{"id":154,"date":"2012-05-12T19:37:24","date_gmt":"2012-05-12T19:37:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bisexualwombat.wordpress.com\/?p=84"},"modified":"2012-05-12T19:37:24","modified_gmt":"2012-05-12T19:37:24","slug":"we-notice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/2012\/05\/we-notice\/","title":{"rendered":"We notice"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Did you enjoy Rule 34<\/em>?” my husband asked when he saw it on the kitchen table.\u00a0 I’d been unpacking from a holiday for which that book had been my main reading material.<\/p>\n

“I’m only halfway through it, but I am really enjoying it, yeah,” I said.<\/p>\n

“Did you notice how all the characters are LGBT?” he asked.<\/p>\n

I nodded.\u00a0 “Well, I don’t know about all of them, but I’m only halfway through the book.\u00a0 I did notice it right away about a couple of them, though.”<\/p>\n

“I didn’t, until Stross said so on his blog.” *\u00a0 Rule 34 <\/em>is set in the near-future, and I really appreciated that he’d made a point of not making a big deal of the queers (though I was a little chagrined that he’d referred to a civil partnership as if his readers would assume that was a same-sex relationship, then all the more chagrined when I realized I’d immediately made that assumption myself! bad equal-marriage activist, no biscuit! still it’s the only time I can remember reading about a civil partnership referred to so casually in a piece of fiction; admittedly they haven’t been around very long, but still they’re just about novel enough that if they’re mentioned at all, it’s not in this deliciously offhand and normal<\/em> way).<\/p>\n

“I noticed,” I said.\u00a0 “Especially because so many of them seem to be bi.”\u00a0 (Behaviorally, if nothing else; none of the characters have labeled their sexuality as anything as far as I can remember.)\u00a0 Yes, I notice that particularly…but these matter-of-fact representations of bisexuality are still so remarkable<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I notice these things.\u00a0 We notice these things.\u00a0 I wasn’t surprised when a commenter to this blog, Ste, said<\/a>\u00a0 I find myself thinking \u201cyes, thank you\u201d, whenever I hear or read someone refer to \u201csame sex marriage\u201d<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I’m sure I’m not the only one who recognizes that little flash of excitement, gratitude or relief when someone gets the language right.\u00a0 Yes, maybe it shouldn’t be a big deal, but for now it still is.<\/p>\n

<\/em>Ste also noted<\/a> that the BBC news had referred to it as both “gay” and “same-sex” and found it a little odd that the one station (radio 2) veered between using gay and same-sex. obviously, i was pleased when they called it same-sex marriage, but maybe it just goes to show that for some (many) people, the two are interchangeable. which sort of spoils the fact that they got it right at all, if they don\u2019t understand the difference in the first place.<\/em><\/p>\n

I think a lot of people. probably including those who wrote these BBC news snippets (or write about marriage equality for the Guardian or Channel 4 or any other news source), would be surprised if they knew how much their word-choice matters.\u00a0 It’s not just a matter of accuracy and fairness, it’s about giving people that little moment of thankfulness and relief in being understood, in feeling someone’s “on our side” a bit if they say “same-sex” rather than “gay”…and how quickly that good feeling can be lost if these are treated as meaning the same thing, when they don’t.\u00a0 Not to us, because we notice.<\/p>\n

To those still getting it wrong, or getting it right only intermittently, I can only say: Take notice.\u00a0 Because we sure do.<\/p>\n

* From here<\/a>: Yes, all the main protagonists in the book are LGBT, or are somewhere on the Kinsey scale other than a 1, with the exception of the Toymaker. Yes, I was trying to make a point. There are a lot of cliches in fictional depictions of LGBT folk (or, to be fully inclusive, QUILTBAG<\/a> people). Cliche #1 is the novel with the single token gay protagonist whose sexuality, if it is visible at all (rather than merely being flagged by the author) is purely stereotypical and there to flag how open-minded and inclusive the author is. Cliche #2 is for the STGP to fill in for the magical negro<\/a>, and come to a similar sticky end. Cliche #3 is the bisexual female who, after a night of passionate hetero sex, comes to see that she doesn’t feel attracted to women any more … well, fuck that shit<\/em>. You will spot some of these cliches in “Rule 34″ as photographic negatives. “Rule 34″ is written from a perspective of queer normativity rather than closeted invisibility.<\/p>\n

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“Did you enjoy Rule 34?” my husband asked when he saw it on the kitchen table.  I’d been unpacking from a holiday for which that book had been my main reading material. “I’m only halfway through it, but I am really enjoying it, yeah,” I said. “Did you notice how all the characters are LGBT?” […]\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":1211,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[159,141,163],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-just-semantics","category-marriage-equality","category-visi-bi-lity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}