Oh the People, the Places Part 2

I guess what inevitably frustrates me about putting together any sort of history about my past use of AFF is my desire to glamorize and streamline what happened into a narrative. Sadly, nothing irl is ever neat enough to really be a proper story though we may try to impose such structure when we reminisce.

(Speaking of reminiscing, let's break for a little tangent about the song "T.R.O.Y." by Pete Rock and CL Smooth. I gotta admit, I really tried to like this song, but I hate it?? If I recall correctly, it has little of substance to say. I feel about it as I do about obscure rock—I am uncomfortable and think my ego and estimation of myself is tied to my enjoyment of the music. It is something I would only mention to impress other people. It is totally opaque and kind of boring.)

It is for this reason that I feel uncomfortable continuing the previous chapter about someone else's antics on AFF.

I will instead speak about my previous homophobia and how AFF single-handedly changed my understanding of homosexuality.

I was raised in a religious household. My parents are Christian, and when I was younger, I was very religious as well. So AFF was my introduction to homosexual relations in any form. What little I knew of homosexuality was invariably negatively framed. I knew what the Bible said. I could not understand the draw of homosexuality.

AFF was remarkable, then. Homosexual pairings were widespread, were rarely negatively framed. At first, I refused to read fanfiction with gay pairings, but over several years, the normalization of homosexuality and the way it was viewed on the website—totally acceptable, not aberrant, not unnatural—made me curious. I started to read fanfics with homosexual pairings. It is honestly entirely thanks to poorly written kaisoo fics that I cast off my retiring conservative views.

All this is to say that I cast my lot in with the psychological theories du jour about the media around us. It teaches us how to view things; it forms our framing of the world rather than our views. It was the near universal, tacit acceptance of homosexual relationships on AFF that prompted me to reevaluate my own views.

At one point during my early AFF years, I was completely baffled by a lesbian's testimony of being a Christian; she spoke about how her attraction to women could not be a defect, could not be a sin. Confronted with the supposed humanity of a lesbian, I was so dismayed to hear this that I cried to my parents. The world was changing. Why was such apostasy being accepted as true belief?

I was not receptive to direct methods. Much like the vast majority of people. The article about the Christian lesbian was meant to declare to readers like me that she was perfectly fine and not defect, but all I saw was delusion and explicit conflict between the moral and faithful (me) and the sadly mistaken (her and those who supported her version of Christianity).

Instead, it was not the explicit argument for the personhood and normalcy of gays but fanfiction that swayed me. I read about fake gay versions of people I had never met in relationships, and this was easier to approach. They were as functional and dysfunctional as everyone else. The heeby jeebies of confronting something foreign disappeared after repeated exposure. So I found myself, slowly, becoming less prejudiced, more accepting.

So thank you, AFF, for making me a better person in this respect.