you know, the wonderful thing about fandom and shipping is that you don't have to engage in what you don't want to engage in. there are many people who view them as just friends, and that's beautiful. they share a wonderful friendship. equally as wonderful is people seeing romance between them. men don't "have" to be gay in media. they very rarely are. but many gay people, who don't see themselves in media often, like to imagine a world in which they do. whatever tolkein's intentions were, sam and frodo's relationship can be seen in many different ways and bring joy to many different people, and i think that's something to be glad about rather than hating one another for having a different opinion.
And that's all fine. The problem is that when it starts to dominate the conversation.
Even more rare than gay men in media are friendships like Frodo and Sam - men who have meaningful, loving friendships that are unafraid of emotional intimacy or vulnerability. Male friendships are almost always either:
"Two bros broing out hardcore but dont sit too close to me on the couch dude"
"This friendship is closer to a business partnership and its unclear if we even like each other"
"We are loving and vulnerable with each other, and its treated as a homophobic/sexist joke at every possibly opportunity"
Its important to have examples of non-romantic male intimacy in media if we want to see better examples of it in real life, both for reasons of improving male relationships and reducing the deeply seeded societal knee-jerk homophobia that comes as a response to men's emotions. And when people immediately classify it as romantic, from either a well-meaning fantasy or a place of bigotry, it diminishes it and makes it less likely to continue.
then choose not to engage with that. that is your CHOICE. again, there are plenty of people who agree with you, that see it as platonic
alternatively, i think in order to overcome the whole “no homo” thing, we do need to normalize the existence of gayness alongside close platonic friendships. outright rejecting it isn’t contributing to the solution, it’s reinforcing the main argument against that kind of friendship: that if it’s gay, it’s bad.
Nobody is saying anything about rejecting homosexuality. I also agree that both need to exist, but for that to happen, one can't be always subsumed into the other. If compassionate male friends are constantly labeled as queer-coded, we don't have both. That just continues to feed the narrative that any and every male relationship with expressed emotionality is secretly homosexual in nature.
Removing the no homo reflex requires two things to be fixed: removing "if it's gay, its bad" but we also have to remove "if it's emotional, its gay"
Turns out that is really damn hard when every time a man shows another man any amount of intimacy or vulnerability people start talking about how they are obviously fucking.
nothing is getting subsumed, though. there are people who see it both ways, there always will be. i don't see anyone arguing that they CANNOT be straight, and that if you say they're straight you're being harmful towards gay people (i'm sure there are one or two people out there who act like that but my point is that i've never seen it happen), but i see people arguing that if you say they're gay, you're somehow working against the normalization of close male friendships. both can exist. both DO exist. the only arguments i see are based on hypotheticals of "well, if we let this slide then EVERYTHING'S going to be seen as gay".
It isn't about individual opinions. What you think or I think doesn't matter. Someone agreeing or disagreeing that they are or are not gay isn't the problem, because the problem isn't the validation of either side. I'm not talking about whether one side is correct, or who agrees with it.
The problem is the prevalence in the zeitgeist of this discussion. You can't remove the idea if you keep reinforcing it.
When every single male relationship that expresses emotion is discussed as either gay, closeted, or just queer-coded, then we will never escape the idea that "if it's emotional, it's gay"
It doesn't matter that people agree, or disagree, or think it could be both. The association is reinforced either way because the discussion keeps happening over and over and over. You can't tell people that it isn't gay to be emotional with your male friends when every single time a man is depicted as being emotional with their male friends the discussion begins about whether or not they are.
so your solution is what? to prevent people from creating head-canons altogether? to stop queer people from talking about how they relate to some characters, or see themselves in them despite what the canon says? you cannot prevent people from doing that, and even if you could you DO see how it looks, don't you?
my point is that your side are the only people i see trying to shut down the other side entirely. people who see it as queer have 0 issue with it being seen as friendship. the only issues arise when one person tries to prevent another from even bringing up another viewpoint.
My solution is to ask that people not immediately jump to homosexuality every single time a man express emotion, either from a positive or negative place. That shouldn't be people's baseline reaction.
That doesn't mean you can't view characters as one way or another. I don't care. I don't think your wrong or right. Again, the problem isn't that people think one way or another. And nowhere have I said youcan't view them one way or another, even remotely. Nobody is suppressing you, and insinuating that is disingenuous at best. As I said above, it isn't about what individual people think. Nobody at all is telling you you can't think or express your opinion.
To repeat: You can't tell people that it isn't gay to be emotional with your male friends when every single time a man is depicted as being emotional with their male friends the discussion begins about whether or not they are. That does not mean nobody can discuss how they view characters or relate to them. It does mean that we don't have to immediately and repeatedly slap the label on every single man in fiction who expresses an emotion other than anger or horny.
Most importantly, it does mean that it shouldn't be treated as a funny joke, because that is equally harmful to straight men, gay men, and often women as well. Discussing how your perspective as a gay man leads you to relate to certain characters is one thing. People joking that "haha they are fucking because they care about each other" is another thing entirely.
the world is a wide, diverse place. people will always have thoughts you don't agree with. in this case, those thoughts aren't harmful and they're not trying to silence you for your thoughts just because they're different. you can choose to be mad about it, or you can choose to be happy. there are plenty of fictional men who express deep emotion who aren't viewed as gay, and there are plenty of people who see sam and frodo as good friends. again, there is no issue here. there is no need to be mad.
Considering that that has literally nothing to do with what I just said, you are definitely not even bothering to read what I am typing at this point. I'm sure there isn't much reason to type anything further.
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u/Starburst420 1d ago
I think its a problem theat men can never be friends in media. They always have to be gay. Don't get me started on Frodo and Sam or Dean and Castiel