Jughead Jones is a CLASSIC example of how characters who were coded as gay were often stripped of any sexual identity, not shown expressing any sexual desire, and basically rendered non-sexual beings in every way as a means of turning them into jokes… and instead of addressing the homophobia inherent in that people are now just being like “well that means these homophobic caricatures are now positive asexual representation!” like. Read a book.
this is and historically has been the flip side of the “predatory gay, lesbian, bisexual, and/or trans person” trope – the gay, lesbian, and/or trans person* who is nonthreatening to straight cis people because they have been completely “defanged” by having any reference to their sexual attractions, their libido, their romantic relationships, etc completely removed and replaced with, like, idk, jokes about them eating a lot, for example. This is why it was such a big deal when I was coming of age to see shows like Buffy and DS9 and etc show same-gender kisses on screen – because I had seen shows with gay and lesbian characters before (not so much with trans characters – I mean I guess in some ways Dax is coded as trans on DS9 but that’s complicated and I don’t really feel comfortable speaking to that) but never seen those gay and lesbian characters actually have healthy romantic relationships where they got to like, exist as sexual beings.
*bisexual people are usually exempt from being portrayed as nonsexual mostly because our sexuality makes a good slut joke but it doesn’t fit quite as well with this opposite narrative – a nonthreatening bisexual is a bisexual who has “picked” the “right” “side” which makes portraying us as completely nonsexual unneccessary.
You mean Jughead Jones from Archie comics, the one dude with the gay friend, Kevin Keller? Who is openly gay?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Keller_(comics)
The jughead who was coded aro-ace?
The jughead where the creator said he wanted him to be represented as aro-ace?You are a classic example of an aphobe who wants to take away canon representation of an LGBT+ orientation which is underrepresented in the media.
First of all you don’t have to tag me in a reblog of my own post, that serves no purpose except cluttering up my activity page. Second of all Kevin Keller is a relatively new character, introduced in 2010. Jughead Jones was created by Bob Montana (who never said he wanted the character to represented as aromantic or asexual – Jughead was largely based on a childhood friend of his) in like 1946. Saying that the existance of an openly gay character within the past 7 years of Archie comics “canon” is proof that a character whose portrayals date back to the 40′s was never intended to be read as gay is… pretty revealing of a deep ignorance of the conventions that governed (sometimes literally) comics for a significant part of the medium’s history.
For a long time Archie comics were heavily regulated by the Comics Code Authority – in fact, one of the founders of Archie Comics was PRESIDENT of the governing body that implemented the CCA, and Archie Comics was the last major comics imprint to drop the CCA Seal Of Approval from their titles. The CCA was introduced as a direct response to a moral panic around comic books that was explicitly homophobic in nature. Gay and lesbian characters in comics during the time of the CCA had to be written in such a way that their sexuality was either entirely sublimated and only referenced obliquely, OR written as villains and tragic figures whose stories ended unhappily. Comics did that not comply with the CCA faced heavy censorship. Take it from someone who makes comics for a living – in many ways, the comics industry is STILL recovering from the influence of the CCA.
This is a big part of why when we talk about “coding” of LGBT characters in comics, we often have to consider things that are largely subtext. LGBT literary history is not aphobia. For more on media and pop culture coding and stereotyping of LGBT characters, I recommend watching the documentary The Celluloid Closet, and/or reading the book of the same name.
There’s also no such thing, at all, as a character being coded as aro or ace. These are both very new concepts, and has never faced censorship. It’s even funnier because the ace community insists that the biggest issue facing aro & ace people is that most people don’t know they exist. So is ace and aro existence so strongly built into society that there are styles and patterns used as shorthand to reference their existence without being unable to print, or do most people not even know you exist? It can’t be both. It is literally impossible for it to be both.
‘Ace coded’, ‘aro coded’ these terms are just examples of people seeing discussions of queercoding and thinking you can just swap out concepts and wind up with the exact same result, and you can’t.
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