"Gay comics characters don't look gay enough!"
This has been making the fandom rounds, but I haven't seen it here yet, so here goes:

Brett Booth and Scott Lobdell, the team behind the relaunch of Teen Titans, have decided to add a new gay character to the team. Cool, right?

Unfortunately, Booth's comments on the reasoning behind this decision are somewhat less cool. A few choice quotes:

I’ve seen all the other gay superheroes out there, Ok maybe not all. They look just like regular heterosexuals, they act like regular heterosexuals, they just happen to have sex with people of their own gender, under the covers and in the dark. Sure you might get a kiss on a page, but that’s all (an no we won’t be doing any sex scenes in TT, get your minds OUT of the gutters

We wanted to show an interesting character who’s homosexuality is part of him, not something that’s hidden.

[...]

As for the children.. Most simply don’t know or don’t care. It’s not like Migg’s is going to be doing a one man gay pride parade. I don’t think we even mention that he’s gay, you see him, you know it, no need to harp on about it. He’s just a happy fun loving guy! He won’t be wearing anything that I haven’t seen at Walmart. Well maybe Target;)

Which (a) has the unpleasant implication that gay characters (and indeed actual gay people) are Not Gay Enough unless they fit certain stereotypes and (b) leads to concerns that the character in question may be written as a sort of sexless Gay Best Friend type who you "know" is gay not because he expresses any interest in men, but because he's effeminate. Fun!

This RPG.net thread has a good discussion of it (turning partway into a discussion of comics characters who were conceived as queer vs. ones that were retconned to be, but that's interesting too!); it's also been posted on inclusive_geeks on LJ. (Those are the only places I've seen it, but if anyone has more links, by all means let me know!)

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quantumreality
2011-09-25 08:07 pm UTC (link)

Honestly, I like that they're putting the gay character in at all, and I think these guys just have a really poor way of getting it across. Their comment seems like the kind of bog-standard thing a straight guy might say who believes he's pretty open-minded, but doesn't quite get it yet that the way he comes off is dismissive rather than supportive.

On the whole, I will be squinty like my icon right now.

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	seiberwing 2011-09-25 08:51 pm UTC (link)
	I like to think we're at the point where just putting a gay character into the comic isn't enough for us to give him credit. Perhaps I'm optimistic. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	quantumreality 2011-09-25 09:02 pm UTC (link)
	That's true. Booth does seem to be coming across like he thinks just putting the "gay character" in should get a medal or something. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	seiberwing 2011-09-25 09:08 pm UTC (link)
	The 'obviously gay' one, at that. As if making gay characters act 'straight' was the baseline before, rather than the flamboyant purple wearing so-gay-we-don't-need-to-actually-show-it trope that actually was the baseline. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	sandglass 2011-09-26 06:44 am UTC (link)
	So many people seem to think that way, too. The writers of Lost bragged (in an episode commentary) about having one minor character be gay. And he was only outed after his death. And he was a villain. But it was "time" to include a gay character. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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