Slash and the historic fandom
So a while back (like a looong while back) I posted a rant reacting to one profic author's view of slash fic and her ability to utterly and completely miss the point. And that was good. And then, you know, unemployment and anxiety medication happened (plus, well, kdrama crack) and I started thinking about the nature of slash fic more and how I interact with it.1
As I may have previously stated, I firmly believe that romantic love (which is the only love being discussed here) is, well, love. Love cares not about the trappings of the body -- though physical attraction is, of course, an element to the love, if you really love someone then the fact that you have the same type of plumbing is an irrelevant factor. Love does not know the boundaries of biological sex assignment. And I think this is best seen in the kdrama Coffee Prince. Which, um, requires a little bit of a background explanation before I can get to the important part.
So in CP, the main female lead is named Eun Chan. She is...well, she's basically "other" when it comes to assigning a gender to her. She's biological female and identifies as female. That being said she naturally comes off as male in terms of appearance, speech patterns, physical habits (like the way she walks and sits and interacts with others), clothing styles, hobbies, etc.. It's not an act -- she's not a girl pretending to be a guy, because this implies that this is a conscious persona that she can ultimately take off. And that's about as far from the truth as you can get. She's just a girl who, well, passes for a guy because that's who she is. (...look, you really do have to see her in action to get the full sense of what I'm saying; as a case in point -- when she undergoes the dreaded "ugly duckling" transformation it doesn't stick. Like, at all. She presents as a beautiful woman but is still the same bumbling Eun Chan she was prior to the transformation.) Now the reason I tell you all this is because the main male lead Han Gyul thinks she's a guy (and his confusion is totally believable) when they first meet and continues to think so until someone basically hits him with the clue bat. This is an important fact, because Eun Chan and Han Gyul are the main romantic couple in this show. And Han Gyul -- who is utterly convinced that he's straight -- falls in love with Eun Chan thinking she's a man. It's, well. It's an absolutely amazing thing to watch unfold, because it takes the "Gay for you" trope and treats it with absolute seriousness, including all the inner turmoil of a previously confidentially heterosexual man finding out that the one person he loves most in this world is...another man. It's beautiful and epic, is what I'm saying, and is a perfect illustration of the "love transcends corporal trappings" thing.2
And, you know, I love the "gay for you" trope because it hits my "love transcends all" button. But, as I've slowly come to realize, I actually only love it in my Sci-fi/utterly non-realistic fandoms because I can handwave away the fact that everyone is, you know, gay (or bi, or accepting of all) by the fact that this is an entirely different universe that plays by entirely different rules and one of them happens to be that the "Jack Harkness Rules of Sexual Attraction" apply to all inhabitants (or, you know, they're gay to begin with). I don't have to deal with the soul searching that would be necessary if a formerly hetero-identified character was all "...you know what? I'd really like to suck that dude's cock." Because of the Universal Sexual Enlightenment! It's like every character came equipped with a little internal code that read: "Don't Panic: so you think your sexual orientation has changed for this one dude/dudette. Rock on and make with the monkey sex."
I do not, however, have this ability it historical fandoms. Largely because, well. I'm OCD about some things, and one of them is period accuracy (or as near period accuracy as I dare attempt) with regards to things like: social norms. (...I could give fuck all about whether or not the set dressings are period accurate; I only care about the psychology of the characters). And this is because these characters have not yet experienced the "Jack Harkness Rules of Sexual Attraction (and subsequent freedom from inner turmoil)". These characters live within a society guided by certain norms and appropriate social behavior -- and all the attendant emotional turmoil that would arise from the "Being Gay" trope.
Now, I say all this because, well, I had a point. I'm pretty sure that point was that in the American Old West (an in particular the area Mag7 is tentatively set in) Homosexuality as a lifestyle was Not On. Yes there were trans people (see, for example, Cockeyed Charley), and I don't doubt that there were primarily homosexual people out there as well (although research is rather spotty on this subject, at least via the internets). More importantly, IIRC, the concept of "being a man" was incredibly important to the social and psychological norms of the time. Which is not to say that being gay makes you any less of a man -- of my many gay friends, I'd say most of them out butch me, and I read as male in the online "guess your sex" quizzes (no, really: I prefer to build shit rather than clean shit, and occasionally do a sniff test to determine if my clothes are beyond the point of wearing; yes, I am a dirty, dirty girl) -- but there's a reason the floppy wristed fop was such a prominent sterotype. All of which is to basically say that even though the Kinsey scale was surely in effect before Kinesy quantified it, I suspect that society established a far more rigid structure regarding gender and gender preferences. It's the whole idea of mutual masturbation isn't a gay thing. Which...also had relevance, but at this point I'm a bit too sleepy and happily floating on my anti-anxiety meds to deal with in detail. I think I mean to argue that much like how Chris exhibits a certain code for when he's living within the strictures of society as opposed to when he's out the outskirts of society -- e.g., how he treats the working girls when they roll into town in Working Girls, vs. how he treats them out in Wicks Town -- the same attitudes could be construed towards true homosexual behavior. Which is a tricky thing to suss out because back in those days it was common for two completely hetero male friends to share a bed with nothing untoward being thought about it (sharing a bed being a cheaper option, after all, and this fact being brought to you by some vaguely remembered foofraw about Abraham Lincoln having been gay, and also John Adams and Benjamin Franklin sharing a bed on a journey to France, I believe). Point being bit of slap and tickle (or even suck and fuck) out on the range was one thing, but back in town it was all women or nothing else. What happened on the range, stayed on the range, and all that.
Which, you know, is a fine sort of baseline to take when writing, say, Buck getting a handjob from Chris. It's not a good thing when writing Chris being with, well, anybody. Because even if he's on a sliding scale, I don't doubt that societal pressures pushed his sliding scale up higher than it would have been had he lived in, say, the current time period. (And in England, where they appear to understand these things a bit better.) So, you know, if he starts out as 80% attracted to women and 20% attracted to men, I suspect that society would skew those numbers to 85-90% attracted to women, 15-10% attracted to men. (I realize, of course, that not everyone is as shame driven as I am, but still. Out on the frontier, I think the bonds of human companionship were especially important/strong).
What's all the point of this rambling? You know, I don't know if I really have one, except to say that as much as I (in real life) believe that love transcends such foolish things as gender, I don't believe that in my fic writing. Or if I do, and if I'm writing historical fic, then I feel the all-mighty need to explore the inner turmoil of what being attracted means to a hard drinking sonofabitch gunslinger. And that the way I get around it is by making the characters I want to be gay be, well, gay. I mean, I suspect that the lack of a legitimate female interest is the major reason I ship V/E as much as I do...besides the fact that they seem to fit together so well in some strange opposite-attract-kind of way.
Anyway, enough of this rambling. I should sleep now and fic later, and ponder more on the mysteries of sex.
1. Look, I know I should be enlightened about the multifacted nature of sex and gender, but let's face it. I'm a middle-leaning secular Jew with strong Chinese influences who suffers from OCD and ADD. I like neat categories and the concept of a third gender just makes my brain give me 404 errors. I totally get the whole concept of gender identity not synched with one's biological gender, but even then, in my mind, there are still only two sexes: male and female. Sometimes the male is accidentally born into the female body and vice versa, but there you go. The idea of being something other than male or female is just something I can't wrap my brain around, no matter how hard I try.
2. I should also point out that CP has forever endeared itself to me because even after he finds out, the fact that Eun Chan is a woman doesn't make it all better, at least not at once. I mean, yes, they end up together and are adorable like a basket of sleepy kittens, but Han Gyul's first reaction to finding out that hey! he's not gay after all! isn't one of elation -- it's one of absolute anger and justified resentment. Because he was so ready to be gay for Eun Chan; he'd faced all his demons about his sexuality and the attendant consequences and was all: fuck it. I love him. And the post-reveal episodes are just wonderful for the fact that instead of rejoicing that their love is socially acceptable, he spends it being hurt and betrayed at being lied to, and it basically takes someone going "dude, you were willing to accept that you didn't care that Eun Chan had a cock, you were so in love with the essential nature of who she is. The fact that she's actually a chick and, ok, yes, lied to you for several months (by basically not correcting your initial mistake) does not invalidate the fact of your love."
This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth where there are
comments
As I may have previously stated, I firmly believe that romantic love (which is the only love being discussed here) is, well, love. Love cares not about the trappings of the body -- though physical attraction is, of course, an element to the love, if you really love someone then the fact that you have the same type of plumbing is an irrelevant factor. Love does not know the boundaries of biological sex assignment. And I think this is best seen in the kdrama Coffee Prince. Which, um, requires a little bit of a background explanation before I can get to the important part.
So in CP, the main female lead is named Eun Chan. She is...well, she's basically "other" when it comes to assigning a gender to her. She's biological female and identifies as female. That being said she naturally comes off as male in terms of appearance, speech patterns, physical habits (like the way she walks and sits and interacts with others), clothing styles, hobbies, etc.. It's not an act -- she's not a girl pretending to be a guy, because this implies that this is a conscious persona that she can ultimately take off. And that's about as far from the truth as you can get. She's just a girl who, well, passes for a guy because that's who she is. (...look, you really do have to see her in action to get the full sense of what I'm saying; as a case in point -- when she undergoes the dreaded "ugly duckling" transformation it doesn't stick. Like, at all. She presents as a beautiful woman but is still the same bumbling Eun Chan she was prior to the transformation.) Now the reason I tell you all this is because the main male lead Han Gyul thinks she's a guy (and his confusion is totally believable) when they first meet and continues to think so until someone basically hits him with the clue bat. This is an important fact, because Eun Chan and Han Gyul are the main romantic couple in this show. And Han Gyul -- who is utterly convinced that he's straight -- falls in love with Eun Chan thinking she's a man. It's, well. It's an absolutely amazing thing to watch unfold, because it takes the "Gay for you" trope and treats it with absolute seriousness, including all the inner turmoil of a previously confidentially heterosexual man finding out that the one person he loves most in this world is...another man. It's beautiful and epic, is what I'm saying, and is a perfect illustration of the "love transcends corporal trappings" thing.2
And, you know, I love the "gay for you" trope because it hits my "love transcends all" button. But, as I've slowly come to realize, I actually only love it in my Sci-fi/utterly non-realistic fandoms because I can handwave away the fact that everyone is, you know, gay (or bi, or accepting of all) by the fact that this is an entirely different universe that plays by entirely different rules and one of them happens to be that the "Jack Harkness Rules of Sexual Attraction" apply to all inhabitants (or, you know, they're gay to begin with). I don't have to deal with the soul searching that would be necessary if a formerly hetero-identified character was all "...you know what? I'd really like to suck that dude's cock." Because of the Universal Sexual Enlightenment! It's like every character came equipped with a little internal code that read: "Don't Panic: so you think your sexual orientation has changed for this one dude/dudette. Rock on and make with the monkey sex."
I do not, however, have this ability it historical fandoms. Largely because, well. I'm OCD about some things, and one of them is period accuracy (or as near period accuracy as I dare attempt) with regards to things like: social norms. (...I could give fuck all about whether or not the set dressings are period accurate; I only care about the psychology of the characters). And this is because these characters have not yet experienced the "Jack Harkness Rules of Sexual Attraction (and subsequent freedom from inner turmoil)". These characters live within a society guided by certain norms and appropriate social behavior -- and all the attendant emotional turmoil that would arise from the "Being Gay" trope.
Now, I say all this because, well, I had a point. I'm pretty sure that point was that in the American Old West (an in particular the area Mag7 is tentatively set in) Homosexuality as a lifestyle was Not On. Yes there were trans people (see, for example, Cockeyed Charley), and I don't doubt that there were primarily homosexual people out there as well (although research is rather spotty on this subject, at least via the internets). More importantly, IIRC, the concept of "being a man" was incredibly important to the social and psychological norms of the time. Which is not to say that being gay makes you any less of a man -- of my many gay friends, I'd say most of them out butch me, and I read as male in the online "guess your sex" quizzes (no, really: I prefer to build shit rather than clean shit, and occasionally do a sniff test to determine if my clothes are beyond the point of wearing; yes, I am a dirty, dirty girl) -- but there's a reason the floppy wristed fop was such a prominent sterotype. All of which is to basically say that even though the Kinsey scale was surely in effect before Kinesy quantified it, I suspect that society established a far more rigid structure regarding gender and gender preferences. It's the whole idea of mutual masturbation isn't a gay thing. Which...also had relevance, but at this point I'm a bit too sleepy and happily floating on my anti-anxiety meds to deal with in detail. I think I mean to argue that much like how Chris exhibits a certain code for when he's living within the strictures of society as opposed to when he's out the outskirts of society -- e.g., how he treats the working girls when they roll into town in Working Girls, vs. how he treats them out in Wicks Town -- the same attitudes could be construed towards true homosexual behavior. Which is a tricky thing to suss out because back in those days it was common for two completely hetero male friends to share a bed with nothing untoward being thought about it (sharing a bed being a cheaper option, after all, and this fact being brought to you by some vaguely remembered foofraw about Abraham Lincoln having been gay, and also John Adams and Benjamin Franklin sharing a bed on a journey to France, I believe). Point being bit of slap and tickle (or even suck and fuck) out on the range was one thing, but back in town it was all women or nothing else. What happened on the range, stayed on the range, and all that.
Which, you know, is a fine sort of baseline to take when writing, say, Buck getting a handjob from Chris. It's not a good thing when writing Chris being with, well, anybody. Because even if he's on a sliding scale, I don't doubt that societal pressures pushed his sliding scale up higher than it would have been had he lived in, say, the current time period. (And in England, where they appear to understand these things a bit better.) So, you know, if he starts out as 80% attracted to women and 20% attracted to men, I suspect that society would skew those numbers to 85-90% attracted to women, 15-10% attracted to men. (I realize, of course, that not everyone is as shame driven as I am, but still. Out on the frontier, I think the bonds of human companionship were especially important/strong).
What's all the point of this rambling? You know, I don't know if I really have one, except to say that as much as I (in real life) believe that love transcends such foolish things as gender, I don't believe that in my fic writing. Or if I do, and if I'm writing historical fic, then I feel the all-mighty need to explore the inner turmoil of what being attracted means to a hard drinking sonofabitch gunslinger. And that the way I get around it is by making the characters I want to be gay be, well, gay. I mean, I suspect that the lack of a legitimate female interest is the major reason I ship V/E as much as I do...besides the fact that they seem to fit together so well in some strange opposite-attract-kind of way.
Anyway, enough of this rambling. I should sleep now and fic later, and ponder more on the mysteries of sex.
1. Look, I know I should be enlightened about the multifacted nature of sex and gender, but let's face it. I'm a middle-leaning secular Jew with strong Chinese influences who suffers from OCD and ADD. I like neat categories and the concept of a third gender just makes my brain give me 404 errors. I totally get the whole concept of gender identity not synched with one's biological gender, but even then, in my mind, there are still only two sexes: male and female. Sometimes the male is accidentally born into the female body and vice versa, but there you go. The idea of being something other than male or female is just something I can't wrap my brain around, no matter how hard I try.
2. I should also point out that CP has forever endeared itself to me because even after he finds out, the fact that Eun Chan is a woman doesn't make it all better, at least not at once. I mean, yes, they end up together and are adorable like a basket of sleepy kittens, but Han Gyul's first reaction to finding out that hey! he's not gay after all! isn't one of elation -- it's one of absolute anger and justified resentment. Because he was so ready to be gay for Eun Chan; he'd faced all his demons about his sexuality and the attendant consequences and was all: fuck it. I love him. And the post-reveal episodes are just wonderful for the fact that instead of rejoicing that their love is socially acceptable, he spends it being hurt and betrayed at being lied to, and it basically takes someone going "dude, you were willing to accept that you didn't care that Eun Chan had a cock, you were so in love with the essential nature of who she is. The fact that she's actually a chick and, ok, yes, lied to you for several months (by basically not correcting your initial mistake) does not invalidate the fact of your love."
This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth where there are
comments