A whole lot of isms, but mostly heterosexism.

[strange_tomato]

Given that this Sunday, May 17, is the International Day Against Homophobia, it's interesting that I was recently called out for being heterosexist. To my face, by a lesbian. I was pretty embarrassed. (Not that it would be any better to have this pointed out in another way, but I felt pretty careless.)

Comments

[strange_tomato]

Glad you think so. I thought it was pretty interesting (especially being on the side that's being criticized this time).

Yeah, well she's one of those Level 10 feminists (where I'm still working on enough exp. points to get to like Level 4 or something like that :P). That's the crowd I run with these days, so my awareness level has gone WAY up.

It's not so much that I was a villain. In fact, she wasn't nasty about it at all. She said something like, "these are pretty heterosexual images" and went on to talk about ways to cut down on the heterosexism a little. I was just thrilled to find pics of elderly people dancing, so I hadn't even thought about it (and neither did my boss).

You do bring up an interesting point there. I'm not sure it's a good idea to show obviously gay couples on the poster either, because then it would instantly be read as a "gay event" by most people. She actually suggested showing a more mixed group that was less couple-centric as a compromise. It does make sense because the older we get, the less men there are. The event will be mostly single women, either way.

How nice to be young forever. LUCKY. XD

I think your approach is a good one. You can see the characters sexuality without ever mentioning it, and that avoids the whole issue of treating it in a certain way. I like to directly refer to it because I like to explore it in my writing and have the characters explore it too, but that does leave me wondering if I'm ever being insensitive about it. I'm sure someone could react that way. There's almost always someone who won't like what you're doing.

I do that too for all sims born in-game and all the townies/NPCs. Anyone who doesn't need to be one way or another for the story is left to chance.

Thanks. I like a good discussion every now and then.

[ikichi]

That's a fantastic compromise. Even if there were an even number of het elders, how many of them would be divorced/widdowed and never remarried? The couple-centric bit is another good point.

[strange_tomato]

Yeah, once she said it, I totally agreed. We just hadn't thought of that because we were more focused on showing them happy and active, and mostly those images were of couples.

I did manage to find some that were better, I think.