Bohemia Bunny

You are underage for such content

March 25th, 2005 by lynnylchan under Uncategorized

The year I turned 16, my parents finally bought a new computer to replace our 8-year-old dinosaur. I went straight from Windows 3.1 and using MS-DOS to input commands to play games from a floppy disk, to Windows 98 Second Edition (with USB support no less). The biggest change it wrought in my life, however, was the Internet.

Before, going online for me was a rare event, something that only happened at my mum’s office or occasionally at cyber-cafes. I didn’t like going to cyber-cafes because those places were the stronghold of teenage boys beating the virtual crap out of each other, while uttering swear words as though they were combat spells or cheat codes. So when our new computer arrived, I guarded it jealously, because it contained the secrets to life, boys, and free mp3s. I discovered many things about the world and myself from it, and one of the things I stumbled upon was ICQ Planetout.

ICQ Planetout was my first encounter with a gay site. More correctly, it is a portal for those of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) camp. It was as good as any in being my introduction to the LGBT lifestyle. The one feature which really caught my attention was the comics page, probably because of my short attention span.

Through those comics I understood that the lives of gays and lesbians aren’t much different from those of ‘mainstream’ families. ICQ Planetout is an American site, so obviously the comics focused on American gays and their (more liberal) lives. But the themes the comics explored made sense to me, a heterosexual Asian girl. The comic characters set up home together, they started business ventures, went out, made out, broke up, made up, had babies, and campaigned against Bush in the 2004 elections. All the above could have been done by anyone, straight or gay. The only difference is who they do it with.

Go to the site and see for yourself. My personal favourite was ‘Ethan Green’, but the artist has gone on a very long sabbatical. ‘A Couple of Guys’ is full of puns, and the artist, Dave Brosseau, was the first online entity I ever sent an email to. Meaning he was the first person whom I didn’t know in real life to receive an email from me. It was a big deal for me when he replied. It was almost like getting an autographed photo of my idol, it was proof that I mattered as a fan and a reader.

I don’t know if the site made me a fag hag. Not that I hang out with gay men (don’t know any), but I know the parlance and I understand a bit of their history and symbols: Stonewall, the rainbow flag, pink triangle. I wonder what the reaction would be if I had tried to access that site while using a school computer in JC. Would I get the infamous MOE “Access Denied!” screen? Would that make me a subversive underage individual trying to view content for which she is not deemed mature enough? Then when am I mature enough to see such content, or is it in my best interests that I never see such content for fear that I might engage in activities that go against “family values”?

I’m really angered by the reaction of the population jumping on the Gay=Aids bandwagon. LGBTs aren’t all the disease-bearing hedonists you think they are. But I guess you didn’t have the Internet at 16 to help you understand that.