Of course they are.
When some straggot verbally harasses you in the street for "looking gay", what do you think they're responding to?
Stereotypes informed by prejudice.
But okay, since you found that confusing let me rephrase. What if everyone based their decisions about who they were attracted to and wanted to sleep with not on some internalized sense of what sexual category they fall into (which is identity, by the way) but rather on how they felt at the specific time when the possibility became available.
Well I don't see the scenario you're describing actually existing. What you seem to be suggesting is that everyone is more or less bisexual. If this isn't the case, it doesn't matter what category one falls into, people with opposite-sex attraction are going to be attracted to the opposite-sex, people with same-sex attraction are going to be attracted to the same-sex, then there'll be people attracted to both, and so on.
If you're asking what changes in the long run, I guess people can be with who they want to be, and society's better for it. If in the short term...okay, maybe not sexual assault, but if everyoe acts on how they feel in the moment, then what do you think that means practically?
I mean, it's a pretty basic description of how sex works, and how sexual and relationship dynamics function as a cultural baggage around sexual acts and indeed sexual relationships. You were the one insisting that I was talking about fetish stuff ("domination") when I talked about "active" and "passive" roles earlier, you were the one who insisted I was talking about "bro culture" rather than "heterosexual culture" and insisting that most straights never do stuff like this. What on earth did you expect if not an explanation?
It's still not an explanation at all. It's still stuff like "topping" and all these other terms I've never heard of until now.
If you want to discuss sexual positions and sexual dynamics, fine, but don't expect me to do it with you.
Sexual dynamics structure the way people physically behave around people they are in a sexual relationship with or are attracted to. When we see couples acting out intimacy in films, the dynamics of their interaction alters the way we see them. For example, compare the way Neo kisses Persephone with the way Neo and Trinity kiss in the elevator (and the fact that I've phrased it that way is giving it away). When Neo kisses Persephone, he is topping. He leans in for the kiss, she parts her lips a bit. He is actively doing the kissing, and she is receptive. It's an extremely gendered kiss between a man and a woman acting out conventional male and female roles. When Trinity and Neo kiss, they both kind of throw themselves at each other. They each put their hand on the back of the other's neck, which is a pretty strong gesture. There's no clear top and bottom. It's not weird, it doesn't register as overtly the "wrong" way to kiss, but it's also much less gendered. It's not unheard of or weird to see straight kisses depicted that way, but it is far more indicative of the way you'd shoot a same-sex kiss (without a clear masculine/feminine dynamic).
Okay...sure...maybe? But you can see my earlier comments on that kiss as to why it is the way it is (in my view) rather than what's written here.
I'd argue my case (again), but it seems we simply look at media completely different.
That's not my point.
My point is about whether that scene is pandering at all. I think your arguments for not liking the scene are fine. I don't think I like it either (although I don't seem to find it as obnoxious as you do) but you specifically stated that you felt the scene was pandering to straights. My argument is that I disagree, and I wonder if part of the reason you registered that scene in particular as pandering is precisely because it didn't actually pander to you, because it's not very effective as a heterosexual fantasy.
It was a very, very small point though, and I'm happy to drop it.
Okay, fine, you may be right. But as I hope I've demonstrated, even if the pandering is effective, I don't necessarily enjoy pandering (again, ThaddeusxJune). As a fantasy, it's effective. But it's still pandering, and it doesn't really add anything from a story or character perspective.
