Discussion Main / HomophobiaIndex

There's a section that is specifically for trans issues on this page. Also, see Trans Tribulations.

It's been proposed a few times, but ultimately kept being shot down due to being ill-defined and a huge complaint magnet. Examples roughly became nothing but "my ship wasn't canonized" which... isn't helpful.

Yeah, from my experience, "queerbaiting" is also easily-hijacked by reactionary/anti-LGBTQ tropers who define it as "This non-heterosexual thing was added just to appease "The Gays™" .

Honestly this whole page needs an overhaul since it brings up talking claims that certain tropes are homophobic right the hell out of nowhere. For example

"Has Two Mommies - Despite the trope name, this also applies to partnered gay men who are parents. If used strictly, it can imply that a child can't be raised properly without parents of opposite sexes, which some real-life opponents of same-sex marriage have explicitly claimed. It may also suggest that lesbians are misandrists and gays are misogynists."

Where? Sure sadly there are people like that ,but how is this trope existing implying that all examples of this trope have an anti-gay adoption agenda specifically

"Matt" and "aural"? I get what you're trying to say, but I think you used speech-to-text or something.

Anyway, "Sexuality Fluidity" sounds like an excellent trope that I don't think we have. There are documented cases in Real Life as well...including yours truly, who has identified as straight, lesbian and pansexual in various attempts to figure myself out.

I meant Meg, and I was referring to the episode "Prick Up Your Ears," wherein she allows another teenager to his penis into her ear.

My problem is if we've arrived at the conclusion that gay people are born gay, to now depict as a lesbian a character that the writers have gone to great pains to depict as not only straight but having quite a history of dating guys is cheating actual lesbians out of a character they can relate to. Meg hasn't gone through what they have. If she's spent so Iong taking it this far with guys, she can't be a lesbian to begin with. That's not how it works in real life. This all gives the wrong impression of the nature of sexuality. That's why I was adamant about keeping Queerbaiting as an index, and was upset to see it redirected here. It actually does happen, and perhaps the extent of intentionality doesn't matter, because acting on misinformation on the subject of sexuality is damaging in its own right.

Sometimes sexual fluidity seems to me to come off as a fad or a meme with no real merit. Sometimes I think people want us to believe there's no such thing as concrete sexuality at all.

I actually know several gay/lesbian people who were attracted to or had sex with the opposite gender before figuring out who they were and identifying as homosexual later.

It's not an either/ or issue.

Yep, not to mention "compulsory heterosexuality" is a thing.

You do?

If people are born gay, it can't not be an either/ or issue.

There are loads of people who never feel enough attraction to a person of the opposite sex to escalating sexually. Those people are definitely gay and are born that way. That's not what the deal with Meg is. Her situation isn't the same. Hell, Meg was prepared to get with Brian. If Family Guy wanted to do things accurately, they should have had her come out as pansexual, because, taking her entire history into account, that's how her character has been written.

So I'm really confused as to what you're actually arguing for.

Moreover, Meg's biggest thing has been A: Trying to fit in and B: Not actually knowing her place in the world. If ever there's a character to "suddenly" become a lesbian, a teenaged girl who has given up on fitting in and is still finding herself actually makes sense. I don't know if that was what the show was going for (honestly I doubt it) but my point is that it's kind of No True Scotsman because she's had relations with guys in the past.

I'm confused as to how my points of concern are confusing. I think the points you bring up support my assertion that Meg isn't really a lesbian, but is only claiming as much because she hasn't had as much success with guys as she would like, and showing support to the gay community is seen as the trendy thing to do. If the trend of that ebbs away, she might take her cue from Lois and "(go) back to men." Since Her earlier encounters with men are apparently considered canon, I think this "Meg is a lesbian" thing is a load of crap, and she's either pansexual or bisexual.

The golden rule of fiction is that we can only trope what's in the work itself. That doesn't mean we can't interpret things any way we wish, but fiction does not follow any "rules". If the story says that Meg is a lesbian, then she's a lesbian; we can interpret that it's just the writers making an Ass Pull and Shocking Swerve (and I totally agree with you that it's almost certainly what this is), but that's all we can do: interpret.

Furthermore, sexuality is a nebulous subject. Heteronormative Crusaders refuse to believe that you can be naturally LGBT, which is why the fact that you can is repeated ad nauseam until the world finally catches on. However, you can also "discover" your sexuality later in life. I know several lesbians personally who dated men early in life and showed attraction to the opposite sex, but later found greater fulfillment with women. Also, I know a woman who doesn't like to call herself a "lesbian" because although she's never been attracted to a man, she doesn't rule out that there may be an exception someday.

Tl;dr: It's a very complicated issue.

"You know."

I was at least weighing the possibility of being a lesbian when I was a kid.

If people experiment with their bodies and relationships before figuring out which sexuality is theirs that's one thing, but it's not the same as apparently switching sexualities which seems to be the route people are taking with Meg.

If we're going to say that sexuality doesn't work the same way in fiction as it does in reality, then it's important to be clear on how sexuality does and doesn't work in real life especially if people claim that science justifies the prevailing views on the subject.

Summarily, the storyline of Meg being portrayed as a lesbian sends the wrong message about the nature sexuality, and the only way it won't do any real damage, is if people remain clear on the facts. If people let this misinformed media slide, that will be difficult to do.

But this wiki's stance is that it isn't the place for that. (This isn't a position I agree with, but it's what they've chosen.) If your goal is to "inform people of the facts" regarding an incorrect portrayal of any real-life issue or science, there are only two ways to do that.

1. Make a trope that does it. A friend of mine made Transgender Fetishization because he noticed that fiction tends to portray trans persons in overly sexualized roles. The trope description explains WHY the trope doesn't measure up with reality and why it's considered controversial.
2. Make a Useful Notes page. Same deal as making a trope, except in this case you get to go at length about the facts concerning the issue in question. For example: Feminism.

Beyond that, the site is very much against what they call "Righting Great Wrongs".

It's weird how that idea works for some concepts and not others.

The basis of my initial complaint is that, for a time, we had a page just like that: the Queerbaiting page, but it wasn't valued for its merits, and it got absorbed into a redirect here. It's a shame. This wiki can be a forum for great learning as well as great entertainment, as the Useful Notes pages and Truth in Television demonstrate. That was the crux of it. I thought it could work, and there's no reason why it can't, but...

This is part of why homophobia prevails, but media plays such a big role that it has the ability to not only convey the state of reality, but also to change it.

I'm going to check out Rousseau.

The problem of queerbaiting is as marginalized as the LGBT community itself, which exacerbates everything. The proper acknowledgement of each necessitates acknowledgement of the other, as the presence of queerbaiting holds the gay community back, and the LGBT community will never get anywhere without at least making some headway in getting past queerbaiting.

The problem with Queerbaiting, that made it untenable as an official trope, was that it was too many different overlapping issues at once, which led to people bickering about what the trope covered and what it didn't.

Meg's example, for example, could probably qualify as Suddenly Sexuality (since it's a character previously portrayed as straight suddenly coming out as a lesbian), although I think it may still be worth taking a shot at a Sexuality Fluidity trope, because it's also an example of a character (along with Lois) changing sexuality over time.

But that would be feeding into the Queerbaiting issue, to the extent that it was defined when we were able to come to some agreement on it.

I am attending to this thread, but as long as TV Tropes is about discussing the impact media has on people and maintaining useful notes pages to aid people in doing things right, what's the sense in doing it by halves? Why can't we advance the cause of "writing great wrongs?" Creators certainly try. Why not acknowledge it?

I’m not the person to ask.

And just to warn you, pursuing the issue too strongly can lead to a ban.

I think if we're going to discuss media and its use seriously, and it's being used for, well, evil, we've got a responsibility to play a part in advancing its proper use. I mean, we all use it and see how harmful it can be. What's the rationale behind the official stance against Righting Great Wrongs, anyway?

Most homo/transphobia also invalidates cis-women. That's standard, but in the context of this page, it's especially harmful to trans persons.

I think we can easily make subtle changes in the wording to be more broad, but that's a minor tweak that really doesn't require a Discussion.

Mmmm, asexuality has nothing to do with homophobia, at least to my knowledge.

There seem to be folders for prejudice against other specific orientations and gender minorities (if nothing else, a lot of tropes, like A Man Is Always Eager/All Women Are Lustful and You Need to Get Laid, that assume not wanting sex is wrong or unusual apply to prejudice against asexuals)...

It has been suggested that asexuality might get its own Useful Notes page. Perhaps that's the best route to take.

I was under the impression that this was supposed to be an index for the various LGBT prejudice related tropes? It seems a bit odd to banish one of them to its respective UN page.