Why Exactly Does Captain America Need A Boyfriend?

The Internet's been at it again.

Captain America Bucky
Marvel Studios

After demanding that Elsa from Frozen needs a girlfriend (and inspiring Idina Menzel to support them), the Internet's progressive arm have decided to take it upon themselves to get Captain America a boyfriend. The logic behind the movement says Cap and Bucky's relationship is already extremely close to romantic and there must be some reason Cap would put aside his duty and patriotism to endlessly follow his childhood buddy.

Apparently, for some, that's because he likes the way his terrifying metal arm brings out the blue in his eyes.

Shipping the pair is no new thing on the Internet: it seems that no two characters can have a relationship that even remotely suggests affection without someone, somewhere suggesting they want to put parts of each other into each other. Bromance is dead, romance is alive and kicking and it doesn't care how many fanboys it slays along the way.

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Feeling triggered? Well, it's inevitable that some fans will balk at the suggestion: narratively speaking, there is plenty of reason why Cap and Bucky are so close. Cap sees Bucky not only as his best friend but as a mirror of what he could have been. Both are engineered supermen, used as government tools, and for Cap, but for the grace of God he could have been The Winter Soldier. It just so happens he was made by a government with less nefarious intent.

There's also an argument that suggests reducing any relationship to a sexual one is as bad as insisting that every female character in a movie must be a love interest (or a mother), to add definition through proximity. It's reductive, insulting to the characters and needlessly suggests we're all heathens whose only goal is to make delicious whoopie everywhere.

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But that's not the point (before you burn me as a heretic). The point is that both this movement and the Get Elsa A Girlfriend movement are positively parasitic attempts to capitalise on major cultural successes to talk about an important thing.

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For all the tongue-in-cheek-ness of the movement, and the inevitable backlash from fans who can't possibly stomach the idea of a macho male superhero getting his kicks from another macho male superhero, we're talking in a round about way about Marvel's responsibility to bring LGBT characters to their universe. Just as Disney have a responsibility to reflect the LGBT community in their films.

It's not about ruining your comic books because CAP WAS NEVER GAY AND NEVER WILL BE RANT OVER, it's about giving an entire community a voice in a billion selling cultural platform that millions of people see. It's about normalising, which shouldn't need to happen in 2016.

And while some fans will always be precious about who Cap is and who he puts his boots next to after a heavy day pounding the streets, there's no denying the value of the conversation.

So that's why Cap needs a boyfriend. Even if he doesn't get one (some say he already has a few on the go), Marvel and Disney need to acknowledge that they need to bring in LGBT characters very soon. And that doesn't mean just releasing statements about the intent, or saying it's "very likely" at some unnamed point in the future. Do it, it's not a big deal, it won't lose you money and it won't lose you any but the worst fans.

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