Fighting Homophobia in Nerd Culture, One Convention at a Time

[Potoooooooo]

http://www.vice.com/read/bent-con-lgbt-comics-nerds

As Gam​ergate and a thousand other microscandals have illustrated, there's a fair bit of misogyny and homophobia in nerd culture. This is slowly changing, however, thanks to the efforts of people like Sean Z. Maker, a digital artist and author of an epic pansexual comic series called MYTH.

In 2010, Maker founded Bent-C​on, which is basically a queer version of Comic-Con, in Los Angeles to bridge the gap between LGBT artists and fans and geek culture. The idea is to showcase work from people who are marginalized by the heteronormativity of mainstream comics, and also to show gay audiences that they are more represented in this realm than they might realize.

I sat down with Maker at Bent-Con in November to find out what it's like to be gay in the comic book world.

 

[repoman]

Fags gonna fag

What about "Chan Culture"?

 

[repoman]

Is heteronormativity a bad thing? Most people are heterosexual.

Is it ok for an artist to not include not much or any references or portrayals of gay people in his/her work?

 

[Underseer]

Is heteronormativity a bad thing? Most people are heterosexual.

Is it ok for an artist to not include not much or any references or portrayals of gay people in his/her work?

So if we think it's bad to mistreat homosexuals, that means we hate heterosexuals?

What fascinating logic.

 

[bigfield]

Is heteronormativity a bad thing? Most people are heterosexual.

Is it ok for an artist to not include not much or any references or portrayals of gay people in his/her work?

So if we think it's bad to mistreat homosexuals, that means we hate heterosexuals?

What fascinating logic.

Amazing - it's as if you didn't even read the post you quoted.

 

[Underseer]

So if we think it's bad to mistreat homosexuals, that means we hate heterosexuals?

What fascinating logic.

Amazing - it's as if you didn't even read the post you quoted.

I read it.

People are complaining about how homosexuals are being treated.

He responded by claiming that the people doing the complaining are somehow being unfair to heterosexuals.

Complaining about the mistreatment of one group counts as mistreatment of the entire group from which those doing the mistreating come. It's the same game Christians play when people complain about the way they treat women and homosexuals. It's an old game. The Nazis pulled the same stunt when they complained they were being "persecuted" by the Jews when precisely the opposite happened, or when Apartheid South Africans insisted they were being mistreated by blacks, or when Muslims in Muslim-majority countries complain that they are being "persecuted" by religious minorities whenever anyone asks them to stop mistreating said minorities.

Every rightist political movement does this.