My OTP, my mind, my rules.
I didn’t want to bother even writing a post about hypocrisy in the queer community because it’s so obvious that it doesn’t even need to be said. This topic isn’t even worth writing about. Antis are not morally superior. Antis are selfish-to-the-core and cowardly people. But I needed to vent just a tiny bit.
I am usually super careful who I open up to about my writing and my main character pairing, because I know better than to believe that everyone will get it. But this time I slipped in my judgment and thought that someone else who is trans might at least be neutral towards my preference, since I was trying to be supportive of their stuff (their trans stuff) but this person thought my reaching out to them was an invitation for them to go on a rant at me about how they are an anti and how they are against the “normalization” of incest.
And the worst part, they thought they could tell me that I need to change key details about my characters’ identities/relationship. I told them off in as calm a way as I could but it really shocked me that they of all people would think they have that right to tell others what they can or cannot feel or like (considering how they had been treated for their own creative expressions).
I’m not one of those people who will try to argue that cousins are not incestuous. They are in an ambiguous area because they are not immediate family but are still family. And I’m not even saying everyone should automatically be into the same things as me.
But when it comes to my OTP, no way in hell am I changing who they are for anyone. To do so would be to give up my principles as a creative person and also my beliefs about love and relationships and personal freedom.
What exactly would I gain by changing that core part of them? Fake fans, fake love, everything I hate most. My characters would no longer be themselves… they would be just another unrelated couple basking in privilege and making flimsy, half-hearted alliances with queer people, setting themselves up against the newest version of a demonized minority: incestuous couples.
No thanks. I will NEVER change who they were when they first came to me…
When it comes to art, there is such a thing as an ideal audience. That’s the audience you find when you are 100% authentic in your writing or your art. You don’t find that by being a wimp, a conformist. That prospective ideal is worth fighting for because that is the difference between conditional and unconditional love.
It’s not the “normalization” of consensual human incest people should be worried about. It’s the normalization of this level of mindless hypocrisy that should be a concern. You can’t move any minority’s rights forward while maintaining that it’s ok to leave people out, it’s ok to be intellectually dishonest, it’s ok to infantilize others because their preferences are different, and most of all… you can’t move anyone’s rights forward while maintaining this idea that a person’s body is not their own and that their identity is what society makes it.
No. I will not change a single thing about them because the problem is with the Anti. The anti is the one incapable of loving a being that is different. The anti is the one in denial about their own lack of understanding. The anti is the one that needs to change.
Read the Update to this post HERE.
rainbowamory 