my thoughts on your thoughts on yaoi
Okay, so you know what I don't like? I don't like when people in fandom act like ragging on slash is somehow rebellious and superior.
YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. or maybe you don't. EITHER WAY I AM GOING TO EXPLAIN.
So there's this tendency in like every fandom ever for there to be a big segment of fans who are keen on shipping dude characters together in a squicky fetishising way where the fact that these guys are getting it on is the main thing here and people are more concerned with that than whether they're writing them IC, to the extent that they willingly and enthusiastically bulldoze the character's actual traits - you know, the ones that make them interesting imaginary people - in order to slot them into boring, vaguely creepy clichés that frequently also manage to be offensive as fuck on a number of levels that I was just as angry about two years ago as I am now.
You knew that. Of course you knew that EVERYONE KNOWS THAT. it is, depending on how often you have to deal with it and how easily annoyed you are, somewhere between PRETTY FUCKING IRRITATING and THE CANCER THAT IS KILLING FANDOM, EVERY FANDOM, ALL OF THEM.
Okay, so faced with that, and with the assumption in mind that you know better than to be into that sort of thing, YOU HAVE A CHOICE:
Either you can be like "God damn that is fucked up! Good thing not every single instance of male homosexuality ever portrayed in any fanwork falls into this category, especially since there's such a disproportionate dearth of gay relationships portrayed in mainstream media!"
or you can be like "WELP this proves that all slash is awful and gives me more than enough reason to behave as though the only reason anyone would ever be keen on the idea of any specific pair of male characters being romantically involved is that they are a shallow yaoi fangirl with no regard for what is IC!"
can you see where I'm going with this yet?
YOU PROBABLY CAN, BUT LET ME CLARIFY FURTHER, JUST IN CASE
basically a lot of people seem to pick OPTION B for some reason, which leads to a whole bunch of people going around behaving as if it makes them somehow a better person because they dismiss the idea that bringing your own queer subtext is ever justified or valid - but at the same time are totally cool with reading romantic subtext into heterosexual couples.
And let's be honest here, guys, there's plenty of shitawful het. Not just in fandom. Everywhere. But WEIRDLY ENOUGH you don't find nearly as many people saying, "oh man, I've just seen too many shitty unrealistic romantic comedies where the guy gets the girl by stalking her even though she hates him because women don't know what's good for them, and now I just can't take straight pairings seriously at all! BUT DON'T GET ME WRONG HERE I AM TOTALLY IN FAVOUR OF STRAIGHT PEOPLE IRL AND I KNOW LOADS OF THEM!"
I mean, idk about you, but I've never seen anyone say that and NEITHER HAS ANYBODY I KNOW
why could that possibly be
See, I have this sneaking suspicion that it is because mainstream media tends to be really really in favour of the idea that romance is the only plausible outcome of a man and a woman being friends. Or hating each other. Or putting grudgingly up with one another while on some kind of quest. Or knowing each other. This is SO UNIVERSAL that to avoid learning to expect that, at least on some level, is basically impossible.
What the much-maligned "slash goggles" are, essentially, is taking that attitude and applying it to pairs of characters who aren't a man and a woman - and, since it's what everyone is doing with straight couples all the time ANYWAY, it isn't really all that unreasonable. (Obviously this happens with dude characters much more than lady characters because the average work of fiction has like a million times more dude characters than ladies; I'm not going to deny the part that heterosexual women being into the idea of two dudes making out plays in this, and that this can be problematic, but considering the fact that most mainstream movies don't even pass the Bechdel Test it is really kind of unsurprising that fewer opportunities to point your goggles at ladies ever even come up.)
So, yes. Basically. All of society is wearing het goggles. Your het goggles do not make you special.
So the choice is:
You can try to get rid of the goggles altogether.
You can wear them all of the time, instead of only putting them on when a dude and a lady enter the room.
Or you can leave your goggles exactly where they are, but for crying out loud stop acting like that makes you a better human with more refined and sophisticated tastes.
(this is not even getting into the whole thing where LIKING DUDESLASH IS A GIRL THING and GIRL THINGS ARE PERCEIVED AS INFERIOR AND SILLY AND NOT WORTHWHILE but I have totally ranted myself out just now. MAYBE ANOTHER TIME.)
This entry is crossposted from http://orm.dreamwidth.org/14662.html.
YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. or maybe you don't. EITHER WAY I AM GOING TO EXPLAIN.
So there's this tendency in like every fandom ever for there to be a big segment of fans who are keen on shipping dude characters together in a squicky fetishising way where the fact that these guys are getting it on is the main thing here and people are more concerned with that than whether they're writing them IC, to the extent that they willingly and enthusiastically bulldoze the character's actual traits - you know, the ones that make them interesting imaginary people - in order to slot them into boring, vaguely creepy clichés that frequently also manage to be offensive as fuck on a number of levels that I was just as angry about two years ago as I am now.
You knew that. Of course you knew that EVERYONE KNOWS THAT. it is, depending on how often you have to deal with it and how easily annoyed you are, somewhere between PRETTY FUCKING IRRITATING and THE CANCER THAT IS KILLING FANDOM, EVERY FANDOM, ALL OF THEM.
Okay, so faced with that, and with the assumption in mind that you know better than to be into that sort of thing, YOU HAVE A CHOICE:
Either you can be like "God damn that is fucked up! Good thing not every single instance of male homosexuality ever portrayed in any fanwork falls into this category, especially since there's such a disproportionate dearth of gay relationships portrayed in mainstream media!"
or you can be like "WELP this proves that all slash is awful and gives me more than enough reason to behave as though the only reason anyone would ever be keen on the idea of any specific pair of male characters being romantically involved is that they are a shallow yaoi fangirl with no regard for what is IC!"
can you see where I'm going with this yet?
YOU PROBABLY CAN, BUT LET ME CLARIFY FURTHER, JUST IN CASE
basically a lot of people seem to pick OPTION B for some reason, which leads to a whole bunch of people going around behaving as if it makes them somehow a better person because they dismiss the idea that bringing your own queer subtext is ever justified or valid - but at the same time are totally cool with reading romantic subtext into heterosexual couples.
And let's be honest here, guys, there's plenty of shitawful het. Not just in fandom. Everywhere. But WEIRDLY ENOUGH you don't find nearly as many people saying, "oh man, I've just seen too many shitty unrealistic romantic comedies where the guy gets the girl by stalking her even though she hates him because women don't know what's good for them, and now I just can't take straight pairings seriously at all! BUT DON'T GET ME WRONG HERE I AM TOTALLY IN FAVOUR OF STRAIGHT PEOPLE IRL AND I KNOW LOADS OF THEM!"
I mean, idk about you, but I've never seen anyone say that and NEITHER HAS ANYBODY I KNOW
why could that possibly be
See, I have this sneaking suspicion that it is because mainstream media tends to be really really in favour of the idea that romance is the only plausible outcome of a man and a woman being friends. Or hating each other. Or putting grudgingly up with one another while on some kind of quest. Or knowing each other. This is SO UNIVERSAL that to avoid learning to expect that, at least on some level, is basically impossible.
What the much-maligned "slash goggles" are, essentially, is taking that attitude and applying it to pairs of characters who aren't a man and a woman - and, since it's what everyone is doing with straight couples all the time ANYWAY, it isn't really all that unreasonable. (Obviously this happens with dude characters much more than lady characters because the average work of fiction has like a million times more dude characters than ladies; I'm not going to deny the part that heterosexual women being into the idea of two dudes making out plays in this, and that this can be problematic, but considering the fact that most mainstream movies don't even pass the Bechdel Test it is really kind of unsurprising that fewer opportunities to point your goggles at ladies ever even come up.)
So, yes. Basically. All of society is wearing het goggles. Your het goggles do not make you special.
So the choice is:
You can try to get rid of the goggles altogether.
You can wear them all of the time, instead of only putting them on when a dude and a lady enter the room.
Or you can leave your goggles exactly where they are, but for crying out loud stop acting like that makes you a better human with more refined and sophisticated tastes.
(this is not even getting into the whole thing where LIKING DUDESLASH IS A GIRL THING and GIRL THINGS ARE PERCEIVED AS INFERIOR AND SILLY AND NOT WORTHWHILE but I have totally ranted myself out just now. MAYBE ANOTHER TIME.)
This entry is crossposted from http://orm.dreamwidth.org/14662.html.