1.
You’re a fucking homonationalist, shut the fuck up.
If you don’t know what homonationalism is, it is the phenomenon where individuals who conform to the vast majority of privileged cultural norms (i.e. some majority combination of white, cis, masculine presenting, abled, normal body typed, middle/upper class, monogamous, and male) find themselves slowly being admitted into the privileged class. It is now, more than at any other time in this century or last century, ok to be gay. Or, it’s ok to be gay and also be white, cis, masculine presenting, middle/upper class, abled, normal body typed, and male. It still pretty much sucks for anyone else who doesn’t reside within all of those other categories.
Now, the homonationalist realizes that they have reached the privileged class, and perfectly satisfied with their own feat, turns around, pulls up the ladder, and joins the chorus of the privileged. They are the Other, they are freaks, and different, and they must be reminded of their difference at every moment, and disadvantaged on the basis of that difference. For the homonationalist, their own individual privilege is enough for them, and many of them have harbored a deep resentment towards the Other they can now disparage freely.
“I have more in common with the privileged than with the rest of the movement,” they say to themselves. They harbor a resentment not towards the system of oppression, but towards the rest of the movement for hindering their own person progress. “Why can’t the rest of you act normal! Like me!” It is their fault that they aren’t accepted–and it is their fault that you haven’t been accepted all this time as well. Their difference is a slime that has covered you for so long, you have tried to wash it away, and yet your association with all of these Others has plagued you. Now, you are finally free–you are recognized by the privileged as someone they should have privileged all along.
You are being accepted now, because you have always deserved to be and the Others are not recognized because never had any chance of curing themselves of that plague. And so, you are free to discriminate as much as you would like against them, something which should have always been your right.
2.
That was, perhaps, unfair. You know what? Let’s try things your way. Let’s follow this logic of yours to it’s proper conclusion. Here we are, in the MC/TF genre, so lets suppose that from now on, I write my stories about conventional body types only. But how long until I get someone asking me why I only write stories about GAY PEOPLE? GAY PEOPLE are gross, after all, my stories would be much hotter if they were about straight people.
What can I do? Following your logic, I must cede the point–how can I possibly challenge it, if your logic is sound?
Or perhaps your logic is a bigoted, stinking pile of bullshit. Perhaps you need to pull your head out of your ass and realize that not everyone experiences the world in the same way that you do, and that your perspective is not by it’s very nature somehow more privileged than the perspective of others.
Oh there I go, being unfair again. My apologies.
3.
But at least you meant no offense. I believe you–you meant me, the author Wesley Bracken, no offense. But only me. I’m sure that when you sent this, and when I posted it, you intended to offend someone, or rather, a large group of individuals whose bodies lie outside the spectrum of body types that you deem to be physically attractive.
You intended for this comment to remind them that just because I write stories featuring their bodies in a positive light, that the wider world still views them with scorn and disgust, and wishes that they would be starved skinny. You sought to remind them that they aren’t ever going to be privileged in society. That their body type will always mark them for humiliation and exclusion, that you will never accept them, and furthermore, you will work to further outcast them by urging those few people who don’t view them as disgusting to adopt your perspective, because to do otherwise would violate a personal, natural order of things.
Yes, no offense intended, yet plenty of offense taken, so don’t worry.
4.
You seem scared.
Perhaps it’s your reluctance to use punctuation, which gives your passage a hurried voice, like you want all of the words to get out immediately so you can leave the room before your speech can reach anyone’s ears. Before anyone has the awareness to respond.
Perhaps it’s the fact that, twice, you wanted to ward yourself from counter-attack.
“No offense…no offense.”
But you do seem scared, or perhaps threatened. Perhaps desperate is the term I’m looking for? Does the fact that I don’t hate fat men, does the fact that I consider their bodies to be beautiful, does that frighten you? Does that, for some reason, bring some visceral fear to your throat, that encouraged you to send me this note?
I only ask because I am curious. I can only speculate that the realization that someone who’s art you admire might perceive the world in a vastly dissimilar way than yours terrifies you. Or perhaps its the fact that my stories target the privileged and twist them into something unrecognizable that leaves you unsettled and disgusted and ill at ease? Is the problem that you see yourself only in the men who die in my stories, and never the men who are born? Always the changed, always the target, but never the result? That would imply, after all, that I might consider you to be something which requires improvement, it might challenge the deep seated belief you hold in your own superiority and privilege which has always been denied to you by society at large.
Do my stories show you how ugly you are?
Is that why you seem so scared?
Bracken's Corner 