On Being Queer in Fandom

[eumelia]

This post touches an important pan-fandom subject and as such I think it should be read far and wide, so please, spread this link around! Thank you in advance.

verasteine has written a parallel post of her own regarding being straight in fandom.

Something has been weighing on my mind for a while now.

It’s not a new thought, in fact I’ve written and discussed this before, because it is a pervasive issue and it touches me again and again in fandom.

Slash fandom is not a place without problems, this we all know, as fans, but this one particular issue is one which I’m finding harder and harder to let go as time goes by and I’m wondering if other fannish queers and/or queer fans feel it as well.

I’d like to state that I’m very aware of how problematic the use of “queer” is as a word – because while I personally identify with it strongly, it is a word with a traumatic past and not every QUILTBAG person sees it as a reclaimed word, as such, please bear with me regarding its use in this post.

Things are not as they once were, over the past decade the media landscape has changed in a way I still find hard to describe, I’m sure you who are older than I feel this even more acutely.

I don’t want to talk about the canon queer characters, relationship and storylines, because you can critique those from here to high heaven from our perspective and that has been done.

I want to talk and ask you, my fellow queer fans, about the ambivalent feeling I get from slash fandom as a queer fan.

Slash isn’t queer fiction, but it is queered fiction and a lot of the time, the idea that gay people exist within a larger cultural context is either forgotten or exploited. Forgotten in the sense that a lot of stories write the two men as though there isn’t an entire gay history and culture that informs on how these relationships are constructed.
And they are exploited in the sense that some aspects of gay culture are used to differentiate these two guys from those other queers, because they are the strange and the freakish, whereas the two guys are in love.

There are of course the instances in which authors try to be inclusive of queer culture, but due to the stereotypical way it is depicted in the media the image of effeminate men being “less than” masculine men gets perpetuated in fic.

The coming out process and the whole notion of being queer in public is, at times, reductive and lacking in the narrative complexity that informs our own queer identities. Not to mention the use of the work “queer” itself without any acknowledgment that hey, for a lot of these guys, it would as bad as the f-word (no, not “fuck” or “fellation”).

There are times where I will be thrown out of a fic that deals with homophobia, but succumbs to gender stereotypes, because the relationship becomes yet another reflection of heterosexual and heteronormative models, only with two dicks.

And of course, the ever popular of putting “slash” or “m/m sex” in the warning part of the header.

There are other issues and other instances, some of them too numerous to recount, and yes, fandom can’t but reflect the larger straight assuming culture from which it emerges. But QUEER PEOPLE EXIST in slash fandom and I’d like to hear our voices with regards to how these narratives and stories are written. Because even though this isn’t gay fiction, I am a part of this creative and transformative culture that takes from my sexual culture and doesn’t seem to realize that that is what it does.

Do other queer fans and/or fannish queer fans feel this way? Are there areas in slash fandom you feel more welcome and included? What other issues have you felt that corresponds with being queer in fandom, if at all?

Comments

[ithiliana]

I'm glad I followed the link here! I'm just going to babble for a while, since you asked for feedback.

A few background notes: I'm 56, was active in Star Trek fandom in the late 70s (zines!), dropped out of fandom to write my dissertation, and then found myself in LOTR online fandom in 2003. Although there must have been some slash under some of the tables at the cons I was at on the west coast in the late 70s, I never heard about it (possibly because I was hanging out more with the male nerds). I learned about slash from reading Russ, and Lamb and Veith; I liked the idea intellectually, but never liked it enough to try to read it until 2003 when I found myself totally turned on in every possible way by some good LOTR fic. I can call myself a slasher (as I have called myself bisexual, as I now call myself queer), but I have no interest in most slash (I do have friends who love slash, even if they don't know or love the canon).

With that in mind: in some ways I don't feel the media landscape has changed that much (for example, with regard to women: Cagney and Lacey was incredible -- I could not stand even five minutes of Rizzoli and Isles--could be my prejudices--I have not seen any great expansion in women's roles that strike me as any more progressive than, say, GOLDEN GIRLS or MURDER, SHE WROTE -- in some ways I don't see as wide a range of women characters as in past decades--although there are a few more roles for women of color). And bisexuality is not exactly out there that I've ever seen! There are more gay characters--but they seem to be mostly white men, in mostly sit coms and realistic dramas -- I am a stone sf fan (with a little less passionate love for mysteries) (and am also an English teacher which means I know a lot about the canon and the challenges to it--as a result of being an sf fan since grade school, I ended up with a strong interest in marginalized literatures, and define more as a critical theorist and creative writer than traditional lit prof). So the various shows featuring (what I perceive to be mostly very young--and that's an issue too!--featuring very conventionally and heternormatively pretty--slim for example--gay and lesbian characters are of absolutely no interest to me). It's always been easier to find multiple queernesses in sf/fantasy (or at least I've found it so).

The incredible sexual turn-on that I found as I discovered LOTR slash AND began peri- menopause at the same time is impossible to describe. That's not to say all slash is good, or all LOTR fic is good (I read good gen, good het, and damn some amazing Femslash in LOTR--it's LOTR, and I've been queer for Eowyn since I was 10). It's to say in some ways I thought I either had a very low libido or was asexual (a concept I learned about through fandom) UNTIL I found that specific kind of slash. So….the discussion about being a queer fan in slash fandom….doesn't quite work for me, because I don't, and have never seen a unified slash fandom (and there are some slash areas in some fandoms I won't touch with a ten foot pole due to my own squicks). (If it comes to that, LOTR fandom is split among different sub-groups as well, and Hobbit Slash is different from Elf Slash is different from Manslash is different from Interspecies slash--which was my main thing at the start, i.e. Frodo/Faramir).

I like the idea of slash as a queered fiction, and have used that terminology myself. A lot of slash is heteronormative (and classist, and racist). (I am remembering Alexander Doty's note in his book on queering film that "queer is not automatically progressive"). There is a lot to deal with in the idea of "Queer fiction" (in the same sense of Lesbian Fiction--and "Women Writers"-- a course I have taught. My students are shocked when the women turn out to include black women, lesbians (of different ethnic groups), and most of all OMG science fiction!). The designation is based on identities of the writers, not the genre conventions--and that identification is vital in the process of making marginalized literatures visible, but at some point….the intersections are important as well.

I'm not interested in a queer (or lesbian) (or gay) fiction that's not also (and more importantly to me in some ways) sff. I don't want to read realistic or naturalistic "litfic," and the "gay history and culture" (and there is more than just one of course, but I know that it's impossible to always qualify) has no part in any slash I love because, well, LOTR isn't set in a contemporary setting. The only way I can connect with that issue is that some of the LOTRiPS is of course set in the here and now--but even then, as I've said in the past, I write bisexual characters, male and female, not gay men. I don't think I'm a part of your sexual culture (though I don't know for sure since you don't give many specifics)--I'm queer. I'm a pagan (animistic). I'm rural. I'm against marriage. I don't want children. I am a nerd and have been for about half a century. I'm fat. Some of these aspects of my identity are, I guess, part of something that might be called "gay culture" though I resist that term because for me, it's male (and I dislike "lesbian" being subsumed into gay--which it mostly has been in my perceptions). But while I can easily identify as queer (mostly because of my queer relationship with a woman--neither of us are lesbians), I do not and have never identified as part of a gay culture. I don't even think I'd call myself part of a queer culture because that implies a more coherent set of boundaries and definitions than I'm comfortable with.

So, I'm not quite sure--but I plan to subscribe so I can read the responses you get because I'm sure they will be fascinating.

[elspethdixon]

I'm not interested in a queer (or lesbian) (or gay) fiction that's not also (and more importantly to me in some ways) sff. I don't want to read realistic or naturalistic "litfic," and the "gay history and culture" (and there is more than just one of course, but I know that it's impossible to always qualify) has no part in any slash I love because, well, LOTR isn't set in a contemporary setting.

I'm personally interested in more genres than SFF, but I agree with your points about genre playing a major role in the kinds of queer fiction queer genre fans want to read (naturalistic litfic in a modern setting is well down below non-fiction, epic fantasy, space opera, mysteries, and swashbuckling costume drama on the list of "things I'm going to want to buy from a bookstore") and about real life "gay history and culture" not applying equally to all fandoms' canons, especially when those canons are second-world fantasy settings or the distant future and the societies being depicted are completely made up.

I also think that fanfiction ought to be considered as something slightly separate from pro fiction with queer characters, in that fanfic authors have to work with the original canon (for a value of "work with" that can include "telling canon to go fuck itself" if we feel like it, but reacting against canon is still being influenced by it) while professional/original fiction writers don't have that limitation.

[ithiliana]

Sorry, really quick reply from work--I hope we can talk more!

I would argue that pro writers are often influenced by and reacting to pre-existing works of pro fic -- that's different in magnitude/scope from fan fict writers re/vising (or not!) the canon, but it's on a spectrum--and of course some professionally published fics are transformative (parody) (THE WIND DONE GONE! THE WIDE SARGASSO SEA), but even beyond those obvious examples, "reacting against genre conventions while still being influenced by it" is a real thing (despite the idea, esp. in the anti-fanfic circles that "original" fic is totally pristine, new, original never thought of before--which is SO not true).

I teach creative writing (and allow fanfic) but even those students who have never heard of fan fic start by writing incredibly derivative works based on what they're read....they're not pro authors, but I bet every pro author starts out more or less the same way!

[eumelia]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and your very correct feminist critique when it comes to female characters - no, not a lot has changed with regards to that, there is still a pittance of female characters that rise above the rest, Buffy is what comes to mind for me.

There isn't one cohesive or coherent queer culture, if I implied that, then that wasn't what I was aiming for. I'm not American, but I'm in American fandom and the history of lgbt culture and identity informs a lot in the way I perceive characters as queer or not.

I'm bisexual and a lesbian, I don't think those two are mutually exclusive.

[ithiliana]

In the part of the U.S. where I was, at the time when I realized I was bisexual (Seattle, WA), there was a huge amount of sexuality policing (this was during the 1980s, when the reality of AIDS was becoming stark and horrendous)--and specifically 'lesbians' and 'gay men' in the rhetoric of the culture of the time/place excluded bisexuals from being homosexual--the rhetoric very much made it impossible to be both.

I was denied membership to a lesbian group because I identified as bisexual, but my friend who identified as lesbian (despite being married to a man and having sex with him) was not. A woman who had more sex with women in her past than I have done in my whole life said that she wasn't bisexual because she'd had more sex with men, and it took a 50/50 split....so, the two might not be mututally exclusive, but I've never met anyone who identified as both, and I've not seen much out there in what I've read that allows for it. So I'm interested in those constructions -- but I think we're at the heart of the ongoing problem--the idea of who defines identities. My experiences in the activist groups in Seattle during the 1980s burned me out so much I've refused to get involved with any group focusing solely on sexuality--I left the whole scene in disgust when the gay men who ran the Sexual Minorities Center denied a bisexual support group I was in a meeting room because bisexuals weren't sexual minorities....so, yeah, it's complicated and immensely context bound.

[eumelia]

I feel you on the biphobia you've experienced, and I'm sad to say I've participated in that kind of erasure for myself because the bisexual identity is one that has left me unsatisfied on a personal level, hence taking on both "lesbian" and "queer" which all together have enabled me to speak more coherently about my sexuality.

The idea that bisexuals aren't sexual minorities is such a terrible, and yes, ongoing myth and needs to keep being busted.

There's a lot of biphobia in my locale from the LG community and a lot of erasure from the more radical queer community and my own community activism (such as it is) does attempt to combat that - identity politics are a finicky thing.