Hi, Team.
All right, fine: let’s talk about Pedro Pascal’s sexuality and why you freaks need to shut the fuck up about it.
Historically, constant scrutiny and speculating about a person’s sexuality has bad results. At best, they end up safely coming out and accepted for their truth, even though they end up doing it before they were ready or ahead of their comfortable timeline, ie both Heartstopper actor Kit Connor and Love Simon author Becky Albertalli were pressured to come out, both are bisexual. At middling, a person under scrutiny might be plunged into obscurity, grey listed by an industry that is ultimately conservatively run and oriented–don’t let the corporate floats in July fool you. And at worst, they are fucking KILLED. So one more time, team: shut the fuck up about it.
We’re entering another era of overt prioritization of the straight, white, able-bodied cisgendered man. Christofascism isn’t even attempting to be insidious anymore. We were plunged deep in this poisoned soup already and the burner is only cranking up higher.
I assumed it was a clear indicator that by the time the entertainment industry insists the tall, white, often blonde and usually blue eyed actors are the standard of beauty and talent we were fully cooked. We’re fully cooked. Benefits and social aid have been quietly vanished away for the past decade, there was an immediate shift during the most recent presidency to pretending the pandemic is over (it isn’t) and it wasn’t that bad (it was). These are things the disability community has been very vocal about for a long time. Homeless folks and folks who use drugs are being criminalized in a manner I can only describe as medieval in its cruelty and overwhelmingly targeted at non-white members of these communities. It is a constant dehumanization and an extreme level of harm that has been completely normalized. Trans healthcare and reproductive healthcare are trapped holding hands as the nation shreds any piece it can grab away from them. No fucking duh the culture is hard right, it’s been veering that way for years. To boil a frog alive, you raise the temperature slowly. And the water has been boiling over the edges of the pot for a long, long time. So naturally, attempts to needle out a latinx man’s sexuality raises an internal alarm.
According to the FBI’s resources on crime data violence towards members of the LQBTQIA+ community have increased. Violence towards gay men spiking over the summer and violence towards bisexuals as a mixed group is also higher than last year. When you break it down by race and ethnicity, something the CDE doesn’t provide – the cops don’t factor in intersectionality? Shocker! That supplementary info must be sought out from human rights orgs. The numbers are, brace yourself, high.
Let’s circle back to bisexual men, a group largely ignored and when their existence is remembered, a group largely vilified. Google “bisexual men mental health” and take note of how it feels when the first suggested follow up question is “how to deal with bisexual men” instead of any leads on resources. The kerfuffle about Pascal’s sexuality flies past the idea of bisexuality straight to gay town with such verve, such vim, such vigor, it’s no fucking wonder bisexuals (hey disaster crew, I see you. Do you see me?) have an astonishingly high rate of suicide. According to the HRC, that statistic is approximately 40% of bisexual people have considered or attempted suicide, a number that rises when factors such as disability and race are included. You’d want to kill yourself too if your community denies you even fucking exist. Bisexuals make up approximately half of the LGBTQIA+ community, yet over half of bisexual+ youth have no support, and only roughly a quarter of bisexuals report even being out to those closest to them. Newsflash dickshits, not only do we exist, we have no fucking choice in the matter, so stop fucking saying the-B-stands-for-Babadook-because-he’s-gay or I am going to start a devastating fire in your home.
And okay, say you’re right, say there is a secret boyfriend. Use two microvolts of brain power and focus on the word “secret.” Secrets are private things. They’re not necessarily shameful things, but they’re definitely protected things. Consider a person whose private vacation was infiltrated by a “fan” that tracked them across the globe to approach them while they were alone on the beach. Would that person want their romantic partner’s identity to be known? I doubt it. So. If this secret partner that I’ve been unable to find any evidence of beyond sporadic-yet-increasing tiktoks and threads speculating on them exists, perhaps mayhaps perchance it is best to not only shut the fuck up about it but to also indulge in a little something I like to call “leave it the fuck alone.”
There’s something I think gets somehow forgotten, which is: Pedro Pascal is a latinx actor, he is genuinely a latinx man. It’s not a character; he’s literally from Chile. The freakest of the freaks love to slobber giant ropes of fetishizing slime for the latin lover trappings that envelop him, but somehow hold it just detached enough that he’s still treated, somehow, as if he is actually anglo. He is not anglo. He is a latinx person who does a really good Southern accent and has a gift for a non-regional dialect that makes my Appalachian-hidden-in-plain-sight brain go brr.
Now, I’ve been over here trying to write an essay about the fetishization of Latinx actors in the genre fandom realms, with a focus on Pedro Pascal as the public glut for all things related to him are the most obvious and inescapable. I wanted to bide my time, talk about depictions of this specific group in media and entertainment, discuss the objectification, point out with as much nuance as a moron such as myself can muster the sharp split in treatment afforded to Afrolatinx actors and artists by the public, the industry, and within the latinx community itself. I’ve been reading so much about this! I have points! I have brash conjectures like a firm belief the level of fanaticism for one latinx actor over another hinges on how well they can pass for anglo – Oscar Isaac flows easily through realms of white-with-a-little-vague-extra character types as well as being a known latinx actor. Diego Luna, less so. Gael Garcia Bernal, even less. Pedro Pascal walks this razor thin line of being so undeniably latino the fetishes can’t help but flourish but also has the ability to slip into an anglo space with deftness. The slip allows a “safety” to this fetish, almost as if there’s a sick plausible deniability to it– “he’s not actually latinx to these freaks!” I scream. Seeing fancam after fancam of him has made me profoundly uncomfortable. When I worked at a now-bankrupt furniture chain, a white customer came up to me to complain about a latinx family being loud, her underlying meaning being “these people, am i right?” not realizing I was included in these people. The slime of her thinking not only was I like her, I thought like her, coated my hair and skin and throat– it was sickening. These fancams made me feel something similar. It felt like the whole world was grabbing me by the shoulders to yell “YOUR UNCLE IS SO EXOTIC. I DESPERATELY WANT TO FUCK YOUR UNCLE.” Disclaimer: he’s not my uncle, I’m just taking it personally. So I’ve been working on this and I’ve been trying to make sure what I say isn’t absolutely unhinged.
But
You
Freaks!
First of all, learn some lessons and quit putting people on pedestals. On a plinth with only a square foot to maneuver, a person is going to fall. And from experience I know not one person will catch them. But a mob will flood in to make sure to get in a few good kicks while they’re down.
Next, what in the tumblr ass Harry Styles and Louis Lomlinson are actually lovers type queer fetish is going on, here? Speculating a man’s queerness after lumping heaps and heaps of sugar-iced Baby Girl accolades reeks of two dimensional understanding and expectation of queerness. Queerness as a trope instead of a lived and evolving thing that cannot be defined as a monolith no matter how much Target tries (Tried? I’m not convinced they want the rainbow dollar anymore) to do so with increasingly hideous capsule collections.
Also, shutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckup about it.
Do you want this man hurt? Do you want to hurt this man? Do you want to pressure this man to come out? Force a person to expose their insides before they’re ready? Force a person to expose their insides and reveal to your great freak dismay they’re straight, actually? What would you do, honestly, if he were straight? What exactly do you think will happen next? Harry x Louis conspiracy? Or be normal? Probably Harry x Louis. Fine, go ahead. Shatter any platonic relationships he might have in public because the other party gets forced into participating in a parasocially constructed reality. Jesus Christ. It’s no one’s business. If he’s queer, great, hope he feels happy and safe and surrounded with love. If he’s straight, great, hope he feels happy and safe and surrounded with love. As beneficial to the greater good of community representation and perceived legitimacy in the public eye as an openly queer popular actor is, it’s none of my fucking business. It’s none of your fucking business. Shut the fuck up. You freaks. Be normal for, like, three weeks so I can write my stupid fucking essay. Damn.
Here’s a quick and fast resource for my fellow bisexuals out there/folks who have a bisexual in their life they care about: https://biresource.org/mental-health/
Okay, Team. Talk with you again soon (threat).
If you see any typos don’t tell me oh my GOD