Joss Whedon: Alien Overlord Bringing About the End of the Human Race
kantayra's recent post (Which you should definitely read right now - seriously, you'll find it, well, hmmm. Stunning would be the word, I'd guess.) was a revelation to me, because it explained the entire course of my life. I don't just refer to the brilliant, incisive explanation of why I read slash - although, oddly enough, I have never seen the sixth season of Buffy, but probably I was traumatized by remote or something. There's so much more. So very, very much more, if you take the concept to its logical conclusion.
See, there was a time in my life when I dated men; these days, I live with a woman, the famed Best Beloved. A part of that change can be attributed to my realization that dating men and dating women ended in the same place: me having sex with a woman. I just decided I'd rather do it without a guy watching. (There were other, larger parts, that mostly had to do with a) enjoying having sex with a woman and b) being in love with one, but most likely I was fooling myself about that. The human mind has so many layers of denial, you know?)
So what is it, I used to ask myself (often at parties featuring a bunch of guys who did not know the meaning of "oversharing" after four drinks) - why do so-called "straight" men want to watch two women get it on? I had many theories for this, ranging from "it's hot" to "who knows what motivates other people?", but I see now that I was wrong. It was Joss Whedon. Of course. I should have known. (It might've helped if I'd heard of Joss Whedon at the time; see what not watching TV will do to you?)
Because, OK. Season three of Buffy contained a major plot arc that caused serious, lasting emotional trauma to men - specifically, men who are attracted to sexy "bad girl" types instead of virginal blonde slayers with worrisome taste in shoes. These poor guys were into Faith - just because of some inherent personal preference - and the writers spent the entire season convincing them they were evil and wrong for liking bad girls instead of good ones.
And every time it looked like Faith could be redeemed, like there was a shred of hope for her, the writers slapped it down again - and, in the process, slapped down all the straight men who thought she was hot and were desperately hoping for some verification, via mass media, that their preferences were right and good. Until, eventually, they began to identify with her - they were told they were evil for liking Faith, and Faith was evil, so it is any surprise they'd get confused?
And then Faith heads over to Angel, where there's one final attempt at redemption. That, of course, goes astray, because loving the bad girl is wrong wrong wrong in the Whedonverse.
And so where does Faith end up? In prison. Where she can only have sex with other women.
Net result: these poor once-straight men, whose only crime was thinking Eliza Dushku was really kinda hot, are now trapped in a lesbian lifestyle. Except, of course, they aren't equipped for it. So all their sexual fantasies start to feature two women getting it on. Eventually, they turn to lesbian porn and start pressuring their girlfriends to have sex with other girls, and those women are so stressed by the experience - even if they seemed to be having fun at the time - that they end up actually dating girls, and loving girls, and possibly identifying as bisexual or lesbian or queer.
(Which leads inevitably to reading slash, of course, but that's a whole other story.)
My point is: the season 3 BtVS writers have crushed the sexual identities of a whole generation of men and women, induced widespread interest in twisted, wrong, gay porn, and very likely brought about the extinction of the human race.
Or, at any rate, the extinction of that portion that can be irreversibly, permanently traumatized to the degree of changing sexual identities by a fucking TV show.
I won't miss them.
Mmmm. Faith.
See, there was a time in my life when I dated men; these days, I live with a woman, the famed Best Beloved. A part of that change can be attributed to my realization that dating men and dating women ended in the same place: me having sex with a woman. I just decided I'd rather do it without a guy watching. (There were other, larger parts, that mostly had to do with a) enjoying having sex with a woman and b) being in love with one, but most likely I was fooling myself about that. The human mind has so many layers of denial, you know?)
So what is it, I used to ask myself (often at parties featuring a bunch of guys who did not know the meaning of "oversharing" after four drinks) - why do so-called "straight" men want to watch two women get it on? I had many theories for this, ranging from "it's hot" to "who knows what motivates other people?", but I see now that I was wrong. It was Joss Whedon. Of course. I should have known. (It might've helped if I'd heard of Joss Whedon at the time; see what not watching TV will do to you?)
Because, OK. Season three of Buffy contained a major plot arc that caused serious, lasting emotional trauma to men - specifically, men who are attracted to sexy "bad girl" types instead of virginal blonde slayers with worrisome taste in shoes. These poor guys were into Faith - just because of some inherent personal preference - and the writers spent the entire season convincing them they were evil and wrong for liking bad girls instead of good ones.
And every time it looked like Faith could be redeemed, like there was a shred of hope for her, the writers slapped it down again - and, in the process, slapped down all the straight men who thought she was hot and were desperately hoping for some verification, via mass media, that their preferences were right and good. Until, eventually, they began to identify with her - they were told they were evil for liking Faith, and Faith was evil, so it is any surprise they'd get confused?
And then Faith heads over to Angel, where there's one final attempt at redemption. That, of course, goes astray, because loving the bad girl is wrong wrong wrong in the Whedonverse.
And so where does Faith end up? In prison. Where she can only have sex with other women.
Net result: these poor once-straight men, whose only crime was thinking Eliza Dushku was really kinda hot, are now trapped in a lesbian lifestyle. Except, of course, they aren't equipped for it. So all their sexual fantasies start to feature two women getting it on. Eventually, they turn to lesbian porn and start pressuring their girlfriends to have sex with other girls, and those women are so stressed by the experience - even if they seemed to be having fun at the time - that they end up actually dating girls, and loving girls, and possibly identifying as bisexual or lesbian or queer.
(Which leads inevitably to reading slash, of course, but that's a whole other story.)
My point is: the season 3 BtVS writers have crushed the sexual identities of a whole generation of men and women, induced widespread interest in twisted, wrong, gay porn, and very likely brought about the extinction of the human race.
Or, at any rate, the extinction of that portion that can be irreversibly, permanently traumatized to the degree of changing sexual identities by a fucking TV show.
I won't miss them.
Mmmm. Faith.