User blog comment:Psychopathotical/Josh's Unpopular Opinion Ep 1- Pride Month/@comment-26234016-20190627132418

Alright, there's a lot wrong here! Let's try to unpack at least some of it so we don't have to throw away the whole metaphorical suitcase. I'm not touching your equating queerness with bestiality, since that's a whole can of worms. I also won't touch the "do not make me feel happy for your sexuality. I dont [sic] give a fuck."

I'm really gonna focus on the, "I get annoyed when LGBT+ characters are mandated in entertainment. I get annoyed where everything pushes a political agenda."

Firstly, I'm going to wait until you can prove to me that there has ever been a queer character "forced" into a piece of media that was not there of the creator's volition. If you can find proof that, like, Fox Entertainment has been stifling artists' creativity by forcing them to write in queer characters, alright. Sure. But I doubt that's happening. What's actually happening is likely this nifty thing called "an artist wants to depict a queer character, and chooses to include one in their piece of media."

So we can agree, then, that mandated in entertainment is some pretty faulty wording.

To the second half. "Where everything pushes a political agenda."

Really, Josh? Fucking,,,,, really? You really think that diversity in media is indicative of a political agenda, Josh? When a straight, white, male character is created, no one accuses the author of pushing a political agenda. No one insists that there's forced diversity at play. But that's strange, isn't it? I mean, white people certainly aren't the majority in this world. They might have more political power than any other ethnic group, but if we were running this strictly by what was most common, Asia has just over 60% of the world's population.

Maybe this is an artist who lives in the United States, and has never seen an asian person in their life, and besides they'd just like to write about what they know. Well then, they should be writing about women. According to a study by the World Bank Group, female people actually are in the majority in the US, even if it's by a slight margin. Except, you know, they have less political power than men, so I guess the fact that they're actually in the majority (and have been since the 1960s) is irrelevant.

So, if you think about it, having a white dude in your story is kind of pushing a political agenda of its own– an agenda which states that the people in power are the heroes of stories, and should be kept as such.

Or, it doesn't push an agenda. But guess what, Josh? If having that collection of identities in a story doesn't push an agenda, why should any other collection be any different?

I'm queer. If you think that when I create queer characters, I'm furthering some propoganda piece by The Gays, you're wrong! Sorry! I'm creating those characters because I want to see people like myself represented in fiction, and there aren't usually, so I'll do it myself. There's no mandate to have exactly five bisexuals, I'm writing these characters because I want to. And when a straight, cis writer creates queer characters, that isn't pushing an agenda either! Maybe these writers simply think, "hey, this group is lacking representation. It'd be nice to give this group some representation. Time to do that."

Percy Jackson and the Olympians was a book series that kind of took the world by storm, but, surprise, it actually had a lot of representation! Many characters were people of color, and the main character actually had ADHD. For a person with (undiagnosed at the time) ADHD, it was so incredibly refreshing to see a main character who struggled in the same ways I did, and that main character saved the world! Did Rick Riordan sign a form sent to him by the PC Police in order to make Nico di Angelo gay, or Alex Fierro genderfluid? No! He did it because he wanted to. If you think he's pushing a political agenda, you are incorrect.

The fact is that people like this, queer people, exist in the world, and their existence is not a political agenda. They were not born to go arm-in-arm with the Ess Jay Double-Yous. They exist apolitically, and they are incorporated into media apolitically.

Hopefully you can understand that.