, mental illness, a few mentions of sex acts, and uncomfortable concepts. It’s also pretty long too. I feel as if it needs to be; Each step informs the next until we reach the end.
Yes, this writing IS about the end of LGBTQ+… but I’m going to start with Harry Potter. Oh, and if you’re not a huge fan of Harry Potter or the hatemonger who wrote it, neither am I: We’re not there for long. That’s just The Shire, and we gotta start somewhere. Walk this admittedly difficult journey with me, please, because I feel it’s important to our identities.
The Comic Book Convention of the Self
My friends and I had this chat a long while ago; half a decade at least. It was about an effect we noticed in blindingly popular media. We created a formula for success that boiled down to: “Clearly defined, color-coded archetypes with a baked-in personality test.”
In analyzing some of the most profoundly successful capitalist juggernauts like Harry Potter and Game of Thrones (Congrats on getting Kyle Sportsball to care about dragons and shit, HBO.), we wanted to figure out why Comic Cons and Fan Fests were filling up with people who you’d otherwise never see at a comic shop.
We just wanted to understand how “Nerdery” became the new norm, particularly a very corporate kind of nerdery. What was the arena of aspiring writers, engineers, proud perverts, fringe enthusiasts, and bootleggers now has stores in the mall dedicated to celebrating just how much you like Star Wars. These conversations tend to scuttle on “selling out”, or mishandling of an IP in pursuit of money. For now… it did.
I remember letting the topic rest and we all agreed that we’d circle back around to it if we had any more profound realizations about the “Corporations love nerds now?” thing. The “Anne Rice Pleading Us To Stop Making Fanfic Era” is gone because brand managers found that all engagement equals brand awareness. From a corporation’s perspective, this isn’t even a mystery: Corporations love people who will love their output even if it’s bad, and there’s money in stoking that flame. On a personal level though, what compels someone to pay $230 for a raggedy replica baseball bat from The Walking Dead?
Fast forward several years: The other day I was reading an article that had a very spicy take. Not necessarily wrong, it was just a sociologist explaining how the recent rise in discussing “The trauma of operating under capitalism” misses the forest for the trees. They posit that the banner “Neurodivergent” implies the existence of a wholly mythical “Neurotypical” person. This isn’t so much a label that can be proven as it is an identity that is assumed.
Those who do call themselves neurotypical by any other name may partake in “normal person” activities, act in “normal person” ways, and never give a thought to their BPD-like behaviors, addiction, depression, or being a “space case”. Self-destructive, manipulative, “spoonless” people will assume the mantle of their own perceived normality and spend their money in “normal ways” because they are not self-othered by their illnesses. We are all ground down by a working-class life, but only some internalize it as an expression of the self in so many different ways.
That’s not groundbreaking enough, so here’s the admittedly spicy part which I’m not 100% in understanding or agreement of but it’s been burnt onto my brainpan: They posited in the article that “Neurodivergent” identities (And this is the IDENTITY of neurodivergence, not having a mental illness. An important line to draw here.) are tools of capitalism through which you can be exploited for money. Everything from the most gratuitous “Wine is cheaper than therapy” sleep shirts, to quasi-medical goods like re-poppable silicone stim boards and fidget cubes, to (and this the spiciest part:) medication and supplements, which you pay for, which are not for desired qualities or health so much as making you a more ideal worker for the capitalist machine.
I’m not here to talk about that particular conclusion. The sheer MAGNITUDE of the flame war it caused in the original article was humbling (I wish I could find it!) and it may upset you as well. This idea attacks you, or at least the you as you have been brought to understand it, and that apprehension is normal. That the identity of oppression has been given and then sold to you by the same oppressive system feels disgusting, right? It feels very authentic and inalienable to identify as an ND individual.
This idea that something so closely held as neurodivergence points towards the hands of propagandists was unacceptable. Surely we are immune to propaganda insofar that it could not be self-generated. The author was called the requisite amount of names for this in the comments, KYS got thrown in there, etc. “It’s gross how this sociologist hates neurodivergent people and somehow benefits from their erasure, right?”-style readings in bad faith from the deeply offended audience. These identities are being re-exploited, and I posit that awareness of such things is not erasure… but it is difficult to combat without a willful loss of community and identity with other neurodivergent people.
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This writing is about the end of LGBTQ. How are you doing? Drink some water. Take a breath. Still here? Great! Next step:
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What Am I If I’m Not a Ravenclaw?
So… I actually don’t want to talk about if mental illnesses are grown, sorted, and reaped by capitalism, but I had to mention it to go where I’m going next. I’d like to draw another line through nerdery and dorksploitation for now. Let’s talk about a loss of identity.
What are you if you’re not a Ravenclaw?
In considering the points made about mental illness, a dearly-held identity to many people, we’re left with the idea that capitalism encourages denial of the self in favor of an infinitely-splintered matrix of opt-in identities which one aligns the self with. Exhaustion via capitalism is better understood elsewhere as a cult tactic that the tired and angry will put up with more and question things less.
The constant struggle to redefine the self begs for easy answers which the system then provides. Did I say the system? I meant you provided them in your bio: Capricorn, INFJ, Hufflepuff, 25, agendered, House Targaryen, pansexual, neurodivergent, Buddhist, vegetarian, high-functioning autistic. How many of these ideas have you purchased items to express? I am not immune to propaganda: I bought an Asexual flag buttplug a while ago. It’s not well made or big enough to be much fun but it was an interesting conversation starter about Asexuality being an aspect of attraction, not sterility; that’s an important thing to understand about House Asexual.
The “teams” that we spoke of at the beginning of the article were all Marxist alienations of the self. Splintered, corporate, tiny baskets for the purpose and effect of codifying, celebrating, then selling the mere notion of “difference.” It’s not clear, of course, if J.K. Rowling was aware of this effect when she was writing Harry Potter. If anything the “Houses” make much more sense to someone who grew up in the real British schooling system. If you’re entirely unfamiliar with it I’m pretty sure there’s a wildly popular concept album about it made by an equally popular prog rock band. Houses or no houses, they’re just different colors of bricks to the people with the means of building The Wall.
How many jobs have you been in which did not mention being “part of the X-corp team” or “Part of the X-corp family?” I’ve held a lot of jobs and the answer is zero. They all want to foster a “family feeling” so you’ll internalize the identity of your employer instead of asking “Am I being abused by anonymous number crunchers?” Big corporate fandoms offer the same illusion of inclusion with other Groot-lovers, Original Series purists, and Ride-or-die Tony Stark fans for his internationally-sanitary swagger. Even the “divide” pushed by Civil War (MCU that is) is about making the smallest visible bucket of company-controlled individuality to distance you from yourself. I ask again: What are you if you’re not a Ravenclaw?
This question is VERY hard to answer for real people you know. Perhaps it’s hard for you to answer. All of this isn’t to say that the fruits of artists working with corporate money can’t be enjoyed for personal reasons, but I’d hope that some of the people reading this will question the nature of their relationship with fandoms, media, and in fact ALL labels given to them and ask “Am I in control of this label? Does it describe my true or desired self? If I am not in control of this label, does it NEED to be MY label in order to codify myself?”
As mentioned at the beginning of the chat, that discussion with friends, felt like a big, open, unexplored cave and I feel like this was the motherlode we were just on the cusp of expressing. In identifying the sales of identity, whether you agree with my interpretation of fandoms as capitalist identity sales or not, it feels like there’s a much bigger pattern at large in shameless marketing which can be seen in other aspects of life. Ask yourself: Which identities are fulfilling for you, and which are consistently sold to you as in-name-only inclusivity under the aggressive recategorization under late capitalism?
Hell, Forget Fandoms… What About Your Gender?
This writing is about the end of LGBTQ+. You’re at the middle point. Do you figure you see where it’s going? It might be, but by now I hope that you’re at least having fun. Maybe you need a break and have a lot to think about? Do it! Maybe you wrote a research paper on Baudrillard or Deleuzian rhizomatic representation and this is all stuff you know already. In that case, I’d love to share a drink with you sometime. There are no more Communist philosophers in this writing though, I promise!
Ok, ready?
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Omega Man vs. Sigma Man
I think about this one tweet a whole lot. Possibly more than the person who made it who may have accidentally shared a bisexual awakening. In fact, it was buried on the internet possibly forever by some drama where the person who made the tweet soft-confirmed he was dating Tyler the Creator.
Jaden Smith, among many tweets, that no purely straight person would think to post, posted a tweet once which amounted to:
“`”What if bisexual people are normal and it’s the straight people who are weird?”“`
So, there are a lot of angles to take this tweet from and I’ve spent many sleepless nights deconstructing it. It’s an exciting turning point for their account between philosopher teen takes and actually discovering something about themselves. These are the superficial, early critical thoughts we have during teenagerdom. He’s tackling a real question, I feel, which deserves consideration. A few obvious places to begin tackling this sentiment are the acknowledgment that this observation is “lazy”: It just reverses what we’ve come to understand as the norm… but then the next logical step is “Why is this the norm?” I feel as if Jaden had that exact question in mind but asked it from a different angle… and I agree. Why?!
It’s well-published, with more evidence coming out via archeological and anthropological finds, that the homophobia which is prevalent across the discovered world is relatively new. The very early societies such as Greece, the Turkish Empire, Pompeii, Babylon, and more hold a bunker of published evidence that bisexuality was not just practiced but considered to be part of a healthy lifestyle. Obviously some preferred straight relationships and some notably preferred homosexual ones.
In fact, the least passionate accounts were that of the bisexual layperson: A man with a household who idealized buff dudes with small junk but had a wife for procreative sex and female companionship. Many women also sat on the fence or didn’t. Lesbians (or, ya know, “Lesbos”) are present in some of the world’s oldest surviving stories. Either way, we keep finding remains of “war buddies,” “close friends,” and “roommates” throughout time. Jaden has a good point: Enforced heterosexuality isn’t in-line with basically all surviving pre-Christian record. Is heterosexuality “normal”, or is it just a popular identity to assume?
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This writing IS about the end of LGBTQ+. See how this all ties together? If any of this makes you feel even more alienated or confused, just confronting it makes me think you’re really neat! If this hurts to think about, I understand and appreciate all the mental energy you can put forth.
Once again into the body of the text. Prepared with knowledge, we’re back to the known world and are ready to go for the jugular of the great beast. Let’s go for the big game:
You Must Construct Additional Genders
So let me contrast that angle of Jaden’s tweet to the current state of discourse: “Genders are constructs of the systems which selectively oppress them. Soooo stop calling for genocide over it maybe?”
We’re also dealing with erasure, as many of us already know. Gender-essentialist puritanicals have fewer and fewer legs to stand on as the white-out job of Christian morality upon all western academia washes out with age.
Like here, have this one: a National Geographic article discussing how a “Prehistoric female hunter discovery upends gender role assumptions”.
“Gender’s Fake.” We made it up. This isn’t news to The Gays. Gender is important to many trans folks such as myself, but our amazing freedom of self-expression isn’t necessarily a gendered thing, we’ve merely taken the chance to be ourselves however feminine, masculine, or other-ine that we may be. If the genders weren’t there, we wouldn’t have felt constricted in the first place! We would just be what we are.
“More genders” does not equal “infinite genders” and a greater selection of myopic boxes is the opposite of the solution. Earlier pieces as of this writing detail why MOGAI failed from a Baudrillardian perspective: All these micro labels are self-sorting and self-enforcing into neat, capitalizable, self-damning boxes. And yes, “LGBTQ” is a box of damnation.
Today, LGBTQ+ individuals all must band together because there’s a nameless, more powerful non-label of the “normal” which is raised through suggestion and societal fear to hate them. How many of the L,G,B,T, Q, and plus-es reading this article didn’t express queerness at first for the fear of repercussions? All of us. The answer is everyone, even those privileged to live in more liberal areas.
So here is what I feel Jaden was just on the precipice of uncovering with their tweet. A “Future take” if you will: Queer identity boxes are constructs that have slipped the bonds of mere classification. They have become binding and uncomfortable under the societal preference for their alternatives… would we not then, with trepidation, turn our attention to the at times oppressive-feeling constraints of labels like Bi? Pan? OR, to go for the BIG game… Gay?
I do not live in a vacuum. These are by and large symbols of resistance. These are symbols we strongly identify with. They represent the hate we’ve endured, so much buried history, and so much love in places we were ordered to never find it in others and ourselves.
But.
With so much biological and sociological precedent, we approach a conclusion that socially-enforced heterosexuality is a relic of an ancient, popular, and successful pogrom upon western society as a whole… Not only do I think Jaden’s onto something here but I’m ready to say “Gender is a construct… and sexuality is also a construct.”
Everyone has something that’s a little unique and not quite classifiably comfortable but it attracts its nearest neighbor. Perhaps you GREATLY prefer women but feminine men are kinda cool too? Perhaps you’ve developed a fetish somewhere down the line for a particular archetype of tall women with dark hair, slender hands, and tattoos, but are otherwise the gayest pissplay-addicted leather pup in the dogpile? Hell, maybe you “only brake for thick thighs?” There are “nearest neighbor” classifications for most of these. These labels are buy-in to whichever you feel is closest to you but… why support a label if it doesn’t describe you?
These examples are all people I know, and they’ve ALL settled on labels that were merely close enough. We all have words, and most of these alignments can be expressed in under ten of them. The first’s “Heteroflexible” becomes an attraction to “All women and some feminine men, depending on mood”. “Gay” becomes “Two very specific women EVER but otherwise all men.” “Straight” for this friend of mine is closer to “Asexual but horny for specific feminine features on women.” None of these require much further explanation. The label’s vagaries are gone, and it gives a window into the INDIVIDUAL which greatly damages the platform of those who benefit from the classification of “others vs normals.” Under the banner of capitalism, communism, or whateverism, these labels are easily weaponized by totalitarians, authoritarians, and fascists.
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This writing is about the end of LGBTQ. Oh god, the vibes in this article right now are atrocious. Lemme send some volts into this dialectic Frankenstein’s monster. Frankie knows better than anyone that the end is NOT “The End” and the same is true for this article. Sing the next header with me like a Depeche Mode song, won’t you?
Your Own / Personal / Gender
I call this writing a “future take” because the dissolution of gender roles seems possible within our lifetimes, but I anticipate that the dissolution of sexuality and its constructs may well come far after.
Everyone who took these labels and fought for those who wore them deserves recognition. They deserve to be seen for achieving equality, then ultimately must leave the label behind. These labels, I hope, will be only artifacts of hate in a more peaceful future where we don’t need them to other ourselves.
To hold onto otherism invites the hateful who didn’t design the colors or patterns but ultimately placed these flags upon us. Even in a world that is 95% bisexual-identifying humans: That majority creates a minority where “Bisexual” is the nearest neighbor for its adopters and outliers are pressured to conform. The new normal we must strive for is “Whatever you are, man!”
So I guess the takeaway here is to examine your labels. A bisexual face mask doesn’t describe me very well, and my ‘Hail Gay Satan’ babydoll tee could invite violence upon me. All working as designed, in that case, from my buying it to the label it puts upon me for bigots, allies, and fellow gays to judge appropriately.
Like an asexual-colored buttplug: what joy do I get from the label’s presence in my life? Do a ‘Hail Gay Satan’ t-shirt and an ace buttplug make me laugh? Yeah. It sure does. In that I find joy and that makes it worth the risks for now until these concepts aren’t needed for solidarity and we can all merely be without arguing about which “houses” deserve oppression.
So examine your labels. Shed them if they do not serve you and don’t replace them with more labels. Oh, and if you come across a website with a zillion tiny labels in the Edit Profile section, ask what you gain from letting those labels commodify you. Does it further your goals upon the platform, whatever those goals may be? Don’t let them do that to you, because unless you stand to gain something from their label, you can insist that they engage with you as an individual or not at all. Resist commodification of the self. It’s your gender and your sexuality; Take it back.
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This writing was about the end of LGBTQ+. This wasn’t the original postscript. The original one was cryptic, only asking for thought which is nice but promotes no change. My message was signed but not delivered. Having reached the end of this entire journey, I present a new conclusion with a better seal on the envelope: An easy way to begin to shrug-off labels for yourself which you may choose to take as I have.
The message of this writing is to re-find yourself. Define yourself with the least number of community-enforced labels that you can manage. Just 10 words or so is a good top end to aim for and completing that sentence may take weeks, months, or years. It may even change as you grow and live. Flags are fun but should not constrain you. Do not worry if you’re being a “true demisexual”; just be you.
My sexuality sentence, so you the reader know, as of writing is “Kink-over-sex femme who finds potentially anyone attractive.”
What’s yours?
