The PC and Perpetually Offended Brigade

[Caomhaoin]

They tweeted out that he was a member of the LGBTETC community.

[Blackout]

I was misled. I thought spongebob was non-binary.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

What you're referring to was indeed a tweet, i.e. not actually in the cartoon. And it was last year.

https://twitter.com/Nickelodeon/status/1271795092391682048
"Celebrating #Pride with the LGBTQ+ community and their allies this month and every month"

They will have intentionally left it open to interpretation, since the other two pictured are explicitly part of the community and hence not "allies", whereas Bob... well, that's up to the viewer, depending on just how perpetually hanging on the edge of their seat waiting to be outraged they are.

[Caomhaoin]

That word 'allies' is quite ingenious. If you aren't one, then logically you are a bigot.

I heard the origin of that word comes from Ulster Protestant politicians saying 'by god' in their violent and vehement anti-Catholicism around home rule, might be bullshit though.

[Nazgûl]

Apparently the show creator was asked the question years ago and said he would always have thought of the character as being asexual, and that although the question of sexuality was never meant to be really even considered in a daft show like SpongeBob, the "writer's attitude was always about promoting tolerance and the idea that everybody is different".

As mentioned, I don't think this will change anything about his on screen character, and probably also is a bit opportunistic for the Pride month celebrations.

But to be honest, who really cares? In the context of this show it doesn't seem to matter -- but in other children's TV shows it might. Why is it a bad thing that kids may learn -- through watching their favourite cartoon -- that it's alright that a character's relationship to another would be of the same-sex kind. Like I dunno, The Flintstones for example...A kids tv show where the narrative revolves around a straight married couple. Kids obviously pick up on this being the case, so is there an issue if tomorrow *insert cartoon here* came along with a similar set up but with two gay characters. It doesn't need to be overtly pushy in terms of how they teach kids this, but just there in a passive sort of way?

[Blackout]

Or they could stop making Children's cartoons about sexual preference. Just a thought.

[Nazgûl]

You completely missed my point.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

"Normalization" is a hard concept for certain people to grasp. If you have a boy-girl kiss in a cartoon, that's viewed as "normal", so normal that it may be barely noticed. If you have a boy-boy kiss in a cartoon (not sure if this has even happened in a romantic context anywhere in the mainstream), then all of a sudden it's "having sexual preference shoved down our throats".  Obviously not a cartoon, but Mare of Easttown really nailed normalization, i.e. diversity that precisely doesn't make a song and dance about itself.

[Giggles]

Either way, he'll probably still be no actual gayer in his on-screen portrayed character than, say, Noddy, or every single male character during the final 30-40 minutes of The Return of the King.

[Blackout]

"Normalization" is a hard concept for certain people to grasp.

Starting off with this sentence makes you seem like a giant sanctimonious cunt.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

What I meant is just that, to someone who consciously or unconsciously views anything outside of boy-girl romance as deviant or degenerate or perverse (restricting myself to terms we've been treated to on this forum), i.e. as abnormal, "normalization" of anything LGBTQ+ will leap off the screen as aberrant. For instance, can you name a children's cartoon that is actually "about" sexual preference? Personally, it wouldn't bother me in the slightest if my kid watched a cartoon about a family where the parents were two men, and it was just a "normal" part of the show. I actively hope he will have a broader, more pluralistic, and more embracing vision of what "normal" is than the one I, most of us, were brought up to accept. For example, by the time he gets to primary school in a couple of years, maybe the notion of using a homosexual slur as an insult will already be seen among kids as being as ludicrous as it would have been in ancient Greece. When I was a kid, "gay" was used as an insult from the time we were seven or eight, and that's how we found out what it meant. Not great really, right?

[astfgyl]

or every single male character during the final 30-40 minutes of The Return of the King.

Those are some spectacularly gay minutes there now you mention it.

It's mad to think, given how many folks are "out" these days and how popular the whole rainbow movement is, how many poor fuckers must have been buried in the closet over the years because it's hardly as if people have simply turned lately. They must have been there all along, riding their women, devastated.

I was also going to say leave it out with spongebob and why can't all the kids characters be asexual but then I remembered Pepe Le Pew, who is basically a rapist now and I never saw the harm in it.

[Nixer]

or every single male character during the final 30-40 minutes of The Return of the King.

Those are some spectacularly gay minutes there now you mention it.

It's mad to think, given how many folks are "out" these days and how popular the whole rainbow movement is, how many poor fuckers must have been buried in the closet over the years because it's hardly as if people have simply turned lately. They must have been there all along, riding their women, devastated.

I was also going to say leave it out with spongebob and why can't all the kids characters be asexual but then I remembered Pepe Le Pew, who is basically a rapist now and I never saw the harm in it.

Spongebob is a rapist?

[Blackout]

What I meant is just that, to someone who consciously or unconsciously views anything outside of boy-girl romance as deviant or degenerate or perverse (restricting myself to terms we've been treated to on this forum), i.e. as abnormal, "normalization" of anything LGBTQ+ will leap off the screen as aberrant. For instance, can you name a children's cartoon that is actually "about" sexual preference? Personally, it wouldn't bother me in the slightest if my kid watched a cartoon about a family where the parents were two men, and it was just a "normal" part of the show. I actively hope he will have a broader, more pluralistic, and more embracing vision of what "normal" is than the one I, most of us, were brought up to accept. For example, by the time he gets to primary school in a couple of years, maybe the notion of using a homosexual slur as an insult will already be seen among kids as being as ludicrous as it would have been in ancient Greece. When I was a kid, "gay" was used as an insult from the time we were seven or eight, and that's how we found out what it meant. Not great really, right?

K

[Caomhaoin]

Male-Female relationships are 'normal', in the sense that most relationships have the dynamic, the vast majority. I don't think anyone here would seriously consider homosexuality as 'deviant' or 'sick', they are just strawmen, like the desperate search for evangelicals with jack boots. It's the drag queens on blues clues, the rainbowification of material meant for children of an age who should be left alone to enjoy those precious few years before they turn into self conscious pricks (I've been told Chris even had one).
I agree, explain that not every couple is heterosexual, not even every parent, but in its own time. You've seen these insane LGBT books being aimed at preschoolers of course? If I met the author of any of them, I'd have a go at the cunt.

Spongebob is aimed at young children (granted I got a load of laughs), just make the cartoon and shut the fuck up about what 'community' the protagonist belongs to for a shallow virtue signal that only spas can't see past.