My involvement in X-Files fandom was early and brief, but I guess I was one of the people who insisted that shipping Mulder/Scully demeaned their friendship. However my argument wasn't "If Mulder and Scully have sex, it will make their relationship lesser or inferior" (though everyone always responded as if that's what I was saying) but "The insistence that Mulder and Scully should have sex implies a belief that their current relationship is lesser or inferior." Perhaps I was misinterpreting the shippers' motives, but hey, they were misinterpreting my motives, so it all balanced out. :-P
I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that m/f romances in popular media are a dime a dozen while strong m/f friendship is incredibly rare, so when something that looked like a strong m/f friendship came along on a show I liked, it was annoying to see everyone wanting to turn it into the 153865928370239857th romance. Also, I really-really-really hate the whole "men and women can't be friends" thing that seems so pervasive in our culture (don't get me started on When Harry Met Sally), and the M/S shipping seemed to be feeding into that.
Which is why, to this day, I'm more likely to make this objection to a het pairing than a slash one. M/m friendship is ubiquitous in all media, while m/m romance is still fairly rare, so the impulse to slash is a lot more understandable to me.
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Date: 2008-11-23 01:36 am (UTC)I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that m/f romances in popular media are a dime a dozen while strong m/f friendship is incredibly rare, so when something that looked like a strong m/f friendship came along on a show I liked, it was annoying to see everyone wanting to turn it into the 153865928370239857th romance. Also, I really-really-really hate the whole "men and women can't be friends" thing that seems so pervasive in our culture (don't get me started on When Harry Met Sally), and the M/S shipping seemed to be feeding into that.
Which is why, to this day, I'm more likely to make this objection to a het pairing than a slash one. M/m friendship is ubiquitous in all media, while m/m romance is still fairly rare, so the impulse to slash is a lot more understandable to me.