I’ve been thinking a lot about this of late, mainly around TV series and movies.
(As a side note my own morality on all of this is comes from having lived my early adult years in The Netherlands: for me all sexual orientations are normal things, same as eye colors, height and so on, so there is no “right” or “wrong” sexual orientation, just like there is no “right” or “wrong” eye color, and sexual orientation is not even important outside a sexuality context)
I agree with you on that: show it as normal and people will start seeing it as normal rather than give some disproportionate importance to what is just another human characteristic that varies from person to person, which IMHO the best way for everybody to treat people equally independently of sexuality - only a nutter would treat somebody differently because of, say, eye color, and as I see it in the ideal world it would be just the same for sexual orientation.
That said, forcing displays of sexuality or sexual orientation isn’t the way to go, IMHO, because it keeps the whole thing in this special pedestal and goes against normalization of it because it does not treat it as normal.
Unfortunatelly a lot of TV series and Movies of recent have forced displays of non-majority sexual orientation rather than just having it as just as normal as all else - say, some otherwise asexual character is made to explicitly be gay or some other non-majority sexual orientation for no actual story-related reason - although there are a few that just portray it as “just another bunch of people” (say, one of the couples in the neighbourhood happen to be gay, and they’re living life like everybody else or somebody just happens to be attracted to somebody else of the same gender and it makes sense to show it as part of the story) which is how it is in real life, at least in civilized countries.
It all feels like the makers are preaching to us through this medium rather than the whole thing just being a representation of “normal life” (in the story setting) with all the range of normal characteristics that humans have (which naturally includes a range of sexual orientations).
(Mind you, I also think unecessary emphasis on the sexuality of straight characters is ridiculous: beyond what is relevant for the story in terms of how it affects how characters relate, I don’t see why straight people’s sexuality has to be highlighted).
I think we should strive to display the variety of the human condition without actually putting things like sexual orientation in a pedestal and treat it all as special (hence, by implication, not normal). It’s not easy though, especially in countries like US where morality has been picked up by Politics and thinks which are absolutelly normal human characteristics have been fetishised beyond all logice and turned into battlefields.
All that said, in story-driven games and other media, were there is emphasys in human relations, you’ll almost always end up with sexuality involved, if only because sexual attraction is a frequent drive for the how people relate and act around each other so it’s a bit harder to have a normal range of human behaviour there without seeming to be forcing anything.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this of late, mainly around TV series and movies.
(As a side note my own morality on all of this is comes from having lived my early adult years in The Netherlands: for me all sexual orientations are normal things, same as eye colors, height and so on, so there is no “right” or “wrong” sexual orientation, just like there is no “right” or “wrong” eye color, and sexual orientation is not even important outside a sexuality context)
I agree with you on that: show it as normal and people will start seeing it as normal rather than give some disproportionate importance to what is just another human characteristic that varies from person to person, which IMHO the best way for everybody to treat people equally independently of sexuality - only a nutter would treat somebody differently because of, say, eye color, and as I see it in the ideal world it would be just the same for sexual orientation.
That said, forcing displays of sexuality or sexual orientation isn’t the way to go, IMHO, because it keeps the whole thing in this special pedestal and goes against normalization of it because it does not treat it as normal.
Unfortunatelly a lot of TV series and Movies of recent have forced displays of non-majority sexual orientation rather than just having it as just as normal as all else - say, some otherwise asexual character is made to explicitly be gay or some other non-majority sexual orientation for no actual story-related reason - although there are a few that just portray it as “just another bunch of people” (say, one of the couples in the neighbourhood happen to be gay, and they’re living life like everybody else or somebody just happens to be attracted to somebody else of the same gender and it makes sense to show it as part of the story) which is how it is in real life, at least in civilized countries.
It all feels like the makers are preaching to us through this medium rather than the whole thing just being a representation of “normal life” (in the story setting) with all the range of normal characteristics that humans have (which naturally includes a range of sexual orientations).
(Mind you, I also think unecessary emphasis on the sexuality of straight characters is ridiculous: beyond what is relevant for the story in terms of how it affects how characters relate, I don’t see why straight people’s sexuality has to be highlighted).
I think we should strive to display the variety of the human condition without actually putting things like sexual orientation in a pedestal and treat it all as special (hence, by implication, not normal). It’s not easy though, especially in countries like US where morality has been picked up by Politics and thinks which are absolutelly normal human characteristics have been fetishised beyond all logice and turned into battlefields.
All that said, in story-driven games and other media, were there is emphasys in human relations, you’ll almost always end up with sexuality involved, if only because sexual attraction is a frequent drive for the how people relate and act around each other so it’s a bit harder to have a normal range of human behaviour there without seeming to be forcing anything.