the binary

#someone said ‘the supergirl kiss looks like when michael kissed oscar on the office’ and it does and i’m screaming

this is literally the same gif

I fucking choked

Hollywood cast queer folks to play queer characters challenge. And cast POC to play POC

This last point is absolutely true.

HOWEVER.

Having been in high school when Brokeback Mountain came out, I can tell you Heath and Jake took A LOT of heat for many of the scenes in it (including this one), because they WEREN’T all awkward and afraid to touch each other. They both went in with the attitude of “we’ve been hired to portray a relationship, and we’re going to do that.” I lost count of the number of times they were asked if it was weird/different to kiss another man. I think it was Jake who made the most confused face ever at the camera and kind of went “….no…..? A kiss is a kiss?” The speculation on their sexualities ran RAMPANT—at the same time that Heath started dating Michelle Williams (who played his wife, in the most positive-but-ironic turn of events ever). They literally were basically not allowed to say “queer people are people, and you don’t have to be queer to see that queer people can love and cherish each other emotionally and physically.” They did their best to do that, working against a mass media that was going “look, it’s a story about TWO MEN!! And they HAVE SEX!!! HOW FREAKY!!!”

So while I agree that in 2019 we should be aspiring to cast queer actors to play queer roles, please recognize that the fact we can aspire to that now is partly because of what two straight actors did fifteen years ago, when they decided they weren’t going to be afraid to risk breaking each other’s faces in a show of passion and longing.