The film stands accused of privileging the “right type of gay” at the expense of the effeminate and gender-nonconforming.

Love, Simon has won over many gay fans with its tale of an unassuming hero confronting the challenges of coming out in high school. But not everyone in the LGBT community loves Simon.

In an op-ed for The New York Times, Jacob Tobia recounted how he was “a veritable genderqueer mess” after seeing the movie — the first about a gay teen to be made by a major studio, 20th Century Fox.

Tobia, who is gender-nonconforming, bemoaned how Love, Simon privileged the white, heteronormative character, while sidelining a more effeminate character of color, Ethan. They saw this point of view as part of a systemic problem in Hollywood.

“For over a decade, the unspoken rule of gay cinema and television has been that gay men can be sexy protagonists — as long as they are masculine gay men,” Tobia wrote. “Feminine or gender-nonconforming gay men, on the other hand, are desexualized comedic relief.”

Clark Moore, the actor who portrays Ethan, declined to respond to Tobia’s commentary. But in an earlier interview, he defended the presence of his character — who did not exist in the source material, the novel Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda — as a major victory in representation.

Read more.

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  1. allofmysockshaveholesinthem reblogged this from medickalmalpractice
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  4. georgiesblues reblogged this from theadvocatemag and added:
    It sounds like people are just throwing the word femmephobic without understanding the context of the movie and the...
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  10. transientsolution reblogged this from outofficial and added:
    this headline gave me a migraine
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  12. nada-mal said: Jacob Tobia is a grown ass adult man who’s notoriously attention-seeking and also wrote an anti-feminist essay how sexual objectification isn’t bad bc ppl like him want to be objectified to know they’re desirable, and he was the subject of another essay complaining how straight men won’t sleep with him, despite the fact he doesn’t identify as a woman, just a gender-variant male who’s male-presenting. Don’t give him legitimacy when he’s homophobic, sexist, and transphobi
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