Tag: yes

nianeyna:

haldora:

cephiedvariable:

avienbgwp:

roachpatrol:

alanahikarichan:

cephiedvariable:

*pops on to tumblr for 5 seconds*

boy, it really is coincidental and not suspicious that 90% of fandom crusades against “fetishization” and “bad/abusive ships” are focused entirely on gay ships. I especially love how a het ship actually has to have some element of “problematic content” to it to be considered bad (Reylo), but gay ships can be branded bad just by virtue of people liking them (Victor/Yuuri). I’m sure all of this is entirely incidental. 🙂

gently lays on this post in agreement

it’s also really weird and inexplicable that the best way to address dehumanizing portrayals of queer people in the media is to publicly shame women for their sexual interests and expression

Wow, it sure is weird how we shame the people who are doing the thing that’s the issue, which in this case is women fetishizing gay men.

Last I checked, we shame straight men for festishizing lesbians and and no one cares about that (except the fragile men who can’t handle being told to stop fetishizing women’s sexuality). This is the same thing.

1. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: fandom – where women and LGBT people, who are not paid for this and thus have no tangible financial interest in pushing the genre in a certain direction, write romantic porn stories about fake not-real characters that they adore and empathize with – is not on any level comparable to the mainstream porn industry (in which lesbians are routinely fetishized), in which real, breathing, alive, R E A L women’s labour and sexuality is exploited by a billion-dollar industry in which there has been an increasing demand for brutal, violent performance (that happens to, once again, real people). This is not an “apples and oranges” situation, I shouldn’t HAVE to explain why they’re different because they are self-evidently not the same thing.

I’m astounded that people in fandom can make this comparison over and over again, both directly and obliquely. On one hand, I am glad that there are so many people who don’t know much about the current state of the porn industry because that shit KEEPS ME UP AT NIGHT. On the other hand, the fact that anyone can compare the exploitation, abuse and fetishization of real life people to the act of SHIPPING anime men with each other displays a shocking lack of perspective.

The thing with “fetishization” in fandom is that no one can seem to agree what it is. Is fetishization stuff like ‘Killing Stalking’? Or is wanting Stucky to be canon? Or is it cute PoeFinn fanart? Is it simply the act of thinking that a gay pairing is cute and romantic and wanting to draw art and read fic of it instead of being interested in its success for Important Purely Political Representation Purposes. I have seen all of these things lumped together or equated, resulting in a culture of hyper-scrutiny that targets m/m and f/f pairings and the people who ship them disproportionately over minor shit that wouldn’t make anyone BLINK in a het pairing.

The reason the portrayal of lesbians in porn, and LGBT people in the mainstream media matters so much is because those portrayals have the ability to reinforce toxic cultural norms on a massive scale, and often work with the specific intent to do exactly that (because these things are produced by privileged people who have power in the dominant culture and financial incentive to do so). 

Fandom is not a corporate mechanism with a corporate agenda, or even with any real cultural cache. It’s a grassroots, self-selected sub-culture made up primarily of people who are disenfranchised by mainstream culture on one or more axis. Fandom can be a reflection of those cultural norms, yes, and it’s good to think about that and talk about that, but it’s also a reaction (slash fandom is not as dominated by straight women as you’ve been told). I’ve not seen one piece of compelling evidence or study that says gay fanfic has had a cumulative negative effect on the way culture views gay people. Feminists and academics rail against lesbian porn because it has had an observable effect on the way men view women and because of that, it has begun to bleed out into non-pornographic mainstream culture.

2. And you know what: no, I DON’T see everyone agreeing that men should be shamed for their online conduct the same way women are. Everyone “agrees” on this, but no one actually does anything about it. Why are there so many campaigns to run m/m and f/f pairings into the ground for not being “healthy” enough, or for being too “appealing to fujoshis”, but no one ever goes after the 4chan bros posting macro-dick rape shit and lolicon into the tags of female characters I like? Why is there no mass movement to get people educated on the abuses in the porn industry and organize to help create and bolster more ethical porn?

Instead, it’s just people in fandom bullying each other over pairings as usual, and a not-so-subtle push to put gay fic back underground where it “belongs”.

Just the fact that you see a lot of lesbian and bisexual women who prefer writing slash fic involving male characters goes to show that the motivations going into these stories have less to do with raw sexual appeal and more to do with escaping the psychological and social minefield that comes with women writing about their own bodies/pleasures/relationships. I would even go as far as to say that the constant pressure for women to expose and perform their sexuality for others (regardless of their orientation) is a big part of what makes the idea of writing sexual stories about women an inherently fraught and uncomfortable experience for many women. Writing stories with characters not of our own gender (and thereby, completely inaccessible to straight men) relieves some of that pressure. Make of that what you want (I have mixed feelings about it, myself), but it’s certainly not the same motivations that go into straight men creating lesbian porn—which, as far as I can tell, extend no further than wanting to watch attractive women in sexual situations without the ‘competition’ of another man in the picture, or wanting to avoid homophobic panic from watching porn that includes male bodies. Whatever criticisms one can make about how women write slash fiction, the argument that it’s the mirror equivalent of men and lesbian porn is inaccurate and harmful.

“escaping the psychological and social minefield that comes with women writing about their own bodies/pleasures/relationships”

I think about this concept a lot and this is one of the better ways I have seen it expressed.