[meta] on het-shippers' love of women

[duskwings]

I've been noticing what I consider to be a recent trend in fandom -- that a lot of het-shippers have a crush/girl-crush on the female half of their ship.

Comments

[joyfulfeather]

One thing I've always wondered... Where is the line between having a "girl crush" and being bi? I guess it's the kind of thing a person defines for themselves -- het, bi, and gay are apparently pretty subjective labels, in a way I didn't realize until I came onto LJ and saw all the different people out there. Really, I don't know how much of my changing perspective on things is the world changing versus me changing as I grow up. So I can't comment on the changes you're questioning, I guess.

I will say that I think you're hitting a truth with #2 -- that LJ makes us more willing to share things that we wouldn't in another sort of forum. LJ is more personal. Moreover, you can choose who gets to see what you say, so you don't have to be quite so careful.

The last part of point 3 -- statements like "I love Ronon." I think it's partially like saying "I love hockey," which means "I love watching it, it makes me happy." It's partially respect/admiration for him as a person (albeit fictional). It's quite different from saying that you love your friends and family, because it's such a different emotion. Personally, I sometimes use a phrase like "I heart Ronon" to differentiate, just because... it expresses the fluff/shallowness of it better.

Great little essay here. I'll be interested to see other people's comments. If it doesn't show up on sga_newsletter tomorrow, would you like/mind if I emailed them with the link?

[duskwings]

I think that the difference is basically that a crush implies some kind of sexual element, while a girl crush isn't really sexual. But it's got a lot of the components of a crush -- serious idolization, admiration, getting flustered when they're around, thinking about them a lot, and so on. Just ... none of it in a sexual manner. So girl crushing, at least as I understand it, doesn't have anything to do with bi/heterosexuality. You can probably girl-crush whether you're straight, bi, gay, or whatever.

But I am by no means the authority on this, as I don't pay that much attention to the distinction -- in my head, they're pretty much a seamless blend. Which is ... simplistic, and probably not good for meta, but I just don't consider sexuality to be so central to crushes that a pseudo-relationship (or whatever you want to call the more general category that contains crushes and girl-crushes) stops being a crush when the sexual element is removed. Still, that's probably just me.

Yeah, changing perspectives do seem to be a large part of growing up. I'm actually beginning to think that that may be the root cause of the Aeryn/Elizabeth issue -- after all, I was in the Farscape fandom almost five years ago, a quarter of my current lifespan. Forget misremembering -- it's highly possible that I just misinterpreted everything back then, and that misinterpretation is reflected in my memories.

Hm ... "I heart Ronon." I like that. I always considered "heart" and "love" as mostly synonyms, but that's a nice distinction to make.

Linkage? I wouldn't mind. Although I am trying to fight the urge to seriously revise the whole thing at the possibility of a larger audience. *is quite self-conscious about her work, even if it's just meta*