Originally Posted by
Cloaked
I wasn't going to say anything else, and it's probably a mistake to, but I just want to clarify—so no one thinks otherwise, as I don't want to be misunderstood—that I'm not saying that a gay man is actually less of a man if he's not traditionally masculine in the ways that are expected and demanded from society. A gay man is a man; that's the entire deal. I'm just saying that society, largely, doesn't see it that way, no matter how we wish it were different, and we can't pretend that there are not all these denotations everywhere, all the time. I would love if gender and sexuality could be just be accepted for what they are, that people could be more comfortable in both being themselves and having the security of mind that other people see them as themselves, too, see that they are who they are, not some neat little box of checkmarks for gendered expectations. I don't want to get too personal, but I'm very involved in gender-related realities and it's a big part of my life and my thinking. I hate harmful gender essentialism, the structure of it, and it tears me and the people I care about up because that essentialism shouldn't be the force that it is. It's stifling, it builds ridicule and fear and countless other things. A gay man is no less of a man than a straight man.
But much of society doesn't see it that way (like how it's still a common belief that trans people are just really, really, extra gay, so gay that, for instance, a gay man is ''really'' just a man who wants to be a woman, because if you're a man who likes men, then you're ''really'' a woman because only woman are supposed to like men), and even sub-/unconsciously many people don't realize how much heteronormative thinking seeps into things, both with sexuality and gender, like viewing gay relationships and, in fandom, doing things like having the tendency to alter one partner to be bigger or smaller in size. Many think it's cute or hot to have a size difference, to have a burly protector of a boyfriend to watch over a smaller partner, I know (and Teddy and Billy's patterning on a brawler and a mage probably does exacerbate it), but there are also societal influences there. The topic of fangirls portraying art/stories about gay men was just mentioned in here, too, and, well, that's behind a good amount of that fan art, and that says something about the fetishization that goes on… We just can't ignore that it's A Thing until society actually reaches the point where it's not A Thing anymore, and very, very sadly, we are still a long way from that. There aren't enough people yet in the world who care enough and have enough power to move it along to where it needs to and should be. We should have our ideals for a better world in this way, and we should strive for them, but at the same time we need to be aware that we're not there yet, and heteronormative portrayals have meaning and a core; they have a message, intentional or subconscious.
I don't personally consider Billy to be ''feminine'' or Teddy to be ''masculine'', and I don't think that of their personalities, and I truly hope my words didn't come across that way. If Billy—or a living man, as there are definitely such people in real life—were to choose female characters in video games and such, that doesn't make him Not A Man Anymore, and I would never, ever think that way. If it seemed I was saying that and/or even offended any of you on a personal level, I'm sorry, because that's not at all what I meant, and if I did sound like that, I wish I had better explained myself the first time. I absolutely see both Billy and Teddy as men, because that's what they are. I'm just, again, troubled by the push to change them and the attempts to make the fantasy real… I know some people have forgotten that Teddy had body image issues, but I'm not one of them. I wish I had said pre-emptively that I've thought a lot about that (mental health-related things are also a very large part of my life) and have always found it a wholly impressive accomplishment for Teddy to learn to accept himself for being ''a freak'', for being ''different from other guys'', after so desperately wanting to be ''normal''. It's amazing and moving that he was capable of becoming the self-assured person we see now, saw even in the original series. It's honestly part of the reason I find it troubling for a larger, buffer frame to be applied to him, because that's something he was able to make progress on in accepting himself as a whole: a not-like-the-other-guys guy with weird powers and who happened to be gay (I've always loved that he used the word ''fun'' to describe how it'd be to be an openly gay superhero with Billy, by the way, not wanting Northstar to have all that said fun; that was a good moment).
So, to kind of take that away from him is… We 100% for certain saw his completely natural frame when Kl'rt forced him to revert, and he was the same as he'd been the entire time we, as readers, had known him, no shapeshifting use to make himself look like other guys anymore, so he had been being true to his form and growing as that self-assured dork that we love. To go backward on that, in good part because years and years' worth of fangirls got ahold of him, is… If he and Billy had been designed this way, then, hey, all right, that's how they'd be. But they're a gay couple who was designed without such a blatant distinction, and story rationalizations for what's an altered aesthetic seem unnecessary. To make a bit of a comparison, it's kind of like with Billy being surprisingly muscular in most of New Avengers; that was an artistic choice, being the artist's style, and there's no story reason for it. He didn't go to the gym and buff up, or magic himself buffer; he was buffer because that's the artist's style: buff dudes. When people, like fan artists, render Teddy super buff and Billy delicate, that doesn't mean there's an actual story reason for it. It most likely means that said someones wanted Teddy to be buffer and Billy to be smaller for their own aesthetics or headcanons or desires, that they envision the characters counter to the characters' concept and reality, that they prefer them in their own way instead of the characters' way.
Okay, that got longer than I'd planned… Um, speaking of ''troubled'', I'm sorry for the trouble I brought by bringing this topic up. I…I guess I don't really fit in well here, so I shouldn't have imposed with my question like that.