Heterosexual shenaniganry

submitted by [deleted] from (self.Lesbians)

It really is frustrating how much social interaction in general is centered around heterosexuality. Like as soon as we leave toddlerhood or even earlier girls are constantly being trained for their future role as a (straight) wife.

I remember feeling so alienated by all the advertisements for girls' toys that focused on baby dolls, makeup, most fashion toys, hyperfeminie princesses, all the cartoons and movies that ALWAYS ended in a male/female romance regardless of how little sense it made. Not to mention every single person in my life who constantly teased me for having male friends, for not being girly enough, how any time a boy picked on me adults would be all "aw he likes you!" (WTH?), how many people told me I would change my mind about wanting to get married or having kids in the future, how gay guys/lesbians were always being made fun of on TV or at school. I could go on and on.

And don't even get me started on the culture surrounding what I like to call heterosexual humor. You know it when you see it. It's the whole "marriage is awful, my wife and I hate each other, men and women are totally different species lol" crap that's mired in sexism and misogyny. Like... can heterosexuals chill out for ten minutes?

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[–]RedditHatesLesbians 23 insightful - 1 fun23 insightful - 0 fun24 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

It doesn't really bother me, I don't expect the rest of the world to bend over backwards to always accommodate what ends up being a very small minority. Culture reflects the majority, as it always will and as it probably should, and we're outliers here. What we really need is our own communities in real life again that haven't been taken over by the TQ

[–][deleted] 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Unfortunately TQ is the mainstream LGB now that the heterosexuals like the most because it keeps women sexually available to men and straight couples, so I don’t see that going anywhere EITHER. Boooo.

We will just have to make our own communities again

[–][deleted] 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I agree - I also don't have a problem relating to well told heterosexual stories, even romances, so long as the characters and the narrative are well developed. The feelings and struggles they depict are mostly the same as the ones I deal with, just minus the struggles specific to being a sexual minority. And I will pull for two heterosexual characters (or two homosexual males) to get together if their characters are well matched and have chemistry, and I'm always a bit weirded out by the "eww men" or "eww hetero" responses you occasionally see. I would like there to be more decent lesbian stories for me to like, but I know they're never going to eclipse heterosexual stories.

I don't relate to the "men be gruntin', women be shoppin'" storylines that appear in sitcoms and dumb movies, but I would hope a fair amount of heterosexual men and women find that off-putting too.

[–]just_lesbian_things 10 insightful - 7 fun10 insightful - 6 fun11 insightful - 7 fun -  (0 children)

I'm always a bit weirded out by the "eww men" or "eww hetero" responses you occasionally see.

I think men are ugly and I prefer to look at beautiful people in my free time. What's not to get? 😂

[–]Tarohan 11 insightful - 6 fun11 insightful - 5 fun12 insightful - 6 fun -  (0 children)

I get you. In general, I feel gender roles should be more relaxed. I mean some have gotten to the extremes to light forests on fire for announcing baby boys. 😂 c'mon folks.

[–][deleted] 13 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 0 fun14 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

Most of this stuff seems to go beyond heterosexuality.

[–][deleted] 13 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 0 fun14 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

I'm aware of the overlap. The problem is with how much of female socialization, sexism, prejudice against gender nonconformity, homophobia, etc are directly related to heteronormativity. Is it hard for people to understand how those things are linked? What is not clicking?

Maybe I wasn't clear enough but quite a few people here seem to be missing my point and putting words in my mouth. Some of y'all exhaust me lol.

[–][deleted] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Perhaps you should be more clear then? I'm hardly the only one pointing it out.

The world is always going to be predominantly heterosexual, but there's no reason why a heterosexual world has to be a misogynistic one with strict gender roles. And homosexuals can be viciously misogynistic and have narrow views on how men and women should act and look.

[–][deleted] 11 insightful - 2 fun11 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Forgive me for assuming that this would not be that hard for other lesbians to relate to on a lesbian forum. Let's not pretend the predominantly heterosexual, predominantly patricarchal world world we actually live in isn't overall misogynistic with strict gender roles, or that these facts somehow don't affect young lesbians growing up.

[–][deleted] 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

And if you had tied these issues to the patriarchy or to misogyny and not to heterosexuality, I wouldn't have had an issue. We're always saying "words matter" so let's use the correct word.

[–]just_lesbian_things 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The world is always going to be predominantly heterosexual, but there's no reason why a heterosexual world has to be a misogynistic one with strict gender roles.

There's misogyny and then there's well-meaning women telling you how to land a good man under a general "advice for women". I'm not bihet, but I'm still a woman. Most (heterosexual) women connect to other women in a way that's entirely het centric. I'm not asking them to stop, but I wish they wouldn't assume.

[–]Skipdip 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I feel ya lol, ppl can be harsh on this forum. For what it’s worth, I agree. Which incidentally is why I think so many straights are so desperate to be “queer”. They want us to take them in and give them a safe place away from all of the heteronormative bs.

[–]beholdyourheart 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

For a lot of this I think of it more as a misogyny thing than a heterosexuality thing. It's girls who are being socialized into the role of a wife (like you said) - the boys aren't receiving nearly as much of that messaging of life being centered around their future relationship. This is only tangentially related but I've always been frustrated by those posts online that are of some man acting horribly to his wife/girlfriend, and people make fun of it as being 'straight culture' when really it's just misogyny. I really feel bad for a lot of straight women honestly

But I do get what you're saying, I had all those experiences you mentioned growing up and it sucked. The shoehorned straight romance into every possible piece of media, even a lot of children's media, bothered me since I was really young and I could never put into words why; I just always said that I hated love stories. I don't mind heterosexual love stories now, but they have to actually be good and the vast majority of them really are not imo - I think it's the idea that a lot of writers have that if a man and a woman are interacting with each other, they must be in love, so there's no effort made to actually give the relationship any nuance or interest. I have a few clear memories of being young and reading novels with characters of the same sex who had a lot of romantic chemistry and thinking 'I bet if these characters were male and female everyone would call it a romance, but because they're not they're just considered close friends', and that was way before I realized I was gay lmao

[–]just_lesbian_things 6 insightful - 3 fun6 insightful - 2 fun7 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

the boys aren't receiving nearly as much of that messaging of life being centered around their future relationship

There's some of it. The damsel in distress rescue is pretty common throughout male media. It's how you get the nice deeds should be rewarded by sex male logic.

[–]sootsprite 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Something I really hate is that every time you see a male and a female character fight and act horribly towards each other in media it's meant to be "sexual tension" and they usually end up hooking up. I HATE it.

[–]FrostyNugs 9 insightful - 3 fun9 insightful - 2 fun10 insightful - 3 fun -  (1 child)

I mean it's kinda ridiculous for to expect society not to assume everyone is heterosexual, when we make up such a small percentage of the population. Also, being gender nonconforming != being homosexual, and vice versa.

[–][deleted] 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yeah no shit, 95% of people are mostly straight. It’s a straight world and we just live here.

[–]Seahorse 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I just feel sorry for straights, actually.

They seem to have a culture surrounding not actually knowing and wanting to spend time with your significant other.

It makes me think that they often marry/partner for reasons other than love and commitment. What a sad existence.

[–]VioletRemi 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

There like 95% of people (2-3% of lesbians, and 2-3% of gays) in the world are heterosexual (or bisexual), so nothing weird that no one is advertising or making stuff for our 5%. I wish there were more done for us and by us.

focused on baby dolls, makeup, most fashion toys, hyperfeminie princesses

And this has nothing to do with heterosexuality, it is just misogyny and gender stereotypes, which were slowly going away, being non-confirming to girls became a cool thing and society started to pressure less and less women into hyperfeminine roles...until this non-binary-genderqueer-trans ideologists not appeared and in them were not poured billions of money, and they are reinforcing old stereotypes back.

[–][deleted] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

If there is a hetero couple (when I'm not disgusted with it, which is <1% of the time) on tv or movies, I just focus on the woman. I do feel disgusted with hetero relationships, but like 97% of people are hetero so everyone thinks that you're going to end up with the opposite sex.