I've to admit, I'm very puzzled by the whole discussion. If there's no sex, isn't that just genfic? Asexual characters do not exist in a vacuum, if the story does focus on sexuality, I think it's inevitable that the character compare and contrast his/her attitude toward romance and sex with others.
I am dissatisfied that the only two alternatives appear to be:
- Gen fic (invisibility); and - Fics in which asexuality is presented as a legitimate orientation, but the story is focused on sex to the exclusion of other things (visibility).
I would genuinely prefer to go back to being invisible. But if you're going to throw "asexual" out there into the fannish discussion, I don't want to be left with having been given the impression that asexuals are always - as you put it - "compar[ing] and contrast[ing] his/her attitude toward romance and sex with others". Sometimes, they are - because like you said, they are not in a vacuum. But to reduce them to being merely....reactionary is to look in from the outside, fetishising them as a group.
ETA: Anyway, I think I may have answered my own question. The third option would be gen fic in which asexuality is given prominence. This actually makes complete sense to me...
I was going to argue that the point of asexuality is for the "sex" part of sexuality to be absent, therefore gen fic, then I remembered that some asexuals still engage in solitary sexual activities, and that might be the part where asexuality start to deviate from other sexualities....Infinite variety still allow for broad categorizations, after all.
the point of asexuality is for the "sex" part of sexuality to be absent
I would have to disagree. The "point" of asexuality may be that sex or the interest in sex is absent. But asexual characters should no more be reduced to their asexuality than African American characters be reduced to their non-whiteness.
This has always bothered me.ext_253685March 2 2012, 03:50:28 UTC
I'm not asexual myself, but my best friend throughout high school was a self-proclaimed asexual... and, even though she currently has a "girlfriend", may very well be still for all I know (it's been a while since we've been in touch
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Re: This has always bothered me.the_grynneMarch 2 2012, 04:41:27 UTC
Eventually their work turns out to be, not an exploration of an asexual character's life and thoughts, but an exploration of the WRITER's attempts to understand such a mystifying being. It's the same as a lot of male writers who don't understand women - or more accurately, believe that there is such a unified and easily defined entity as womanhood - try to write female characters: they highlight the differences too much and ignore the similarities, and the result is something truly grotesque.
I think you've hit the main issue spot on. I don't think it's a product of bad writing, though, as much as it is of lack of perspective or understanding?
Re: This has always bothered me.ext_253685March 2 2012, 05:19:20 UTC
Well, I could always argue that perspective and understanding are basic requirements for really good writing, which was what I had in mind. But yes, perspective would be the more central issue here, methinks
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Re: This has always bothered me.the_grynneMarch 2 2012, 06:33:01 UTC
You probably weren't around when race!fail 09 rolled around - or the following year's big race debate surrounding the white-saviour trope. Suffice it to say, it left people a lot more cautious about how they depicted cultures and societies and races that are not their own, but I think you hold writers to a far higher degree of credence that they would typically do themselves. Writers' arrogance - "I can do what I like with these characters, and you can't stop me" - is arguably even more pronounced in fandom (where you have the canon authors complaining about how you have stolen their intellectual property) than when it comes to original stories.
While I think the problem arises, like with atheism perhaps, from being defined against something else as an absence of that thing, I also believe that asexuality can be its own presence of experiences that are not solely defined in opposition to what 'sexuals' experience.
I agree that it's the negative (i.e. the "a-" prefix indicating lack of something) definition that's the root of a lot of the problem, and I'm interested in what else you would say are the unique positive (positive in the sense of them being there; their presence, rather than non-presence) experiences of asexuals that could indicate to others that they are asexual? I worry that those experiences other aces would recognise would be completely overlooked by a large part of the audience (the gen!fic problem).
Have you seen Whitechapel? There's a character in it, played by Rupert Penry-Jones, who I would definitely type as ace. The externalisation is a bit louder than I would expect in most asexuals, because he is also a bit obsessive compulsive, but there are other
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I am dissatisfied that the only two alternatives appear to be:
- Gen fic (invisibility); and
- Fics in which asexuality is presented as a legitimate orientation, but the story is focused on sex to the exclusion of other things (visibility).
I would genuinely prefer to go back to being invisible. But if you're going to throw "asexual" out there into the fannish discussion, I don't want to be left with having been given the impression that asexuals are always - as you put it - "compar[ing] and contrast[ing] his/her attitude toward romance and sex with others". Sometimes, they are - because like you said, they are not in a vacuum. But to reduce them to being merely....reactionary is to look in from the outside, fetishising them as a group.
ETA: Anyway, I think I may have answered my own question. The third option would be gen fic in which asexuality is given prominence. This actually makes complete sense to me...
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I would have to disagree. The "point" of asexuality may be that sex or the interest in sex is absent. But asexual characters should no more be reduced to their asexuality than African American characters be reduced to their non-whiteness.
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I think you've hit the main issue spot on. I don't think it's a product of bad writing, though, as much as it is of lack of perspective or understanding?
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I agree that it's the negative (i.e. the "a-" prefix indicating lack of something) definition that's the root of a lot of the problem, and I'm interested in what else you would say are the unique positive (positive in the sense of them being there; their presence, rather than non-presence) experiences of asexuals that could indicate to others that they are asexual? I worry that those experiences other aces would recognise would be completely overlooked by a large part of the audience (the gen!fic problem).
Have you seen Whitechapel? There's a character in it, played by Rupert Penry-Jones, who I would definitely type as ace. The externalisation is a bit louder than I would expect in most asexuals, because he is also a bit obsessive compulsive, but there are other ( ... )
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