Today I'm steamed.
I've been steamed for a few days, actually. Why? Because of gay fetishization.
See, there's this phenomenon. People - especially straight people - find out someone is (or, posthumously speaking, was) gay, and proceed to flip the fuck out. Especially if that person is or was a) multiply marginalized, b) an artist or other content creator who they enjoy, and/or c) someone they thought might be gay already. And the fetishization of gayness is out of control.
I have two big examples of this right now: Anne Frank and Dan Howell.
Anne Frank, for those of you who somehow don't know basic Holocaust history, was a young teen during the Holocaust who kept a diary of her experiences. Lots of us read it in high school or college, and some of us (Jews mostly) read it for... not fun, exactly, but voluntary edification. I personally haven't read it, because by the time I was old enough and not-edgy enough to understand the impact it had, I was already very aware of the rise of fascism happening today, and as a queer, disabled, trans Jew, I kind of want to minimize my voluntary reading about people being killed in genocides that would absolutely affect me today and actually might happen.
Anyway. A passage from her diary, which was edited out of many editions, has been circulating lately. In the interest of not making you search for it, here it is:
"I already had these kinds of feelings subconsciously before I came here, because I remember that once when I slept with a girl friend I had a strong desire to kiss her, and that I did do so. I could not help being terribly inquisitive about her, for she had always kept it hidden from me. I asked her whether, as a proof of our friendship, we should feel one another, but she refused. I go into ecstasies every time I see the naked figure of a woman, such as Venus, for example. It strikes me as so wonderful and exquisite that I have difficulty in stopping the tears rolling down my cheeks.
If only I had a girl friend!
Yours,
Anne"
Okay, yeah, that's not straight. Straight girls tend not to feel so strongly positive about naked women. No argument there, Anne was at least a little bit inclined towards a not-straight existence.
However, people have chosen to label her as gay, or bi, or a lesbian. And this, quite simply, is wrong. Why? Because she was a child who died in the Holocaust, and never got to self-identify.
It is quite possible that she would have been gay, or bi, or a lesbian, or even some other sexuality altogether - had she lived. But she didn't, and she wasn't.
Now, goyim (non-Jews) in particular are getting Real Mad at me and other queer Jews for saying this. Yesterday I was informed that I'm erasing queer people (fun take given that I'm queer). The argument goes that she clearly had Gay Tendencies™ and therefore not calling her gay or queer is erasive of her identity. People say they're giving her a voice.
Newsflash, goyim: she had a voice. Her diary has been read by millions of people. Labeling her without knowing if she would have agreed with that label is taking that voice away.
As more than a few folks have already pointed out, the queer community offers strong pushback against labeling kids as straight before they've actually self-identified that way. Yet, faced with Anne Frank's admiration for women, people suddenly forget that assigning labels to others is a shitty and prescriptive thing to do. Even as adults, if celebrities decline to publicly label their sexualities, most of us leave that alone. But Anne Frank, a child who didn't even have the chance to privately label her sexuality, is not offered this courtesy.
Even worse, some people (shockingly, still mostly goyim) are hailing her as an "LGBTQ victim of the Holocaust". This is frankly (pun?) disgusting.
Anne Frank was not an LGBTQ victim of the Holocaust. Anne Frank was not murdered for being queer. She was murdered for being Jewish.
I cannot stress this enough. Goyim who don't give one single shit about antisemitism, who support the banning of Jewish pride flags (this will probably be another post) and who claim that Jews are privileged, are hailing a girl who died for being Jewish as an LGBTQ martyr as if her Judaism wasn't what killed her. And that is horrific.
So, okay, it's pretty clear that we shouldn't be labeling her like this, because it's unfair to her to identify her in ways we don't know she'd agree with. Now we reach the truly awful part of this discourse:
She didn't want us to know.
This post on Tumblr, by user realsadjewishhours, expresses most of the issues around this discourse really well, but it's long. So here's the gist, and the thing that's bothering me the most.
Contrary to claims that her father was homophobic and edited out that passage (and other, similarly gay-sounding passages), it was actually Anne herself. She chose to remove those passages. Her father didn't even know about them.
Why? We don't know. Some people are suggesting that it was shame, but as realsadjewishhours points out, being gay was still very illegal and very frowned upon, even well after the Holocaust, and even in many places today. She knew that being gay would change how people saw her narrative.
But also, she may very well have removed it for her own privacy. Even today, plenty of queer people are still in the closet, or at least not open about their sexualities, because they just prefer it that way. Why shouldn't she have that same right?
So there's Anne, a possibly-not-straight girl whose wishes are being expressly ignored for the sake of LGBTQ goyim's entertainment.
Then there's Dan Howell. Today, June 13, 2019, Dan Howell released a video talking about his sexuality and coming out as gay.
I was delighted by this news, because I'm always delighted to hear that an adult is coming out. What a wonderful thing, to grow up with much more homophobia than there is for kids today (not that there's none), and to then, as an adult, find the strength and support to come out. Especially as a public figure! What a great thing! And I was also delighted because I admire Dan and enjoy his content, and it's cool to have something in common with him besides the desire to lie on the floor and scream quietly.
Lots of other people were also delighted, many of them for the same reasons. However, some people - especially, but not exclusively, straight people - are delighted for a much simpler and worse reason: gay fetishization.
As anyone in my age group (I'm 22) can tell you, lots of us fucking loved Dan and Phil when we were younger. And with good reason! They were funny, relatable, and interesting. But a lot of people also loved Dan and Phil because they "seemed gay".
This has always made me uncomfortable. First of all, it's deeply tiring to me that any two people of similar genders are automatically read as gay and in love if they express affection for one another. This is deeply ingrained in American culture, especially as it pertains to men. And second of all, their relationship, romantic or otherwise, had nothing to do with their content.
People have been actively begging Dan and Phil to come out for years despite no actual indication that either of them was gay, and now that Dan is out, it's not hard to imagine what's about to happen.
People are going to harass Phil to come out too, despite the fact that Dan being gay has nothing to do with Phil.
People are going to harass Dan about his past and present dating life, and especially about his relationship with Phil.
People are going to bring back Phanfic (get it? Phil and Dan? Phan? Fanfic but Phan? I hate this fandom - sorry, Phandom).
People are going to pressure him to be A Gay Icon and to collab with other queer YouTubers solely because they're queer.
And it's already happening.
As of this posting, Dan's video hit YouTube four hours ago. I've mostly been offline because today my brother and I had an interview for a scholarship (because we have no money, because college financial aid is a fucking joke), followed by afternoon tea at the Boston Public Library because goddammit, my brother and I deserve something nice today. And despite the fact that I've been offline pretty much continuously since the news broke, I've seen three people on my feed phreaking the phuck out. (Haha, Phan humor, I hate it and myself.)
I haven't even gotten to watch the video yet, both because it's 45 minutes long and because I was just too fucking mad to wait to write this post. But what I do know already is that he referred to himself and Phil as soulmates, and hinted at what sounds like past romantic involvement between the two of them, and people are way too into that.
Why? Because when they became popular a decade ago, people wanted them to be gay for each other really badly and fetishized the hell out of the possibility that they might actually be gay. And the fanbase hasn't calmed down since.
Now, as it turns out, Phil's tweets in response indicate that he might also have some potential coming out to do, but that's his own business. Except it's not, because the entire fanbase is about to start harassing him too.
And I'm furious! Because this is supposed to be a time for Dan to be supported and uplifted! He's supposed to have a chance to be out and decide what that means for him! And instead he's going to have to deal immediately with being re-fetishized.
Now, I could go on about other kinds of gay fetishization, like the oversexualization of lesbians, "unicorn hunting", and straight girls getting way too into gay men's relationships, but that'll have to be another post, because I am so tired of this.
Here's the takeaway:
Our sexualities are our business. Our coming out, or not, is our business. What we do if and when we come out is our business. Butt the fuck out.
EDITED 6/13/19 8:30PM
So I've now watched the video Dan posted, and I have to say, it filled me with joy. Seeing a person I've admired for years coming out as queer, talking about how he got there, and being more open and vulnerable than I think I've ever been? It was honestly amazing.
But he also said some things that feed directly into what I wrote above.
He talks about his entire journey, starting at age six when he was bullied for being "gay" before he even had a concept of what that was. And once he gets into the point in his life where he and Phil became well-known, he says some pretty real things about the exact shit I just wrote about.
He talks about the pressure to come out, and says the following verbatim:
"We can preach the message that being out is good, but aggressively speculating or trying to out someone is really bad. They might not be gay, in which case we're just harassing someone and probably stereotyping; and if they are, there's gonna be a reason why they haven't talked about it."
He also adds, about his relationship with Phil (whatever it may have been at that point in time): "What Phil and I had was ours and personal, and yet some people were trying to get access to it for their own satisfaction."
I cannot stress enough how important these two quotes are. In no uncertain terms, he's letting us know that this kind of speculation and fetishization of his sexuality and relationships had a real and negative impact on him. He talks a bunch in the video about how this kind of thing contributed to his fear and defensiveness around his sexuality; how can anyone, in good conscience, justify that kind of harm?
I found this video uniquely impactful for me as a queer person. Hearing an influential person I admire say the word "queer" in reference to himself, listening to him talking about the fears he had and the things he faced as someone only five years older than me, watching as he talked about how much other shit the queer community faces... it all combined to make me feel a connection to this person whose existence I've been familiar with for years.
And at the end of the video, perhaps the most important quote of all. "You can all fuck off and leave me alone, bye!" Not said with malice, but rather with a mixture of teasing humor and frustration over years of harassment about this.
He deserves to be left alone, to stop having his personal life pried into.
I have reached out to Dan and invited him to comment further on his experiences and feelings around the speculation about his sexuality. If he chooses to participate, I will update or write a second article; if not, that's his right! He's more than earned that space for himself.
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