Queer Fetishizing

I know I have been absent, I have been distracted and today started "Malia Week" on Tumblr which is about appreciating Malia Tate from 'Teen Wolf' who gets far too much hate, all because she kissed a boy. The fandom turned on her, I watched it happen. Yes it meant my ships sunk but there's no reason to slut-shame and berate a teenage girl for kissing the first person who was ever nice to her. I have deicated my Tumblr to Malia for this week and have accepted quite a few prompts that I'm going to try my hardest to write within the week. I've been meaning to write fan fiction again for a while now and now I have an excuse. 

Speaking of which there is an issue that effects me every single day on Tumblr; and that is the fetishization of queer people. To make a queer person nothing but a sex object, to sexualize them, to completely ignore their humanity, to appropriate their rights; its fetishizism of queer people. Its important to realize that fetishizism is not a good thing and just another form of oppression. Tumblr is the beacon of all queer fetishization, especially in form of white cisgender heterosexual men. In the media today there is little to no queer representation and when it is it is generally also in the form of white cisgender men; just look at Klaine from 'Glee' and you will see. 'Shameless' also have a white cisgender pairing representing the whole queer community. There is nothing wrong with white cisgender people and yes those queers do deserve representation too however there is nothing any for non-white or trans, non-binary and genderqueer queers who also deserve representation too. That's another reason queer fetishization is so harmful, its so deeply rooted to white cisgender heterosexual men. Because of queer fetishization it means queer people are reduced to fodder for straight people to fawn over without actually caring about the discrimination, prejudice, hardship or rights of said queer people.

On Tumblr I spend a lot of the time disturbed and a little scared, I have seen countless people take secret photos of two girls or two boys, determine that they are in a relationship, theorize about their sex and love life, give them ship names, talk about how beautiful the children will be because just look at the parents, if they are boys they will go on about how they wish "MPreg" was real-never mind that not all boys have penises-all while claiming they are so open minded to homosexuality. I have seen posts where people go on about how they can't wait for their children to come out as gay, so they can ship them and their boyfriend, talk about boys, let them have sleepovers with boys, wanted to show them all their ships, and laughed about how scared and uncomfortable they'd make their kid.

What is queer fetishizism? Queer fetishizism is when queer individuals are objectified/sexualized usually in order to achieve sexual gratification. However sexual gratification is not always the case. Those who fetishize are always straight people, you can't fetishize your own sexuality. Its also mostly down by white people because many non-white people face racial fetishizing and therefore straight POC are more likely to stay away from it. These people will also always be the one who believe queerbaiting is the same as queer representation and that people like me should be thankful for it. As someone who is an active member of many fandoms I put up with a lot of fetishizing behaviour. When someone has 

• Heteronormative ships, such as someone is always the "girl" and "boy" even though the idea of a some-sex relationships is that there is no "girl and boy" just "girl and girl" or "boy and boy". If there is children they will try and slap on the mammy and daddy labels rather then just two daddies and two mammies. 
• Shipping exclusively white cisgender men or women. 
• Ignoring anyone who isn't white, see the above point about shipping exclusively. In the 'Teen Wolf' fandom this goes as far as to erasing the Latino lead, including cutting him out of gif sets, using his traits and passing them down to others, etc etc. I once saw a gif set about Derek Hale which had the quotation of a line that was said to Scott about Scott. 
• Writing out women/men, killing off women/men, bashing women/men for "getting in the way of", and all general dislike for someone of the opposite who did as much as hug the person you are fetishzing.
• Transphobia, this is strong in male/male pairings with MPreg which completely erases trans men and that some actual men do in fact get pregnant.
• Ignoring canonically queer characters for your canonically straight characters. Such as in 'Supernatural' Charlie, a canonical lesbian, is ignored or used as a prop for 'Supernatural's' queer fetishizing ship Destiel. 
• Shipping the real life actors of your said pairing to the point of disregarding the induvuals' sexual identities and accusing any significant others of being cover ups.
• Treating your shipping as activism also known as Fangirl Activism. Such as I saw a 'Sherlock' fangirl paste the symbol for equality marriage over a photo of Sherlock and John, even though this is a big deal for many actual queer people.
• Ignoring, belittling, harassing or verbally abusing real queer people who voice any discomfort with queer fetishizism. 

That being said someone who is straight can have queer pairings and not all straight people will use queer pairings for sexual gratification. You can ship them, just don't do it in a fetishistic manner. Straight people you are not empowering anyone with this behaviour you are just making fandom life insufferable. You are hurting real people and still contributing to the oppression that many queer people undergo in their everyday lives. Queer fetishism is not supporting queer people.