shipperhipster:

((Okay, so I was asked by a friend to write an article of my choosing for this geek website. You see, though his writing staff started off pretty diverse, over the years via normal attrition they found themselves with a writing staff nearly 100% CisHet White Males and are looking to remedy that, which is good.

But this is what they got when they allowed me to write an article of my own choosing. When they wanted a queer female voice on something comics/geekery-related, this is where my mind went.



They won’t publish it. Its not in their “voice” - which is fine. I get it. It his site and its a bit preachy and editorial but lo and behold this is the kind of stuff that I think about. A lot.



A lot.

So I’m back to posting on Tumblr, preaching to the choir so to speak. ))







Art by the amazing shop5.tumblr.com







*** This article may contain spoilers for the Marvel Cinematic Universe ***

The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has a representation problem. For everything the movie-magic-makers at Marvel do right (engaging storylines, great dialogue, complex characters…) this seems like such an easy fix that seems so obvious, it’s becoming more and more unbelievable the Canon Gods at Marvel aren’t addressing it: diversity. While I can applaud them with some of their recent announcements (Captain Marvel! Black Panther!), they still have strides to go with one particular facet of representation that seems to have been ignored almost completely: LBGTQA+.

Of every character that has appeared in the MCU movies, none of them are confirmed to have any form of marginalized sexuality. On the other hand, every single one of the headliner hero characters have been shown to be involved in a heterosexual relationship. The only exception, which only counts as an exception if you’re being picky, is Black Widow and Hawkeye, which are only hinted at being in a relationship with each other. Iron Man has Pepper Potts, Bruce Banner has Betty Ross, Steve Rogers has Peggy Carter, Thor has Jane Foster, and even Starlord has his eyes on Gamora (and apparently random chicks he even forgets are sleeping in his spaceship).

Even expanding the MCU into its current television properties (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Peggy Carter, to date) in which gender and racial equality get heavily expanded (though still have a long way to go, especially with race), there is still hardly a blip on the LBGTQA+ radar. Victoria Hand, who appeared in the first season of S.H.I.E.L.D., is a lesbian in the comics, though it was never confirmed in the show before her demise.

So, since Marvel has made it clear they are interested in expanding their headliners to include more than just white dudes named Chris, why isn’t there just as much of a push to include some LBGTQA+ representation? So far there hasn’t been any public acknowledgement that this is something they plan on making a priority.

But are they?

There’s a very popular theory in the Marvel fandom, especially in the female-and-LBGTQA-dominated Tumblr, that Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, is bisexual. Making the brave move to actually come out and canonize this in the MCU would be a huge step towards in LGBTQA+ representation in mainstream media and would honestly fit seamlessly in with everything they have already established with Steve Rogers in the MCU so far. Here are several (and certainly not all) reasons why a bisexual Steve Rogers would benefit everyone:

Bi-erasure is real: As much as our society has marched towards equality, there’s still tons of misunderstanding about bisexuality. People are generally pegged as either “gay” or “straight,” which completely ignores other orientations, including bisexuals and asexuals. When Spiderman actor Andrew Garfield discussed a bisexual Spiderman on screen, many news outlets simply had the headline Actor Wants Gay Spiderman. NBC recently sparked controversy by “straight-washing” the character of Constantine. Even though the character is canonly bisexual in the comics, this wasn’t a facet of the character the show-runners were willing to explore in the TV series. Having a character as visible and important as Steve Rogers come out as bisexual would take a small stride to undo the damage done by so much of the mainstream erasure of bisexual people.

Misunderstanding about bisexuality: Not all bisexuals are swingers, sluts, or greedy sex-fiends (not there’s anything wrong with that). Bisexual does not, contrary to popular opinion, mean someone who MUST have sex with both males and females. Evan The Man himself, Stan Lee, doesn’t seem to understand what bisexuality means. In one interview , Lee replied, “[Garfield] wanted to talk about I think Spider-Man being bisexual, and my only comment was I thought one sex at a time ought to be enough for anybody.” Multiple-partner-shaming aside, this perfectly illustrates the problem. There are legions of bisexual people out there who are exceptionally content with “one sex at a time.” Bisexuals can be just as dedicated and monogamous as anyone else, yet in most TV and movies when Bisexual people are portrayed (which isn’t often) they are usually written as bed-hopping swingers who like to have sex with multiple partners at a time (Oberyn, from Game of Thrones is a recent example of this). Again, who better to help battle the negative stereotypes than Captain America himself? Captain America’s moral compass points strongly towards a monogamy; he loves strong and he loves hard, and he only loves one person at a time. Whether that person was a man or a woman, he would be completely dedicated and loyal to that person, and that’s the kind of representation that would go a long way to counter the broad brush many bisexuals have been painted as.

Does not negate ANY of his existing MCU canon: The First Avenger clearly shows him falling in love with the amazing Peggy Carter, though their relationship is doomed when he puts his plane in the Arctic ice. Peggy, understandably, moved on and had a family with someone else. Steve coming out as Bisexual wouldn’t effect this storyline at all; being bisexual wouldn’t diminish the love he felt for her. Just because he may choose to date a man in the future, doesn’t mean he didn’t love a woman in the past. Furthermore, Steve has been dodgy so far with Natasha’s attempts to get him to date women. Of course there are many reasons for this - his hesitance to jump feet-first into an all-woman dating pool could be Marvel’s subtle way of telling the audience there’s more he’s looking for. In the comics, Steve has an on-again, off-again relationship with Sharon Carter (Peggy Carter’s niece), who shows up as Agent 13 in The Winter Soldier. But even then, his interest in her seems surface at best awkwardly - trying to ask her for a cup of coffee before realizing she was a spy, for example. He doesn’t press, he’s just as shy and flustered as ever, and he seems to take it rather personally when it’s revealed she’s been spying on him. When Natasha eggs him to ask her out at the end of the movie, he deflects and refuses to directly say that he will.

It’s not coming out of left field: “Best friends since childhood, Bucky Barnes and Steven Rogers were inseparable in both the schoolyard and the battlefield.” This is how the Smithsonian describes the friendship between the two in The Winter Soldier. Captain America and Bucky Barnes are more than just a hero and his sidekick, at least how it has been set up in the MCU. In the comics, Bucky was younger and didn’t meet Rogers until after Project Rebirth. In the movies they actually take the established backstory of another character named Arnie Roth. In the comics Arnie is Steve Rogers’ best friend who protects him from bullies and is the smooth womanizer. Why is this significant? Because in the comics it’s later revealed that Arnie is gay! That interesting bit of trivia aside, the relationship between Bucky and Steve, especially in the second Captain America movie, flips many traditional romance tropes on its head. Steve actually meets Sam Wilson (aka, The Falcon) in a traditional “meet cute” scene that is usually reserved for the eventual love interest. The Winter Soldier himself is broken from his Hydra-induced “spell” when Captain America utters words of true friendship (love?) to him in the form of “I’m with you until the end of the line.” Sebastian Stan himself has admitted to the relationship being “a little Brokeback Mountain at times.”

Captain America should represent all Americans: Okay, this one is impossible just out of principle, but being bisexual would go a long way to help more people relate to him. All men and women, whether gay, straight, or bisexual, would be able to crush on him without feeling like a creeper. In all seriousness, having Captain America come out as being bisexual and supportive of LBGTQA+ people could be extremely inspiring to so many LBGTQA+ youths out there struggling to find their place in the world. If Captain America - the strong, sensitive, loyal, golden boy who represents the American Dream - can be out and bisexual, then it would vastly help those struggling with sexual identity. Representation matters!

Any publicity is good publicity: While probably the most boring point, it’s the one that is probably the most significant: Would Captain America being bisexual alienate fans and drive people away form the box-office? NO! First of all, if Captain America being bisexual is the only thing that would make you not like a character you used to love, then there is probably some deep-seeded homophobia that you need to work out. But, the bigger picture is this: everyone would be talking about it. Good or bad, it would be a HUGE news story if one of the most iconic comic characters of all time came out. Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook would all be aglow with the debates, the hate, and the love. All of this will draw ticket sales. Even the groups of people who would be against Captain America coming out would flock to the theater to see the spectacle. Fox News wouldn’t shut up about it. People would be talking about this movie and as long as people are talking about it, the money will come in. Marvel has already proven they can make money off of basically any premise, so only the really hard-core homophobic Marvel fans would boycott the movie. But for that handful of bigots they would lose, thousands more gay, lesbian, bisexual, and questioning people would see THIS Marvel movie, even if they normally wouldn’t be the usual audience.

There are of course many other reasons having an open and proud bisexual hero in the Marvel lineup would be a benefit to everyone, though I believe these would be the most significant. I encourage everyone who reads this article to give it some good thought: if the idea of Captain America being bisexual makes you uncomfortable, perhaps you need to examine exactly why that is. Would having Captain America be interested in dating both men and women change your perception of the character? Make the movies any more or less engaging and well-written? These are important questions, and Marvel can be the studio to bring some of them to the forefront.