I made an earlier post on this under my irrational comics ranting filter yesterday, but this is my hopefully rational and not ranty post on it, because I do think this is something that needs to actually be discussed, and me shrieking like a harpy about it where only five people can read it won't accomplish that.
This post by karnythia about K/S shippers who want K/S to be canon makes some very good and important points, but some of the comments on it made me uncomfortable. Not as a white woman with priviledge, which would have been fine because calling people on their priviledge was the post's intention, but as a bisexual woman and slasher who felt erased and insulted by statements like:
you think this is what actual gaybos give a rat's ass about?
and
I HATE SLASH FICTION WRITERS FOR THIS REASON UGH GUGH THEY AREN'T GAY, STOP TRYING TO MAKE THEM THAT. I really, really hate people who force heterosexual men into gay couples that make no sense from canon. It's just fairly wrong.
Thankfully, though the statments went unchallenged initially,![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
maehrys and nora_charles have now responded to the second quote to point out that the slash bashing was a) derailing the original point of karnythia's post (which is that wanting the Reboot writers to break up Spock/Uhura is problematic, and the way some of the petitioners were going about it even more so, NOT that we should all now argue about whether slash fanfic itself is wrong) and b) that insisting that all characters are straight until proven otherwise and it's offensive to "make them gay" erases bisexual, pansexual, and closeted gays/lesbians and discounts their existance and experiences. They are my heroes. I now feel much better about Star Trek: Reboot fandom than I did yesterday ^_^.
Still, the fact that the comments were made at all bothers me. I am made uncomfortable by the use of insulting slang to refer to LGBT people, by the repeated fannish battle cry of heterosexism, the classic, "Why are you making them gay? It's wrong." By the fact that some people who say they are at least partially offended on behalf of LGBT fans are insulting said fans further in their defence of them. Reading the comments on karnythia's post yesterday, when as yet no one had questioned or challenged these statements, made me feel as if I were a figure of contempt in the eyes of the people making them -- and I'm not even part of Reboot Trek fandom. I have nothing to do with the petition, which I'd never heard about before clicking on the post. I think it's silly and doomed to failure. I agree that some of the people involved may not have the 100% noble motives they claim and may in fact just want their ship to be canon and Spock/Uhura to break up, rather than to increase LGBT visibility and give us, for the first time, a pair of bisexual heroes on the silver screen who save the day and get a happy ending. But people weren't just criticizing the authors of the Make K/S Canon petition, or even K/S fans in general. They were dismissing ALL slash, everywhere, as illegitimate, and making blanket statements about what LGBT fans do and don't want (personally? I'd love to see the leads in a blockbuster action film be two men in a romantic relationship, and while making a supporting character in the next Trek movie gay would at least give LGBT people a place in Trek's future, it isn't remotely the same thing as having the leads be other-than-straight. You know it isn't. On the other hand, while it's very much not my ship, you could achieve the same visibility and recognition the petition framers say they want by making Kirk/McCoy canon. If representation was really the only goal, there would have been no need to ask for a specific and particular pairing).
If these particular K/S fans are Doing It Wrong, surely it's possible to call them on that without launching into scathing indictments of all slashers everywhere, without repeating and further disemminating the tired old heterosexist assumption that everyone everywhere in fiction is straight until specifically stated to be otherwise. And, most importantly, without throwing terms like "gaybos" around?
flocked, so that I can get a feel for how people respond to this. If y'all don't think I'm being offensive or pulling the tone argument, I'll take the flock down (Surely openly insulting LGBT fans isn't protected from criticism on grounds of not doing the tone argument, is it? I can never tell where the lines are drawn on this - I know things aren't actually as all or nothing as I usually perceive people to be saying they are, but I tend to get kind of "Never compromise, Daniel! -- .][." over arguments I have an emotional stake in).edit: have now unlocked the DW post. The lj post remains locked because there's off-topic discussion about other fandoms (with spoilers) and RL stuff in comments.
Anonymous comments enabled. Post mirrored on lj and DW. Please don't debate the validity of K/S vs. S/U here, though. That's not what this post is for (nor is it for arguing about whether or not the make K/S canon people are in the wrong or not and why -- karnythia's post has several links where you can go and do that edit: and metafandom now has several more).
This post by karnythia about K/S shippers who want K/S to be canon makes some very good and important points, but some of the comments on it made me uncomfortable. Not as a white woman with priviledge, which would have been fine because calling people on their priviledge was the post's intention, but as a bisexual woman and slasher who felt erased and insulted by statements like:
you think this is what actual gaybos give a rat's ass about?
and
I HATE SLASH FICTION WRITERS FOR THIS REASON UGH GUGH THEY AREN'T GAY, STOP TRYING TO MAKE THEM THAT. I really, really hate people who force heterosexual men into gay couples that make no sense from canon. It's just fairly wrong.
Thankfully, though the statments went unchallenged initially,
maehrys and nora_charles have now responded to the second quote to point out that the slash bashing was a) derailing the original point of karnythia's post (which is that wanting the Reboot writers to break up Spock/Uhura is problematic, and the way some of the petitioners were going about it even more so, NOT that we should all now argue about whether slash fanfic itself is wrong) and b) that insisting that all characters are straight until proven otherwise and it's offensive to "make them gay" erases bisexual, pansexual, and closeted gays/lesbians and discounts their existance and experiences. They are my heroes. I now feel much better about Star Trek: Reboot fandom than I did yesterday ^_^.Still, the fact that the comments were made at all bothers me. I am made uncomfortable by the use of insulting slang to refer to LGBT people, by the repeated fannish battle cry of heterosexism, the classic, "Why are you making them gay? It's wrong." By the fact that some people who say they are at least partially offended on behalf of LGBT fans are insulting said fans further in their defence of them. Reading the comments on karnythia's post yesterday, when as yet no one had questioned or challenged these statements, made me feel as if I were a figure of contempt in the eyes of the people making them -- and I'm not even part of Reboot Trek fandom. I have nothing to do with the petition, which I'd never heard about before clicking on the post. I think it's silly and doomed to failure. I agree that some of the people involved may not have the 100% noble motives they claim and may in fact just want their ship to be canon and Spock/Uhura to break up, rather than to increase LGBT visibility and give us, for the first time, a pair of bisexual heroes on the silver screen who save the day and get a happy ending. But people weren't just criticizing the authors of the Make K/S Canon petition, or even K/S fans in general. They were dismissing ALL slash, everywhere, as illegitimate, and making blanket statements about what LGBT fans do and don't want (personally? I'd love to see the leads in a blockbuster action film be two men in a romantic relationship, and while making a supporting character in the next Trek movie gay would at least give LGBT people a place in Trek's future, it isn't remotely the same thing as having the leads be other-than-straight. You know it isn't. On the other hand, while it's very much not my ship, you could achieve the same visibility and recognition the petition framers say they want by making Kirk/McCoy canon. If representation was really the only goal, there would have been no need to ask for a specific and particular pairing).
If these particular K/S fans are Doing It Wrong, surely it's possible to call them on that without launching into scathing indictments of all slashers everywhere, without repeating and further disemminating the tired old heterosexist assumption that everyone everywhere in fiction is straight until specifically stated to be otherwise. And, most importantly, without throwing terms like "gaybos" around?
flocked, so that I can get a feel for how people respond to this. If y'all don't think I'm being offensive or pulling the tone argument, I'll take the flock down (Surely openly insulting LGBT fans isn't protected from criticism on grounds of not doing the tone argument, is it? I can never tell where the lines are drawn on this - I know things aren't actually as all or nothing as I usually perceive people to be saying they are, but I tend to get kind of "Never compromise, Daniel! -- .][." over arguments I have an emotional stake in).edit: have now unlocked the DW post. The lj post remains locked because there's off-topic discussion about other fandoms (with spoilers) and RL stuff in comments.
Anonymous comments enabled. Post mirrored on lj and DW. Please don't debate the validity of K/S vs. S/U here, though. That's not what this post is for (nor is it for arguing about whether or not the make K/S canon people are in the wrong or not and why -- karnythia's post has several links where you can go and do that edit: and metafandom now has several more).
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I was so pleased today when I check the post again and saw that several people braver than me had pointed out that the commentor was a) wrong and b) bordering on derailing, because I'd wanted to do so but had just enough sense to realize that I'd only lose my temper and cover myself in fail if I actually waded in to argue with people.
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The whole thing was very weird and awkward. I mean, goodness knows the initial post was quite reasonable, but for those commenters to extend it into the blanket condemnation of slashers was... massively uninformed and kneejerk. Especially as the commenters didn't really offer much apart from 'slash is icky'.
So, uh, I have little productive to offer, but I agree with you, and I don't think it's the tone argument, because you're objecting to content rather than style.
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I knew that if I commented, I would only derail and escalate, because what I wanted to do was leave an angry reply to the first comment I quoted that made heavy use of the word "fuck," and a tl;dr rant about how deeply I hate the "They aren't gay! Stop trying to make them that way!" thing and why to the second one.
I think it's unfortunate that the discussion kept devolving into "slash is gross/"my ship is better than your ship" all over the place, when it ought to be about whether the petitioners are/were misusing gay rights as a tool in a ship war (with possible attendant race issues), not about which ship is better or more "valid." Unfortunate and really, really annoying.
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So saying "Kirk can't like men cause he dates all these chicks" is just... bleh. It's small scale as far as injustices go, I know I'm fortunate and privileged and I don't want to kick up about it in the middle of a far more important discussion (because invoking MLK in support of your ship, dear God no) but I still don't think it's right.
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I don't tend to either, outside fandom. I get a lot of mileage out of the gender neutral (when spoken, anyway, if not when written) word "fiancee" in professional situations.
because invoking MLK in support of your ship, dear God no
It's moments like that when you really want to yell, "Get off my side! You're making it look bad!" (mostly, I have those moments re US politics, but fandom tends to be good for them, too).