I Don’t Think We Realise Enough As A Community The Extent Of Our Own Trauma At The Hands Of Decades

I don’t think we realise enough as a community the extent of our own trauma at the hands of decades of queerbaiting in media.

People will laugh at this, but I’m actually deadly fucking serious. My friends and I have been talking non stop about Our Flag Means Death for the past week, and the one thing we all have in common is how much disbelief we have that they actually went there. That this show centers around a mlm relationship, that the two lead male characters of this show fall in love - and are allowed to show that intimacy and affection on screen with a kiss.

Looking on social media this past week, its more and more of the same. Queer people all asking each other the same things:

“Wait it’s real?”

“You mean they ACTUALLY get together?”

“It’s NOT queerbaiting?”

“Those are the LEAD CHARACTERS?!”

The level of disbelief and shock involved is so ubiquitous it’s actually really sad how much we have been conditioned to think that such a thing isn’t possible. Whilst there have been other shows made about queer characters, it is so rare to actually find a show that has been made with us in mind that isn’t specifically about a queer persons struggle in a homophobic world, about coming out, about fucking AIDS or some other dramatic bullshit where we die in the end. A show that was marketed for the mainstream as just a silly pirate comedy and not another LGBTQ nische for that specific category on the streaming sites, kept shoved out of the limelight so it doesn’t offend the mainstreams more homophobic tendencies. A show that also hasn’t bought into the kind of insidious PR to reel in queer fans by making over the top announcements about certain “bisexual” or “pansexual” characters, who are then never actually shown in same sex relationships, or announcements about minor characters in big budget movies who may be allowed a “gay moment” which is overhyped to the extreme when said moment is a blink and you miss it laughable excuse at keeping us queer fans placated whilst we are told over and over again that our existences aren’t meant for certain spaces and clearly not on the silver screen.

The trauma is real. It has affected how we consume the media we love. Audiences have been conditioned to recognise certain TV tropes for generations. We should be able to recognise a developing romance on screen. Lingering eye contact, romantic music cues, camera’s panning over bodies from character POV to depict attraction, storylines filled with profoundly deep bonding scenes as the characters learn each other and get closer, secondary characters sharing knowing glances as they watch the pair interact…

For heterosexual pairings, these types of tropes are obvious - the characters get classed as a “will they, won’t they” pairing. Journalists and reviewers write articles speculating on when they will get together, cast and creatives openly talk about the budding relationship between the characters, fans happily share theories about the building love story and ask questions openly at conventions.

But where the exact same tropes are used on same sex characters, the opposite happens. The conversation is usually considered taboo. Any journalist bold enough to ask the question is usually quickly dismissed by the creators and cast, questions about the characters relationship are banned at conventions, fans are laughed at and openly mocked online for “seeing things that aren’t there”. Other fans loudly bemoan “why everything has to be made gay” and “why can’t we just enjoy platonic relationships?”

Queerbaiting over the last few decades in genre shows has become so bad, that it has left a generation of queer fans suffering from so much trauma that we were not able to recognise a clear romance between male characters on screen when it was happening right in front of us. Or in truth, we all recognised it, but we all just assumed that they were doing the same thing that so many of their predecessors had done. The creators of Our Flag Means Death were shocked that no one picked up on the relationship building between Stede and Blackbeard after episode 5, they were surprised that no one wrote about the romance in reviews of those episodes. The show remained relatively under the radar throughout its release, until in episode 9 the characters finally declared their feelings and shared a kiss on screen.

Only at that point, did the internet blow up, and through word of mouth, news of the openly gay pirates spread like wildfire. Queer fans all over the world are sharing their joy at something which for them, has never happened before - because we all expected yet another queerbait. Because we are so used to being disappointed.

I cannot stress enough how groundbreaking this supposedly silly pirate comedy show is for queer audiences. Yes, other shows have had queer characters, queer leads even, but this is a show that centers around two lead male characters who fall in love, with an extended cast of MORE queer characters, including a nonbinary character whose very presence had my trans friend shedding tears of joy. OFMD made it look so easy too.

I hope this is a turning point. Enough is enough. Queerbaiting needs to die. There is NO EXCUSE now that OFMD has shown how easy it is to do it properly, to take that final step. Two men kissing on screen should not be scandalous, not in 2022. Its time we start healing some of this trauma.