Five easy ways to tell you’re a homophobe!

1. You disown your son when he tells you he’s gay. CHECK!
2. You refer to homosexuals as fags, fairies, or with other unsavoury F-words. CHECK!
3. You find yourself ripping up rainbow-coloured flags in your free time. CHECK!
4. You stop voting for the German Liberal Party even after Guido Westerwelle’s resignation. CHECK!
5. You upload a picture of two Elves from the Tolkien legendarium and say they’re not gay. CHECK!

… Now wait a minute.

It’s incredible how narrow-minded people can become if you dare to say such politically incorrect things as “These characters are not gay”.

I can only imagine that some of the ones who accused me of homophobia in comments and PNs after the image I uploaded last week* were gay themselves and have been subjected to all sorts of homophobia for so long that they jump at anyone’s throat for the slightest hint of what they perceive as intolerance. And I can imagine it very well indeed. I have gay friends, very close friends too, and I’ve seen first-hand what intolerant people can do to the ones they don’t tolerate.

What those people don’t get is that there’s nothing homophobic about stating that characters that were clearly never intended to be gay by their authors are… well, not gay. And please, don’t give me all that “Tolkien was just a downtrodden Catholic boy who would have written steamy sex scenes between all the guys in his novels if conventions had permitted.” No. Just no.

I suppose you’re getting too old for this community if you find that 96% of it revolves around sex – because the average deviant is between 16 and 20 years of age and that’s what those people’s minds revolve around a lot more frequently than older people’s minds. Which isn’t supposed to say that I don’t appreciate well-written erotica (loads of it on this site though you have to search for it), or well-drawn sex scenes, whether straight or gay. There’s a lot of beautiful and sexy stuff around – of the artists’ original characters, or of loads of fandom characters who actually are gay.

I don’t mind sex, heaven forefend. I’ve had lots of it. And that’s probably the reason why I don’t have to think about it non-stop while reading Tolkien, or Harry Potter, or watching Heroes, or eating cheesecake. I don’t care if it’s excessive boy-on-boy, girl-on-boy, two-girls-on-boy, unicorn-on-zebra or archenemy-on-archenemy. It wearies me.

And I would never dream of prescribing you what to think. If I come across slash I don’t support – again, regardless whether it’s excessive boy-on-boy, girl-on-boy, two-girls-on-boy, unicorn-on-zebra or archenemy-on-archenemy – I’ll usually hold my tongue. But I don’t want it shoved in my face in my own gallery, when I’ve uploaded a picture with no sexual content at all, and say so in the description (and it’s sad that these things even have to be said in descriptions).

On that note, I suppose I can count myself incredibly lucky for having found such wonderful, mature, and insightful people here on dA that I can chat with. Given that quite a few of my pics have made the front page, I suppose that it borders on a miracle that I’m getting relatively little batshit. But all the good vibes that I get in my gallery do make the bits of batshit stand out all the more.

So what is this post? It’s a bit of a rant. It’s a bit of an explanation. It’s something I’ll link the next person to who thinks they absolutely have to accuse me of homophobia. Feel free to accuse me of being literal-minded for insisting on canon. I’ll freely tell you that I am.

And while we’re on it, why not be more creative? Why accuse me of homophobia for drawing two straight guys when you can just as well accuse me of racism for drawing a white-skinned figure, or of arachnophobia because I’m drawing a horse? Or, come to that, of anti-lefthandedness because I draw all my Tolkien Elves right-handed though I'm left-handed myself?

Just a thought.