Some Thoughts on Privilege and Fandom
So, if you're not aware that there has been a distressingly large amount of racefail going on in fandom at large lately, I'm going to have to ask what rock you've been living under. I'm not going to address the specific instances (many, many people have done so brilliantly), but I did want to talk a little bit about how recent events have gotten
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I find that racefail is an interesting thing because much of it is very selective and guilt laden. Political correctness really shouldn't be a fashion, it shouldn't be embraced because it's cool or the thing to do. It's very easy to point out white middle class privilege and how awful it is for persons of color. It's literally easy to see, to visualize, to personalize with pictures. How about the behavior of the entire slash community with regard to the way they treat men, and specifically how they portray gay men?
I am gay. I am at times mystified and left slack jawed by the things that women write about men loving other men. Sometimes I enjoy them more than I can say, but it's rare to get through a story of any length that I don't scratch my head and wonder what the heck those guys are doing. Do slash writers ever ask gay men what's erotic or romantic or just real life? I might be wrong, but I think this is far more a matter of slash writers not even seeing the point that it even matters. At least when speaking of color discrimination people will admit there might be a problem. I don't think the slash community has ever even been aware of, or cared that gay men might be a group that deserves equal or fair consideration.
I won't go to the issue of at least nominally straight, hetero sexual men being portrayed as gay and depending on their point of view it could be pretty offensive. I'm not straight, I'm gay so that's my point of view. If you want to say that if a lot of people are pointing their fingers at an author or story perhaps the writer should think things through, then how about the idea that in slash you can't even get a lot of fingers pointed at routine bad behavior because while it's about gay men, there aren't very many reading it to make complaints.
All too often gay men have been pressured not to make any complaints, to be ashamed to admit their identity, to just suffer in silence. As a matter of statement I'm of an ethnic grouping, but I've never experienced the level of discrimination as an ethnic person that I routinely do as a gay man. Slash is a haven in that gay men aren't hated and reviled. That's TOTALLY awesome. It's why I read slash in the main, because it's a warm fuzzy place of mostly happy emotions. It can be wonderful to read about men with deep feelings and genuine love for each other along with some smut. How can that not be good in the main? I think it is.
I have many friends in the community, I go to cons and pal around with some awesome gal-pals. They write some of my favorite fics, not because they're my buddies, but because they ask questions and do what they can to make their men more like men. It's a pet peeve of mine and I think it's also true for many of the guys I know, we hate it when writers use male actors or celebrities and emasculate them by making them chicks with dicks.
Then some women say things like "but we're just telling a story" or "that happened to a girlfriend of mine and that's how she felt." OK, but explain why it's awful to project those things on a person of color but acceptable to do it to gay men?
I like slash. I read it daily, I often make comments and send feedback. Some of the responses I get are wonderful and so feel good it warms me all day. Less frequently I get emails that let me know that slash "isn't written for men, so if you don't like it don't read it" and let me say I'd love to see some people write that kind of comment to a person of color. They wouldn't have the guts to even attempt that sort of blatant offense.
Truth is often subjective, it's truly difficult to pin it down at times. I think most people really understand that. No group is perfect, no society has all the answers, I know that I certainly don't. I can't speak for all men, I can't speak for all gay men, I simply point out that there are plenty of things done routinely to the men in slash that wouldn't be acceptable in other genres.
Thank you for allowing this comment,
Cappy.
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I won't go to the issue of at least nominally straight, hetero sexual men being portrayed as gay and depending on their point of view it could be pretty offensive.
Fanfic is not written for, nor is it intended to be seen by, the people it is written about. This is quite a different issue from your personal experiences as a gay man participating in fandom. To claim that we shouldn't write anything that might be offensive to the subjects, or to the creators in the case of fictional subjects, can only lead to the conclusion that we shouldn't write fanfic at all. Ever. Since you've said that you enjoy reading fic, I'll assume you share with me a basic feeling that it's a form of storytelling and creative output that has a right to exist.
Now, to address the rest of your comment.
I don't think the slash community has ever even been aware of, or cared that gay men might be a group that deserves equal or fair consideration.
I cannot emphasize enough how much this is not the case. Debates about the motivations for writing slash, whether it is an unacceptable appropriation of gay male identity, and (relatedly, although not directly relevant here) whether it is misogynistic, are as old as fandom itself.
Obviously, each fan individually may be more or less concerned with these issues, or, in some cases, not even be aware of them. Different groups of fans also, I think, tend to be more or less concerned with certain topics. However, in fandom writ large, these issues are discussed frequently, and with a great deal of depth.
Here are a few links. Representative only of what I could turn up in my delicious account, unfortunately, but there's a lot more where these came from.
Recent post by tsukinofaerii that addresses a few gender and sexuality issues, including this one
A post by a gay male fan with an interesting perspective.
Terrifyingly smart piece by hth_the_first on slash communities and queer fan communities, how they're different and how they overlap.
A very thoughtful perspective from poisontaster on how straight women can deal with this issue conscientiously.
Some older meta that I actually haven't read. I just had it saved for a rainy day, but it looks like the fourth list on that page has some posts you might find useful.
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I will certainly agree with you that, as a woman, I can't understand male identity from the inside. However, as a queer woman, I certainly have some understanding of gay identity. The question then becomes, how much can I, given my own experience and whatever information I have access to, successfully understand and portray gay male identity in my characters?
That's not a question I have an answer to. Nor can I assess another writer's success when I'm reading a fic. Or, at least, I can't do so based on the criterion of personal experience as you do, since I have no experience as a gay man. The most I can do is do my research and try my best.
FWIW, the writers that I respect most, and whose stories I enjoy most, are those that make a concerted effort in this regard. And there are whole groups of writers (female) who absolutely agree with you about the undesirability of the "chicks with dicks" characterization. Plenty of us flail and agonize and show each other bits of things and ask "but is he acting like a guy here?" We don't have a definitive answer, but a lot of us do try.
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This is your journal and I'm a guest here, hopefully a mannerly one. I certainly don't want to be overbearing and rude. I do want to say that my original post was to comment on the reaction of the slash community to racefail as compared to their treatment of gay men.
When you said "Fanfic is not written for, nor is it intended to be seen by, the people it is written about. This is quite a different issue from your personal experiences as a gay man participating in fandom. To claim that we shouldn't write anything that might be offensive to the subjects, or to the creators in the case of fictional subjects, can only lead to the conclusion that we shouldn't write fanfic at all. Ever." I would respond by saying that while it isn't written to portray my experience as a gay male participating in fandom, neither is it written for ethnics. But the community is obviously reacting with a certain vehemence to at least one story that stereotyped a black male. I've read numerous posts about it, though I could never find the actual story since I think it was locked and taken down. I'd say that my experience as a gay man is probably at least as relevant to slash as is the proportion of blacks and in particular black men.
I think that it's simply easier to point out racial miscasting than some of the behaviors that happen with regard to gay men in slash. I understand that it's written in the main by heterosexual women. I truly don't expect them to get everything just the way I think the world should be as a gay man. I don't know if I could do that for myself on any given day. That doesn't change the fact that there are some issues that deserve to be considered, to be pondered or deliberated. Clearly some of the slash community is doing exactly that, and I'm glad.
I'm not sure if there is a proscribed etiquette for posts of this nature. I sincerely hope I haven't intruded in a negative way. LJ seems very much a medium for public posts in what are nominally personal journals and the contradiction is at times awkward. Have you ever wanted to truly communicate with a writer about something in a story but didn't want to post something that could be construed as negative when what you really wanted to be interrogative? I've been in exactly that position at times and find that discretion is the better part of valor. It was never my intent to barge in or condemn the slash community, it was simply to point out a perspective.
thank you for your gracious allowance in free speech. I wish you much success in all your writing endeavors.
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Oh, please don't feel obligated to wade through all of those links. Especially since I freely admitted I haven't read that selection either. I just wanted to offer some broader resources since my general practice on tagging meta posts is haphazard and very much geared towards my own interests.
I think perhaps I wasn't quite clear on what I was addressing in that first post. When you suggest that one potential problem with slash is that the (presumably) heterosexual men about whom it is written might find it offensive. What I meant with my response is that the reaction (or potential reaction) of the celebrities that we write about is a separate beast, theoretically speaking, from your own perception of the portrayal of gay men in fanfic.
There's plenty of meta (not to mention literary theory) regarding what and who it is or is not "okay" to write about, especially when we consider RPF. But that's a different question entirely ("Should we write wildly untrue stories about real people with real lives?") than what you were addressing with the rest of your comment, which is why I bracketed it off at the beginning.
Regarding race vs. sexuality, I agree it's a difficult question. I know this may not be the most pleasing answer, but I do think audience has something to do with it. While there are many fen of color, male fans in slash fandom are rare enough to be a statistical anomaly.
Does that mean we shouldn't try our best to represent gay men as accurately as possible given our lack of personal experience? Of course not. But it does mean that most writers probably don't expect any men to be reading their work. So, naturally, they're going to cater to the desires and expectations of their audience as they understand it, which is female.
I'm trying not to ascribe a positive or negative value to this because I'm describing a perception of general practices, not what my own practices are.
It's also important, I think, to take a historical view. Fandom didn't spring into being with the birth of the internet. It's been around since at least the sixties (although more than one of my friends would argue for an earlier birth date than that) and Star Trek. At that time it really was almost entirely heterosexual women (although, from my understanding, gay and bi women, gay men, and others have always been present). Because they gained new members by actual personal contact, they tended to recruit others very like themselves.
If you look at accounts of early fandom, it's clear that we've come a long way when it comes to inclusion and issues of representation. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't continue to try to improve, but it does put things in context.
Lastly, please don't feel like you're intruding! That's exactly what public posts are for. You've been very respectful (as I hope I've been in return) and never let it be said I can't take a little polite disagreement. I would, though, like to suggest to you that being gay doesn't exempt you from male privilege. You talked about getting negative reactions to some comments you left on stories. I'm not surprised. Fen can be very protective of what is seen as a female space precisely because there are so few such spaces. There is definitely a knee-jerk response to being told by a man (however polite and well-meaning) that you (a woman) are not writing the "right" stories. If you know what I mean.
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