This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Working Title: Gays As Monsters: From YKTTW
Correction: The Legacy Virus didn't come along until the early 90's, when the X-Men comics REALLY got Anvilicious.
Trouser Wearing Barbarian: Fenrir Greyback is a "homosexual pedophile rapist"? While he's a pretty thinly-veiled child molester, the term "homosexual pedophile" (or "heterosexual pedophile", for that matter) is a bit of a misnomer, and he goes after girls as well.
Also, I always perceived lycanthropy in Potterverse to be more of a metaphor for HIV/AIDS than homosexuality. It makes more sense and has far fewer Unfortunate Implications.
This trop... heck, I, Erik S - thinks this, just as Fantastic Racism, need not be either a case of Rule-Abiding Rebel nor the need to make some sort of Aesop. It could simply be a lazy shorthand when an author is trying to consider the implications of the existence of mutants or vampires or whatever: if there really was minority X, how would they be treated? Well, OK, what real world equivalents could there be...? While it doesn't stop any Unfortunate Implications (gay people cannot read your mind and does not need the blood of humans to survive) it may still "make sense" more that way.
Trouser Wearing Barbarian: I actually agree with all of that, but a lot of Harry Potter fans do take this trope literally, considering how often it gets brought up as evidence that Remus Lupin was supposed to be gay and that J.K. Rowling is a homophobic bitch for giving him a girlfriend.
Anyway, in the Harry Potter books, lycanthropy is transmittable (via bite, which is sexual in a barely metaphorical way for Fenrir Greyback), has symptoms that can be controlled by medication but no real cure, is potentially deadly if the person who has it acts irresponsibly, and is the subject of a lot of misunderstanding and discrimination. It's essentially wizard AIDS. Of course, the discrimination aspect also applies to homosexuality, and AIDS is widely regarded as a "gay disease", So Yeah...
Norwegian Guy: ...it looks to me like this page was written by somebody on a crusade. While I personally find the statement that using fantastic metaphors to illustrate real-life issues is a universally despicable and cowardly act by writers, to be a bit of a blanket statement, and think that it should perhaps be moderated ever so slightly, I'll leave it up to the judgment of the rest of you.
Trouser Wearing Barbarian: Seriously. It really annoys me how some people think that anyone who does this is being a Rule-Abiding Rebel who's too scared to write about homosexuality or whatever. (Ironically, the article snarks about gay characters being included in these stories no more than a sentence later. Damned if you do...)
Why write about about wizards, superheroes, vampires, etc. instead of actual gay people? Because they're cool, dammit. Most of the time, it's more a case of the writers wanting to do a story about the fantasy elements with the Real Life parallels being made later on instead of the reverse. After all, if mutants/werewolves/whatever existed, there'd probably be prejudices against them, so tropes like Fantastic Racism and Have You Tried Not Being a Monster? are kind of inevitable.
For instance, there's something I'm working on right now that uses this trope, and I didn't even realise that I was using it at first - I just noticed the similarities and decided to play them up a bit.
Gattsuru: As an author, it's a very easy trope to pull, even if you only use it to provide better emphasis of your world rather than to act as a metaphor for the Real one. It's not a good trope, due to the typical Unfortunate Implications and the tendency toward what a YKTTW called 'false parallels', but it's a tempting one, and while it's seldom used for good, it's not always evil. That said, I don't think it's a damned if you do/damned if you don't issue for including gay individuals, just that it's certainly not something helped by being explicitly defined, and can seem like a coward's way out if done poorly.
Trouser Wearing Barbarian: Unfortunate Implications is quite possibly the most overused (and misused) phrase on this wiki next to Seriously, if you're going to say that something is offensive, explain why it's so damned offensive.
Most people don't take this trope literally except for slash fangirls (as noted above) and people who want to Complain About Tropes They Don't Like. The parallels usually happen unintentionally, but sometimes the writers end up noticing them and hang a lampshade or two. Having some "come out" to their parents as a mage or whatever is not saying that homosexuals have magic powers. Seriously. It's just a "Does This Remind You of Anything??" moment.
The inclusion of gay characters is not "explaining the joke" - if anything, it's acknowledging that being gay and being a mutant werewolf fairy aren't the same thing within the story, despite a couple of parallels.
And like I said, the "coward's way out" argument seems to hinge on the belief that the only reason the author is writing about monsters/superheroes/whatever instead of gay people is because they're scared to do the latter.
Gattsuru: I didn't say that using gay individuals in the same novel is automatically explaining the joke, but many authors do explain the joke through them, and that's precisely what the current page warns against.
As for why it's offensive... I'll admit my understanding of human sexuality is far from impressive. From what I do understand, though, there's a lot of opportunity for issues. To take a common example, if you portray vampires are being treated like gay individuals are on being 'outed', maybe it makes sense to treat people like that since they have an innate desire and urge to drain other people dry of blood. The Mercy Thompson series seems to be a fairly good portrayal of the trope (even the gay werewolf avoids lampshading it), but from a Fridge Logic viewpoint you've got a metaphor for gay man that would have gone on a bestial, bloody rampage if they anything goes wrong in a relationship or if they don't reign in their instincts. Even if the comparison is to an entirely good target (say, The Tick example), it leaves some implications that don't match the common accusation (it's not hard to put away a cloak; changing sexuality is... well, it's debated if it's even possible). The very trope name brings up the metaphor "a monster = gay".
A good enough use obviously counters all of this. The Mercy Thompson series would have to fit an elephant in the living room if it tried to avoid the trope, and does it well enough that none of the above come to mind without thinking hard about it. X-Men likewise isn't that bad about it. But it can be used for rather questionable comparisons without the artistic or linguistic ability to avoid bringing the objectionable metaphors to mind.
Trouser Wearing Barbarian: I honestly can't think of any examples where this was directly explained through a gay character, although I'm not sure if I understand what you're saying correctly.
It's impossible to make something involving a fictional group that's discriminated against in-story without it resembling some form of real-world discrimination. This doesn't mean that they're 100% identical or that they're intended literally. Using this trope isn't necessarily indication that the story is making some big extended metaphor, it's just a Does This Remind You of Anything? moment or two in many cases. Superheroism isn't supposed to be a stand-in for homosexuality in the world of The Tick - that episode is more Rule of Funny than anything else. Even True Blood doesn't do this. Sure, there's stuff like "God hates fangs" and "coming out of the coffin", but the vampires aren't supposed to be a literal stand-in for gay people, they're just another group that's discriminated against, complete with their own set of issues along with some more familiar ones. The show has gay characters (including a very woobie-ish gay vampire) and it never really equates the two with eachother or regards them as synonymous.
Also, the "homosexual as monster" thing in a literary tradition that goes back as least as far as the 19th century, and it's a bit more complicated that "gay people are monsters!" While frequently it's just making villainous characters Ambiguously Gay in order to make them more repulsive, there's plenty of other cases where it's closer to The Grotesque than anything else in that the character is seen as being a social outcast with a "tragic affliction." If this sounds a bit homophobic, it is, but it came from a time when homosexuality was essentially an unfortunate condition that made people social outcasts. This trope wasn't just embraced by straight writers, filmmakers, and audiences, but gay ones as well. In fact, one the oldest "gay vampire" stories I can think of was written by a gay rights activist, no less. (Yes, there where gay rights activists in the 19th century.)
Vampires are probably the monster most frequently associated with homosexuality because the Kiss of the Vampire is a popular way of slipping in some blatant Ho Yay, which sort of evolved into "all vampires are bisexual." While the association itself might sound blatantly offensive on the surface, you need to keep in mind that vampires are widely regarded as being extremely cool and sexy. They've long been cast as escapist Villain Protagonists and Anti Heroes as well as antagonists, and even "bad guy" vamps will have quite a few people rooting for them instead of the heroes. Nowadays, vampires don't even have to be Anti Heroes anymore - they can be straight up good guys.
Due to the mixture of coolness, escapism, sexiness, and Ho Yay, vampires are popular with many gay viewers as well as Yaoi Fangirls and Yuri Fanboys. Stuff like Interview With A Vampire, The Hunger, True Blood, etc. is more likely to repel homophobic fans than attract them.
As for werewolves, the only modern example of this (besides the one you mentioned) that I can think of is Harry Potter, and that is one is extremely debateable, as noted above. Most modern (non-vampire) examples of this trope use characters that aren't really regarded as "monstrous", such as superheroes or wizards. It's worth noting that the whole superhero "secret identity" was initially used more as a metaphor for anti-semitism or immigrants trying to integrate into society, and X-Men was about the civil rights movement. But a lot of gay fans identified with these stories as well, so it's not surprising that some writers though "Sure, Why Not??" and decided to a hang a couple of lampshades. Plus, some of these writers and filmmakers (i.e. Bryan Singer) are gay themselves and incorporate this trope into their work because they personally relate to it.
Yes, there are plenty of badly done examples of this trope, but this doesn't mean that's its bad by default, that's just Sturgeon's Law in action. The angriness of the write-up ought to be toned down.
Can people please remember that this trope is not so much about stories that are paralleled by "the gay experience" but rather fiction that includes a moment in which a character that is intrinsically different in some way stop being different.
bluepenguin: On a completely different note, what was the kids' show mentioned that did the Ugly Duckling thing? I'm curious.
Look, guys, it's not just gays! There are other real life people who grow up different from everyone they know, trying to fit in, and then find out there are others like them. For example, that's pretty much the classic story of adult diagnosis of autism, or ADHD, or some other cognitive difference.
"More realistic period stories can do the same by asking the same stupid question about asking left-handed people if they ever tried being right handed like "normal" people, a result of an old Western cultural prejudice that has thankfully finally died out." Back when my mom was a kid growing up in Soviet Russia, the teachers at her school made her write with her right hand all the time, despite her being naturally left-handed. So I wouldn't be too sure that its completely died out. In the US, definitely, but maybe not the rest of the West.
