Folks upset with Trump’s election have been offering plenty of amusing, ill-advised takes, but this one posted at pop-culture website The Mary Sue may well be the most unusual.
The Mary Sue tends to be pretty leftist, but contributor Jessica Mason has taken the next (il-)logical step: in response to Trump’s win, she has called for Hollywood to make ALL of your favorite characters gay. All of them. Like, no more straight characters. Because PROGRESS:
[I] never thought that Donald Trump would be elected president and that decades’ worth of social progress and civil rights might suddenly be on the chopping block, yet here we are. I have a voice, no matter how small, and it’s my duty to use it when I can and so I’m using it to implore you, Hollywood: please make our favorite characters gay.
Mason presents this request as necessary to make all the LGBT lefties currently freaking out about Trump feel safer, saying “we need heroes.”
The fact that plenty of LGBT Trump supporters exist is completely irrelevant to her — as is the fact that Trump has never actually said anything that can realistically be construed to be an attack on the LGBT community’s safety.
Mason then gives a litany of examples that — she feels — proves her point, and then offers some suggestions, including one of my pet peeves:
[L]et Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes be a couple (their movies make more sense that way anyway).
Frankly, what movies was she watching?
The Captain America characters of Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes illustrate a level of straight male bonding that the left repeatedly blasts men for not having — while at the same time claiming any examples of such bonding must be homoerotic.
Mason continues in her absolute ignorance:
If you’re worried about alienating people or scaring away the audience — don’t. Those are the very people that need to be confronted with different viewpoints and stories, who need to be uncomfortable. I won’t say those people don’t matter because they do, but what matters is changing their minds.
No. What matters is getting people to actually watch these shows. After a long day of work, if you try to make people uncomfortable rather than entertain them, they’ll find something else to do with their precious free time.
What Mason misses the most, however, isn’t the stupid argument regarding popular culture or even geek culture needing to be confronted. No, what she misses the most is that crap like this is what got Trump elected.
Millions of Americans are tired of being stereotyped as hateful and violent. They’re tired of the Social Justice Warrior crusade to ram ideology down people’s throats.
Mason’s gay-only demand takes this idiocy to a whole new level. Now it’s not just about normalizing certain groups, but about punishing those who dared to disagree.
Luckily, I suspect even Hollywood is smart enough to ignore such a ludicrous request.
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