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

[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 the show. And they DEFINITELY do this without making Ianto a perpetual sub -- in fact, it's often the times when he takes on a dominant role that this is emphasised. And you know, in doing so, they write some stuff that I would be pretty uncomfortable writing -- plenty stuff that I personally would choose not to write (not that I could write anything as brilliant as that anyway, but even if I could, I wouldn't). Yet for all that, I'm immensely glad that they wrote it, because too much fic just handwaves the potentially disturbing aspects of the J/I relationship.

I diverge from the trad feminist viewpoint which assumes women are victims of patriarchy and do not feel that gender inequality pervades my life. I've been equal to men (and women) or in the "power position" in male-dominated fields, in the military and in relationships. (Sorry to personalize this, since we're looking at Wine Glasses, but you've made me examine my own fictional motivations.)

Absolutely nothing wrong with stating your personal experience, although I think it's not a good idea to base your idea of how patriarchal culture operates solely on your own experience, and I will say that just because you didn't perceive any sexism operating in situation a, b, or c, that doesn't mean that it wasn't operational in x, y, or z. It's not a matter of being a "perpetual victim", but recognising that there are powerful discourses at work out there that do limit women's lives in different ways, and we often don't recognise these things until we have a magnifying glass held up to them.

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. An older girl saw, and reported it to the police as sexual harrassment, and my immediate response when I found out was, "That wasn't sexual harrassment! It was just a joke!" Not that I'd found it particularly funny, but since it had clearly been a joke to the boys, I assumed that that was all it could be. I just thought it was normal, and therefore I did not think it was the result of any sort of gender inequality. Yet looking back on it, it so very clearly was sexual harrassment. And as a result of that, I'm very aware simply not perceiving sexism doesn't mean that it's not pervasive -- and this translates into smaller things too -- 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).

[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.

Actually, that ties into a question posed on torch_wood cafe: "What will Gwen do if she gets pregnant? She has a dangerous job!" Well, maybe the same thing female police officers and soldiers and shop clerks do: obtain a reliable childminder. These things induce facepalming for me.

It's often slash writers who bash Gwen and other female characters, as you've noted. I do not buy the Dworkin-esque "all men, consciously or not, perpetuate oppression against all women" assumption (linked to penetrative sex, natch). At all. Some feminist theory forgets that, vilifies men and turns women into martyrs.

Realizing I'm atypical, here. I was raised by a stay-at-home father, have been surrounded by a cadre of guys who forgot I had an X chromosome and let it all (metaphorically and emotionally) hang out, etc. So I'm a little bit touchy about man-blame. Not that you're doing that at all, but some feminist theory goes there.

[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.

I tend to think that, with Dworkin, when you read her in context, she 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. And indeed, women partcipate in it too (as evidenced by your example of a woman inquiring into your plans to have children), but usually that is part of an attempt to negotiate a safe space for themselves in relation to that construct of masculinity. And that's not to say that I agree with Dworkin in everything she says, but I think that her arguments are more complex than simply "it's all the men's fault".

[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.

Do not mean to simply AD's arguments, either, but the penetrative sex as aggressive action notion has always baffled me. Puzzle pieces don't "top" one another and they didn't have any say about how they were configured by the jigsaw. Human beings are obviously more complex, but women can easily be the dominant partner in relationships with men, regardless of biological equipment or the act itself (and the same goes for slash pairings).

[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?

I had meant to add that this story triggered a memory. Something similar happened when I was in 5th grade, so I guess I was 10 or 11. Some boys in my class decided that I was probably a lesbian (OMG!). I don't remember being at all offended. I had short hair and played basketball and fought people, FFS. I remember telling them they were just pissed off because I wasn't interested in them and that they should STFU and play wallball with me if they were MAN ENOUGH TO HANDLE IT.

I'd forgotten about that. I was a mouthy brat.

[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.

Funnily enough, I also had certain experiences around the age 10-11 with people claiming I was a lesbian. I remember being bothered that I was being teased, but also baffled as to why you would tease someone for being a lesbian. A few months after that I was decorating a folder for school with pictures from magazines, and one of the pictures I wanted to use was a silhouette of a naked woman -- I remember wondering whether or not I should use it, and then I decided that I didn't really care if people thought I was a lesbian or not, since there was nothing wrong with being one anyway.

[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.)