An open forum for discussion on homosexuality and fandom
Lots of people left interesting comments while I was doing laundry, so what do you say we just talk about this? I will make this post public on DW and LJ both, and will keep it that way for as long as I feel personally safe.
I'm not going to start with my thoughts, because they're jumbled. Instead, I'll link to the original post of neo_prodigy's, How To ( Read more... )
I'm not going to start with my thoughts, because they're jumbled. Instead, I'll link to the original post of neo_prodigy's, How To ( Read more... )
Okay, my thoughts about this are a little disordered and confused, so forgive me if it comes out that way and/or if it gets a little too personal.
There was a time when I was probably 16-18 or 19 when there was a certain type of narrative which - at the time, and to my perception, at least - seemed very prevalent in slash fandom (and less in femslash circles, for whatever reason), you know the coming out story, complete with my-out-and-proud-boyfriend-has-perfect-parents-also-mine-are-religious-nutjobs that I hated and thought, what the heck, no queer person would ever write this because queer people would know it's never as simple as that. And I thought, why are you using this; why can't you get your UST and h/c somewhere else? And this was after I'd been in slash fandom at least a couple of years! Then eventually I came around to the realization that there are other people in the world than me (this sounds bitchy, but I swear it is actually what happened) and that sometimes queer people write those stories to work out their own issues, and sometimes straight people write those stories, and >i>it's okay. But I get that, I do.
And definitely sometimes when I'm reading books that have queer characters/are written by queer authors and one of my straight friends expresses interest and I get this immediate DNW reaction, like don't you realize that there are some things that are just not for you? So I get that too. But the thing is, it's not a rational reaction, even if there is some grain of truth at the bottom of it. And the other side of me says, well, the only people books are for are the people who want to read them.
There's this Peter Sellers in brownface movie that my parents love whose very existence makes me want to scratch my palms out in rage and definitely makes me kind of hate Peter Sellers, who has made his whole career by making fun of people who aren't English. And I think that's kind of the point, for me. My gut says, well of course my parents are allowed to like it; they are Indian. But I think - hmmm.
It's funny that he says he does things with dudes that he would never do with women because I've heard some people say that's what draws them to slash, and I can definitely see it, particularly with certain kinds of kink. But it never quite sits right with me because if you can write about dudes being called sluts by other dudes or being submissive to other dudes, why can't you write about dudes being called sluts by or being submissive to women? It's a piss-poor justification, but I think a place where people feel called on to justify their likes is a place that can become toxic very very quickly.
Reply
And I get why that happens! I get this feeling sometimes that the whole world intends itself for straight dudes and that's why things pass without comment that are objectively really fucked-up, like action movies that have shots of women's bodies without including their faces, and horror movies where naked women get chopped up all the time. No one would raise their eyebrows at a straight guy liking those things offline, so it makes sense that fandom, which is a largely queer and largely female, people do raise their eyebrows at things that might also seem fucked up. But I think that very quickly runs from "let us critique these things that are fucked up" to "tell me why you like these fucked up things" to "you haven't the right to like this if you don't meet this criteria." And I think that's sort of what's happening here, where neo-prodigy is saying "listen up slashers; you are doing queerness wrong" and ignores slash writers who are queer and slash readers who are queer (obviously they're not discrete categories at all, but I am still thinking of my stupid Peter Sellers analogy, bear with me) and also straight people who have had, well, the experience of being people. I'm not saying that it counts for everything; I'm just saying it counts for something. But I think that the shaming of slash fandom is something that's gone on for a while, either for misogyny or heterosexism (and I've seen both, but I certainly wouldn't say it's the fundamental characteristic of slash fandom, not even close) and I'm not sure why, but to me, it does create this environment where people like they have to show their cred and that makes it easy for someone who seems to have all the cred like neo_prodigy to make this batshit post where he attributes everything that he doesn't like to one section of fandom (like h/c doesn't exist in het or femslash fandoms? HAH) and makes disagreement impossible (I don't know if you read the comments, but he accuses people both of sexism and sounding like a white women (not verbatim, I think, I'm not going back there to check, though)). SO BASICALLY, YES, my immediate reaction was: what an asshole, does he think queer women don't exist or what? Because even if the writer is straight, chances are that a lot of the readers won't be. In the end, I always end up siding with the side of me that says, even objectionable things don't belong only to the people who find them objectionable (the same way that Peter Sellers movie doesn't belong just to my parents because where would you delineate? Should they not watch Westerns, after all?), is what I'm saying. But I guess I can also see why people wouldn't; it just upsets me.
I'M NOT SURE OF ANYTHING, BASICALLY. EXPLAIN THE WORLD TO ME, MEI.
Reply
I am fascinated by your analysis and will comment properly in the morning. Right now I've had 4 hours of sleep every night this week, so I'm going to bed early. -_-;;
Reply
First of all, let me say that I really appreciate your points. You are starting to get at the heart of the problem for me. We've had a lot of discussions that have moved beyond scratching the surface in the past few days, but you're getting deeper into the id mess that surrounds my feelings on the subject (obviously, everyone's id mess is going to be different).
There are narratives that get played out in many different contexts. For example, the star-crossed lovers narrative that someone else brought up (god only knows where at this point - it's getting jumbled in my head) is a good example. We get Romeo and Juliet and all the het stories of its ilk, but when you come down to it, the star-crossed lovers narrative fits many people's experiences of being gay in many Western countries between about 1800 and today EXTREMELY well, and as a result, slash fandom is full of that narrative, as are published m/m romance and erotica. Why not? You and I know life is more complicated than that, but star-crossed lovers gets at the part of my id that is angry, that believes just a little bit in saying 'fuck you, world' and making it stick. It also gets at the painful reality that how one's family reacts to one's sexuality makes a huge difference in one's life and one's pride in oneself. It shouldn't, maybe. But it does. So there's a powerful connection between that trope and some fundamental problems that come with being gay today. There is a powerful need to express how the attitudes and behavior of others affects gay people in as graphic and obvious a way as possible. To translate the silent hurt into something with a voice, even if that voice is about destruction and even self-harm. It needs to be said, because people do die from this.
So is the trope common? Yes. Does it meet a need or at least speak to a problem? Yes. Is it a cliché and often stereotypical? Yes. But I have yet to see anyone tell me what harm it does unless people take it as the gospel truth of how relationships work, rather than as an archetype. If it's the only story getting told, then yes, there's a problem. But we have a lot of archetypes now.
(I say all this while preferring my big gay happy ending, because I need that. But I still appreciate what this archetype can be useful for, in all its incarnations.)
I also like how you brought up femdom. Kai would love you right now. ^_^ In neo_prodigy's view of gender (and a very essentialist view it is), women simply don't do that. Women are about feelings. Women want meaning with their sex. Women don't want to dominate. Given the amount of D/s out there in fandom as a whole and the number of women who openly identify as tops, I find this hilarious. He's simply wrong on this point entirely. A man and a woman (or two women, or multiple people including at least one woman) can and do battle for dominance in the bedroom just as well as two men. I've seen it and done it myself. I also laugh at the idea that domination must come without feelings. What? No seriously, what? Where does it say that in the manual? Oh right, there is no manual. Only some bizarre and very outdated misogynistic worldview of women as weak, mixed with some apparent fears that women will cry rape if anyone plays dominance games with them.
Reply
I think that it's reasonable to say that no single person gets to define what is okay and what isn't, except in relation to their own body and their own space and people talking or acting directly in their space, including personal space. Outside that, I can say that I object. I can say it as loudly as I want. But I can't shut people down without first bringing in lots of points of view. I can't force people into silence. I can tell them I don't like something, but I can't tell them they can never do it again. (This is for legal acts, of course.) No matter what neo_prodigy says, he can't tell people not to slash. If he raised his points with more awareness of what slash is, the breadth of its scope and community, and the reasons for its inception, he would have a better chance of finding allies outside his current group of friends. But he first failed to remove the log from his own eye, and that is hurting his argument. (Also, omg, can we reserve the cries of "white women's tears" for situations where that tactic is actually being used? By straight people? When queer women call you on your bullshit, you don't get to silence them with that one.)
Like you, I've seen misogyny and homophobia in slash fics. I've also seen racism. Does that make all slash racist? No. It makes the specific works racist, just like it makes the specific works that engage in misogyny and homophobia misogynist and homophobic. I believe in pointing that out in specific works if the reader thinks it will actually be helpful.
I like you bringing up the cred problem. I think it's possible to deal with a subject poorly whether one has cred or not, and I think it's possible to deal with it well whether one has cred or not. A lot of it comes down to good writing or vid-making or drawing or whatever (because slash fandom, like all fandom, is multimedia). Skill affects the story one is able to tell and how well one can tell it. A lot of the worst slash fic I ever read was in Gundam Wing fandom back in the 90s, when the average age of the fandom was younger than me, and I was under 20. Without experience, we simply wrote whatever we felt like, completely unexamined and usually unbetad. The result was often a laundry list of isms. But I don't think even now I would have the temerity to tell any of those writers to stop writing. For one thing, they were exploring new kinks and finding ways to tell each other that liking those kinks was okay. For people just discovering their sexuality, that's important.
So yeah, I guess I feel that there are a lot of competing demands here, and they need to all be addressed if one is going to ask for an entire segment of fandom, tens of thousands of people (if not hundreds of thousands, if one counts the lurkers), to change how it operates. There needs to be a discussion. Saying "you cannot disagree with me" simply puts neo_prodigy out of the real discussion, while the rest of us will continue ourselves. Too bad. If he could drop the misogyny and erasure of queer women, I'd be interested in talking to him in more depth.
So, novella for novella? ^_^ *hugs*
Reply
Leave a comment