What did you think when Willow turned gay? - part 2

[Goby]

First, I think we are being too critical of Joss. He deserves major kudos for showing one of the first (if not the first) gay relationship. So what if he thought of it during Season 4 and not prior to the pilot being written. It worked for me 100%.

I did a google search and found this post from 2000:

At the moment I'm in heavy mourning for the loss of Buffy the Vampire Slayer from my life, as Dartmouth doesn't get the WB. Sigh.

Anyway, one of the reasons that I like the show so much is the Willow/Tara relationship that began this past season and is continuing into season five. Putting aside the vampires, monsters, and general fantasy horror of the show, it's the first time I've ever seen a realistic television portrayal of a same sex relationship on television. (Even if they're not allowed to kiss, but that's a different rant.)

I know that I must not be the only gay person out there who is sick of almost every gay person on TV being a plot device, nothing more than a stereotype, or an utterly nonsexual being.

I'm straight, but I bet being gay is a royal pain in the butt. It's so much easier to be "normal" (of course that is said with rolled eyes). My 4th grade love, Debbie, who was smokin' hot, dated lots of boys. I found her on Facebook, and she was still hot. She then told me she was married... to a woman. 🙁 We had a very long talk, and she said that she really wanted to be straight, and dated in high school, but in 12th grade she got honest with herself, and has been with the same woman for about 20 years.

I enjoy the conversation (I'm a member of the Bi-Willow club), but I don't think Joss should be faulted. He was a trailblazer. Willow and Oz was nice, but Willow and Tara was historical, very, very special, and simply perfect.

But Joss should not be forgiven for the mess called Kennedy. lol

 

[HelloWhatNow]

hi goby,

i was afraid i might come off as too harsh on joss. it’s not easy for anyone to address, myself included. but can i assume for the sake of argument that when you say “I bet being gay is a royal pain in the butt,” you are also counting bi people in that assessment? because as much as it is true that joss whedon wrote about love in many forms, and that his standing up to the networks to keep tara & willow was a breakthrough; celebrating this while simultaneously being nudged back into the closet is awkward. it sets me up as being happy for “them” which means hey guess what: not one of. not fitting in here, not fitting in there, also a pain in the butt.

by the way i love that you had a 4th grade love who was smokin’ hot. would that i were so naughty back then! and ps: there is actually scholarly writing on bisexuality and "evil queers" in buffy?! i can't post the link because i'm too new, but if you google this: " “I Think I’m Kinda Gay” site:slayageonline.com" it's the first article that comes up, by McAvan. sorry if people knew this already. this is my first night in the buffyverse.

 

[zobothehobo]

hi, i'm new here! 😛 i see gay and straight perspectives here but not bi. is anyone is still into this conversation? i'm reading season 8 for the first time, and found it when googling "willow and oz gay or bisexual".

while it's true that as zobo said, willow claims her gay self and does so proudly, that's great, but to me, not the point. "the closet" symbolizes denial, real aspects of ourselves that we stuff away and hide. it's not just for us queers anymore; example: private pagans and wiccans hide in the "broom closet." willow the character does a great job of proclaiming her gay, but an equally great job of closeting what she was before, whatever that was, and how that leads to who she is, fictionally speaking. maybe it was gay in denial, maybe it was just non-realization, maybe it's undealt with bisexuality. but it's never addressed, leaving the dichotomy here being a very oversimplified one.

i always found, "hello, gay now," incredibly irritating. "hello, not that simple, writers" is more like it. speaking from personal experience, yes, there is social pressure from birth to be straight, but there is also constant social pressure to be one way or the other, either straight or gay. maybe more today than ever. if you are bi and coming out you really feel this, and sometimes it is truly less than subtle. zobo, i give you credit for seeming open-hearted because it's not always that way.

i say the writers were either bi-phobic or incredibly straight. there's an analogy with the treatment of sexuality to the treatment of the actual vampiric act on the show. seldom do the cameras linger more than a few seconds on a shot of blood-sucking, and especially early on in the show, cameras filmed the post-coital a lot more than the"¦ coital. commentary from the writers, for example in the paley fest reunion videos, always addresses queerness at joking distance, very similarly to the way they address the evil activities of vampires and demons. : poke: i know it's not easy for anyone to address, but speaking of closets"¦.

and yes, i do realize the irony in venting about closeted bisexuality in a fan forum on a show that isn't even on the air anymore. so have at me, but this conversation just called out to me!

I get that being bi must be incredibly difficult because of the relationship our society has with dichotomies. Please don't think I was suggesting that that wouldn't be difficult. I just truly believe Willow was gay. I'm going to link you to a post I posted in another thread on this topic... https://www.buffy-boards.com/showpost.php?p=907981&postcount=45. That best explains why I think Willow's gay not bi... I guess I could elaborate more if you want... because I do have more to say but for now I think that post says it pretty well.

And I feel you should know in that thread I just linked to, it is said that the writers considered Willow bi until season 7 when they made her gay with Kennedy. So I don't think the writers were bi-phobic or incredibly straight. They made a decision about their character and they have the right to do that.

 

[HelloWhatNow]

I get that being bi must be incredibly difficult because of the relationship our society has with dichotomies. Please don't think I was suggesting that that wouldn't be difficult. I just truly believe Willow was gay.

i wouldn't say incredibly difficult, just it's own breed of difficult. maybe it's your background, zobo, that leads you to sympathetic understanding, and i really appreciate that, (as well as the venn diagram!) i do believe you just really think willow was gay.

i took an english class where one of our assignments was "written on the body" by jeanette winterson. throughout the entire story the narrator is genderless, with a female lover. when the class debated the book, it was really interesting to watch the sides line up. straight classmates were addressing the narrator as "he" and queer classmates were addressing the narrator as "she," whether or not we meant to.

don't get me wrong- i don't think we are capable only of seeing others' sexuality through our own lens of experience. but i do think it's our starting point, our instinct. i think that holds true for me and my discomfort, for you and your perspective, and also for the writers. clearly people are capable of imagining their way out of that, and looking at love and lust regardless of preference and gender. otherwise the writers* would never have written the love story of tara & willow, and stuck to their guns.

in regards to bi-phobia, i stand by what i said, with caveat: i don't mean to sound accusatory. even out gay people can be homophobic. i even think i can be bi-, homo- or hetero-phobic at times myself: it's fear, of something that causes internal conflict. i just think that begs addressing. the writers negated a rather obvious possibility of willow being bi: it wasn't addressed except reactively, in statements like, "hello, gay now," as if that cleared it up; and once in a conversation with kennedy where she admitted it wasn't easy.

even in the most accepting, idyllic society i don't think it would be easy to come to terms with sexual conflicts, internal or external. there's a process you go through. what process did willow go through to reconcile her love and lust for men in the past with her love and lust for women now, before deciding that she was gay? either there was a process and we simply didn't see that story for some reason, or willow chose not to go through that process, suggesting unresolved character issues. i googled the topic in the first place because the suggestion of her "unresolved issues" got on my nerves.

but goddess i wish i had as much focus on homework as on this conversation tonight.

*i know this is a jumbo assumption. the writers i could find wikireferences on who wrote S4 willow & tara episodes are listed as married to folks of the opposite gender and make jokes like they're straight. that's my truly specious basis for assumption.

 

[mayfever]

What a truly great post, HelloWhatNow. I think it covered a lot of my issues with Willow/Tara, except I wasn't familiar with the term "bi-phobia". I blame a lot of what I don't like about the show on clumsy writing, and I think this is one of the times where that holds true especially. The whole thing rings a bit of "an open-minded straight person is trying to imagine what coming out is like for a gay person." Kudos for effort and good intentions and all, but you're just not going to cut it, because you can't possibly know what it's like. I'm not normally one of those who say "you have to experience it before you can write about it", but I think this is a model case where they should have asked a writer who's been through it themselves. (By the way I'm not gay, I'm bi, and my friends know but my family still doesn't (and unless I meet someone truly spectacular, they're not going to either. I grew up in a rural area with very traditional values and I witnessed two friends come out and it wasn't pretty. So I think I'm qualified by my own standards to have an opinion).

Nevertheless, I can only repeat what I said before: If Willow says she's gay, she's gay. We don't go round telling our real-life friends "No you're not" when they come out to us, so why do it to fictional characters? I sleep a lot easier since I blame everything I dislike on telly on sloppy writing 🙂

 

[Goby]

Nevertheless, I can only repeat what I said before: If Willow says she's gay, she's gay. We don't go round telling our real-life friends "No you're not" when they come out to us, so why do it to fictional characters? I sleep a lot easier since I blame everything I dislike on telly on sloppy writing 🙂

It's totally different. And I bet you do tell people "no, you're not." in relation to other things. We all do. Buffy said that she didn't love Spike, and that it will "never happen," yet we all knew that she loved him and that it would happen. 🙂

Buffy her breakup with Riley on Riley, yet Xander said it was her fault and she needed to take action.

Humans also see things they way they want. Perhaps some small part of me (hehehe) would love for Willow to be bi---so I can ask her out for coffee and a danish. 😉

 

[mayfever]

It's totally different. And I bet you do tell people "no, you're not." in relation to other things. We all do. Buffy said that she didn't love Spike, and that it will "never happen," yet we all knew that she loved him and that it would happen. 🙂

Buffy her breakup with Riley on Riley, yet Xander said it was her fault and she needed to take action.

Humans also see things they way they want. Perhaps some small part of me (hehehe) would love for Willow to be bi---so I can ask her out for coffee and a danish. 😉

You are right of course about humans seeing things the way they want. Still, if I tell someone "I am bisexual" and that person responds with "No you're not" (as has actually happened to me; people saying that I was playing the bi card to get the attention of guys when it's "girl-kissing o'clock"), I would be very offended indeed. I am the one that lives in my head and I know who I am attracted to.

In that respect, I don't think the Spuffy comparison works - you can be confused about your feelings, but trust me, it is pretty obvious who gets your juices flowing on a purely sexual level. People who claim they didn't know didn't want to know.

 

[wickedwill]

Oz and Willow first sleep together.The world is ending they're about to fight the whole Ascension hoopla and Angel is dying and Willow feels so guilty because it is "the happiest night of her life".

I can't imagine it would be the happiest night of her life if she was indeed gay. Sleeping with someone of the opposite sex for the first time when you're gay feels far from perfect.



With Tara I just think Willow fell for her as a person, I don't think her gender even came into tbh.

This sounds like double standard to me. If you think that making love to a man can't be that awesome if you're a lesbian, well, ..how come she seemed so happy having sex with a woman, if she wasn't at least bi.
Maybe it was the opposite, when she fell in love with Oz,she fell in love with a person and the gender had nothing to do with it! 😀

 

[mayfever]

This sounds like double standard to me. If you think that making love to a man can't be that awesome if you're a lesbian, well, ..how come she seemed so happy having sex with a woman, if she wasn't at least bi.
Maybe it was the opposite, when she fell in love with Oz,she fell in love with a person and the gender had nothing to do with it! 😀

I don't think ashsummers meant to say that Willow isn't at least bi, or pan, or whatever. However, the more I think about it the less it makes sense and the more I get angry at how the whole issue was dealt with by the writers. She's probably bi from the mere "set-up" (i.e. which primary and secondary sex organs she feels attracted to) and nothing will convince me that she didn't genuinely love Oz (although aside from her "I want smoochies!" comment, I never got the feeling that their relationship was all that much about (sexual) passion, more companionship and mutual understanding), but after Tara (who was her soulmate, the whole ten yards) she decided that she wasn't going back (maybe even as a way of remembering Tara and paying her respect? I dunno, just a theory), hence the "Gay now!"

 

[Deus Ex Machina]

I found something from an old conversation I had on another forum about Willow and someone brought up something quite interesting so I'm just going to quote it all (in chunks):

As much as I love Willow, she is fully capable into deluding herself into thinking that Tara needs to hear her "gay now!" speeches often, just like she tries hard to shed the nerd label, even though none of her friends is bothered by her being a nerd. Or like when she thought Buffy and Xander were cold to her because she was dating Tara back in The Yoko Factor, when in fact Buffy was supportive and Xander didn't even know about the relationship. Willow is insecure but she also has the need to improve herself and be good at whatever she is doing. If she is doing magic she needs to be learning new spells often and improve her power, she wants to win the Science Fair, she spends five hours preparing for teaching Jenny's class, she gets into Harvard and Oxford. Heck when she is depressed she doesn't just do petty acts like breaking stuff or drinking till she falls, she tries to destroy the world instead. 🙂 So no wonder that when she is dating a woman then that woman is soon considered to be her soulmate and Willow professes her lesbianism loud and clear. I love Willow/Tara, mind you, but I think this an interesting way of looking at it.

This conversation is fascinating, but backing up a bit, I have always thought that Willow's "Gay now!" comments were, well, rather jarring, but understandable. I too am a woman who has only ever fallen in love with one woman and she's the person I intend to live the rest of my life with. Willow, it seems, intended to live the rest of her life with Tara. As we live in a culture that focuses on labels, Willow was going to be labeled as gay/lesbian for the rest of her life whether or not she was ever attracted to men, in the past or present. Succumbing to the label you're being given is sometimes just easier than trying to explain anything. I oft have the argument with people that I am not, in fact, a lesbian and it's rather pointless and frustrating.

And this argument of Willow's insecurities making her change into who/what she thinks her friends need her to be becomes the thrust that eventually turns her to the dark side. From the middle of Season Five to the middle of season six, Willow's changes - her need to become stronger in magical ability - are driven by the fact that she believes that she needs to protect those around her - especially after 'The Gift', where Willow believes that she failed Tara, Buffy, and all of the Scoobies. Her need to bring back Buffy in Season Six was that, again, she thought that she would fail the remaining Scoobies, as well as the more obvious desire to 'save' Buffy after the fact. She didn't love Tara or Buffy any less when she tried to mind rape them, she again was trying to 'fix' them HER way.

Okay, so these are from THREE different posters. What do you think of their ideas? I think they're all Tillow fans and accept lesbian Willow but found it interesting to look at it from that perspective and I hadn't really thought of it much either. I thought Willow said "GAY NOW" to assuage Tara's fears that kept cropping up, but I didn't think that deeply about it like they did.

 

[Hale Caesar]

I didn't mind it, Willow didn't come out and say she was gay before she met Tara, she met someone she had a genuine connection with and made her feel happy...it just happened to turn out that Tara was a woman lol. Although, I do like Oz more than Willow, he's just so funny

 

[TimeParadox]

I have a hard time swallowing that she's completely gay. You don't just have a crush on a boy for years, then fall in love with another boy, and then realize your orientation does not include being attracted to me. That just doesn't happen.

I personally don't believe in a romantic love without sexual attraction. If there is no sexual attraction, no matter how much in love with someone you are, all it can ever be is a best friend relationship. Which is usually a wonderful and loving relationship. But it's pretty hard to form a romantic boyfriend/girlfriend relationship out of it, and it's hard to mistake that kind of love for romantic love.

And she very clearly had sexual attraction to both Xander and Oz. Especially Xander.

In the season 3 plotline, when Willow and Xander had that thing, it's also pretty hard to ignore the serious sexual attraction Willow had with him. She tried to make an anti-love spell to control her own hormones.

As for vampire Willow, despite Willow reffering to her as "kind of gay" because of the sexual moves she made on regular Willow, vamp Willow was also clearly in a very sexual relationship with vampire Xander. It's difficult not to feel the heat between those two.

Also, Willow and Oz may have both been fairly reserved about the sexual stuff, in comparison to horny Xander, but Willow was clearly upset in the beginning of her relationship with Oz when there was no touching happening, and she clearly really enjoyed the sex that they had.

That's not to say that her love for both Oz and Xander were purely sexual, but it was a major component, and I have a very hard time not seeing that.

That being said, She very clearly had a sexual attraction to Tara, and to women in general in the later seasons. I think that was made very obvious in their astral projection spell in "who are you" and their song in "once more with feeling" There is no denying that sexual side of Willow either.

Given that, there are 2 options:
1. She's Bisexual
3. It doesn't make sense/bad writing.

I'm going to go with option 1, basically since I like to make sense of the buffyverse, and also Vampire Willow was very bisexual and Angel implied that orientation stays with you when you go vamp.

Also, many bisexual people prefer one gender over another, despite being attracted to both, and can shift that preference. So it actually makes a lot of sense.

She says she's gay, but I think that's more to emphasize that she IS interested in women, and that Tara was not just a fluke. People who recently came out as gay when they've only had one gay partner can often be accused of it being "just a fluke" so she needed to let people know that it's not.

Conclusion: Willow is, was, and has always been bisexual.
QED

 

[Scarlett Blade]

Being homosexual means that you have romantic and/or sexual desire towards members of the same sex. It dosen't mean that you could never have those feelings for the opposite sex as well, you just prefer to be with the same sex. So I find it completely logical that Willow could have had feelings for Oz and Xander in the earlier seasons while still being very much gay and with Tara in the later ones. I guess now I think of her as both gay and straight in the earlier seasons, instead of bisexual, with her focusing on the attraction she felt to men, and never realizing her attraction to the same sex. It also seemed to me that Willow never really sexually matured untill around season 4 or so, and that is also when her sexual identity manifested itself.

 

[Icarium]

And she very clearly had sexual attraction to both Xander and Oz.

And Giles. See Where The Wild Things Are where this is explicitly mentioned.

Personally I think it's futile to speculate about Willow's sexuality since I don't think the writers had much a plan about it. If people think she is bisexual, that's great. If people think she is totally gay now - that's great too.

 

[KellGreen]

It seemed kinds of natural to me at the time. She was hurting from losing Oz still, and met this person who looked at her like she was special. They got extremely close and things developed from there. I don't view sexuality as something to be categorized - I view it as more fluid (sorry for the bad pun here). I happen to be straight, but some of the guys I was attracted to in my teens make me shudder now. We all change. I think it is perfectly sensible to believe Willow fell for Tara, even though she wasn't "gay" at the time. I don't, though, see her as forever "gay." I can imagine her with either gender down the road. I think many people, especially those who do fall directly within one "sexuality" or another find it difficult to understand others who do not have a set definition of theirs. I also have heard of friends who are bi being told that's not possible and that they MUST REALLY have a preference for one gender or the other. I view Willow as bi, but I realize the writers couldn't have written her character as having Tara as the only woman she is attracted to, because (unfortunately) that would cause many viewers to assume that she wasn't really ever attracted to women and that the thing with Tara was just "experimenting." Sorry for rambling, but it bugs me that in the real world there is so much pressure put on people to know, identify and "live" their sexuality.

I must say for the record that I can not forgive the writers for the creation of Kennedy.

 

[zobothehobo]

I have a hard time swallowing that she's completely gay. You don't just have a crush on a boy for years, then fall in love with another boy, and then realize your orientation does not include being attracted to me. That just doesn't happen.

rep cut me off. You're being really dichotomous about this. sexuality is NOT a black and white thing... even in the "gay" and "straight" categories. It's a lot more fluid than people give it credit for.

 

[The Unspoken]

rep cut me off. You're being really dichotomous about this. sexuality is NOT a black and white thing... even in the "gay" and "straight" categories. It's a lot more fluid than people give it credit for.

It's the show itself that was dichotomous about it, what with Willow's numerous 'gay now!' exclamations and her attempt to turn R.J. Brooks into a woman as soon as she fell under his love spell. I think that's what she was pointing out.

 

[zobothehobo]

It's the show itself that was dichotomous about it, what with Willow's numerous 'gay now!' exclamations and her attempt to turn R.J. Brooks into a woman as soon as she fell under his love spell. I think that's what she was pointing out.

I chalk that up to Willow being single for the first time after discovering she was gay. For me and several friends I have... when we first came out we were very dichotomous about it. It was something I didn't understand much. So I started saying all boys were gross and I started saying I didn't have any attraction at all to men. It took about a year for me to come to terms with the fact that sexuality is not a black and white thing. I'm gay, but there might be a man I fall in love with someday. And there are going to be men I can tell are attractive.

But yes, I agree the show is too dichotomous about sexuality in general and this explanation I came up with is probably a way for me to deal with the what I'm going to assume is probably ignorance of the writers with their representation of sexuality.

 

[TimeParadox]

rep cut me off. You're being really dichotomous about this. sexuality is NOT a black and white thing... even in the "gay" and "straight" categories. It's a lot more fluid than people give it credit for.

That's kind of exactly my point. To me, insisting as defining her as completely gay or completely straight is dichotomous. Although it's true for many people, Willow doesn't fit into either category, (or alternatively, fits into both). I think it doesn't work to just ignore a whole side of Willow that's obviously there to neatly fit into either straight or gay.

...Although probably everyone else is right and it's just because the writer's changed their mind about Willow's sexuality.

 

[zobothehobo]

That's kind of exactly my point. To me, insisting as defining her as completely gay or completely straight is dichotomous. Although it's true for many people, Willow doesn't fit into either category, (or alternatively, fits into both). I think it doesn't work to just ignore a whole side of Willow that's obviously there to neatly fit into either straight or gay.

...Although probably everyone else is right and it's just because the writer's changed their mind about Willow's sexuality.

My point is under your definition of "gay," no one really fits there. Much how IMO, the socially accepted definition of "straight" doesn't fit anyone either. No one is 100% gay or 100% straight.