Meta: Sometimes I feel like a tool of phallocentric hetero-male-supremacy, and sometimes I don't.

[lefaym]

Over the last week or so, I've been thinking a lot about the way that my slash-writing in Torchwood/Who fandom fits in with my feminism. I'm trying to be very self-critical (i.e. I'm not trying to hand-wave problematic issues where they do exist), but at the same time, I really want to highlight the positive feminist experiences that have come out

Comments

[51stcenturyfox]

Yet it's still problematic, because Jack still withholds information from Ianto, which emphasises that ultimately, Jack still has a helluva lot more agency than Ianto does.

There is employer/employee relationship here as well, though. The Jack/Ianto pairing has other issues attached to it and some of them apply to heterosexual couples.

There are issues I have with some slash writing but I'm going to sleep on this in order to gain a bit more coherency.

[lefaym]

There is employer/employee relationship here as well, though. The Jack/Ianto pairing has other issues attached to it and some of them apply to heterosexual couples.

Of course -- but what I'm arguing here is that the typical cultural assumptions about heterosexual power dynamics (which come with a whole heap of icky patriarchal baggage) get transferred onto Jack/Ianto, and the employer/employee dynamic is part of the way that can manifest itself.

[51stcenturyfox]

Point. I think that one thing missed in slash (or het) fiction involving characters with differing levels of power is this, though: it does not necessarily translate to what they do in intimate situations. Powerful people often relish handing over the reins - and this is not often reflected in fiction. It is perfectly plausible that J/I are intimate equals or that Ianto steers in private.

Personally, I enjoy writing/reading about characters (het or slash or femslash) who are equals outside of the bedroom, though use of power games in the context of sexual interaction is something different entirely and can be unrelated to the characters' realities outside the relationship.

I suppose one could argue that such inequalities pervade our lives anyway, and that J/I fic is one way of negotiating that, but I'm sure the real answer is much more complex than that.This is one reason why I prefer other pairings to Jack/Ianto, and every time I've written J/I, Ianto is large and in charge. I diverge from the trad feminist viewpoint which assumes

[lefaym]

Powerful people often relish handing over the reins - and this is not often reflected in fiction. It is perfectly plausible that J/I are intimate equals or that Ianto steers in private.

I agree with the first point, but as for the second part, I don't think people's lives compartmenatlise quite that easily. Which is not to say that the power dynamics of the bedroom must be exactly the same as the power dynamics of the office, but it's not like the Jack that is the leader of Torchwood ceases to exist when he's having sex -- they may actively seek out a different power dynamic when having sex, but Jack's status as immortal, as boss, etc, doesn't just disappear either.

I actually had a bit about this in the original draft I was writing, but I took it out for this shorter post, but one of the things that I really love about rm and kalichan's I Had No Idea I Had Been Travelling -- they pull no punches about the fact that Jack and Ianto are completely fucked up, and they’re perfectly willing to highlight inequalities that often remain implicit in

[51stcenturyfox]

"...the way you get treated differently, subtly, when wearing makeup as opposed to not wearing makeup, the different ways that men respond to you when you're fat as opposed to thin, the differences between being a woman with short hair and a woman with long hair, etc (all of these are things I have personal experience with)."Yes, and I've read Naomi Wolf and I've been objectified and am definitely not blind to harassment or gender discrimination. I've been asked "to you plan to have children soon?" when applying for a position, for example. By a woman

[lefaym]

Oh yeah, the attitudes surrounding "what if Gwen got pregnant?" are pretty scary sometimes. And no one ever considers that Rhys might be willing to give up his job to take care of the kid. I'm actually really scared that, if the show goes there, the moment Gwen ends up in a slightly dangerous situation, a lot of the fandom is going to be "OMG, SHE'S NOT TAKING CARE OF HER BAYBEEE! SHE'S EVIL!" Although actually, one thing I'd really like to see on the show, if they were to do canon mpreg, would be to have Rhys carry the foetus somehow (enabled by alien tech, of course) -- although that does sort of allow them to avoid directly addressing the issues that might come out of Gwen herself being pregnant

[51stcenturyfox]

(Dworkin) tends to be saying something more along the lines of the cultural construct of masculinity is to blame for the oppression of women -- and that is a cultural construct that all men, to a certain extent, participate in, although, in my belief, they are capable of challenging it and overcoming it -- but most men choose not to do this.I agree with that somewhat, especially if you compare this cultural construct with something like, say, white privilege, which is often invisible... to people with white privilege, but it's not invisible because they have any sort of malicious intent or a conscious desire to perpetuate inequality

[lefaym]

Yes, white privilege is an excellent analogy, although of course racial privilege and discrimination function in different ways too.

And definitely, I don't think that penetrative sex is inherently aggressive -- you could easily see it as a type of envelopment, or inviting someone into your house, rather than a breach or an invasion of one's body. It requires overcoming an awful lot of cultural programming for most people, but it's definitely worth doing! (And that brings up back to the original topic of how feminists writing slash -- and het for that matter, of course -- should approach writing penetration.)

[51stcenturyfox]

A bit of personal experience from me -- when I was about 12 years old, I was sexually harrassed, quite horribly, by some boys on my schoolbus -- they were asking me all sorts of intimate and personal questions about my very-non-existant sex life, implying that I wanted to have sex with my father, all sorts of horrible things, just for a laugh.Were you bothered at all before you were informed that you were being sexually harassed? I mean, I realize that you were bothered, but did the realization make it somehow worse

[lefaym]

Initially it bothered me a lot that people were "making a big deal" out of it -- although a big part of that was me being afraid that the boys would take retribution on me somehow. And I do think it was hard to actually admit that what happened was sexual harrassment, but once I did, I think it became a lot easier to recognise that that wasn't behaviour that I had to put up with, and to place the blame on the boys who did it instead on myself (previously I thought it was my fault because I sat behind them on the bus, instead of sitting right up the front with the kindergarten kids). And you know, even to this day it makes me feel really good that an older girl was looking out for me -- ultimately I am so glad that she spoke up, and I think I am definitely better off because she did

[51stcenturyfox]

And you know, even to this day it makes me feel really good that an older girl was looking out for me -- ultimately I am so glad that she spoke up, and I think I am definitely better off because she did.

Just hearing that she did makes me feel good, too. How many times do children - or even adults - stick their necks out to stop someone being victimized? Not nearly enough.

Ditto on the namecalling. Boys get this too... if there's anything slightly unconventional about another child, out come the labels. It works as a bullying tactic because most children are deathly afraid of not fitting in. It doesn't matter what the label is; it could be anything. (The trouble is that it's harder to laugh off if a young person is really struggling with sexual preference confusion or depression. Downright terrifying, I'm sure.)

[lefaym]

Just coming back to this -- I found a quote today that reminded me of what you were saying about "the trad[itional] feminist viewpoint which assumes women are victims of the patriarchy", and what we were saying later in our discussion about the way that we both had the label "lesbian" thrown at us as though it was a threat. It's from Adrienne Rich (a very influential radical feminist writer), who is talking about the way that compulsory heterosexuality is harmful to women:

...I continue to think that heterosexual feminists will draw political strength for change from taking a critical stance toward the ideology which demands heterosexuality, and that lesbians cannot assume we are untouched by that ideology and the institutions founded upon it. There is nothing about such a critique that requires us to think of ourselves as victims, as having been brainwashed or totally powerless. Coercion and compulsion are among the conditions in which women have learned to recognize our strength.

I found it really interesting that both of us