Random ruminations on sexual orientation and profanity alert

[ciroccoj]

So, linaelyn told this story about a bunch of (rather startlingly secure in their sexuality) teenage boys playing "I'm gayer than you" at a public pool. It brought to mind one of my fonder memories of Kingston, where I lived for eleven years after high school. Kingston is... well, I love it to death, but it's not exactly a screaming hotbed of social progressiveness. Other than Queen's University, the rest of the city is mostly very white, very working class, and fairly conservative. And when I was there the high schools basically fell into two groups: KCVI, right next to Queen's, where the sons and daughters of Queen's profs attended and where you were likely to find student groups like the Gay-Straight Alliance, and... everywhere else. Where you would not.

So one day I'm on the bus and we stop near QECVI; tough school, many many children of federal inmates, because Kingston's two main industries are higher education and prisons. A bunch of 6-8 little hooligans of both sexes get on. Oh, goodie, I think. Black clothing, a ratio of one cuss for every five words spoken, at least one of them sporting an article of clothing with an obscenity on it, tough, sullen expressions. They settle near me, oh how nice. Start chatting about cutting class and drowning kittens. Oh - no, sorry, they were actually talking about a great pizza place, but, you know, I expected the kitten-drowning anecdotes to start at any moment. They were just that kinda crowd, you know?

And then one of them says something about gays. And I sink down into my seat and brace for the bashing stories to begin and the F'in' Faggot this and M'f'in' Queer that to flow thick and heavy.

And then I actually start to pay attention.

"Yeah, and it's like, his own mom's like mad at him. Like, yeah, sure, bitch, he's just doing this to piss you off, right."

"Oh, I know! Fuckin' stupid!! And like he's got kids in school givin' him a hard time, too - like, get a life, you know? I hate our fuckin' school."

"Fuckin' what's the matter with people? Like, he's just gay, what's the big deal?"

"Yeah, I know! My cousin's gay, and you wouldn't believe the shit he's had to put up with. It's like, yeah, OK, we got it, he likes having sex with guys! But it's not like he's gonna wanna fuck you, 'cause you're a loser anyway, so shut up!"

"Shit, man, people are such fuckin' idgits."

"No shit."


I still get warm fuzzies when I remember that conversation. It wasn't a huge deal, and I doubt any of those kids went on to become politically active champions of gay rights. But it was still nice to see that, even in conservative Kingston in the mid-nineties, there were people you wouldn't expect to be accepting or open-minded about gays, who were both.

Yeah, so I was thinking of that the other day, both when I read linaelyn's post and when I read this:


Now, I don't know the lady who wrote this originally, and she has friends-locked her post so that people stop beating her about the head for her opinions. Which is her right, and I'm not going to provide her lj name so that people can go and bug her for having written this. In part because I'd like to respect her desire to hear no more about this, in part because she's probably heard enough from people who commented before she f-locked, in part because I very much doubt anything can make her change her opinions, and in part because this all happened a while ago so her response might be (understandably) WTF how long are people going to be obsessing over my one little entry?!!.

Anyway, here's what she wrote:

They're so going to yank my fannish union card for this...

Time to come out of the closet (again?).

Nope, still not gay. I'm coming out as a fan.

Well, not as a fan, per se. Everybody knows I'm a full bore geeky fan. I wrote fanfic in which Angel and Spike argue the physics of both Star Trek and Star Wars. I've got the cred. But I must confess to one thing.

I don't like slash.

No, I don't just not like it. I really, really hate it.

Part if it is just my own thing. The sight of two guys has never done squat for me. Neither has the thought or sight of two girls. Kind of bluntly put, if I'm not involved, I'm not interested. And the sight of two guys has a sort of implied exclusion for me. Not my proclivity, not my taste.

But what disturbs me about slash is the wholesale appropriation and basic, fundamental changes that slash writers make to characters that aren't theirs. It's one thing when Joss Whedon throws a bone to the slashers the way he did with Angel and Spike. But take, for example, the slash writers who are head over heels for the idea of Daniel Jackson and Jack O'Neil from Stargate: SG-1.

Jack O'Neil is an Air Force colonel when the series starts. He's currently a general. Jack couldn't survive and be the kind of person that he is if he had to hide a sexual orientation that was contrary to military regulations. And he'd have had to hide it deep to make it as far and as long as he did. As for the argument that Daniel just "sparked" these feelings in Jack, I'd say that if that were the case, I'd bet all the money in my pockets against all the money in your pockets that as soon as it happened, Jack would, at the very least, take a leave of absence from the military. If he didn't resign, first.

I think of my original writing (which I actually still occasionally do), and the idea that someone might appropriate any of my characters doesn't bug me (much). It's the idea that someone would appropriate a character that I created and just completely change them to get the pretty mental picture of him or her having sex with someone else who's pretty that makes me angry. I wouldn't want it done to my characters, so I don't do it to others'. And I don't read fics that do. I'm not anti-gay. I'm pro-artistic integrity.

So, why did I pick on slash?

1. It's the only genre I'm aware of where the point, by definition, is to take characters and change their sexual preference. If the definition has changed, I obviously didn't get the memo. Get a copy to me and I'll be all caught up and crawl back into my hole.

Yes, I hate other kinds of fundamental character changes, like Big Bird taking out a retirement home with a AK47 (poor Oscar needed a rest from all that charity work, I thought). But, as far as I am aware, no other character change has had an entire genre devoted to it.

2. It's what everybody around me seems to like and keeps treating me like a freak for not liking.


...so, yeah. I dunno, I can see her point, but there are so many holes and flaws in there that I don't even feel like taking them up. I just start to dither between "wholesale appropriation and basic, fundamental changes that [slash] writers make to characters that aren't theirs" and the 'moral army guys can't be gay without resigning' and "there's no other character change that has an entire genre devoted to it" and end up with a muddled mess of "but-but-but"'s.

Though I must say I'm tempted to make myself an icon with the words "I'm not anti-gay. I'm pro-artistic integrity." Wouldn't know what to use as a picture, though.

Oh, and this is cute:

http://son-of-darkness.livejournal.com/403903.html

Comments

[mynuet.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't like slash, and I think a lot of the justifications for the actions of characters within a lot of slashfic are paper-thin at best, and that characterization can suffer greatly in the urge to make characters gay and sensitive. And if I hear one more time that slashfic has all the good writers because they have to be more mature to handle the subject matter well, I'm walloping somebody, because it's a smarmy and condescending pile of bullshit.

On the other hand, my OTP is a pair who will not go for each other in canon, and a lot of people make the same claims above about it, with obvious edits for gayness, either on the "make them in love and sensitive" side or the "Draco is obviously gay in canon, I can't understand how anyone can think he might be straight" position. And God knows that there are plenty of het writers who mangle characterization - another walloping is scheduled for the next author to inflict "secret Gryffindor Draco" on my poor abused eyes.

I guess what it comes down to for me is that there needs to be more of a gentleman's agreement sort of thing - slash fans don't get to call me a homophobe because I don't care for the fic, and I don't get to call slash fans delusional because they do.

[ciroccoj.livejournal.com]

And if I hear one more time that slashfic has all the good writers because they have to be more mature to handle the subject matter well,
Say wha?

OK, someone has had the great fortune to not have read about 75% of the slash I've read. Because in every fandom, it appears about that percentage of slash is written by twelve-year olds with only the haziest concept of what sex itself entails, let alone what gay sex entails. Never mind the whole thing about characterization and emotional maturity and plot and plausibility.

slash fans don't get to call me a homophobe because I don't care for the fic, and I don't get to call slash fans delusional because they do.
Yeah, exactly. It's a personal preference. I don't happen to like (most) fics that involve character death, or men being pregnant, or cross-dressing. Or alternative universes where the entire setting is changed (ie not just "Obi-Wan never trained Anakin to become a Jedi in the first place", but "Obi-Wan and Anakin are actually Knights Templar in the Middle Ages"). But as for people who do like all the above... this is fiction. Fan fiction. Taking the characters and settings and messing around with them to see what happens is what we do. I may not like what your messing around comes up with; I may not think it's realistic, or interesting. But unless you're writing something that's hateful or harmful or illegal... why should I diss your particular choice of mess? If I don't like it, why not just avoid reading it? Without calling into question your choice of mess, or calling you deluded, or pointing out how my mess is intrinsically better than yours?

[mynuet.livejournal.com]

I think it boils down to the simple answer for most of the puzzling questions of the day:
People are stupid.

[ciroccoj.livejournal.com]

::nods emphatically:: Thank you!

[daf9.livejournal.com]

LOL at the notion of a fanfic writer who is "pro-artistic integrity" ! Sure every fan fic reader and writer has preferences but IMHO, anyone attempting to justify that their appropriation of someone else's orginal characters is somehow superior to another person's appropriation of the same characters is on pretty shaky ground integrity-wise. Kind of like a murderer claiming at least he doesn't sexually abuse little boys.

[ciroccoj.livejournal.com]

anyone attempting to justify that their appropriation of someone else's orginal characters is somehow superior to another person's appropriation of the same characters is on pretty shaky ground integrity-wise.
Yeah, no kidding. If you think appropriating someone else's characters is wrong, don't. write. fanfic!

Kind of like a murderer claiming at least he doesn't sexually abuse little boys.
::snicker:: That would be even funnier if I hadn't met so many guys who did exactly that, when I worked in the prison system.

I had one guy vigorously defend his crimes as just another perfectly valid occupation, because he never stole from poor people: only from people who worked in office buildings and who were wearing nice clothes. And he didn't violate the sanctity of their dwellings; he accosted them in the elevator, grabbed their wallets, punched them a couple times get them too scared to lie to him, got their PINs, then went to the closest ATM, cleaned them out, and ditched their cards. No harm, no foul. Not like the other reprobates around him, who went around breaking into people's houses and taking their things.

To repeat a common theme tonight: people are idiots.

[daf9.livejournal.com]

To repeat a common theme tonight: people are idiots.

Yeah. I can agree with that.

[lonejaguar.livejournal.com]

See, this actually does sound like a thinly-veiled backhand at slash. As if there are no high-ranking gay men! That's like saying there are no gay politicians or business CEOs. Is she that in the dark? Though I can agree that some characters just don't ping like others do, it seems like her point of view is on canon vs. non-canon. And while I do enjoy canon (after all, it's what made me watch the show in the first place), I don't really get excited about fic that's canonised to death. Why on earth would I read exactly what I could see on TV? Fic is there to show us what we don't see, that's its whole purpose.

And how come slash isn't part of this fabled "artistic integrity" I wonder?