Alright. Okay. Fine. Let me explain pseudo-incest for those who are losing their minds over the "comparing lesbians with incest" tweet.

1. Many countries don't allow same-sex marriage. They also censor LGBT+ portrayals in media. So, what do some people do if they can't legally -

- get married? They settle for the closest equivalent that their country's legal system would allow. Yoshiya Nobuko, a pioneer in Japanese lesbian literature, legally adopted her (GROWN ADULT) partner as her "daughter" since they couldn't get married. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobuko_Yoshiya

Is that technically pseudo-incest? Sure. Is it morally wrong? Hell no. I think it's an extremely big brain move.

Now, let's talk about fictional pseudo-incest. Some people WANT to write gay r/ships, but they'd get censored if they tried to put their work into mainstream media.

How do you have an emotionally intense relationship between two characters of the same gender without making it "too gay" for the censors? You claim they're pseudo-siblings. But you keep all the subtext, the ship tease, the food for the fans who can see the hidden meaning.

People living in countries with strict censorship have to either self-censor or never get published. That's just the reality of it.

You can PERSONALLY dislike a ship that uses pseudo-incest, but you can't just entirely disregard the other level of meaning going on here.

More info in my long-ass thread here: https://twitter.com/fuurin_senpai/status/1347378575603757057

Now for the next point.
2. Erasure of IRL gay relationships by homophobic and/or ignorant IRL people.

The "they're not gay they're totally just siblings / best friends!!!" argument has two sides.

On one side, gay people can use it to benefit themselves when the legal system denies them equal rights. On the other side, homophobes can use it to pretend gay people don't exist. They can and will pretend that gay couples aren't actually couples. That's erasure. Tl;dr this meme

Things do get a lot more complicated when "pseudo-incest as a disguise to protect against homophobia" and "gay erasure via saying gay couples are siblings/friends" get all mixed together.

But can you at least see how these two things are connected now?

#kaeluc #discourse