slash/gen: I would like to ship it
hmmm, there's a bit of a thing going on in the vidding community at the moment about vidorama, a vidding community that specifically excludes not only slash vids, but also fandoms where there might be any evil gay cooties that could get on the het vids. For more, I refer you to luminosity's post and morgandawn's post on the subject, the latter of which also gives some context in terms of historical treatment of slash vids at vid cons. I'd like to hear more about that last subject, actually.
Of course I'm disgusted by the whole thing, and get hurt and angry and then ANGRY whenever someone tells me to keep my gayness to myself because they don't want to have to LOOK at it. But here's another little tiny thing that I've seen crop up a couple times, and that occurs elsewhere in fandom as well, and it's starting to really, really annoy me.
het/gen vs slash: why slash doesn't get to be slashed with gen
so, this community is a "het/gen" community. There are lots of places in fandom where one sees this appellation. One of my favourite recs sites, for example, polyamorous recommendations, classifies its recs into three possible categories: gen/het, het/slash, and slash. I don't say that to single out polyam, which is a lovely site that I've frequented for years and that is OBVIOUSLY pro-slash. This is a classification system that polyam inherited from someone who inherited it from someone who inherited it from someone, and it's everywhere in fandom.
but when an obviously homophobic/heterosexist community like vidorama says that it's het/gen, it reveals the nastiness that is always, always behind the coincidence, the partnership, of those two terms. Even when they're grouped together by someone who thinks they're doing it innocently.
The thing is: if I'm writing a gen Smallville story - by which we mean, usually, a story that is not about sexual or romantic partnerships, but is rather something plot-driven or single-character-driven or something that you might see on the show itself - I might end up writing a story that includes the canon pairings of the show, that mentions Lex/Lana or something as part of the general background. So then the story sort of IS gen/het, isn't it? Because I'm not writing a Lex/Lana story, but they're just there.
Yes; but also, NO NO NO NO. Heterosexuality is the background, the default, the "general" to homosexuality's "specific," the assumed condition, the assumed state of affairs. Any kind of queer sexuality is an add-on, an extra, a supplement, a sudden influx of eroticism.
This is why, like I said over at Lum's post, het makeouts on screen are treated differently by censors than gay makeouts on screen.
This is why I am told that the gay children's book I gave my nephew "contains sexuality," but the dozens of children's books that he already has where mommy and daddy love each other do not contain sexuality.
This is why Amazon.com "accidentally" classified all their non-explicit gay autobiographies and gay adoption manuals as "explicit" -- because homosexuality IS sexually explicit, by default, while heterosexuality is not.
This is how these things are set up, conceived of. This is how heterosexual power is maintained, how homophobia is institutionalized. You can be gay, but keep it over there. You can be queer, but I don't want to have to see it, to look at it, to acknowledge its existence. I, as a queer lady, can never ever be "general," for general consumption, appropriate for children; a story about queer dudes or ladies can never be defined by its plot or by a single-character story. Slash stories can never be gen.
But - oh dear - a problem! What if I write a Torchwood story with Jack/Ianto in the background, in which the focus of the story is an alien invasion that Tosh deals with on her own? Is that not the same situation as the Smallville story described above? Labels in fandom do deal with this - some people do label stories "slash, gen," or I might write, "Characters: Tosh, Jack/Ianto background" or something. But I think it's interesting that slash/gen as a larger, more commonly used category does not exist; and that, even when you see them used together in a label, they're seldom slashed with each other the way that het/gen often is.
I am so serious about this: het/gen, the slashing of het and gen, het and gen making out with each other, is a system that reinscribes heterosexuality as the norm and as normal, a system that excludes queer sexualities from representation, from general interest. A system that says: either you're here for the gay porn or you're here for the normal stuff. And the thing is, even people who are here for the gay porn, people who are politically pro-queer and who are gay or queer themselves, use this system, probably unthinkingly. But maybe we should think about this system more, and think about the assumptions it makes. Think about how heterosexual power is supported and maintained precisely by the assumption that het is the gen condition.
This is why I don't want to hear anymore about how it's perfectly acceptable to have a "het/gen" community or a "het/gen" challenge. That shit is NOT perfectly acceptable. Have a gen challenge - in which queer characters can also do gen things - or have a het challenge - because hey, you get off on a lady making out with a dude, that's fine! - but please stop trying to tell me that those two categories are the same. Everything I see, everywhere I go, all of my life, all the time, everything tries to tell me that those two categories are the same, and I am really, really sick of it.
eta: I also encourage you to read rm's post, Oh Noes! There's Gay People in My Fandom!, which is dealing with a lot of issues related to this one, and which satisfyingly pinpoints a lot of things that I encounter in fandom that make me feel uncomfortable, upset, and pissed off.
This entry was originally posted at http://thingswithwings.dreamwidth.org/65866.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Of course I'm disgusted by the whole thing, and get hurt and angry and then ANGRY whenever someone tells me to keep my gayness to myself because they don't want to have to LOOK at it. But here's another little tiny thing that I've seen crop up a couple times, and that occurs elsewhere in fandom as well, and it's starting to really, really annoy me.
het/gen vs slash: why slash doesn't get to be slashed with gen
so, this community is a "het/gen" community. There are lots of places in fandom where one sees this appellation. One of my favourite recs sites, for example, polyamorous recommendations, classifies its recs into three possible categories: gen/het, het/slash, and slash. I don't say that to single out polyam, which is a lovely site that I've frequented for years and that is OBVIOUSLY pro-slash. This is a classification system that polyam inherited from someone who inherited it from someone who inherited it from someone, and it's everywhere in fandom.
but when an obviously homophobic/heterosexist community like vidorama says that it's het/gen, it reveals the nastiness that is always, always behind the coincidence, the partnership, of those two terms. Even when they're grouped together by someone who thinks they're doing it innocently.
The thing is: if I'm writing a gen Smallville story - by which we mean, usually, a story that is not about sexual or romantic partnerships, but is rather something plot-driven or single-character-driven or something that you might see on the show itself - I might end up writing a story that includes the canon pairings of the show, that mentions Lex/Lana or something as part of the general background. So then the story sort of IS gen/het, isn't it? Because I'm not writing a Lex/Lana story, but they're just there.
Yes; but also, NO NO NO NO. Heterosexuality is the background, the default, the "general" to homosexuality's "specific," the assumed condition, the assumed state of affairs. Any kind of queer sexuality is an add-on, an extra, a supplement, a sudden influx of eroticism.
This is why, like I said over at Lum's post, het makeouts on screen are treated differently by censors than gay makeouts on screen.
This is why I am told that the gay children's book I gave my nephew "contains sexuality," but the dozens of children's books that he already has where mommy and daddy love each other do not contain sexuality.
This is why Amazon.com "accidentally" classified all their non-explicit gay autobiographies and gay adoption manuals as "explicit" -- because homosexuality IS sexually explicit, by default, while heterosexuality is not.
This is how these things are set up, conceived of. This is how heterosexual power is maintained, how homophobia is institutionalized. You can be gay, but keep it over there. You can be queer, but I don't want to have to see it, to look at it, to acknowledge its existence. I, as a queer lady, can never ever be "general," for general consumption, appropriate for children; a story about queer dudes or ladies can never be defined by its plot or by a single-character story. Slash stories can never be gen.
But - oh dear - a problem! What if I write a Torchwood story with Jack/Ianto in the background, in which the focus of the story is an alien invasion that Tosh deals with on her own? Is that not the same situation as the Smallville story described above? Labels in fandom do deal with this - some people do label stories "slash, gen," or I might write, "Characters: Tosh, Jack/Ianto background" or something. But I think it's interesting that slash/gen as a larger, more commonly used category does not exist; and that, even when you see them used together in a label, they're seldom slashed with each other the way that het/gen often is.
I am so serious about this: het/gen, the slashing of het and gen, het and gen making out with each other, is a system that reinscribes heterosexuality as the norm and as normal, a system that excludes queer sexualities from representation, from general interest. A system that says: either you're here for the gay porn or you're here for the normal stuff. And the thing is, even people who are here for the gay porn, people who are politically pro-queer and who are gay or queer themselves, use this system, probably unthinkingly. But maybe we should think about this system more, and think about the assumptions it makes. Think about how heterosexual power is supported and maintained precisely by the assumption that het is the gen condition.
This is why I don't want to hear anymore about how it's perfectly acceptable to have a "het/gen" community or a "het/gen" challenge. That shit is NOT perfectly acceptable. Have a gen challenge - in which queer characters can also do gen things - or have a het challenge - because hey, you get off on a lady making out with a dude, that's fine! - but please stop trying to tell me that those two categories are the same. Everything I see, everywhere I go, all of my life, all the time, everything tries to tell me that those two categories are the same, and I am really, really sick of it.
eta: I also encourage you to read rm's post, Oh Noes! There's Gay People in My Fandom!, which is dealing with a lot of issues related to this one, and which satisfyingly pinpoints a lot of things that I encounter in fandom that make me feel uncomfortable, upset, and pissed off.
This entry was originally posted at http://thingswithwings.dreamwidth.org/65866.html. Please comment there using OpenID.