NRW - Retroactively Gay Characters

Four pages in a day?? Man, next time I should start a topic about Star Wars abortions.

Let's see how many replies I can manage here...

The more I think about this the more interesting it gets. Taking the argument that homosexuality is purely the result of upbringing or other environmental factors, there could naturally be gay Jangos all over the place, but if it is genetic, it's trickier. If it were genetic in the same way that, say, eye color is genetic, it would mean that Jango and all the clones must have the same orientation, but less apparent things like personality quirks are still based on your biological makeup without being completely hardwired; a "gay gene" along those lines could conceivably allow for varied orientations. I wonder what Karen would think about all this...

Oh, right. TftMEC was a looong time ago.

There's truth to that, but aside from the likelihood of closeted gays wanting to avoid professions where a less-tolerant society might not want them, a large enough group of people in any area is bound to include homosexuals. Every army in the history of mankind, for example, has undeniably had some gays among its number.

I don't think we have any conclusive evidence that he couldn't. Who knows; he might have wanted one with Zam if it'd been possible.

My impression is that any feelings Jaina had for Jag, while they would certainly manifest in Zekk, would be reflected through his own perspective. Ergo, romantic affection would become simply a profound brotherly respect. Unless there's some specific quote I'm forgetting.

I'm loathe to get involved in the Juhani debate, but I personally would put any alternate-ending personality insights, be they Juhani's or Kyle's or whomever's, in the same pile as insights from deleted film scenes or infinities stories, which is to say, they're a sort of suggested canon. It may be very likely that Juhani was gay, or that Han could've seen through Yoda's insanity shtick, or that Luke's friends called him Wormy, but it's not canon in the same way that everything else is canon unless directly referenced elsewhere.

That said, and I mean this in the most respectful way, can we please shut the *$@#% up about Juhani and get back to the topic?

Of course a lack of evident heterosexual relationships isn't absolute evidence of homosexuality, or vice versa. This thread should be about looking for the characters who have the most evidence; I simply used relationships as a general starting-off point.

Any thread can and will have people making half-assed, or simply baseless, comments. They will either be debated away by others, or simply ignored, like the one about Luke on page one. The point of talking about this in an open discussion is both to increase the likelihood of worthwhile suggestions and decrease the prevalence of flippant suggestions by working toward consensuses. Or, we could talk about global warming.

Ignoring the other problems with that line of t

 

Great, a pointless personal attack. Attacking the thing someone's notably a fan of is low.

First. Relax. It was a joke.

Secondly, I made a comment about Mandalorians, not any poster. Mandalorians are fictional.

How is this any different to what this thread started on - speculation on whether certain characters are gay. I bet there are fans of these characters as well.

Why aren't you taking people to task for "attacking" Ackbar or Pellaeon?

Lastly, speculating about the sexual orientation of a fictional character in a thread dedicated to exactly that is not in any way, shape or form, "attacking".

Now let me ask you a question. How do you think a homosexual Star Wars fan would feel reading some of the comments posters make here about people of their orientation?

Besides, the Mandos have a well-documented love of traditional family values. 16 year old brides FTW!

Begging the question. Who is to say in the GFFA that homosexuality is incompatible with "traditional family values" (a nebulous thing if ever there was one, and doubly so in a galactic civilisation hundreds of thousands of years old, and made up of many different lifeforms) ?

 

Alrighty kids, in consultation with 2ndQuest, any discussions about homosexuality that don't relate to the characters in Star Wars, and anything not related to the topic (ID, for example), can head over the Senate Floor.

E_S

 

Yeah, I know. But jokes can be offensive or hostile.

So is the entirety of the Star Wars universe. Hence the comparison I made. QM is known for being a fan of the Mandalorians. And many of the ideals that the Mandalorians epitomize and value are quite real. An attack on Mandalorians is, in some cases, an attack on the very idea of being a soldier or a warrior.

Well, there is a difference between discussing certain individuals and an entire culture. But mostly it was the tone of antagonism and disdain I perceived. And the fact that you were comparing the people QM is famous for being a huge fan of with something he's famous (or infamous) for being against. I dunno, maybe I over-reacted.

Well ... not good. Oh fierfek, argued into a corner. I would say, however, that a straightforward condemnation of someone's values is less offensive than a hostile joke. If someone feels a certain way, they're entitled to speak their mind, but they're not entitled to be needlessly spiteful about it. Not that I'm accusing you of anything like that. Like I said, maybe I over-reacted.

I would say "conventional wisdom." I was going by the commonly accepted definition of my people, the United States. See Wikipedia. The term is generally more associated more with Republicans and Conservatives, so it would be that section. But yeah, sorry if I was unclear.

Anyways, Mandalorian culture is all about gender roles and rasing children. Every Mandalorian culture article in existence is all like, "The husband does this, the wife does that" and "The father does this, the mother does that." The idea of a married man and woman raising their children is paramount.

 

You won't see gay or lesbianism in Star Wars, period, so there's little point in speculating it. I believe the lack of key female movie villains was that kids make your millions. The younger they buy your sun, the more planets you make of it. You saw this in Phantom Menace. And women are viewed in a motherly role for kiddies; it wouldn't do to have the darlings watch a saber swirling woman take out Kenobi and the boy in AOTC.

My like of Platt Mallar aside, I see SW as just too straight and perfect, and the slightest misbehaviour of the heroes has rabid fandom Mandaloring authors. It's just not on, even with chips and soda. I was thrilled to see a sleazy Jedi in Joiner King, because it was a first from the ever-solemn and dignified wizards we always get. You have to explore new directions, show honest Hutts and Knightrider SoroSuub "Kits".

People need to misbehave, they need to shout at each other, and dispense with the daisy flower behaviourial norm at times.

 

Han Solo and Chewbacca.

 

i think, that even though it may be strange, that some of the Jedi may be Gay.

 

India, Pakistan, China and Africa have been plagued by disease and poverty time out of mind. The relative size of their populations has nothing to do with it.

On the other hand though, China's much lauded one child policiy has inevitably led to a surplus of males (most families desiring to pass on the family name), which could have interesting consequences for us in the future...

Again, it's nonsense.

Let me give you a little example: up here in Alberta, we've got what's very likely the largest oil reserve on earth under our feet; and estimated 1.7 to 2.5 trillion barrels worth of it, enough to supply world demand at the current rate of consumption for anywhere from 15 years to 150, assuming the resource is better exploited, and that's not even taking into account British Columbia's off-shore oil reserves.

However, while industry is booming, the population isn't, and it's hurting. Teachers mount strikes somewhat regularly, complaining they aren't being paid enough, but the number of students in their classrooms continues to shrink by an alarming margin every year. The oil companies are finding it neccessary to scout out-of-province for workers, because there just aren't enough young guys to do the work here at home, and in those other provinces, they've been relying on immigration, rather than their wn birthrates to keep the infrastructure stable. In the town where I live, the starting wages offered by the various business are soaring, because the number of young people available to work part-time or even full-time jobs. The population's over thirty thousand, and approximately 55 to 60% are over the age of 60.

However, while that kind of growing population exhaustion is a ever more rapidly growing problem here, it could be worse, I guess. After all, we could be like Germany or Spain.

The primary reason is the entrenched position of Darwinian evolution as the scientific status quo. No one's yet been able to effectively prove that species evolve into other, different species over the course of time (as opposed to mutations within the species itself), yet any anthropologist can dig up a sufficiently aged skullcap and some teeth in Africa, and suddenly there's an entirely new sub-race of Australopithicenes in the school textbooks.

There is, (warming, not evolution), but the problem I have with "global warming" is the mass of eco-activism that you'll inevitably find parading under that banner, particularly the rather ridiculous suggestion that human industry is the cause of climate change.

Which is rather funny, given this propensity for glorifying Galileo's supposed one-man stand against the big, bad scientific establishment of his day.

Wrong again, sorry.

 

Mandalorians, for one thing, and Corellians, for another.

Heck, I'd say just about any of the Core Worlds, and any planets that were colonized by them.

 

[image=http://starwars.wikia.com/images/a/ae/Player%5C%27s_Guide_to_Tapani.jpg]

'Nuff said

 

This isn't a dicussion on homosexuality.
And I won't tolerate bigotry (or outright stupidity) on this forum.

So peddle somewhere else if you want to continue that debate, folks...

 

Wow, I was just coming in to suggest that Obi-Wan might have been homosexual and that it would add to his character if so, because he's not allowed attachment just like everyone else and it would add some new layers. Of course, he's not, but simply a what if, if it were something that happened in the GFFA, which like Excellence pointed out, doesn't.

...and I find "global warming", "intelligent design", etc. I thought I clicked the wrong link for a sec.

 

Well, actually it is, or I think maybe CooperTFN meant it to be, because any discussion of homosexuality within the GFFA is going to by neccessity touch on real-world experiences, and real-world arguments for and against.

 

Ummm, no.

This is a discussion on who in the GFFA might be retroactively gay. It's completely different.

 

While i haven't read the entire thread, sinc eit's longer than i care to read, i think the most likely character to be gay in star wars is ...

C3PO is my pick for being GAY.

 

I understand that, but the fact is, a discussion of who might be retroactively homosexual is inevitably going to end up touching on why said character might be speculated to possess homosexual inclinations, and that in turn is going to touch on real-world examples we can observe around us.

 

This is a bit off-topic but one thing I find kind of funny is the fact that the Jedi aren't supposed to date or have relationships because it can lead to jealousy, etc etc...which can in turn make him/her turn to the dark side (supposedly). But on the other hand, you get the Sith who can do as they will yet they can't date either because if they form an emotional bond, won't that lead them to the light side???

 

Ah, but Threepio had Ellie. The metal man was crying by the end of that story (okay, so it was the rain running down his face, but it was meant to be tears).

Maybe southern families. Now that we've moved past the fifties, a lot of families have better attitudes.

 

But how would GFFA people react to homosexuality? Leia, for instance, is very used to dealing with cultures and ideas different from her own, and would tend toward tolerance. If Jacen came out of the closet, I could see Leia having a brief "What the kriff?" moment in her head, but she'd eventually accept it. (The whole Dark Side thing, though, she wouldn't like. At all.) Han would probably have a harder time coming to terms with Jacen dating men.

This could tell us about their individual personalities, and does, but also as a small window of looking at Alderaan and Corellia, in cultural terms. Which cultures are more likely to be open to humans who have lifestyles different from the majority? Those would be the places where homosexuality and bisexuality are more likely to be seen. NOT necessarily more likely to exist, but there would be more evidence because the people affected would suppress their desires less and hide them less, if at all.

(For the record, Jacen can't be gay. Allana and his relationship to Tenel Ka is proof, without lengthy retcons that are exceedingly tenuous and ridiculous at best. I'm not saying he is homosexual. And no real evidence for his potential bisexuality, although no real evidence against it, either; there is hardly any proof against bisexuality for any character. I was using him as an example to highlight the likely different reactions from Han and Leia and their initial cultures.)

 

"Better" is a statement of opinion, not a confirmed fact.

As well, it's rather amusing to see the 1950s referenced in this way again. One would think that the decade marked a complete break with everything that had come before, morally speaking.

 

I'm a little concerned about how Mandalorians and their fans are being linked with conservatism and especially homophobia.

You're absolutely right about the Mandalorians, they would be accepting of anyone who did the Resol'Nare.

Anyone - any species, any gender, any orientation, any age, etc.

Right from the Insider article:

"Mando'ade regard six acts?known as the Six Actions, or Resol'Nare?as central to Mandalorian identity: wearing armor, speaking the Mandalorian language, defending themselves and their families, raising their children as Mandalorians, contributing to the clan's welfare, and rallying when called to the Mand'alor (the Mandalore, or leader of the clans, the nearest Mando'ade have to a head of state). Anyone who practices them is considered Mando?ade. The emphasis is on carrying out these acts daily, not simply paying lip service to them."

and:

"Whatever drove the first humans to adopt Mandalorian customs and language, the society remains willing to accept anyone who will follow its code, and all species, including non-humans, are welcome in the community. Mandalorians believe that you are what you do, not what the consequences of your birth dictate."

I'm seeing more and more of this "Fandalorians = homophobes and warmongers", and it's either missing the point or a reaction to the antics of the loudest of the online fans.

As to retconning characters...eh, I'm a little leary of that approach, but there's nothing wrong with the creation of new characters or minor characters who we haven't seen much of being revealed as gay. The main characters not so much, not only for reasons of fan backlash, but because so much story has already been put out there that it'd be a bit abrupt and illogical to suddenly completely change a character.

Obviously, I don't think there are many of us for LFL using the sexual identification of a character for shock value or sales, and I would hope they would never do something as crass as that.

 

It doesn't matter what the reaction is and this isn't the thread to discuss it, let alone any real world analogues...

 

Also from the Insider article:

"If the firstborn is a girl, the couple may try for a son soon afterwards. A daughter will usually stay with her mother until she marries. But if a couple has only daughters, the girls will be trained as warriors by their father exactly as boys would. Boys learn their earliest lessons from their mother before the age of eight, so her fighting skills are critical; a couple pledges to raise warriors, and this is a joint commitment."

Furthermore:

"The Mandalorian way of life is a dangerous one and widows and orphans are a fact of life. Families never hesitate to adopt orphans, and unmarried men and women regard it as their duty to take widows and widowers as spouses."

 

And what does that prove, pray tell.

 

Read in reference to what patchworkz7 was attempting to prove, it shouldn't be at all difficult to see.