okay so here's the thing...
Last night's post was an irritated rant because sometimes fandom just annoys me and it seemed like someone put something in the water this weekend.
I do want to explain that I know that "queer" does not automatically equate to "gay." I know that in the academic world, "queer" has a number of meanings. I even know what some of those meanings are.
But the thing is, I don't live in the academic world. I live out here in a world where, if you ask the average person on the street, "queer" means "gay/GLBT." I live in a world where those of us who fit in the GLBT continuum are trying to reclaim words that have been used against us so they no longer have the power to harm us and instead become something that we can be proud of.
If I get angry when fans casually bandy my reclaimed words of power around, it's because I'm fighting in the real world where, for example, even a presidential candidate of color, the guy I voted for because I think he's the best of a mediocre field, isn't going to say that I deserve the same civil rights as the people around me. Why won't he? Because that reflects the beliefs of the people who vote. So yes, the country I live in doesn't think that I deserve to legally marry the woman I love.
It's hard and it hurts and I'm not sure people not involved in this struggle or others like it understand how fucking exhausting it is.
And so when academia and straight fans use my words to describe their hobby, it all too often reads as if they're grabbing the parts of being queer that are cool and edgy and transgressive, not the parts that are painful and exhausting and fucking depressing.
And often people come back and say "oh but I am helping fight your real world fight in this way or that." To which I say, "yay! And yay slash if that's how you came to realize that fighting for gay civil rights is a good and necessary thing."
But here's the deal. As you may have noticed, I talk a lot about racism in fandom too. I like to think that I'm doing what I can as an ally of both fans of color in particular and people of color in general.
But Dude, you don't see me standing up and saying that I'm Black, that I'm a Fan of Color. Because I'm as white as Rodney McKay's belly, okay? To say otherwise would not only be absurd, but would be an insult to the FoCing Cabal.
So yeah, this thing we do? This slash/fic/art/vids we make? It is transgressive. It is something that a large percentage of the real world population would consider kind of perverse and kinky and even wrong. It can deal with queer issues and I've even seen people change their own personal politics and become more tolerant, become my allies because of it.
But I hope you can all understand why, if you call it queer, I get hurt and angry.
I do want to explain that I know that "queer" does not automatically equate to "gay." I know that in the academic world, "queer" has a number of meanings. I even know what some of those meanings are.
But the thing is, I don't live in the academic world. I live out here in a world where, if you ask the average person on the street, "queer" means "gay/GLBT." I live in a world where those of us who fit in the GLBT continuum are trying to reclaim words that have been used against us so they no longer have the power to harm us and instead become something that we can be proud of.
If I get angry when fans casually bandy my reclaimed words of power around, it's because I'm fighting in the real world where, for example, even a presidential candidate of color, the guy I voted for because I think he's the best of a mediocre field, isn't going to say that I deserve the same civil rights as the people around me. Why won't he? Because that reflects the beliefs of the people who vote. So yes, the country I live in doesn't think that I deserve to legally marry the woman I love.
It's hard and it hurts and I'm not sure people not involved in this struggle or others like it understand how fucking exhausting it is.
And so when academia and straight fans use my words to describe their hobby, it all too often reads as if they're grabbing the parts of being queer that are cool and edgy and transgressive, not the parts that are painful and exhausting and fucking depressing.
And often people come back and say "oh but I am helping fight your real world fight in this way or that." To which I say, "yay! And yay slash if that's how you came to realize that fighting for gay civil rights is a good and necessary thing."
But here's the deal. As you may have noticed, I talk a lot about racism in fandom too. I like to think that I'm doing what I can as an ally of both fans of color in particular and people of color in general.
But Dude, you don't see me standing up and saying that I'm Black, that I'm a Fan of Color. Because I'm as white as Rodney McKay's belly, okay? To say otherwise would not only be absurd, but would be an insult to the FoCing Cabal.
So yeah, this thing we do? This slash/fic/art/vids we make? It is transgressive. It is something that a large percentage of the real world population would consider kind of perverse and kinky and even wrong. It can deal with queer issues and I've even seen people change their own personal politics and become more tolerant, become my allies because of it.
But I hope you can all understand why, if you call it queer, I get hurt and angry.