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elspethdixon Nov. 21st, 2008 08:26 pm)
elspethdixon Nov. 21st, 2008 08:26 pm)I delayed a long time before posting this, because it had its genesis as a shipper-war rant (and my HP-trained instincts to start shipper wars-to-the-knife over my OTPs do not need encouragement), but recent events in my fandom have reminded me all over again why this argument pisses me off.
So, a couple months ago I got the traditional semi-annual piece of feedback on ff.net asking why I couldn't "just let the characters be friends," and why didn't it occur to slashers than men could just be straight? (if it hadn't been an anonymous comment, my immediate desire to reply, "ZOMG, you mean some people are straight? I never knew that! All these years I've wondered where the hell babies come from and why so many men and women get married and you've finally enlightened me! Why did no one ever tell me that not everyone is gay?!?" would have been too poweful to resist). This, combined with an argument I got into this summer with someone who didn't like one of my OTPs because she didn't think people should sexualize friendships, has been preying on my mind, quietly irritating me in the way that only someone being wrong on the internet can.
Several years ago, I wrote piece of meta on sexualizing friendship. Said meta was much more cleverly put together than this rant, and there is some really great input from people smarter than me in comments. Here's the link: http://elspethdixon.livejournal.com/73138.html?style=mine because I'm going to revisit the topic now.
When I wrote the first essay, my position on the topic was informed at least partially by the fact that one of my long-time OTPs (also my only RPS ship to date) is Doc Holliday/Wyatt Earp, whose historically close and devoted friendship I was adding romance/desire too (Note: like most regular RPS shippers, I don't actually think Wyatt Earp and John Henry Holliday were knocking boots - I just like the way they work as a pairing and think the "canon" for them, both the historical record and pretty much every movie about them ever made, is slashy as all get out. So slashy. OMG.).
Now, I approach it from the perspective of a woman who is engaged to her (female) best friend.* Needless to say, I have a little more personal stake in the debate now, and a stronger objection to it than my original mild "but saying that platonic friendships are more pure and/or meaningful than romantic love implies that we still think sex is dirty and shameful."
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and an opinion is not necessarily wrong just because I disagree with it, but it logically follows that, if someone believes putting Starsky & Hutch, Kirk & Spock, Sam & Frodo, Cap & Iron Man, etc. in a romantic/sexual relationship lessens or demeans their friendship, then they on some level also believe that I, by proposing to my best friend, have demeaned our friendship. When someone criticizes slashers for sexualizing friendship, they are by extension implying that our relationship is in some way lesser than a relationship between two heterosexual women (or two non-heterosexual women with no romantic interest in each other), whether they intend to or not. I'm assuming, for the record, that they don't intend to - unless they're the kind of anti-slasher who just objects to homosexuality in general, in which case the issue at work is homophobia rather than the conviction that platonic love is superior to romantic love.
That said, I do think it's interesting that slash fans are so much more likely to hear the "why must you cheapen the purity of their friendship by adding nasty, dirty sex to it" argument then het fans. I'd say it's due to the fact that het ships are much more likely to be canon, but I bet you Tony/Pepper shippers don't hear that one, for all that their pairing is no more canon than Steve/Tony is (all objections I hear to that one revolve around "but it goes against comics canon," or "but Pepper is supposed to be with Happy Hogan/Tony's supposed to be with [insert alternative slash or canon-het pairing of your choice]," or "you know, I kind of liked that she's the first female lead in an action movie since Aliens that didn't just exist to be the hero's girlfriend," or "but the word 'Pepperony' makes my eyeballs bleed." Nothing about it cheapening or distorting Tony and Pepper's friendship.). If there are any X-Files fans reading this, feel free to correct me on this if I'm wrong and MSR writers were deluged with "you're demeaning their friendship/why do you have to cheapen everything by sexualizing it" comments back in the day
If adding romantic love and sexual desire to friendships lessens them -- makes them something less noble/more selfish/less spiritually pure/whatever and reduces them to "all about sex" (as in, "why do we, as a society, always have to make everything about sex? Why can't they just be friends?") -- then that means that I, as a bisexual woman, am doomed to forever have friendships with other women that were "worth" less than those of a completely heterosexual women whose feelings for her friends would be unsullied by physical appreciation of her friends' bodies and (god forbid) romantic committment. (And as a person with a relatively low sex drive, can I also register my discomfort with viewing sex as the sole or most important attribute of a romantic relationship?)
I would contend that introducing sexual/romantic desire into a friendship constitutes an addition, not a substitution or a subtraction. If, for example, Sam feels physical desire for Frodo at the same time that he accompanies him to Mordor, carries the ring for him when its burden gets too heavy, and prepares to die beside him "at the end of all things," that doesn't make their relationship any less meaningful or in any way diminish Sam's willingness to unselfishly sacrifice and suffer for Frodo's sake (something I've seen argued before). Not unless Sam is secretly blackmailing Frodo into sleeping with him during The Two Towers and Return of the King as the price for his help or something (and if that fic exists, don't link me).
If Gilgamesh loved Enkidu as a lover instead of as a brother... well, actually, according to the Epic of Gilgamesh, he, and I quote, loved Enkidu "as a wife," so that one's pretty much a given. And yet their relationship is still the cornerstone of the world's oldest litarary epic.
If we truly believe that sexual/romantic love (eros) is less worthy or less pure than entirely platonic love (phillia), than that also says something less-than-positive about the way we as a society think of heterosexual relationships (not to mention what we really think of sex, deep down). If we believe that eros replaces or even destroys phillia, that slashing friends changes the relationship into something different and lesser rather than deepening an already existing relationship by adding a new element to it, well... I have heard more than one man or woman describe his/her spouse as "my best friend." How do we reconcile that with the idea that friendship and romance are distinct and different, and that portraying friendship as something other than platonic is disrespectful or insulting to that friendship? Are happily married straight people who say that they are friends with their spouse as well as lovers and that this has made their marriage stronger just fooling themselves? Somehow I doubt it.
*Engaged is a lovely term, since it implies long-term commitment and the intention of permanancy in a way that "sleeping with" or "dating" doesn't, without necessarily requiring that you get married right away. You can't truthfully call someone your wife unless you're legally married, but "engaged" simply signals intent-to-marry-at-some-future-point and is a social rather than a legal contract, so you can be engaged anywhere regardless of state marriage laws. Also, fiancee is a nice, gender neutral term that lets you signal that you're in a relationship without telling your co-workers "Hi! I'm bisexual/lesbian!"
So, a couple months ago I got the traditional semi-annual piece of feedback on ff.net asking why I couldn't "just let the characters be friends," and why didn't it occur to slashers than men could just be straight? (if it hadn't been an anonymous comment, my immediate desire to reply, "ZOMG, you mean some people are straight? I never knew that! All these years I've wondered where the hell babies come from and why so many men and women get married and you've finally enlightened me! Why did no one ever tell me that not everyone is gay?!?" would have been too poweful to resist). This, combined with an argument I got into this summer with someone who didn't like one of my OTPs because she didn't think people should sexualize friendships, has been preying on my mind, quietly irritating me in the way that only someone being wrong on the internet can.
Several years ago, I wrote piece of meta on sexualizing friendship. Said meta was much more cleverly put together than this rant, and there is some really great input from people smarter than me in comments. Here's the link: http://elspethdixon.livejournal.com/73138.html?style=mine because I'm going to revisit the topic now.
When I wrote the first essay, my position on the topic was informed at least partially by the fact that one of my long-time OTPs (also my only RPS ship to date) is Doc Holliday/Wyatt Earp, whose historically close and devoted friendship I was adding romance/desire too (Note: like most regular RPS shippers, I don't actually think Wyatt Earp and John Henry Holliday were knocking boots - I just like the way they work as a pairing and think the "canon" for them, both the historical record and pretty much every movie about them ever made, is slashy as all get out. So slashy. OMG.).
Now, I approach it from the perspective of a woman who is engaged to her (female) best friend.* Needless to say, I have a little more personal stake in the debate now, and a stronger objection to it than my original mild "but saying that platonic friendships are more pure and/or meaningful than romantic love implies that we still think sex is dirty and shameful."
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and an opinion is not necessarily wrong just because I disagree with it, but it logically follows that, if someone believes putting Starsky & Hutch, Kirk & Spock, Sam & Frodo, Cap & Iron Man, etc. in a romantic/sexual relationship lessens or demeans their friendship, then they on some level also believe that I, by proposing to my best friend, have demeaned our friendship. When someone criticizes slashers for sexualizing friendship, they are by extension implying that our relationship is in some way lesser than a relationship between two heterosexual women (or two non-heterosexual women with no romantic interest in each other), whether they intend to or not. I'm assuming, for the record, that they don't intend to - unless they're the kind of anti-slasher who just objects to homosexuality in general, in which case the issue at work is homophobia rather than the conviction that platonic love is superior to romantic love.
That said, I do think it's interesting that slash fans are so much more likely to hear the "why must you cheapen the purity of their friendship by adding nasty, dirty sex to it" argument then het fans. I'd say it's due to the fact that het ships are much more likely to be canon, but I bet you Tony/Pepper shippers don't hear that one, for all that their pairing is no more canon than Steve/Tony is (all objections I hear to that one revolve around "but it goes against comics canon," or "but Pepper is supposed to be with Happy Hogan/Tony's supposed to be with [insert alternative slash or canon-het pairing of your choice]," or "you know, I kind of liked that she's the first female lead in an action movie since Aliens that didn't just exist to be the hero's girlfriend," or "but the word 'Pepperony' makes my eyeballs bleed." Nothing about it cheapening or distorting Tony and Pepper's friendship.). If there are any X-Files fans reading this, feel free to correct me on this if I'm wrong and MSR writers were deluged with "you're demeaning their friendship/why do you have to cheapen everything by sexualizing it" comments back in the day
If adding romantic love and sexual desire to friendships lessens them -- makes them something less noble/more selfish/less spiritually pure/whatever and reduces them to "all about sex" (as in, "why do we, as a society, always have to make everything about sex? Why can't they just be friends?") -- then that means that I, as a bisexual woman, am doomed to forever have friendships with other women that were "worth" less than those of a completely heterosexual women whose feelings for her friends would be unsullied by physical appreciation of her friends' bodies and (god forbid) romantic committment. (And as a person with a relatively low sex drive, can I also register my discomfort with viewing sex as the sole or most important attribute of a romantic relationship?)
I would contend that introducing sexual/romantic desire into a friendship constitutes an addition, not a substitution or a subtraction. If, for example, Sam feels physical desire for Frodo at the same time that he accompanies him to Mordor, carries the ring for him when its burden gets too heavy, and prepares to die beside him "at the end of all things," that doesn't make their relationship any less meaningful or in any way diminish Sam's willingness to unselfishly sacrifice and suffer for Frodo's sake (something I've seen argued before). Not unless Sam is secretly blackmailing Frodo into sleeping with him during The Two Towers and Return of the King as the price for his help or something (and if that fic exists, don't link me).
If Gilgamesh loved Enkidu as a lover instead of as a brother... well, actually, according to the Epic of Gilgamesh, he, and I quote, loved Enkidu "as a wife," so that one's pretty much a given. And yet their relationship is still the cornerstone of the world's oldest litarary epic.
If we truly believe that sexual/romantic love (eros) is less worthy or less pure than entirely platonic love (phillia), than that also says something less-than-positive about the way we as a society think of heterosexual relationships (not to mention what we really think of sex, deep down). If we believe that eros replaces or even destroys phillia, that slashing friends changes the relationship into something different and lesser rather than deepening an already existing relationship by adding a new element to it, well... I have heard more than one man or woman describe his/her spouse as "my best friend." How do we reconcile that with the idea that friendship and romance are distinct and different, and that portraying friendship as something other than platonic is disrespectful or insulting to that friendship? Are happily married straight people who say that they are friends with their spouse as well as lovers and that this has made their marriage stronger just fooling themselves? Somehow I doubt it.
*Engaged is a lovely term, since it implies long-term commitment and the intention of permanancy in a way that "sleeping with" or "dating" doesn't, without necessarily requiring that you get married right away. You can't truthfully call someone your wife unless you're legally married, but "engaged" simply signals intent-to-marry-at-some-future-point and is a social rather than a legal contract, so you can be engaged anywhere regardless of state marriage laws. Also, fiancee is a nice, gender neutral term that lets you signal that you're in a relationship without telling your co-workers "Hi! I'm bisexual/lesbian!"
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I'd put the sucky way canon writers often handle het romance down to bad writing, though, rather than the idea that Mulder & Scully, Spike & Buffy, Hermione & [guy of your choice] falling in love is inherently flawed. Because I've read numerous Spike/Buffy, Scully/Mudler, and Ron/Hermione fics that all handled the relationship much better than canon did.
When I hear people say "canon shouldn't go there," it tends to be less "because it will sully the purity of their friendship, and you don't really value their friendship if you want to ship them" and more "because TPTB will somehow find a way to make it suck." Or they're saying "canon shouldn't go there" because they want Hermione to get together with Harry and it's a ship-war argument instead of an anti-ship one.