elspethdixon (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
elspethdixon) wrote2009-12-21 01:53 am
elspethdixon) wrote2009-12-21 01:53 am
Entry tags:
X is straight, because blah, blah, sexuality works like blah, and your sexuality isn't real
I debated a little about posting this because I recently posted a similar rant under flock, but this time the "it's just friendship/he's really straight in canon" thing was extra annoying, so:
Very interesting post on bisexuality and SPN, and what it means to the author that the siren (apparently there's a SPN episode with a siren?) appears to Dean as a male in order to seduce him.
Of course, someone has to appear in the comments to talk about how sexuality is only about physical attraction, and defend platonic friendships against misaimed attempts to sexualize them. She then goes on to insist that one can only be bisexual if one feels physical desire/sexual attraction toward both sexes, and that intense emotional attraction cannot be an expression of bisexuality unless the desire for sex is there, despite the OP's attempts to point out that people can identify as both asexual and heterosexual or gay/lesbian/bi, because affective/emotional desire is a component of sexuality as well. The commentor then decides that the OP is a troll. As you do.
"All right, I concede the point. Straight people's friendships with other straight people of the same gender are valuable and important. I'm not sure that point was ever in doubt in most of these discussions, but just in case it is: friendship is important, and often it is completely platonic and not romantic or accompanied by sexual attraction at all. Now you can stop reminding us of this fact over and over every time fandom has one of these conversations. If you could stop implying that people with low sex drives or who identify as asexual are making their queerness (or straightness, for that matter) up and telling them that their romantic relationships are not real/ are actually just platonic friendships because they're not making the beast with two backs, that would be lovely, too.
Seriously, when people pop up in a discussion about queering a text, or about homosexual or homosocial subtext in a text, to remind people that intense emotional attachments between men/women don't have to be romantic but can simply be platonic/philia, what do they think they're accomplishing, other than a subtle and irritating form of derailing? It's not intentional derailing, but it's still derailing, IMO. "I know we're talking about same sex relationships and desire here, but you know what I want to talk about? Platonic friendships and how fandom doesn't value them enough!" It's not on par with "what about teh menz?" in discussions of sexism, for example, but it's still often people trying to turn a discussion about gay/bi-ness or same-sex relationships into a discussion that *isn't* about those things.
Something can be sexual without being romantic. Something can be romantic without being sexual. But both romantic and sexual are by definition not platonic, and both are expressions of sexuality, which encompasses both romantic love and sexual desire.
If someone who's attracted to their same gender sees a reflection of their own sexuality and their own feelings for other men/women in an intense emotional connection between two male and/or female characters, what purpose does it serve to insist that that reflection is not there, that it exists only in their mind and they're "reaching" or "reading too much into things?" Okay, maybe sometime fans are reaching and imposing our own meanings onto the text in a way the original writer never intended, but fiction is subjective. And when the bulk of history and fiction provide you with so very few textually LGBT characters, and specifically in this context, so few bisexual characters (who aren't serial killers or evil slutty whores, anyway), then those close, intimate, intense bonds of affection between men (or, far too rarely, women) in fiction can mean an awful lot. Someone finding a diffent meaning, a romantic meaning, in them doesn't automatically invalidate someone else's gen reading (or het reading). Someone reading a character as bisexual doesn't mean you can't read them as straight (or gay/lesbian, or asexual/aromantic, for that matter), but saying "Personally, I read X as straight," is a different matter from saying, "X is straight in canon and all slash is a defacto AU," or, as the commentor referenced above did here, "X is straight, because blah, blah, sexuality works like blah, and your/his/her experience of your/his/her own sexuality isn't real." Statement one is explaining your own interpretation of the text. Statement two is insisting that your own interpretation of the text is the only right one, which is irritating in general and contains it's own brand of baggage in this specific context because it assume heterosexuality as the default, but it's nowhere near as irritating as statement three. Statement three is telling someone that they're not only interpreting the text wrong, they're also wrong about their own life (and their own relationships, and their own emotions).
I personally am trying to not do #3 in any fannish discussions (anymore, anyway - I've sure I've done it in the past. I'll probably do it again in the future), and to avoid #2 ("my interpretation of canon is the only right one"). I'm pretty sure I fail utterly at #2 every time I discuss a source text, because deep down, I secretly believe my interpretation is the best one with all my heart, as I suspect a lot of fans do, but #3 is the one that I feel is really important.
Let's not do #3 in discussions about canon/fandom and sexuality (or gender, for that matter). People who don't fit the standard straight, cis-gendered mold spend too much time being told that their experiences of their own sexuality and identity aren't real as it is. Ditto for people who don't experience the "normal" level of interest in sex but are still involved in romantic relationships (to paraphrase a friend of mine who shall remain nameless: "It's like they're saying that my girlfriend's not my real girlfriend because we don't have sex. It makes me feel like I'm being a bad girlfriend by not wanting to sleep with her enough." Or, to quote someone else whose name I forget: "How many women do I have to fuck before I count as bisexual? One? Two? Ten?")
Plus, a small tangent: the word "friend" has historially had a weight in LGBTQ communities that encompasses more than the standard platonic definition of the word (as with "sister" in some lesbian communities). At many times in the past, "friend" was the only safe way people had to refer to the person they loved, and sometimes there was no real alternative term to use even it had been possible for people to be "out." Witness the current difficulties regarding what to call someone's longtime-romantic-partner-of-the-same-gender -- even partner, the most widely used term in American English, has another, more dominant platonic meaning.
So personally, while I know that some people feel that statements like, say, Spock's "I have been and always will be your friend," directly preclude a romantic reading because friend=platonic, I don't find it incompatible with romance at all. Maybe the writers didn't mean it that way, but there's a historical context in which "friend" can also mean "lover" that influences my reading despite the fact that I know it's not (usually) influencing the writers' writing.
Happily, there's a square for this on the anti-slash bingo card ("You just don't understand how friendship works").
Very interesting post on bisexuality and SPN, and what it means to the author that the siren (apparently there's a SPN episode with a siren?) appears to Dean as a male in order to seduce him.
Of course, someone has to appear in the comments to talk about how sexuality is only about physical attraction, and defend platonic friendships against misaimed attempts to sexualize them. She then goes on to insist that one can only be bisexual if one feels physical desire/sexual attraction toward both sexes, and that intense emotional attraction cannot be an expression of bisexuality unless the desire for sex is there, despite the OP's attempts to point out that people can identify as both asexual and heterosexual or gay/lesbian/bi, because affective/emotional desire is a component of sexuality as well. The commentor then decides that the OP is a troll. As you do.
"All right, I concede the point. Straight people's friendships with other straight people of the same gender are valuable and important. I'm not sure that point was ever in doubt in most of these discussions, but just in case it is: friendship is important, and often it is completely platonic and not romantic or accompanied by sexual attraction at all. Now you can stop reminding us of this fact over and over every time fandom has one of these conversations. If you could stop implying that people with low sex drives or who identify as asexual are making their queerness (or straightness, for that matter) up and telling them that their romantic relationships are not real/ are actually just platonic friendships because they're not making the beast with two backs, that would be lovely, too.
Seriously, when people pop up in a discussion about queering a text, or about homosexual or homosocial subtext in a text, to remind people that intense emotional attachments between men/women don't have to be romantic but can simply be platonic/philia, what do they think they're accomplishing, other than a subtle and irritating form of derailing? It's not intentional derailing, but it's still derailing, IMO. "I know we're talking about same sex relationships and desire here, but you know what I want to talk about? Platonic friendships and how fandom doesn't value them enough!" It's not on par with "what about teh menz?" in discussions of sexism, for example, but it's still often people trying to turn a discussion about gay/bi-ness or same-sex relationships into a discussion that *isn't* about those things.
Something can be sexual without being romantic. Something can be romantic without being sexual. But both romantic and sexual are by definition not platonic, and both are expressions of sexuality, which encompasses both romantic love and sexual desire.
If someone who's attracted to their same gender sees a reflection of their own sexuality and their own feelings for other men/women in an intense emotional connection between two male and/or female characters, what purpose does it serve to insist that that reflection is not there, that it exists only in their mind and they're "reaching" or "reading too much into things?" Okay, maybe sometime fans are reaching and imposing our own meanings onto the text in a way the original writer never intended, but fiction is subjective. And when the bulk of history and fiction provide you with so very few textually LGBT characters, and specifically in this context, so few bisexual characters (who aren't serial killers or evil slutty whores, anyway), then those close, intimate, intense bonds of affection between men (or, far too rarely, women) in fiction can mean an awful lot. Someone finding a diffent meaning, a romantic meaning, in them doesn't automatically invalidate someone else's gen reading (or het reading). Someone reading a character as bisexual doesn't mean you can't read them as straight (or gay/lesbian, or asexual/aromantic, for that matter), but saying "Personally, I read X as straight," is a different matter from saying, "X is straight in canon and all slash is a defacto AU," or, as the commentor referenced above did here, "X is straight, because blah, blah, sexuality works like blah, and your/his/her experience of your/his/her own sexuality isn't real." Statement one is explaining your own interpretation of the text. Statement two is insisting that your own interpretation of the text is the only right one, which is irritating in general and contains it's own brand of baggage in this specific context because it assume heterosexuality as the default, but it's nowhere near as irritating as statement three. Statement three is telling someone that they're not only interpreting the text wrong, they're also wrong about their own life (and their own relationships, and their own emotions).
I personally am trying to not do #3 in any fannish discussions (anymore, anyway - I've sure I've done it in the past. I'll probably do it again in the future), and to avoid #2 ("my interpretation of canon is the only right one"). I'm pretty sure I fail utterly at #2 every time I discuss a source text, because deep down, I secretly believe my interpretation is the best one with all my heart, as I suspect a lot of fans do, but #3 is the one that I feel is really important.
Let's not do #3 in discussions about canon/fandom and sexuality (or gender, for that matter). People who don't fit the standard straight, cis-gendered mold spend too much time being told that their experiences of their own sexuality and identity aren't real as it is. Ditto for people who don't experience the "normal" level of interest in sex but are still involved in romantic relationships (to paraphrase a friend of mine who shall remain nameless: "It's like they're saying that my girlfriend's not my real girlfriend because we don't have sex. It makes me feel like I'm being a bad girlfriend by not wanting to sleep with her enough." Or, to quote someone else whose name I forget: "How many women do I have to fuck before I count as bisexual? One? Two? Ten?")
Plus, a small tangent: the word "friend" has historially had a weight in LGBTQ communities that encompasses more than the standard platonic definition of the word (as with "sister" in some lesbian communities). At many times in the past, "friend" was the only safe way people had to refer to the person they loved, and sometimes there was no real alternative term to use even it had been possible for people to be "out." Witness the current difficulties regarding what to call someone's longtime-romantic-partner-of-the-same-gender -- even partner, the most widely used term in American English, has another, more dominant platonic meaning.
So personally, while I know that some people feel that statements like, say, Spock's "I have been and always will be your friend," directly preclude a romantic reading because friend=platonic, I don't find it incompatible with romance at all. Maybe the writers didn't mean it that way, but there's a historical context in which "friend" can also mean "lover" that influences my reading despite the fact that I know it's not (usually) influencing the writers' writing.
Happily, there's a square for this on the anti-slash bingo card ("You just don't understand how friendship works").
no subject
But our classification language is pretty much useless in describing "passionate friendship" or non-sexual romance, and I know that as a writer I've been frustrated by it. How on earth do you tag a "so married but not doing it" story? Where do you post it?
For people who still buy into the idea of a slash/gen boundary - versus, like, relationship-centric and casefile stories - romantic friendship is something that requires careful policing, because it really threatens that binary.
no subject
I'd classify it as being slash/ship fic at heart, but I suspect a lot of slash readers would think of it as gen, as would some gen fans. For my part, though, I'd be annoyed to read a "gen" fic and discover that it contained a romantic friendship that broke up my OTP, because I'd have the same "No, A loves B the best, not C! You can't make C more important to A than B! You can't!" reaction I have to OTP-breaking pairings where they're sleeping together. Which means I'd be reacting to the fic emotionally the same way I react to slash or het.
If they're not doing it because you think that would tarnish their friendship, then it's called smarm, but otherwise I'm not sure there's really a term. Starsky & Hutch fic used to have a lot of romantic friendship type stories, though (as did Xena, I'm told). I've heard people joke that most S&H fic is basically slash -- you have G to PG-13 rated slash, which is labelled "gen," and then you have R or NC-17 rated slash, which is labelled "slash," and if you pulled the sex scenes out of an NC-17 rated S&H slashfic, pasted them into a PG-rated genfic, and switched the fic headers, no one would be able to tell. (Then again, with Starsky and Hutch, writers pretty much had to get to the point of kissing with tongue before they got a scene that you couldn't have put right into one of the episode scripts).
no subject
But yeah, genfic can still totally break up your otp. gen /= no shippy content.