Are you sick of the Glee angst yet?

[eumelia]

Glee isn't my fandom. I'm not all that interested in Glee outside of the canon (except for a select few fics that caught my attention) and far more interested in the Meta of the show.

I spoke to two people, two people about a textual incidence that just wouldn't leave me alone and which touched a nerve of the personal kind.

I chatted with my ex-gf for some perspective and with verasteine for a more fannishly focused thought, as I tried to pinpoint what the hell was bugging me.

See, someone tweeted the other day, regarding their interest in Glee canon, that "I really am interested in how Santana develops, but I like my queers queerer than that. So, Klaine shipping lesbian. FTW."

I had replied asking what "queerer" meant. The reply was that girly women weren't as easy to identify with and implied that they were less interesting than butch women and/or camp men. It felt like a punch in the gut to read that. Not because I know this tweeter/blogger beyond the textual platform, but the sentiment is one that I've had to deal with more often than not, in fandom and out of it.

At this point I would like to explicitly say that this isn't a personal attack against this tweeter/blogger. I like her and what she has to say about Glee. I've enjoyed a chat with her and pretty much rely on her for all my Glee News. Those tweets are part, I feel, of a larger problem in fandom and something endemic in the culture at large and in a fandom like Glee in particular, which is very much hit and miss in the way it treats characters and the way the fandom follows the patterns the culture indoctrinates us to treat female characters and queer female characters in particular.

On a personal level, as a girly (not quite femme, but definitely feminine) queer girl, being told that that there is a hierarchy of "queer" offends me. The visibility of queer people relies in heteronormative standards of beauty and judgement. Camp men and butch women will often pay a hefty price for standing up for who they are, because our to present ourselves as we truly are and spitting in the face of what are considered straight beauty standards is very brave. Not passing, whether on purpose or not, can be dangerous.

As a girly queer - longish hair, curvy physique, feminine clothes and feminine mannerisms - despite being sometimes hairy, sometimes not - I am sometimes passed over by "gaydars", though I've been told that once I speak it cannot be missed how queer I actually am.

So, yes, I have privilege in heteronormative society. But reading about "queerer queers"? The devaluation I suddenly felt was something I'd only felt once before. When an old friend asked me whether I really was bisexual? Because, hey, I didn't "act like one".
Whatever the fuck that meant.
Really?
Is there a litmus test of gayness? Are lesbians more "real" if they're big bull dykes?
Is Coach Beiste less straight because she's butch?

But whatever. The thing is, there is this trend with queer characters where it's assumed that queer men can represent all queers, while queer women are, you know, specific. Queer women can only represent queer women and if they're not queer in a certain way, well, they're just not good enough.

Kurt and Baline can be either camp or not. Santana just isn't up to scratch, what with her having been with both guys and girls and Brittany staying with Artie.
Santana doesn't look any different from any other pretty girl, she just doesn't count as much.

Kurt is written in a way that's a cut above the rest, even with inconsistency when it comes to his characterisation, he was always more complex, more challenging than other characters.

This has to do, I think, with the cultural notion that girls are worth less than boys. This is doubly so when it comes to queer girls in a mixed show, mixed being a show that isn't focused on female characters as a rule. This is something that was noticeable in Queer as Folk (both versions), Torchwood, Will & Grace, Shameless, I guess I can go on.
All the above shows have both queer men and women, I think you can guess who gets more focus in the show itself and in the various fandoms.
Not only that, a lot of the times, the women's queer identity will more often be either challenged or ridiculed in a certain way.

In fandom boys trump girls, always. You don't need to look at the size of femmslash fandom as opposed to slash fandom to see it.
I am also guilty of this kind of focus.

P.S.
I've been spoiled regarding Santana standing up to the homophobic/secretly gay bully Korofsky with Kurt and Blaine. I'm looking forward to seeing the ep. It still smarts that after Santana and Brittany have been treated like comic relief and straight boy titillation that we're seeing some female queer content than matters in this phenomenon that is Glee.

As I said Glee isn't my fandom, but it is my show. So I care. A lot.

Comments

[dharma_slut]

it's early days yet for the portrayal of any queer women at all... Keep fighting

[eumelia]

True and thanks!

[silveradept]

I've been noticing that trend as well - but then again, I'm going at the Santana/Brittany relationship from a different angle - namely, that the writers have gone straight to "This obviously won't work out, split them up, wasn't that fun, tee hee?" instead of writing in them trying several different ways of making relationships. If this high school is able to imagine and conduct relationships the way they have so far, then there should be sufficient creativity and brains in the lot for them to try working out something that's good for all of them.

So, yeah, why do the boys get complex characterization and the hint of everything working out when the girls either have the choice of hetero relationships or lesbian dalliances, with no solid option for a fulfilling relationship that can do both?

[svollga]

Ooookay, I sort of know that there's some hierarhy of queers, but every time I'm buffled by it. Especially as a bisexual bigender with appearance confirming to my assigned gender who for a long time prefers conforming gender performance - I mean, being a (very) femme girl outside. Not even q true queer, some might say.

I'm glad that they slowly let Santana and Brittany shine, though. They also have some very complicated polyamory relationship, and finally there's some talk about that.

All the mixed shows with queer girls I can remember were girl-centric - and actually, I can only remember Buffy's Willow (though this one never had a gay story). Lost Girl has both hetero- and homosexual relationship for the main character, but guess which get more screen time...

[askygoneonfire]

Not to mention that all queer female characters in Torchwood turn out to be monsters/aliens/evil.

There are, all in all, as many problems with the representation of *every* minority in Glee as there are positives in their visibility. This week's UK episode left me infuriated with the lesbian-normative jokes which I am getting sick of hearing - we all like kd lang and Ani DiFranco donchaknow - so I anticipate that Santana's resistance to being labelled will soon give way to a minor rewriting of her character as 'gayer' - the pressures within the script are already there, lesbians are *all* the same; not to mention I believe the writers announced she would be "gay", not "bisexual", despite her having straight relationships up to now. Shades of grey don't seem to exist when they write gay characters so your friend who prefers normative lesbians might be satisfied yet.