Recently, the “Supernatural” fandom experienced something groundbreaking. If you haven’t seen the latest season yet, here’s a spoiler: Castiel confesses to Dean that he is in love with him. Obviously, the fans of “Supernatural” and shippers of ‘Destiel’—people who are rooting for the Dean and Castiel relationship—were surprised and, more often than not, enthused by this development.
Rooting for a gay couple is fine. If that were the normal tendency of fans who ship two men together, that wouldn’t be a problem. The issue arises when fans become obsessed with a gay couple to the point of emotional investment and abuse, even writing graphic smut fanfiction about the actors or characters for the pleasure of a primarily straight, cis female audience.
In this article, use of “female” and “male” will refer to toxic cis, straight norms unless otherwise stated. As a proponent of the female gaze, it’s not often that I find myself deliberately arguing against it. Usually, characters and their relationships in media are depicted with the intended audience of the male gaze—even today, movies like Justice League (2017) and TV shows like “Rick and Morty” are written or directed with the explicit intention of depicting characters and scenes for the pleasure of the male gaze.
It’s frustrating when media rarely caters to the female gaze or even an unbiased gaze, which might look something like focusing less on female characters’ breasts and more on all characters’ facial expressions and emotions. In theory, the female gaze is less harmful than the male gaze because it takes power from the already dominant male perspective in literature by removing the objectification of women.
In this particular case, viewing gay men through the lens of the straight cis female gaze is problematic. The female gaze has a tendency to warp gay male relationships, which exist independently of straight cis woman, and contort them into entertainment for the pleasure of the female viewer. If you’ve ever been involved in a fandom, you’ll recognize the signs. Two male characters who may or may not have explicit sexual or romantic identities are idolized in your fandom. You begin to come across fanfiction written about just the two of them. The fanfiction becomes more graphically sexual as the two male figures gain acclaim. This has happened time and time again.
Look at the television show “Glee,” which featured a gay relationship between characters Kurt and Blaine. The show wrote a breakup between the two and fans rioted until the characters got back together. Not only that, but the actor who plays Blaine—Darren Criss—was publicly uncomfortable about being called gay in real life, and Chris Colfer—who portrayed Kurt—told a fan via Twitter that he was “so tired of people over-analyzing and making stuff up” in regard to his relationship with Criss. These attitudes were likely spurred by the intensity of the fanbase and their fanfiction.
One Direction fans did the same thing to two One Direction members, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson, who have explicitly stated that they would like to be left alone by fans and are not dating or together in any way.
The primary culprit of this over-sexualization of gay male relationships is often the straight cis female. It isn’t hard to guess the cause of this toxic attachment style, either. Men are inherently threatening. They often have physical and social power over women. Women are therefore attracted to less-threatening men, or men whom they feel have less power over them. The gay man poses less of a threat to women and therefore suits the female gaze. He is not intimidating or a figure to be nervous around.
Thus, fanbases are constructed by individuals who don’t feel threatened by these gay men. The sexualization of mlm (man loves man) relationships stems from this presupposition that gay men are not a threat to straight cis women and, therefore, can be used as a lens through which cis straight women may explore their own sexual desires without the threat of a straight man or vulnerable woman in the fantasy.
This is obviously a terrible social practice. Gay men are human beings with individual lives to live. Supporting gay relationships should be encouraged. Sexualizing gay relationships for the pleasure of an uninvolved party needs to stop—permanently—so the straight cis female community can be true allies of the LGBTQIA+ community.