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Does celibacy mean homosexuality now?


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hudsonvalley76

That's the way the media writes it now. I saw an article calling Matthew of Anne of Green Gables gay.

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In the area I grew up in it did. Granted my hometown was so homophobic gay was used as a synonym for anything deemed weird or stupid or abnormal.

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7 minutes ago, hudsonvalley76 said:

That's the way the media writes it now. I saw an article calling Matthew of Anne of Green Gables gay.

Sometimes people assume that someone who chooses celibacy must be gay. They're like ''well obviously he's gay or he'd be having sex with women!'' (you see this all the time with characters like Frodo and Legolas in LOTR - because there is no female partner present, and neither seem to have any form of intimate relationship, people claim they're clearly gay with Sam and Gimli respectively Y_Y)

 

Yes it's totally ridiculous, but certain people (leaning to both sides of the political spectrum) sometimes just cannot comprehend the fact that sex isn't a major aspect of the life of every human being alive.

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Given the time period in which that story takes place, it's highly likely that gay people may have been celibate -- or not been public about any same-sex relationships they did have. So I can understand the theory, anyway. That said, I've no reason to believe Matthew was gay. I haven't seen the currently popular series (and don't really want to), but I did read the book when I was much younger and I loved the original CBC Television adaptation from the 1980s, and I feel like it's more likely that Matthew simply didn't marry for any number of other reasons. Sure, maybe he was asexual... maybe a relationship just wasn't a priority for him for some other reason... maybe he loved someone when he was younger and couldn't be with them and just stayed single and lived with his sister to devote his time to working on the farm... who knows.

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7 minutes ago, Sally said:

We're talking about fictional people, right?  😗

Yuuuuuup.

 

God I get really tired of people trying to figure out the sexualities of very-long-dead or fictional people. Who knows and who cares whether Jesus Christ or Darth Vader or Matthew Cuthbert or Donald Duck or Joan of Arc were asexual or gay or demiromantic pansexual or any other label. Seems like an exercise in extreme futility.

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The French Unicorn
6 hours ago, Ceebs said:

maybe he loved someone when he was younger and couldn't be with them and just stayed single and lived with his sister to devote his time to working on the farm

Fun fact : that actually the plot of the show if I remember.

He and his sister both had "love intterests" in their youth but a tragedy happened and they both had to stay in the farm and take care of their mother.

 

Then there is this plot where Anne tries to make him date his former love and he is not thrilled about it, because Anne is his priority if I remember. At no point at all it is implied that he is gay, I think he just values family more than romantic relationships.

 

The tv show also has no problem in having explicit gay characters so if he were gay they would have let us known.

 

Now that's for the tv show; I haven't read the books but I don't think the author has that in mind.

 

Now if people want to think of him as gay, good for them, they do what they want. I'm right here headcanoning Diana as aromantic since I see the tv show so I won't blame them lol.

 

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4 minutes ago, Frenchace said:

Fun fact : that actually the plot of the show if I remember.

I was trying to remember if anything was stated one way or the other, yeah. Like I say, I haven't seen the new series, and it was about 30 years ago that I read the book and even longer ago that I saw the CBC Television adaptation, so my memory is hazy on that. But something like that would've been my guess, mm. He put family and farm life ahead of having a relationship.

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Oh dear me no, I just made the mistake of googling 'Matthew Cuthbert' and now I know what the character looks like in the new series. This is unacceptable. 😂

 

This is the true Matthew (and Anne) from the 1980s version:

 

D7-E6990-A-7-AB0-4-A03-8513-3-CF95-A91-D

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5 minutes ago, Ceebs said:

Oh dear me no, I just made the mistake of googling 'Matthew Cuthbert' and now I know what the character looks like in the new series. This is unacceptable. 😂

 

This is the true Matthew (and Anne) from the 1980s version:

 

D7-E6990-A-7-AB0-4-A03-8513-3-CF95-A91-D

Game of Thrones Cersei and Jaime Lannister | Cersei and jaime, Jaime  lannister, Game of thrones cersei

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1 minute ago, Major West said:

Game of Thrones Cersei and Jaime Lannister | Cersei and jaime, Jaime  lannister, Game of thrones cersei

Still with Game of Thrones, huh? :P

 

I watched the first season over a decade ago cos I had a massive crush on a (straight 😢) woman who was obsessed with it, and naturally I was changing my personality to be identical to hers so she would abandon her heterosexual ways and fall madly in love with me. (Spoiler alert: she didn't.)

 

Anyway, I don't remember much about the show, but aren't those two characters siblings who are getting it on?

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Marginally related: The phrase "He never married" was very commonly used at the end of obituaries in 20th century Britain as an euphemism for the deceased having been gay, but it was also used in cases where the deceased just never married.

 

And on a personal note: In my mid teens I thought that my disinterest in relationships with men was signifying asexuality rather than lesbianism, just because I hadn't even dared to consider that what I felt for women was, in fact, attraction, and all the lesbians in mainstream media at the time were either caricatures meant to mock or completely and utterly unrelatable to my own lived experience as a tomboy who grew into a genderqueer butch. I found solace in asexuality until I was strong enough to face the truth, and I'll forever be grateful for that.

 

So, celibacy doesn't "mean homosexuality now". Celibacy has historically and is currently been practiced by a vast amount of people with a huge variety of lived experiences and reasons for that. And, historically, yes, many of these people were gay in areas of the world where homosexual activity was illegal, and might have had hidden relationships and used their perceived celibacy to make their gayness invisible to the public so that they'd be safe. Others were devout nuns and monks, others just never happened to find the right person at the right time so they focused on other areas of their life instead (that happens in our days too), and others were asexual/aroace before that vocabulary came to be. Or there might have been a combination of these factors. Who's to say? There's as many lived experiences as there are people on this planet.

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4 minutes ago, Ceebs said:

but aren't those two characters siblings who are getting it on?

yes haha that's what I got confused over during the previous discussion ie;

 

30 minutes ago, Frenchace said:

He and his sister both had "love intterests" in their youth but a tragedy happened and they both had to stay in the farm and take care of their mother.

somehow I read it as they're both love interests who take care of each other haha fail

 

the books of Game of Thrones (called A Song of Ice and Fire) are amazing but the series turned to shyte in season 2. A prequel is airing now that is actually surprisingly good, and there is more incest for all the weirdos out there lol

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3 hours ago, Ceebs said:

Oh dear me no, I just made the mistake of googling 'Matthew Cuthbert' and now I know what the character looks like in the new series. This is unacceptable. 😂

 

This is the true Matthew (and Anne) from the 1980s version:

 

D7-E6990-A-7-AB0-4-A03-8513-3-CF95-A91-D

My favorite version also. I've yet to watch Anne with an E, though it's available on Netflix ...

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10 hours ago, hudsonvalley76 said:

That's the way the media writes it now. I saw an article calling Matthew of Anne of Green Gables gay.

Matthew never came across to me as gay, either in the book or on the TV series. He was a rather lonely man who found joy in having Anne and his sister around. I'd have to live in Elizabeth Montgomery's head to figure out her motivations for keeping him single, which is not a possibility at the moment. However, single men who never married for whatever reason weren't unheard of at the time of the story's original publication, so he wasn't out of the norm. His sister, on the other hand, might have been seen as unusual for not marrying, but again, not really outside the norm.

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1 minute ago, fuzzipueo said:

My favorite version also. I've yet to watch Anne with an E, though it's available on Netflix ...

I don't even want to watch it. 😅 Although this thread is making me want to watch the old version. I remember I first saw it when I was about five and for some reason I recall that it was around Christmastime. I was obsessed. I absolutely loved Anne and Diana's friendship, I thought Matthew seemed like such a kind and caring person and I wanted someone like that in my life, and even as a really little kid I kind of got crush-y butterflies in my stomach over the Anne and Gilbert storyline and I thought maybe I wouldn't mind a boyfriend someday. 😂

 

The guy who wrote the soundtrack for it, Hagood Hardy, is a Canadian composer I really loved when I was like... ten lol. Because I was that nerdy kid really into piano music.

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The key to fighting this is to ignore it and maybe write something about your own interpretation of a character as celibate or whatever, if it's something important enough to you to write about.

 

One article or blog post or tweet isn't worth the "Oh, so EVERYTHING that isn't expressly hetero must be GAY now????" reaction. Even if it's taught in a university course or something, it's just an interpretation being thrown out there. I personally think these kinds of reactions are more extreme than original statements. (And yeah, reactions to these reactions that call disagreements "erasure" or whatever are also way out there. There should be no cybernetic curb stomping here, which isn't a real thing but just a phrase I made up that sounds smarter than it really it — much like arguments that a celibate character must be hohmohsekshoowal.)

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@Snao Cone This. Really well said. I'd write more but my cat is using my body as her personal couch right now and she keeps headbutting my phone out of my hands.

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I never gave much thought to why Matthew had never married in the books. I don't think the plotline where Anne tries to get him together with his high-school sweetheart happened in the books, but maybe I just don't remember. I definitely thought Anne and Diana were in love with each other when I read the books, though. Anne with an E plays up the heterosexuality of both girls compared to the books. I still think Anne and Diana were bisexual in the books.

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One of the things I loved about Anne with an E is that we had three adult characters who were more or less comfortable living single or as part of a sibling household. All three are plausibly straight, but have made different choices to reject marriage in favor of other responsibilities.

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I've gotten it my whole life.  Although I was technically allosexual as a teen, I had a notably lower libido than most guys my age, which made me capable of some apparently amazing feats.  I could do incredible things like...

* ...talk to girls without trying to hook up with them!
* ...treat women as human beings instead of sex objects!
* ...be around girls in swimsuits and such without bugging out my eyes like a Tex Avery cartoon wolf!

Well, apparently these accomplishments were simply too astounding for me to be a heterosexual teenage boy, so I was widely perceived as gay.  People just tend to be dualistic in their thinking, I guess.

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Don't get me started on this. 😆 I'm still salty that Carson from Downton Abbey wasn't allowed to remain a possible asexual, since he really gave off that vibe for a long time until Julian "gotta ship everybody" Fellowes decided to make his sex life an actual plot point. 🤦‍♀️

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It seems like it does in the minds of many.  It’s an old thought as if you aren’t actively pursuing the opposite sex, you’re either secretly pursuing the same sex or have not realised you’re homosexual yet.  I do wonder how far back this thought has been in communities and cultures and as if it’s still a common thought in different parts of the world.

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On 9/23/2022 at 1:00 AM, Ceebs said:

Given the time period in which that story takes place, it's highly likely that gay people may have been celibate -- or not been public about any same-sex relationships they did have. So I can understand the theory, anyway. That said, I've no reason to believe Matthew was gay. I haven't seen the currently popular series (and don't really want to), but I did read the book when I was much younger and I loved the original CBC Television adaptation from the 1980s, and I feel like it's more likely that Matthew simply didn't marry for any number of other reasons. Sure, maybe he was asexual... maybe a relationship just wasn't a priority for him for some other reason... maybe he loved someone when he was younger and couldn't be with them and just stayed single and lived with his sister to devote his time to working on the farm... who knows.

Yes, I'm sure I've heard of older batchelors around where I live now (my mother's family is here). Some I'm sure we're celibate, others just never married...

On 9/23/2022 at 3:23 AM, Ceebs said:

Yuuuuuup.

 

God I get really tired of people trying to figure out the sexualities of very-long-dead or fictional people. Who knows and who cares whether Jesus Christ or Darth Vader or Matthew Cuthbert or Donald Duck or Joan of Arc were asexual or gay or demiromantic pansexual or any other label. Seems like an exercise in extreme futility.

Oh for sure @Ceebs ! Who really cares? Interpret a story the way you want, but don't say that it's carved in stone.

 

Look at the nonsense about Ernie and Bert from Sesame Street 🤦‍♂️

 

I'm surprised I've never heard anything about Batman and Robin from the original TV series. Somehow Batman resisted Catwoman. If that's not proof he was ace or gay, I don't know! LOL

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