Offended for the Sake of Being Offended

Every few days, there is always new conflict arises in the internet. In the relatively small community contributing to my tweeter feeds, there is always someone getting righteously angry about something.

Last month, it was a book about some people claimed containing bi-erasure. These people didn't even bother to read the book, they just accepted what a loudmouth said in his review about a book he didn't read while saying some untrue things. Of course, things spiraled out of control, enlarging the problem from one ranty review about a book to the offense of all Gay-For-You books and exploded with people taking sides, shouting their versions of the other offenses, and looking for sinister motifs behind every post in social media. It was weird. It seemed like people talked about different issues and nobody was listening to each other. The first party felt righteously angry, the second party felt defensive as hell, while the third party who asked everyone to play nice caught shit from almost everyone.

I sat and read blog posts after blog posts, not understanding the problem, until I found a few blog posts and comments that's somewhat coherent and not ranting poisonously. Let me put my thoughts in somewhat orderly manner (according to me).

1. GFY stories happened because of slash fandom and gay fictions in the 60s or70s (I'm not really clear about this). The world was so much more black and white at that time, and I don't think people really saw bisexuality then as they do now. 
2. GFY is a concept where a 'straight' man fall in love with another man although he never had same sex attraction before. Now, people who learn a little about sexuality understand that it is fluid and 100% straight is rarer than most people thought. Based on definition of bisexuality, this should make men who are gay for another man bisexual, not gay for you. 
3. However, the world is still largely ignorant of this and divides people to 2 categories only instinctively: heterosexual or homosexual, or bisexual if you are somehow in the middle. Not many understand that bisexuality is not a 50-50 or 60-40, but a range between 99-01 to everything in between. By this definition, bisexual should be one of the largest group of sexuality out there.  
4. The next part in this discussion is the 'label is for loser' school of thought. More and more people refuse to label their sexual orientation or gender identity and 'just go with the flow'. This group could be the next step in the sexuality and gender identity debate in the sense that in the future all those labels will be obsolete, or the harmful school of thought marginalizing the LGBTAIQ community, reinforcing homophobia, and a coward's way out. The judge is still out on that one.
5. Then, there are people who say that this is just a harmless fantasy trope in romance, which is just as unrealistic as the-virgin-meet-millionaire, secret baby, etc. Also, please note that some authors whose works are considered a GFY do not actually use that term to tag their works. A lot of them even said that they hated this term. Didn't matter though, if you didn't agree, you were part of the problem.  

So I think the questions I have after all this debacle are:

1. Is gay-for-you a harmless or harmful trope? If you understand that what you read is a fantasy, there shouldn't any fear of bi erasure, right? Reading about magic carpet does not suddenly makes you think that magic carpet is real.    
2. After all that anger and public spewing, what is the result you achieve? People are getting more divided and slinging mud to each other forgetting that there are real flesh and blood people behind the keyboards. Words hurt. And what you posted online will be there for other people to see and judge. You don't touch people in positive way by anger and hate. 

As for myself, I muted and unfollowed a lot of authors on twitter because of this debacle. Too many of them just gave each other back pats for being on the right side, not really trying to see what happened objectively. In the end, it seems to be wiser not to engage and just stay away to read book by authors I can stomach.   

 

Introduction

Hi,

My name is Theia (not real name), and this is my first blog. Since English is not my first language--or my second--please accept my advance apologies for any grammatical and spelling mistakes. Also, I don't claim that I'm a good writer, so please bear with me while I try to learn from my mistakes.

I'm a regular girl, living and working in what most people say (especially those in developed part of the world) a third-world country (it's Indonesia, in case you're wondering). I was born and raised here, and I never went away except for short holiday periods.

I was born in a middle class family, from parents with 2 distinctively different backgrounds. My father is a Chinese descendant born in Java while my mother is a native born in Bali. I am the oldest of three girls and we all live together in one of the larger cities in Indonesia, which is not at all unusual since it is customary for unmarried children to live together with their parents here.

I read a lot. And lurked on social medias because I often fear of offending people by what I say and I hate getting into arguments. My thoughts are sometimes cynical or caustic or mean so I have learnt to censor myself and ended up not saying anything. I tried to be considerate to the point of being almost mute.

So, this blog will be my testing ground and a somewhat semi public introspection page. What do I have to say if I can let all my thoughts run unchecked? Am I a troll and a horrible human being? Am I just a regular Jane like my blog suggested?  

So whoever stumble upon this blog in the future, beware. It will not always sane, there will be bad poetry somewhere, and someone somewhere will get offended.