Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2011-05-06 09:26 pm
azurelunatic) wrote2011-05-06 09:26 pm
I exist, and I exist in many universes. (Yet another rant about queer erasure)
shirozora recently posted about how default heterosexuality (particularly in the Disney property Tron) unnerved her in a fashion she couldn't examine too closely, and I put my finger square on the problem. From my comment: I don't like the feeling that in some universes, I would not exist because I am bisexual, because in those universes, everyone is heterosexual unless they are the Designated Gay. In some universes, it is not canonically okay for some characters to be quietly and discreetly gay, or quietly bisexual, or quietly asexual, and g-d forbid anyone actually be TRANSGENDERED. And that is not okay with me. I would not want to live in such a universe, but it overjoys the fuck out of me to go around queering up these universes so WE CAN EXIST.
Some default-heterosexual universes don't have anyone who is Designated Gay. I wouldn't exist there. My sister wouldn't exist there. Most of you guys wouldn't exist there. My best friend might exist there, but he'd have never met me, because I wouldn't exist. Dreamwidth wouldn't exist. Large parts of LiveJournal wouldn't exist.
Having a wildly disproportionately small number of Designated Gays sometimes feels worse. It's harder to pretend that anybody who might be one of us is just quietly closeted and not coming out to be stared at and bullied and beaten and killed. There are a few of us, and they might represent some of us, but they don't represent all of us, and maybe we don't even like them. Albus and Gellert don't even get main-text, they get subtext and an offhand post-series interview mention. (And I don't like either of them.) Pretty much everyone else gets an opposite-sex relationship plastered on.
I exist. Some universes are better. Jamie Crawford exists, and so do Kurt and Blaine and Santana and Brittany, and Aral and ... and Ethan and his whole damn planet. Jamie goes around being loudly fucking fabulous and daring people to make something of it.
Silence = Death. If fictional people are silenced by their authors, then fuck yeah, we're marching right the fuck in and giving them voices.
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Even when there are some queer people, they don't have queer friends. There's never communities. Which, just. I know a fucking lot of queer people. I have no idea if the 1-in-10 statistic that gets tossed around so very fucking much has any validity but I can tell you that self-selection of social circle certainly means that queer people hang out with the other queer people (that they like) that they find.
I choose queer readings when there are other possible readings (and when they differ with the Clearly Intended Reading) not because I insist everyone be queer but that I insist that anyone could be. AND GOD DAMN IT QUEER PEOPLE EXIST.
I will not be erased; I will simply sing louder until you cannot ignore my voice.
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So many common slash narratives are not just 'queer guy finds self, sex' but 'queer guy in search of community'. And sex.
I think once we get less Mary Sue hatred, bashing, and fear, we will get more queer female narratives in fic.
But fic itself is a totally valid practice of queer culture-seeking.
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I have my 2/3 straight, 1/3 queer church community, which is nice but difficult because nearly everyone there is at least 20 years older than me (and the fact that my partner is a man means that a large chunk of them probably still don't know that I'm queer).
Nearly everywhere else IRL I'm the token queer friend. (This is changing. I swear. The whole partnered-to-a-man thing is making me kick my butt into getting involved with the GLBT alumni organization at my alma mater.) Or I run in college theater circles where it's me and two much-more-monosexual queer boys.
So fandom is where I get to hang out with people who Get It.
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I think this is just another BS statistic taken as fact because otherwise there are a disproportionate number of queer people moving to Mississippi.
I wouldn't be surprised if it's just flung about because it sounds low and is therefore reassuring to prejudiced people who would like queers to not exist.
We exist. And we're not going away and there are a lot of us! Suck it up, stupid people.
Via metafandom
Start here for some (unscientific) stats:
http://tech.mit.edu/V129/N49/graphics/survey-samesex_course.html
Hint: CMS = Comparative Media Studies
I love all the "I shall not be silenced" and then having to jump through all sorts of hoops to make a simple comment...which may or may not make it to the general readership because (in this case) comment "will be screened".
Re: Via metafandom
If you care to post with your OpenID here in the future, you may wish to set and confirm your email address; the Dreamwidth infrastructure will recognise you as a valid account rather than classing your OpenID with anonymous postings.
Re: Via metafandom
Re: Via metafandom
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I have to admit, though, I don't remember Tron being distinctly hetero-centric. (Are we talking about the original or the remake/sequel here? I haven't seen the former in a long time.)
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Tron is basically no-canon-relationships, both original and remake. (
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SO much this.
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And it's a big part of why I write fic and play in fandom. Authors and TPTB don't wanna give me queer characters? FUCK YOU, EVERYONE'S QUEER NOW. AND THEY LIKE IT.
Even my conservative, evangelical, gays-are-going-to-hell mother knows at least two queer people, and those are just the ones who are out that I know about. There's no excuse, dear people-who-create-stories. There is no excuse at ALL.
...and oh hello, this is why Children of Earth pissed me off so badly, isn't it? [vague Torchwood spoiler coming up!] Because there IS a Designated Gay, BUT WE CAN'T EVEN HAVE HIM.
How many major characters are in Harry Potter? Even with the 1-in-10 stat, that is a hell of a lot of gay characters, without even taking into consideration bi/heteroflexible/otherwise-queer characters.
Not to mention trans* people. Oh. My. God. I can think of a few books that have trans* characters. All of them are about what it is like to be trans*. And that is NOT A BAD THING. I love these books. But where are they they rest of the time? Where are they when they're not a plot point? Where are they when they're treated like normal fucking human beings? Where are the people who are LIKE ME? Because I exist in all my genderfucked, queer glory, and I am not the only one, and I am tired of other people writing about people like me as if I'm a) invisible/not real or b) THE ENTIRE PLOT.
RAHR.
...I'm suddenly inspired to go write. Heh. Thank you. I love this post a whole lot.
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So, yeah. I need to get on that.
I think we're near the beginning of a renaissance with queer characters in published popular literature, because there are batches of people who were wee flailing fangirls a decade ago getting published and drawing fire from parents who aren't happy with two or three queer teenagers in an ensemble cast. And there are only going to be more when the rest of us who have been doing that start to get in there too, and I'm den mother to a bunch of little fangirls who have never known a fandom where there wasn't bundles and bundles of carefree same-sex relationships all up in the fic, and some of them may well have only been in fandoms that have actual gay characters in canon.
The next generation is coming, and they want their queer smut. :D
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And not trans just to be part of a Very Special Episode - his decisions are thoroughly embedded within the culture of Barrayar and its evolution with respect to the greater galactic cultures.
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I have a whole bagful of thoughts about Dono which I've been tumbling around for years. I very much feel reluctant to map his story onto the experience of a present-day transgendered person, because I'm not convinced that it fits very well. However, it's very much *a* trans* narrative -- just not perhaps the one some of the people I know expected it to be.
The book doesn't get inside his head, but looking only from the outside, I am not convinced that Lady Donna was inherently ill-suited with an apparently-female body. The issues in youth were less problems of an internal gender/body configuration mismatch, and more of living around horrifyingly abusive Vorrutyers who ought to have been under observation and restraint by a Betan therapist out to get retroactive consent. It was the old Count's death and the need to claim the seat which directly precipitated the visit to Beta Colony; if Barrayar's laws had allowed Donna to take the seat without a bodily transition, I'm not sure that Donna would have decided to take that step.
Now, Dono is clearly very much at home and comfortable in his body, and has absolutely no desire to go back. I still think Dono is basically gender-fluid, and only more at home in a male body because his need to care for his District overrode all other priorities, and because Barrayaran experience favors men. Barrayar is amazingly awful to women and crappy on most gender issues. He barely noticed a difference on Beta Colony, and if he lived on Beta Colony, I think he could be at home in whatever the shape of his body happened to be. He doesn't live there, and I don't particularly think he's questioning his decision after the fact, but I rather think that if Barrayar did not put so much pressure on its men to be all MANLY!, that Dono's gender presentation might be much less butch if left to his actual comfort zone. (His comfort zone does involve trolling the fuck out of his ex-boyfriend and the whole Council of Counts, though, so I'm not feeling too sorry for him, because that has got to be *glorious* fun. Despite the very real risk of gender-based hate crimes from political opponents, which is just fucking scary.)
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