Hysteria, Buggery and Other Crimes of the Body

[eumelia]

A Torchwood and Fandom meta.

My muscles are all aching from the 'flu shot. This is a possible side effect of being injected with pod-person making nanogens - we'll see who wins this battle.

Battles, can be exasperating.
Over the past couple of days I had engaged in a comment battle over who has the right to be offended and why.
I would never, ever, accuse anyone of being over sensitive when it comes to how their feel - I've had that hurled at me since childhood, to this very day.
I will, however, go head to head with someone who isn't willing to understand that context matters and that by ignoring one, you pretty much lose the leg you're standing on while making your argument.

I fear there may be wank.

You see, it all started in July 2009, when good ole' Rusty wrote and produced Torchwood: Children of Earth.

I won't rehash all that I loved about it, considering that I wrote non-stop about for about a month (if not more).
A huge discussion regarding Ianto's treatment as a queer character was what I focused on because my mind boggled at how people thought to read what was happening as homophobic rather than a depiction of homophobia.
You can travel back in time to my comments and reviews under the torchwood tag.

One other thing that ensued was that after TW:CoE aired and Ianto died there was a huge, massive and completely amazing fan reaction that brought about people leaving flowers and cards in his memory in Cardiff, a charity was put up in his name and there have been campaigns that demand Ianto be brought back.

Fair enough, we're Fandom. It's a crazy world, I'm down with that.

Something else that came out of this fan reaction was that Russel T. Davies quite possibly became agitated by the quality and quantity of reaction Ianto's death brought. Very likely it was Stephen's death and Alice's cold "I wish so much death unto you" glare that affected Jack the most - not to sound callous, because I am a Jack/Ianto shipper, a big one - but Ianto was another lover in a long string of lovers that Jack tells and will tell stories about. I'm inclined to say that Ianto was special because not only did Jack love him, but because we love him too.

RTD's agitation and irritability with the fans got him name calling.
Calling anyone a "hysterical woman" is pretty damn low.

Many a fan, quite rightly, took offence.
And have not forgiven. Quite rightly, but like all things in fandom these things tend to become huge in magnitude and proportion is lost.

With that, one of the outcomes of people taking offence of the way RTD wrote homophobia and of people being very very sad indeed that Ianto and Jack are no more - a disturbing trend in Torchwood fandom, but also fandom at large, has been the appropriation of very Real Life Queer Issues & Homophobia and conflating it with the 'ship that we like being over!

Good luck trying to distinguish the two.

I find the trend disturbing. It doesn't help when the After Elton poll about the Worst Gay Pop Culture Culture Moments of the Decade puts real Dead People along with Ianto Jones and Ianto is at the top... there need to be priorities.

We can argue until the cows come home as to whether RTD wrote homophobia and indeed was homophobic in his treatment of Ianto.
It's an interesting discussion and one I'm willing to have, mainly because RTD can indeed be sloppy, but his prickly moments are spot on.
Institutional homophobia is not what RTD was on about in TW:CoE, he was very much talking of class disparity - but that's a discussion for another day, it's been neglected enough with the onslaught of it being all about The Gay, when funnily enough, it wasn't really.

I've said it before and I've said it again, sloppy writing or not, people agreeing with him or not, him being a sexist pig or not - RTD, nor in fact any creator, writer, actor, performer, owe us any explanation as to why they used the word they used.
What we get to do, much to our pleasure, is debate it.
I say what I think he meant by saying this, and it has nothing with what I think he intended to say, but in fact but what I saw on the teevee screen and anyone can disagree with me.

Saying that the fact that so many saw it another way, an offensive way, doesn't mean he wrote it wrong. It means that's what you extrapolated from it!

This is a tedious and old and quite frankly irritating discussion to have, because this is what fandom is about - sitting around and trying out what it was that the creator meant.
The fact that we get to ask him, specifically, is a bonus, but his opinion is just as valid as mine because once it's out there it stands on its own within broader culture and not just in the hands of its Daddy.

RTD has been subject to a lot of hating from the Torchwood Fandom (and from Doctor Who fandom, though with less vitriol from what I've seen) and while I'm not in on the hate, or even completely understand why, I do understand that burning effigies is not the same as actually burning someone at the stake.

So when I read a story in which he's hit by a buss and someone considers it Karma for bad deeds done, I'm going to roll my eyes at the immaturity and move on.

However, when someone else writes a story, in response to the one above (now locked, but there are screen shots of the story and after it was slightly altered), and in a fictional setting decides to educate the masses on Real Life Institutional Homophobia by using the fictional effigy of RTD, and has someone call him "faggot" as a karma for the "hysterical women" remark - I'm going to be uncomfortable.
Because while trying to show what homophobia looks like - this person ended up being offensive and in my mind counter productive to the Cause, such as it is.

Context is everything, as we say, and the context of the fic was to "teach RTD a lesson", which made the homophobic remark fucking personal.
The context of TW:CoE, while debatable, was about the casual homophobia found in every day life including your friends and family.

That's debatable.
We did, in fact, debate it at length. (still locked, *sad face*)
What isn't, are the feelings of hurt, or the fact simply having other gay people who agree with one reading of what went on, negates the other.

Edited to Add: aviv_b informed me that she locked the post and comments because she'd been getting spammed, trolled threatened by gendered and sexist remarks by some of the more cowardly and darker contingents of those who disagree with her.
If I find out anyone is doing that because of what I've written here I will be very disappointed and effing pissed!

Edited to Add the 2nd: Screen shots of the story are available and linked. The original link and our debate are still locked due to people being horrible bullies.

Comments

[lilacsigil.livejournal.com]

Much agreed about homophobic remarks directed at RTD - just because he made a misogynist remark doesn't excuse homophobic vitriol. Personally, I agree that the CoE moment was showing homophobia, not being homophobic, but debate is fine. (And while I don't think Ianto's death is homophobia either, given the high death-rate on this particular show, I think it's really problematic that there are so few gay or bi characters on TV so when one goes, it makes a huge dent in the numbers.)

It doesn't help when the After Elton poll about the Worst Gay Pop Culture Culture Moments of the Decade puts real Dead People along with Ianto Jones and Ianto is at the top... there need to be priorities

Yes, but the priorities that are mixed up are After Elton's, not necessarily the voters'. I wouldn't vote for a someone's actual death as a "pop culture moment". That's demeaning and horrible for the deceased person and the people who loved them.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Note though, that there was no outcry like this when Tosh *weeps* died and she was a clearly bi character, also of a coc, which is another intersecting factor.

So the focus on Ianto and how it's "Homophobia *gasp*!" is a bit, um, telling.

A yes, I agree about the dent in numbers, it's always sad :(

Yeah, After Elton has shown fail of not distinguishing fiction and non-fiction - which while I believe the categories can at times be fluid and a dead man who is buried and visited by family, is not the same as a dead man whose body is walking around and being someone else (in the case of Ianto and GDL)

[lilacsigil.livejournal.com]

I had my own tiny outcry for Toshiko! I even have an icon! (but yes, the difference is rather telling)

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Nobody cares about the wimminz and the asians, duh!

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Yes. It is rather telling isn't it.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Rather.
It's okay to prefer Ianto over Tosh, I don't care - but enough with the appropriating of gay rights! Seriously.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Absolutely.

It always makes me think a bit about poor gay Larry who died on Buffy totally unlamented by the fans or other characters. But when Tara died? It was like some quarters thought Joss had killed Lesbianism.

Lots of people liked Tara so they cared. Not many people liked Larry. So no fuss.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I have to tell you, I never considered the whole Lesbian angle when it came to Tara, because I was just angry that Willow had actually "become" lesbian rather than embrace bisexuality - because honestly Oz and Xander. Oz AND Xander! What were they? Last week's fish!?!?

And I <3 Tara to pieces.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that annoyed me a bit too. I don't know what their problem was in allowing Willow to be bisexual. But ye gods you could get into trouble in fandom sometimes for raising it. I got my head bitten off once for saying Willow was Bi not Gay.

One of the best characters Joss ever created, Tara.

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

Completely OT for this post, but my key issue with people calling Willow bi not gay is that she identifies as gay, repeatedly. I feel like self-identity is something that ought to be respected. And of course it is possible for somebody to have opposite sex relationships and then later realise that they're gay. Obviously, that's an in-universe thing - there's a whole other wider issue of why Joss Whedon decided that Willow was gay not bi, and certainly I have no problem with questioning that decision, but I can understand why questioning Willow's own self knowledge might hit some people's buttons. YMMV, obviously :)

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I'm not questioning Willow's identity, I'm irritated by bisexual erasure done by Joss, as you say.

*sigh*

It's all so complicated and ambiguous :)

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

It's all so complicated and ambiguous :)

LOL :)

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I see your point.

With Willow though, she had her crush on Xander throughout the whole show, no? Which is why I never got why she identified as gay, my reading of her was always that she liked people, whatever gender they were.

... of course I also think she had a lifelong crush on Buffy too.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

When you say "lifelong" you mean since 1996, yes?

:P

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Well yes, lifelong in the sense of when the show ran. :)

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and she did to be fair have little bisexualist moments even post Tara with Dracula and stuff (though that might have been just about Dracula being the Dark Master and all).

With her boy period, I guess you could argue she did seem to have a level of subconscious discontent when she was dating guys. She cheated on Oz with Xander, but then Xander didn't seem to be what she really wanted either.

I do agree it's a shame there was no real acknowledgement the ambiguity there, or even maybe acknowledgement that someone can find people of a certain gender attractive sometimes without necessarily wanting to date someone of that gender. Which, hey, to get back on topic is part of what I liked so much about Torchwood, where ambiguous sexuality seems to be the default.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

And the crush she had on Giles at various points throughout the later seasons too.

And yes, off the top of my head, Who and TOrchwood have been about the only shows I can think of that have had bisexual characters.

[lisaquestions.livejournal.com]

Here via Metafandom:

I totally complained about the way Larry was killed off. Of course, I didn't see the third season until the 6th season aired, so I was a bit late.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Ah ha, so there were a few of us then. :)

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

(Apologies if this appears twice, LJ seemed to eat the first attempt but sometimes it spits stuff back out again)

The context of TW:CoE, while debatable, was about the casual homophobia found in every day life including your friends and family.

Absolutely. You already know how I feel about this, but I think that scene with Johnny was actually very subtle and well-observed, because there are all sorts of ambiguities there, especially in the fact that Ianto's family do at the end of the day love him and support him, and Johnny is in no way a fundamentally bad person. For me, that was such a real moment, because homophobia doesn't always come from outright villains or people who hate you, and those are the moments that as a queer person it can be difficult to navigate. I always loved Ianto's character but with CoE came a huge empathy for him as a queer person with an experience I can totally recognise. And because they're such recognisable queer moments for me, I have a really hard time believing RTD really could have written it in ignorance.

And yeah, just because it's a moment that might be misinterpreted by some people who don't recognise that experience, that doesn't make it a bad moment. Queer writers don't need to be policed on how they can write about being queer, nor do they have to always be doing the spade work of educating straight viewers on a 101 level.

You give good meta ;)

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

For me, that was such a real moment, because homophobia doesn't always come from outright villains or people who hate you, and those are the moments that as a queer person it can be difficult to navigate.

I feel like I'm beating a dead horse with this, but yes, so much yes to this.
It really is egg-shell moments and they happen way more often than they should.

I always loved Ianto's character but with CoE came a huge empathy for him as a queer person with an experience I can totally recognise. And because they're such recognisable queer moments for me, I have a really hard time believing RTD really could have written it in ignorance.

I think those moments with Johnny and Clem resonated in me so much I really wanted to give Ianto a hug and say "yeah, I know, I know" and have him roll his eyes - which is essentially what he does.
It's what you do when you're in a situation like that, what other choice do you have. I mean it's rolling you eyes or shouting "Oi!".
Yes, RTD was spot on in those moments and Johnny was obnoxious like many a family member can be.

You give good meta ;)

Shucks... *scuffs toe*

[quill-lumos.livejournal.com]

He was also completely authentic to South Wales, which is after all where Torchwood is set. I still have family there, that's what it's like, it would have been strange if Johnny hadn't said anything, and RTD would know that, because not only is he gay, but he's from there too.

The whole hate RTD thing went far too far imho. I sobbed when Ianto died, but I sobbed when Owen and Tosh died too. COE had its faults, but I thought it was a very brave piece of TV. It was, at least in part, more about the writers giving the currently deeply unpopular UK government a good kicking. But to accuse a gay man and a very influential gay man of homophobia, when he has done so much to combat it, seems inexplicable to me. I can get that people were upset, deeply upset, but the writers can have had no way of knowing that they would cause such a reaction, when as others have said, Tosh's death caused barely a murmur.

Thanks for raising this.

Lucie

[solitary-summer.livejournal.com]

TW fandom has become such a mess... *sigh*

I'm not arguing that the 'hysterical women' comment wasn't misogynistic, it obviously was, but the thing is, I think it's pretty obvious that almost from the beginning of the CoE debate RTD thought that he was mostly dealing with straight women who were now trying to set up standards for what a gay relationship is supposed to be like, and explaining homophobia to him. Now obviously fandom does not only consist of straight women, but there are plenty of them (and quite a few who have done just that, and keep doing it), and almost every article about slashfiction or m/m romance is something along the lines of 'OMG straight women writing gay porn', so it's sort of understandable. IMO the whole fetishisation/appropriation issue was apart of what it was about right from the start, not just a writer who was pissed off that people didn't like his story.


My main problem with aviv-b's story was (cluelessness aside) that while she may go on and on about how she's trying to educate people about homophobia, I won't believe for a moment she didn't enjoy writing that happening to him, and was probably wishing it would happen in real life, and that makes it just... dirty, in my eyes. And homophobic.

I love fiction a lot, so I'm the last person to diminish its importance or impact, but it makes me feel uncomfortable seeing that much hatred towards a real gay person over a fictional gay character in the name of gay rights...

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I don't know if you managed to read our debate before she locked the story but your final point was exactly what I had tried - possibly failed - to convey to her and why her story wasn't just "quid pro quo".

I'm not a lurker, but I'm very much on the periphery of TW fandom and I think I'm okay with keeping myself like that.

[solitary-summer.livejournal.com]

Most of it, yes, although I only skimmed over the last part before she locked it.

And the failure wasn't yours; IMO she wasn't prepared to change her opinion in the least, no matter what anyone could have said. I admire your patience, though. I only went for the part I thought was so blatantly stupid that I thought even she must eventually recognise that...

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

IMO the whole fetishisation/appropriation issue was apart of what it was about right from the start, not just a writer who was pissed off that people didn't like his story.

I agree, and I'm sure that was the real context of his "go and watch Supernatural" remark.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

IMO the whole fetishisation/appropriation issue was apart of what it was about right from the start, not just a writer who was pissed off that people didn't like his story.

I hadn't actually thought of that - just goes to show how insular I am - but it makes a whole lot of sense.

[trobadora]

IMO the whole fetishisation/appropriation issue was apart of what it was about right from the start, not just a writer who was pissed off that people didn't like his story.

So much yes. It's why I've never managed to be angry at RTD no matter how undoubtedly offensive those comments of his were.

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

Saying that the fact that so many saw it another way, an offensive way, doesn't mean he wrote it wrong. It means that's what you extrapolated from it!

I'm out of the loop with this particular discussion because I can't stand Torchwood. But that argument could be applied to so many plots. Is the racism in Avatar 'extrapolated' or does it say something about the person who lifted wrote the story? Sometimes all that matters is how the story makes people feel, especially when they identify with a storyline or a character (e.g. for reasons of sexual orientation, gender, or race).

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen Avatar so I can't comments, but the thing about the discussion here is that both in TW:CoE homophobic language was used, explicitly, as in the fanfic I linked.
Context made what occurred in TW a moment I and others identified as a mark of reality which is at times prickly, uncomfortable and ambiguous, while in the other the use of homophobia (both institutional and "casual") appeared to be used in order to punish a gay character.

It makes me uncomfortable and that's what I wrote. People being offended by the explicit homophobia in the show is fine, as I said, I'm not going to police how something made one feel.
But to harp on RTD for being homophobic because he wrote homophobia and then write a fic in which he's punished for engaging with fans, doesn't sit well, nor do I think should it go without mention.

[mao4269.livejournal.com]

There are three basic ways for writers to deal with problematic stereotypes: perpetuate them, contradict them, or refuse to engage them and treat "minority" characters as you would "regular" ones. When writers engage in the 2nd and 3rd, I'd agree with what you quoted. All of the criticism I've seen of Avatar, however, is based on the writers doing the 1st - perpetuating stereotypes. All of the criticism I've seen of "homophobia" in TW, however, seems based on the idea that if you aren't 100% contradicting a trope then you're perpetuating it. There's a difference between extrapolating from what's there and ignoring parts of what's there that contradict your outrage that a character(/relationship) with whom you identify has been killed.

[xtricks.livejournal.com]

I have also written at length about CoE and I'm not going to reiterate the arguments I have for believing that show repeated the same old homophobic tropes and messages about the tragic destiny of queers or - and this often also gets lost – that I felt the message of the show *as a whole* and beyond Ianto's death and the set up around it, was one of hopelessness and inescapable cruelty and about punishing those who are brave enough to try and change the world for the better. I know, after CoE, that I'm not at all interested in the stories RTD wants to tell and that I do not trust him as a storyteller.

What I really, really wish people would grasp about the whole debacle (and others like it, Cameron's stuff springs to mind) is that *none of us know RTD (or Cameron etc) personally*. None of us know what he was, actually thinking when he created CoE, none of us know that he's full of internalized homophobia and self-hate, if he was intentionally reminding us all of some of the hard lessons queer men of his generation have learned about death, or if he was simply high, or hated Ianto's character because it stood in the way of Gwen/Jack or whatever. We don't know what was going on in his head and that's not our business.

As fans, as viewers and as the audience for his story, our business is his *story*. I believe we have every right to be angry, that CoE was full of terrible messages about love, about being different, about being a hero and about hope – we can and should question those messages. We should express our frustration, want better messages for the future, and so on. As a storyteller, I think RTD could and should pay attention to whether or not the story he wanted to tell was what his audience heard – and whether the messages people seemed to get from his work crept in due to his own issues, or limitations of acting/budget/directing or whatever – but that work is his own. We can't and shouldn't try to do it for him. We can't and shouldn't diagnose his 'issues', his background, his kinks or anything else except for what he publicly says and what he publicly creates. RTD as a *person* is not our business. RTD as a storyteller is.

I do think, when you see repeated messages coming from the same person (or industry) you can begin to question the person's intent but that is still very different from deciding you know what's going on in their head or have a right to demand personal proof from them that they've changed, or they're sorry or whatever.

[coldwater1010.livejournal.com]

I just want to say I agree with this post. I don't think a writer has to be homophobic, sexist, racist etc. to end up writing in a way that may end up seeming that way to your audience. Sometimes it can boil down to simply poor writing or a lack of imagination when deciding how to move a story along. I don't think the fact that RTD isn't a homophobe makes those who might have viewed COE as homophobic in places as automatically wrong. Maybe it just says that sometimes a writer needs to think about the cliches they adopt when writing a story.

As for the worst gay pop culture moment. I think it's absurd to place real life deaths with fictional deaths/moments because then you're pretty much suggesting they carry equal weight. So I agree it's not the voters at fault, but the people who constructed the poll in the first place. Not that I understand why Heath Ledger's death would be considered the worst gay pop culture moment anyway since he wasn't gay or as far as I'm aware a big advocate for gay issues and only played one in a film, but there you go.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the summary. Eventually I hope to get it together to say something (again) on all this, albeit much after the fact. I dislike that I feel morally obligated to keep addressing it -- that's probably my own damage.

*sigh*

So often I think the things people are trying to honor deserve better in this mess -- whether that's the character they miss painfully or the idea that some straight slash writers do have a claim to a queer identity if not a gay one. But you know... nuance and uncomfortable gray areas -- we're not so fine with them.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was also pretty sure we were done during the summer... *sigh*

Just so you know, due to my linking aviv_b has been getting threatening emails and comments which she's been screening.

So if we can avoid more damage to her personally, that would be better than not.