janeaustentextposts:

Okay.

The day has come.

I get up, I shower, I moisturize, I’m feeling good for a Friday where I’ve got to go into work early, and I log on to tumblr dot com.

My inbox has fresh messages! Wowee, this is great. (I know I have a pile of deep(er)-dive asks I have yet to get to, but I will! I promise!)

So I clickitty-click that shit just to make sure it’s nothing time-sensitive like some moneybags Hollywood producer loves my blog and is willing to offer me fifty million dollars, personally, to adapt and cast and direct their feature-length Persuasion adaptation but the offer’s only good for the next 48 hours. (CALL ME, LET’S DO LUNCH!)

No such luck, but I live in hope.

And lo, among the reading recommendations and thoughtful questions and interesting ideas from the 99.99% of you who are adorable beings of opalescent delight, is a festering little turd of vile bigotry I will not even post in order to directly respond to.

We have our first hate mail.

Anon, maybe you didn’t think of it as hate mail–maybe you genuinely thought I would have my eyes opened by your word-salad argument that “gay and ‘sick’“ people should not watch the 1995 P&P because they “all wrong interpret.”

And then my first joke-response apart from my quivering queer-lady indignant rage (I mean, did you even know who you were messaging? I have not been subtle about my own orientation at any point. If nothing else, learn to read the fucking room, you dumbass.) was to rules-lawyer the letter of your proposed law there and claim EVERY OTHER RENDITION, INCLUDING THE ORIGINAL TEXT, FOR THE QUEERS.

But then, you know what? No.

Queer people have been and still are denied too fucking much in this world of ours, not the least of which is equal human rights and something you, anon, have clearly never have heard of, which is a little thing called mutual respect. You certainly offered none, which frees me up to treat you precisely with the unmitigated disdain you deserve.

The only sicko in this situation happens to be you with that caustic layer of caked-on shit encapsulating your heart and brain.

While we and our queer and gender-non-conforming buddies are still out there suffering and outright dying every fucking day because of people like you and the hateful bullshit you dedicate your time and energy to upholding, we’re not going to give up even one iota of what gives us joy. We’re going to cling to it all the more fiercely, now, in fact, just because we know it’ll make you mad–and that’ll give us joy, too!

(Younger!Meryl casting, it counts, shut up.)

So you heard it first here, folks: I hereby claim the 1995 BBC miniseries adaptation of Jane Austen’s seminal classic Pride and Prejudice, starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, for The Gays. We are going to rub our gay hands all over our TV and computer screens while it’s playing and watch it with our gay eyes and with our gay hearts and loins variously afire as we see fit.

And I’m not even touching the interpretation jab because anyone who’s taken any literature class or joined a book club ever is rolling their eyes at you so hard it actually hurts a little. It’s amazing what education and talking to friends can do, anon, so I’d recommend you try it sometime. Death of the Author is valid and in any case there’s more proof out there that Jane Austen herself was queer than any proof that she wasn’t, if we’re being honest.

Sorry there aren’t more Meryl Streep gifs to go ‘round in this one, but obviously it’s a much deeper cut than me simply having a go at someone trying to shill their books on this blog, but I did want to address the issue.

So go forth and be joyously gay, my loves. It’s what Austen would have wanted.