Kate's Homosexual Agenda: More Safe Queers

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The only thing I want to do is read “Romancing the Werewolf” with the possible exception of listening to more of “Timeless”... No, that might be a close third, but listening to “Romancing the Werewolf” would probably come before “Timeless” if after reading it on my Kindle. I am enjoying “Timeless” well enough. The best parts… for me… are the parts that jump back to Lyall and Biffy who are the main characters in “Romancing the Werewolf” so you can see where my head is right now. I also just picked up “How to Marry a Werewolf” but in large part because of the fact that the main guy in the aforementioned book is a packmate of the gentlemen in “Romancing the Werewolf” and it might mention more of their story. I hope to see them being sap-ily, happily in love. YES, I AM OBSESSED WITH THEM OKAY??!! But gosh darn it, they’re just so very wonderful.

I’m still checking NetGalley several times a day for Competence which takes place in the same universe and centers on two characters I’ve been desperately shipping for a couple of years now. I think they might actually get together in this next one and I would just DIE HAPPY. Just *POOF* dead. I had been wanting them to get together but only in a “Kate will ship almost any single female and many not so single female characters if she is given three seconds to think about it” kind of way. But then in the first couple of chapters of “Imprudence,” Primrose got all flustered about Tasherit letting her pet the were-lioness in lioness form. And then there was an insinuation that Tasherit would be very upset about Prim’s random engagement to some random soldier. I can’t remember which thing came first now, because all I remember is that started screaming, “PLEASE BE GAY” at the top of my lungs in my car while driving down the highway. I’m not sure that’s the kind of behavior that suggests a sound mind, but there you have it.

I don’t know if anyone else gets that kind of worked up about fictional characters being gay, but I can’t help it. I do still have my straight ships and there are a lot of straight characters I love, but because there are so many more straight characters (if you consider the history of media in general even more so than if you just compare what’s on TV today) the disparity is huge. Not to mention, a lot of what queer stories have been told have been either a) uncomplimentary aka queerness = monstrous or b) tragic and miserable… or c) both.

I remember for years that people talked about how queer people “only a tiny percentage of the population is gay” and I kept thinking… “no, only a tiny percentage of the population is brave enough to stand up to the horror that it is to be non-cishet in society.” It’s a lot safer now that it even was 15 years ago when I was reading these sorts of things AND GUESS WHAT? More people are identifying with the LGBT+ community than ever before. It’s still low, but in a study a few years ago at a college, the percentage of respondents who identified as non-heterosexual on a survey nearly doubled when they asked about sexual orientation in an indirect and even more anonymous way. Meaning likely there are a whole lot more people out there who don’t identify as LGBT+ because they either haven’t figured it out (heteronormativity is still a pervacious, ubiquitous thing), or they’re too scared to admit it.

I read another article that said a survey for bi men found that only 12% of their respondents said they were out to the people closest to them. GUYS LESS THAN 12% WERE OUT TO THEIR FRIENDS AS BI. Now, I’ll grant you that some of them likely identify as gay instead of bi. I know that happens. It happens with lesbians too because there’s so much pressure on wlw to “realize that they’re being brainwashed to like men.” And just because the world is, essentially, brainwashing women to like men doesn’t mean that they don’t like both men and women.

Wow, it looks like I got off track.

I got through that program tonight for pre-teens so that’s one thing off my list of “reasons Kate is anxious” so helpfully everything will go as smoothly as tonight’s thing did.

I need to go to bed.