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... with emphasis on the pure.
Recently, there was an essay by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pandarus on metafandom decrying Western civilization’s need to sexualise everything, and, specifically, fandom’s need to sexualize close friendships like, say, Sam and Frodo’s, and another one by minisinoo linked to it in the comments about the nature of phillia, the ancient Greek term for the closest and most passionate kinds of friendship, and modern society’s uncomfortableness with it. I was reading away, thinking, “she’s got a point here,” and feeling just a but of guilt since I’m one of those people who sexualises phillia (hello, Wyatt/Doc slash), and then my defensive mechanisms pried up the mental railroad ties and derailed my train of thought. “Why,” I suddenly asked myself, “is sexualising relationships necessarily bad?”
Why do we—we meaning western culture, not just we in fandom—have this pervasive sense that sex, regardless of how hot it is, regardless of whether the people involved love each other, regardless of whether it’s heterosexual or homosexual, is something dirty and impure? That sexual desire is something base and animalistic and innately selfish, that cheapens the people involved? That once desire is introduced into the equation, love is no longer phillia, but eros and eros only?
I’ve got a theory. My theory is that the problem here is that sex is physical, and that society has a strong streak of asceticism that teaches that all physical pleasures are inherently lesser than those pleasures which are purely intellectual or emotional. The general school of thought in Medieval Europe used to be that mankind had two natures, a divine nature, and a bestial (meaning “animal,” not “savage and brutal”) nature. One’s physical body, and physical things like hunger, lust, etc. are aspects of one’s bestial nature, the things that humans share with animals, while things like reason are aspects of one’s divine nature, things that one shared with God and the angels. Therefore, satisfying one’s physical desires was giving in to one’s animal nature, and denying them (via fasting, celibacy, etc.) brought you closer to God. Indulging your physical desires, obviously, didn’t.
This idea didn’t go out with the middle ages, either. The Victorians, who were far more comfortable with the concept of phillia than modern society (witness all those 19th letters where men declare their passionate love for other men, or women, for other women—they can’t all have been secretly homosexual), were desperately uncomfortable with sexuality and sensuality in most forms. Especially female sexuality, but that’s another essay—or is it? I can’t be the only person who’s noticed that Victorian fiction is replete with heroines who are slowly but attractively dying of consumption, who become ever more spiritual and good as their bodies waste away--they are ideals, in a sense, because their frailty makes them less physical than a healthy woman, and thus less sexual. Because if the hero and the heroine love each other in a chaste and spiritual way, that love is better, purer, and more real (with no sinful sex!). And so I can’t help but wonder if some of those intense Victorian friendships didn’t feature a certain amount of suppressed sexual desire/romantic love (which is the reason for the aforementioned Wyatt/Doc slash).
Does that suspicion mean I am shallow and obsessed with sex, and unable to truly comprehend real friendship?
Maybe, but maybe sex doesn’t always have to demean relationships, either. If Gilgamesh (who, I’d like to point out, “loved Enkidu as a wife”), had sex with Enkidu out there in the wilderness, does this mean that his grief at Enkidu’s death is meaner, more petty? That his quest to try and bring his friend back is somehow worth less because they once experienced physical pleasure together? If Sam’s love for Frodo had a sexual dimension to it, does that make his willingness to fight at Frodo’s side, carry him up Mount Doom, and continue Frodo’s quest for him when he thinks Frodo has died (and bear in mind that he thought Frodo was dead when he took up the burden of the ring, so the prospect of hot hobbit lovin’ was out of the picture), pure selfishness, instead of self-sacrifice? If Starsky and Hutch are sleeping with each other, does that really make their devotion to one another “cheap?” Maybe sex, instead of lessening these relationships, can add something to them. Not in every case (sometimes sex is just cheap physical gratification), but sometimes.
Does expressing love in a physical fashion negate it?
I don’t mean to say that all fic should only be shipper fic—far from it. I love gen fic as well, and there are some fandoms where I even prefer it to shipper fic, and the sort of passionate phillia that pops up all over the lace in Victorian novels is a guilty pleasure of mine. But I think we should examine why the concept of introducing sex into intense friendships bothers us so much.
Recently, there was an essay by
pandarus on metafandom decrying Western civilization’s need to sexualise everything, and, specifically, fandom’s need to sexualize close friendships like, say, Sam and Frodo’s, and another one by minisinoo linked to it in the comments about the nature of phillia, the ancient Greek term for the closest and most passionate kinds of friendship, and modern society’s uncomfortableness with it. I was reading away, thinking, “she’s got a point here,” and feeling just a but of guilt since I’m one of those people who sexualises phillia (hello, Wyatt/Doc slash), and then my defensive mechanisms pried up the mental railroad ties and derailed my train of thought. “Why,” I suddenly asked myself, “is sexualising relationships necessarily bad?”Why do we—we meaning western culture, not just we in fandom—have this pervasive sense that sex, regardless of how hot it is, regardless of whether the people involved love each other, regardless of whether it’s heterosexual or homosexual, is something dirty and impure? That sexual desire is something base and animalistic and innately selfish, that cheapens the people involved? That once desire is introduced into the equation, love is no longer phillia, but eros and eros only?
I’ve got a theory. My theory is that the problem here is that sex is physical, and that society has a strong streak of asceticism that teaches that all physical pleasures are inherently lesser than those pleasures which are purely intellectual or emotional. The general school of thought in Medieval Europe used to be that mankind had two natures, a divine nature, and a bestial (meaning “animal,” not “savage and brutal”) nature. One’s physical body, and physical things like hunger, lust, etc. are aspects of one’s bestial nature, the things that humans share with animals, while things like reason are aspects of one’s divine nature, things that one shared with God and the angels. Therefore, satisfying one’s physical desires was giving in to one’s animal nature, and denying them (via fasting, celibacy, etc.) brought you closer to God. Indulging your physical desires, obviously, didn’t.
This idea didn’t go out with the middle ages, either. The Victorians, who were far more comfortable with the concept of phillia than modern society (witness all those 19th letters where men declare their passionate love for other men, or women, for other women—they can’t all have been secretly homosexual), were desperately uncomfortable with sexuality and sensuality in most forms. Especially female sexuality, but that’s another essay—or is it? I can’t be the only person who’s noticed that Victorian fiction is replete with heroines who are slowly but attractively dying of consumption, who become ever more spiritual and good as their bodies waste away--they are ideals, in a sense, because their frailty makes them less physical than a healthy woman, and thus less sexual. Because if the hero and the heroine love each other in a chaste and spiritual way, that love is better, purer, and more real (with no sinful sex!). And so I can’t help but wonder if some of those intense Victorian friendships didn’t feature a certain amount of suppressed sexual desire/romantic love (which is the reason for the aforementioned Wyatt/Doc slash).
Does that suspicion mean I am shallow and obsessed with sex, and unable to truly comprehend real friendship?
Maybe, but maybe sex doesn’t always have to demean relationships, either. If Gilgamesh (who, I’d like to point out, “loved Enkidu as a wife”), had sex with Enkidu out there in the wilderness, does this mean that his grief at Enkidu’s death is meaner, more petty? That his quest to try and bring his friend back is somehow worth less because they once experienced physical pleasure together? If Sam’s love for Frodo had a sexual dimension to it, does that make his willingness to fight at Frodo’s side, carry him up Mount Doom, and continue Frodo’s quest for him when he thinks Frodo has died (and bear in mind that he thought Frodo was dead when he took up the burden of the ring, so the prospect of hot hobbit lovin’ was out of the picture), pure selfishness, instead of self-sacrifice? If Starsky and Hutch are sleeping with each other, does that really make their devotion to one another “cheap?” Maybe sex, instead of lessening these relationships, can add something to them. Not in every case (sometimes sex is just cheap physical gratification), but sometimes.
Does expressing love in a physical fashion negate it?
I don’t mean to say that all fic should only be shipper fic—far from it. I love gen fic as well, and there are some fandoms where I even prefer it to shipper fic, and the sort of passionate phillia that pops up all over the lace in Victorian novels is a guilty pleasure of mine. But I think we should examine why the concept of introducing sex into intense friendships bothers us so much.
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To use your own examples, I think both Wyatt/Doc and Frodo/Sam are built on intense emotional connections, and whether you see that spilling over into the physical is up to you. And honestly, I don't think that whether Frodo and Sam or Wyatt and Doc are having sex or not impacts the intensity of their relationship, since the physical is really only one more expression of their closeness.
I think a lot of people miss that, because, as you said, we're all taught that sex is dirty and wrong, and any relationship that includes sex is in someway debased. I think that the real problem is that people can't seem to find a happy medium- there are those that won't read anything with sex in because it's dirty, and those who will only read things unless there is at least implied sex, and even those that will read either still tend to feel that the sex is dirty in some manner.
Within fandom, the fact that there's so much porn, and so many relationships based only on the fact that the author felt that the two characters would be attractive together doesn't help. It also doesn't in anyway lessen the strength of those relationships built on intense love and friendship.
In the end, I don't see how two characters having sex in any way lessens their relationship, but I also don't see that them not having sex means that their relationship is any less real or intense.
That's actually how I've been excusing Wyatt/Doc to myself- we're not changing their relationship, we're just adding another element to it.
Sorry for the long and disconnected ramble- I've been reading about homosexuality in the Victorian era without anyone to babble at.
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*nods* Of course, you're preaching to the choir there, but yeah. Though it would explain Doc's glorious "catty ex-girlfriend" impression in Tombstone when he finds out Wyatt is married (though it could just be plain old "how can you marry some girl and care about her when you're supposed to be my best friend and care about me" jealousy.) Someone who grew up with no siblings, who has very few close friends or lovers, might not really grasp the idea that you can love multiple people at once. Plus, it's historical canon that Doc would throw over any girl in a heartbeat if Wyatt really wanted him to.
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I think you've got a good point there, and it's probably part of the reason why so many people hate Main Character/OFC het so much. When the focus of the story is on the guy's (or girl's, theoretically, but I've never seen a lesbian Mary Sue yet--though I'd love to be introduced to one) relationship with his new Lady Love, his relationships with the other canon characters take a back burner--and usually, those relationships are what the reader really wants to read about.
Some of the "best friend" relationships in canon are so close that it's hard to imagine a girlfriend/boyfriend/whatever ever being as important to the characters as they are to each other--which goes against the whole concept that romance--and, presumably, marriage--is suppossed to be the most important relationship in someone's life. Which probably increases the temptation to pair the two of them with each other. Who else, other than Mary Sue, could they have that same level of closeness with?
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But wow. It's really rather confusing when you really think about it. On the one hand slashers/UC-het shippers are privileging friendships and other bonds above sexual relationships, and at the same time on the other saying that those relationships MUST be sexual, either already or must become so in the future.
Which means on the one hand we're trying to write these fantastic new relationships where friendship and intimacy and sexual desire go hand-in-hand, or alternate at least, and at the same time saying the characters can NEVER have those relationships with the people they're already sleeping with (not just because of the partner's gender, because we all know gender doesn't matter in slash ;) ). Maybe it's the ORDER that matters in these 'perfect' relationships - you can't ever be really intimate with someone you started off seeing as a sex object, but friendship CAN develop into sexual attraction.
Having a few epiphanies of my own there, sorry. It's a complicated issue really, isn't it?
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I agree. And, to extend that further, you could argue that the mind/body dichotomy is the reason for sexism too (or part of it at least). Because women have periods, people assume we are ruled by our bodies, hormones etc. Periods are also directly related to sex and the reproductive function, which adds to this. Male bodily processes are not as visible or obvious as female ones therefore men are assumed to be completely rational where as we, of course, are all screaming hysterics (from the greek word for womb- see?). Because we have the kids, people assume that women=sex=bodies=bad.
To go even further (and possibly into the realm of the daft), have you ever read a book called "TechGnosis" by Erik Davis? It talks about how the human mind has got more and more detached from the human body with every new invention that comes along, from writing to wheels to trains to computers. And how, although it is expanding our consciousness and letting us see things in new ways it is also causing problems, yet people seem to put more faith in this technology than actual direct experiences. It's like, people think that because something's written in black and white it's more likely to be true, how cars enable us to get further but also make us unfit and lazy etc. It makes us distrust direct reality- our bodies, so to speak. We are forfeiting our bodies (which are actually damn neat devices) for some sort of disembodied "truth" which is not only tied up with technology but with religion. Religion uses lots of technologies- psychological, narcotical (is that even a word?) and a lot of religious/mythological discourse is used in discussion of technology today as religion and mysticism has come to be discredited, yet religious thought is sort of buried in technological culture. It also has a lot to do with millenialist/utopian hype, and apocalyptic predictions in both technology and religion.
But yeah, now that I've fangirled that book to death, I agree with your point about religion having a part in this, but it sort of has technology as an accomplice, It's got a lot to do with Platonic ideas about the real world being but a facsimile of a sham with another perfect world somewhere which was more valid than ours. I'm not very good at explaining this, but I was going to write an essay about it ages ago and never did. However, this is probably a good thing as you've expressed it better than I could, because as you can see, I'm really rather muddled in my thinking at the best of times!
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I mean, there's a reason that romantic stories speak to all of us, it's something very visceral... I know that
And now I'm wondering... I mean, in some ways, maybe gen is just as much of a resistant reading as slash is. That sounds really strange, I know -- clearly, Starsky & Hutch or Logan and Scott or whomever aren't shaggin' canonically -- but... the same way that a slash fan might turn to slash to see something besides rampant heterosexuality, a gen fan might turn to certain genre stories, as well as more gen-ish corners of fandom, to see something besides rampant sexuality. So, I feel for the gen fans that are pimping gen readings and can't find enough of them, but at the same time, sex and romance are always going to grab our attention.
...I have no idea if anything I just said made sense. *g* Did it make sense? If not, I can try again?
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The fanfic equivalent of having your cake and eating it, too, I guess. I agree that for a lot of "buddy" pairings, a romantic relationship does feel like the logical next step--they're already as close as any romantic couple could be, so sex doesn't feel like as much of a stretch as it might between two characters who didn't have that sort of closeness.
I mean, in some ways, maybe gen is just as much of a resistant reading as slash is... the same way that a slash fan might turn to slash to see something besides rampant heterosexuality, a gen fan might turn to certain genre stories, as well as more gen-ish corners of fandom, to see something besides rampant sexuality.
I've actually been known to do just that on occasion--never for a pairing that's one of my OTPs, but for fandoms where I have no real pairing preferences, I'm often just as happy with gen fic, especially if I'm looking for something with a strong action plot rather than for romance (or, y'know, reading fanfic at work, where I don't really want to pull up NC-17 sex scenes on the computer screen).
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In defense of what I wrote, my essay did not say that stories that include sex are bad or wrong. :-) I write a lot of it. I also don't tend to view sex negatively (I was raised bicultural and one of those cultures isn't Western).
But there is so very much 'shipper' fic out there, percentage-wise, and so much sexualization of relationships, that I think we do need to look at why friendship stories attract less attention. Rather than negativise sexual relationships, and while I DO agree with you that Western society has a rather wonky view of sex, I do think that we tend to romanticize romance, and romantic sex.
I think that there are, indeed, some relationships that really do benefit from a sexual/romantic side. I write some like that, and find them wonderful to explore. I tend to be known as a 'shipper' of sorts. :-) But I do resist the need to sexualize relationships automatically, and when I look at the amount of shipper fic versus gen or friendship stories (slash or het), I do wonder about that.
In any case, I did want to clarify that I have NOTHING against sexual relationship, or against sex -- rather the opposite -- but I do question the high percentage of these shipper stories versus others. I wish we were more comfortable exploring intensely emotional relationships that weren't necessarily sexual.
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I think you may have conflated something here that shouldn't be conflated -- the physical and the sexual. The tendency to conflate them, or at least connect them, is a social construct rather than a biological reality. And I realize that veers us off into a discussion of human anthropology more than fiction writing, but it is a central question -- especially since I don't, in my essay, say that friendship is only of the mind, nor would I ever argue that it is. :-)
The physical isn't necessarily the sexual, although to varying degrees, many Western societies (and particularly the U.S.) has a sexualized view of touching -- ironically, in response to the whole negativisation of sex. It's really a negativisation of the physical that goes back to gnostic, neo-Platonic, and manichean influences on early Christianity. I'll spare you that discussion (g), but suffice to say that the discomfort with touch (and sex) and the tendency to overconflate them has a very long history in Western societies.
The upshot of all this is simply that I agree with you that love is never entirely of the mind and often needs -- even demands -- physical expression. But where the problem lies, I think, is in the tendency to equate the physical with the sexual. From what I've seen, experienced and studied of other cultures, I find this to be a construct rather than a 'biological reality,' if you will. Because Western society, or at least some parts of it, are so uncomfortable with the physical period and the sexual in particular, they're less able to recognize variation, and the result is confusion about what one may be feeling, or a tendency to oversexualize affection (opposite-sex or same-sex). To use an analogy, imagine a Southerner dropped into Minnesota for the winter. To that Southerner, snow is snow is snow, and it's all cold. (g) But to someone raised with snow from childhood, there are various kinds of snow which fall at different times and mean different things.
Now, NONE of that is meant to knock sexual expression. It's not either/or, as I tried to make clear in my essay. It's both|and. Friendships can become sexualized. Sexual relationships can mutate over time into non-sexual friendships. Friendships may approach the sexual, look it over and decide that's not what's wanted, for whatever reason (prior committments, recognition of disinterest, etc.). But sometimes, sexual attraction just isn't there, even if deep physical affection/attraction may be. We might call that deep affection a 'crush.' I think it's perfectly possible to have a crush on someone withOUT necessarily being sexually atracted to them, and the ability to pull that intense affectionate emotion apart from sexual desire is important to understanding the rich variety of human feeling and expression. So to me, the need to sexualize things, and particularly to romanticize sex, is actually counterproductive to sexual normalization. I teach classes on gender studies and one of the things I've noticed is the altering of students' views across the life of the course. At first, it's very difficult for my (mixed gender) class to talk about sexual matters bluntly and frankly without blushing and giggling. By the end of the course, however, they're able to talk about sexual things with a shrug and very little stuttering. Sex has been a bit "demystified" for them, normalized. Everything is NOT "sexually loaded" anymore, even the jokes, so the jokes are simply jokes rather than a concealed come-on. :-)
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here from metafandom -
My favorite example is that, while in many non-western cultures breastfeeding for two to three years is common, in the US you have actual cases where women nursing a child older than twelve months have been reported to social services for inappropriate sexual contact with their own nursing babies! - ( As a Women's Studies teacher I'm sure you could site the case names!)
For myself, much as I loved the fountain of erotica I discovered and devoured ( vidly) when I first stumbled across online fanfiction, I've since found myself frustrated by this very conflation - that if love is to have a physical component, it must therefore be sexual. If Sam bathes Frodo, he must therefore want to bottom for him.... maybe - but maybe not too.
Anyway - just wanted to let you know I liked what you wrote here.
Nell
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Actually, your essay didn't come across as "anti-shipper" at all. Personally, I thought it was very interesting and well written, and I couldn't borrow the "phillia" concept for use in my essay unless I linked it so people would know what I was talking about ^_^. It was just one more element that set me thinking about the whole topic.
There are times when I do find myself searching for gen fic over slash or het, often because gen stories tend to be a little more plot-heavy than a lot of shipper fic.
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Good, as I think this discussion can too easily veer into either-or territory, when really, there's no reason for it to. The two types of stories, intense loving friendship and intense sexual love are both equally important expressions.
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Sorry if this is inarticulate...I just woke up, but felt the random need to add an ITA.
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BTW, your icon is from a fairy tale picture book, isn't it? Snow White or maybe Sleeping Beauty? I'm almost certain I've read/seen the book.