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wisdomeagleAnd perhaps then I shall go grind away at secret santa fics. But probably not.
I have had trapped in my head a set of thoughts about queerness and queer narratives and particular narratives that appeal to me in relationship-fic and how those code as queer regardless of the gender (or lack thereof) of the characters involved and this has made my brain increasingly full and unable to focus on making hot characters have sex with each other. Problem!
Solution:
[warning! Lack of coherent reading program in gender studies means I have to recarve the entire problem out of soap, and I was never very good at soap-carving. <-- note to self: work on that analogy some! Also read about four pages of Fuss's Essentially Speaking last night, so discussion inclined to be influenced by that.]
[warning two! *tries not to offend anyone, really really*]
[warning three! spoilers through S5 of BtVS.]
a. Defining queer: Queer for me has always been an umbrella term, which is potentially useful politically (i.e., if gaymen and lesbians rally together in support of same-sex marriage under the umbrella term gay, they can accomplish more than two independent movements could) though obviously potentially dangerous as well (if you've got your GLBTQIABBQWTF umbrella, the particular issues of the intersexed are likely to get ignored and the more vocal gaymen get their issues addressed).
So queer as umbrella covers (don't worry, I plan to problematize everything later...):
i. gaymen -- male people (almost) exclusively sexually attracted to other male people (now).
ii. lesbians -- female people (almost) exclusively sexually attracted to other female people (now).
iii. bisexuals -- people equally sexually attracted to members of both(!?) sexes.
iv. trans* people -- people in some way discontent with either their particular gender assignment or with the whole nature of the male/female dichotomy.
v. questioning people -- people who don't identify with any of the above groups currently but possibly will in the future/have in the past/are open to the idea/like rainbows.
viii. the intersexed -- those who were assigned the wrong gender at birth in a literal and barbaric -- oops, got politics in there -- manner by having bits of their genitals carved off by well-meaning doctors -- those, in other words, whose gender assignment and biology don't match up. (Different from trans* people, whose gender assignment and emotional experience don't match.)
vii. allies -- straight people who care about these issues.
That's the umbrella used at New Jersey Pride, which was the only time I've ever done anything remotely queer-politicky. I quite like our umbrella. But other groups who sometimes seek shelter from the rain under the rainbow umbrella include:
viii. poly* people -- those who reject the idea that a monogamous two-person relationship is the ideal, those currently involved in relationships following other paradigms and
ix. bdsm people -- people whose sex play and possibly lifestyles differ in some profound way from social norms with the inclusion of power, pain, and possibly other fetishes (bondage, punishment, etc.)
Okay, so! The pure constructionist approach would be to leave it exactly at that -- queer is an umbrella term, a nominal (i.e., linguistic) category that can be taken to include all these categories, all of which themselves require further problematizing. But since I'm interested in stories, patterns, and metaphor, I'm not going to leave it at that.
Defining queer, part 2:
So if we look under our umbrella, we see lots of people who... differ from the norm in terms of sexual/romantic relationships and/or gender identity. I like defining queer along these lines because it leaves intact some of the original meaning of queer, i.e., different/weird/abnormal. So as has been mentioned to death, in Ideal Future Utopia Number Seventy-Billion where Same-Sex is Okay, queer as a concept is anachronistic. I plan to talk about same-sex narratives in particular later on, but right now I'm sticking with the bigger umbrella.
So in thinking about Future Utopia Number Seventy-Billion, I remembered Future Utopia Number Seventy-Billion and One, where same-sex is not only okay, it's the norm, and opposite-sex relationships are taboo. When writing in a 'verse like that, your queer narratives are going to be the het stories. This tells us something about the nature of queerness -- it doesn't relate so much to the particulars of our attraction as where they fit into society, how other people react to them. There is nothing innately queer about being a woman desiring a woman.
With that definition squared away, let's talk narrative.
For me, possible aspects of queer narratives are:
-The discovery of oneself as different
-Woe (guilt/rage/angst/etc) and attempts to Make It Not So
-Acceptance of oneself as different
-Coming out to others
-Punishment inflicted by society on those who are different
I imagine this narrative playing out in youth, because that's when it happened to me; in some ways I see coming as a coming-of-age story. But it could be applied to a discovery of queerness precipitated on the particular attraction to a taboo love object.
So, for instance: One can read Dawn in "Blood Ties" as a queer metaphor (not as queer, per se, but as participating in a queer narrative.) She discovers there's something "different" about her. She seeks out knowledge. She panics. She tries to destroy herself. She doubts her fundamental identity in light of her new self-knowledge. Eventually she will come to accept this part of herself.
There's Liam in "Spin the Bottle" discovering he's a vampire, which Joss tells us in the commentary, "And to have this turn into the metaphor of: 'I'm different that the rest.' You know, a gay metaphor or just a metaphor for being an adolescent which... sort of ends up connecting him to his son, but... 'I'm different from everybody else because I'm this.'"
Reading these moments as queer is not essential. It's not the only way to understand the metaphor. But it is a possible way to understand it.
Earlier, though, when we talked about queerness, I said it had strong relations to gender/sexuality issues, that queer is in some way about trajectories of desire, about who you are as a sexual being, and to whom you are attracted.
And here's where metaphors get interesting. There are those who read Spike/Buffy or Buffy/Angel as queer because the Slayer-->vampire trajectory is taboo desire (and vice versa, at least when that desire becomes romantic in addition to sexual.)
There is an aspect of queerness which I haven't made explicit, which is identity politics. I'll begin with a brief personal statement.
I'm a lesbian. I have identified as a lesbian to myself for seven years, when it became apparent to me that I was not going to get over my bad habit of getting crushes on women. I came out to someone else almost six years ago. I had my first actual relationship four years ago. For me, identity pre-dates sexuality. My lesbianism is something that has nothing to do with who I'm dating now and everything to do with the gender of almost every single person I've been in love with.
For me the discovery of difference contained two parts. 1) I am going to keep on falling in love with women for the rest of my life. And 2) I'm not going to fall in love with male people, am I? For me, those two facts mean I'm lesbian, and that's shaped almost everything about how I experience life.
This is why I'm talking about queer narratives first and the particulars of same-sex relationships second. Because (again for me) queerness is first internal, something about myself that does not depend on the relationship I'm in. As I said, queerness cannot exist in a vacuum; it is always a function of norms. But the queer narrative, as opposed to a same-sex narrative or a gay narrative, is one of self-discovery.
So one of the things I enjoy most in (fan)fiction is coming-of-age stories that deal with the discovery of difference, whether that difference is "I am the Slayer," or "I am a vampire," or "I am the Key," or "I am gay."
I can hear Elizabeth fuming at me because I have totally not mentioned bisexuals for about fifty thousand words. I have a bad habit of neglecting to ensure that my umbrella covers bi people, and I'm working on it, really! And I'm trying to figure out how this is anything other than Things That Hit Ari's Kinks.
So, recently, this post got meta-fandomed. It's about bisexual angst or lack thereof, and how all the bisexuals in fanfic seem to be what![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lunacy calls, in quotes, "enlightened," as in, they love the person-not-the-gender and never have any woe about this whatsoever. There's some discussion in the comments of whether that just means there should be more angst, period, but I think queer narratives don't have to have angst. They do, however, have to have discovery.
I guess that discovery can work two ways. We might have a little boy, for instance, who goes along merrily thinking that one day he will grow up to be a woman, and at some point he discovers that he will not. This is a discovery, and an unhappy one. Or we might have a little girl who goes along knowing that one day she'll grow up and stop having crushes on her female teachers and start having crushes on boys her age, and then at some point, she realizes nope, this is how I'll always be. That's also discovery. The discovery could be of the norms, or the discovery could be that one's own experience does not coincide with the norms one already knows.
To return to bisexuality, though: it can function as queer narrative from both sides; the discovery that one is not exclusively straight -- or the discovery that one is not exclusively gay. Part of my love of the queer narrative is my love of self-discovery, introspection, and identity politics, and I think a story about a gay character falling in love with someone of the opposite sex has just as much potential to be queer as the slash formula story where the reverse happens. If monosexuality is the norm (and it is) than bisexuality is doubly queer.
And there was this whole other bit about same-sex desire, but I ran out of energy (and am no more inspired to write than I was three hours ago.)
I have had trapped in my head a set of thoughts about queerness and queer narratives and particular narratives that appeal to me in relationship-fic and how those code as queer regardless of the gender (or lack thereof) of the characters involved and this has made my brain increasingly full and unable to focus on making hot characters have sex with each other. Problem!
Solution:
[warning! Lack of coherent reading program in gender studies means I have to recarve the entire problem out of soap, and I was never very good at soap-carving. <-- note to self: work on that analogy some! Also read about four pages of Fuss's Essentially Speaking last night, so discussion inclined to be influenced by that.]
[warning two! *tries not to offend anyone, really really*]
[warning three! spoilers through S5 of BtVS.]
a. Defining queer: Queer for me has always been an umbrella term, which is potentially useful politically (i.e., if gaymen and lesbians rally together in support of same-sex marriage under the umbrella term gay, they can accomplish more than two independent movements could) though obviously potentially dangerous as well (if you've got your GLBTQIABBQWTF umbrella, the particular issues of the intersexed are likely to get ignored and the more vocal gaymen get their issues addressed).
So queer as umbrella covers (don't worry, I plan to problematize everything later...):
i. gaymen -- male people (almost) exclusively sexually attracted to other male people (now).
ii. lesbians -- female people (almost) exclusively sexually attracted to other female people (now).
iii. bisexuals -- people equally sexually attracted to members of both(!?) sexes.
iv. trans* people -- people in some way discontent with either their particular gender assignment or with the whole nature of the male/female dichotomy.
v. questioning people -- people who don't identify with any of the above groups currently but possibly will in the future/have in the past/are open to the idea/like rainbows.
viii. the intersexed -- those who were assigned the wrong gender at birth in a literal and barbaric -- oops, got politics in there -- manner by having bits of their genitals carved off by well-meaning doctors -- those, in other words, whose gender assignment and biology don't match up. (Different from trans* people, whose gender assignment and emotional experience don't match.)
vii. allies -- straight people who care about these issues.
That's the umbrella used at New Jersey Pride, which was the only time I've ever done anything remotely queer-politicky. I quite like our umbrella. But other groups who sometimes seek shelter from the rain under the rainbow umbrella include:
viii. poly* people -- those who reject the idea that a monogamous two-person relationship is the ideal, those currently involved in relationships following other paradigms and
ix. bdsm people -- people whose sex play and possibly lifestyles differ in some profound way from social norms with the inclusion of power, pain, and possibly other fetishes (bondage, punishment, etc.)
Okay, so! The pure constructionist approach would be to leave it exactly at that -- queer is an umbrella term, a nominal (i.e., linguistic) category that can be taken to include all these categories, all of which themselves require further problematizing. But since I'm interested in stories, patterns, and metaphor, I'm not going to leave it at that.
Defining queer, part 2:
So if we look under our umbrella, we see lots of people who... differ from the norm in terms of sexual/romantic relationships and/or gender identity. I like defining queer along these lines because it leaves intact some of the original meaning of queer, i.e., different/weird/abnormal. So as has been mentioned to death, in Ideal Future Utopia Number Seventy-Billion where Same-Sex is Okay, queer as a concept is anachronistic. I plan to talk about same-sex narratives in particular later on, but right now I'm sticking with the bigger umbrella.
So in thinking about Future Utopia Number Seventy-Billion, I remembered Future Utopia Number Seventy-Billion and One, where same-sex is not only okay, it's the norm, and opposite-sex relationships are taboo. When writing in a 'verse like that, your queer narratives are going to be the het stories. This tells us something about the nature of queerness -- it doesn't relate so much to the particulars of our attraction as where they fit into society, how other people react to them. There is nothing innately queer about being a woman desiring a woman.
With that definition squared away, let's talk narrative.
For me, possible aspects of queer narratives are:
-The discovery of oneself as different
-Woe (guilt/rage/angst/etc) and attempts to Make It Not So
-Acceptance of oneself as different
-Coming out to others
-Punishment inflicted by society on those who are different
I imagine this narrative playing out in youth, because that's when it happened to me; in some ways I see coming as a coming-of-age story. But it could be applied to a discovery of queerness precipitated on the particular attraction to a taboo love object.
So, for instance: One can read Dawn in "Blood Ties" as a queer metaphor (not as queer, per se, but as participating in a queer narrative.) She discovers there's something "different" about her. She seeks out knowledge. She panics. She tries to destroy herself. She doubts her fundamental identity in light of her new self-knowledge. Eventually she will come to accept this part of herself.
There's Liam in "Spin the Bottle" discovering he's a vampire, which Joss tells us in the commentary, "And to have this turn into the metaphor of: 'I'm different that the rest.' You know, a gay metaphor or just a metaphor for being an adolescent which... sort of ends up connecting him to his son, but... 'I'm different from everybody else because I'm this.'"
Reading these moments as queer is not essential. It's not the only way to understand the metaphor. But it is a possible way to understand it.
Earlier, though, when we talked about queerness, I said it had strong relations to gender/sexuality issues, that queer is in some way about trajectories of desire, about who you are as a sexual being, and to whom you are attracted.
And here's where metaphors get interesting. There are those who read Spike/Buffy or Buffy/Angel as queer because the Slayer-->vampire trajectory is taboo desire (and vice versa, at least when that desire becomes romantic in addition to sexual.)
There is an aspect of queerness which I haven't made explicit, which is identity politics. I'll begin with a brief personal statement.
I'm a lesbian. I have identified as a lesbian to myself for seven years, when it became apparent to me that I was not going to get over my bad habit of getting crushes on women. I came out to someone else almost six years ago. I had my first actual relationship four years ago. For me, identity pre-dates sexuality. My lesbianism is something that has nothing to do with who I'm dating now and everything to do with the gender of almost every single person I've been in love with.
For me the discovery of difference contained two parts. 1) I am going to keep on falling in love with women for the rest of my life. And 2) I'm not going to fall in love with male people, am I? For me, those two facts mean I'm lesbian, and that's shaped almost everything about how I experience life.
This is why I'm talking about queer narratives first and the particulars of same-sex relationships second. Because (again for me) queerness is first internal, something about myself that does not depend on the relationship I'm in. As I said, queerness cannot exist in a vacuum; it is always a function of norms. But the queer narrative, as opposed to a same-sex narrative or a gay narrative, is one of self-discovery.
So one of the things I enjoy most in (fan)fiction is coming-of-age stories that deal with the discovery of difference, whether that difference is "I am the Slayer," or "I am a vampire," or "I am the Key," or "I am gay."
I can hear Elizabeth fuming at me because I have totally not mentioned bisexuals for about fifty thousand words. I have a bad habit of neglecting to ensure that my umbrella covers bi people, and I'm working on it, really! And I'm trying to figure out how this is anything other than Things That Hit Ari's Kinks.
So, recently, this post got meta-fandomed. It's about bisexual angst or lack thereof, and how all the bisexuals in fanfic seem to be what
lunacy calls, in quotes, "enlightened," as in, they love the person-not-the-gender and never have any woe about this whatsoever. There's some discussion in the comments of whether that just means there should be more angst, period, but I think queer narratives don't have to have angst. They do, however, have to have discovery.I guess that discovery can work two ways. We might have a little boy, for instance, who goes along merrily thinking that one day he will grow up to be a woman, and at some point he discovers that he will not. This is a discovery, and an unhappy one. Or we might have a little girl who goes along knowing that one day she'll grow up and stop having crushes on her female teachers and start having crushes on boys her age, and then at some point, she realizes nope, this is how I'll always be. That's also discovery. The discovery could be of the norms, or the discovery could be that one's own experience does not coincide with the norms one already knows.
To return to bisexuality, though: it can function as queer narrative from both sides; the discovery that one is not exclusively straight -- or the discovery that one is not exclusively gay. Part of my love of the queer narrative is my love of self-discovery, introspection, and identity politics, and I think a story about a gay character falling in love with someone of the opposite sex has just as much potential to be queer as the slash formula story where the reverse happens. If monosexuality is the norm (and it is) than bisexuality is doubly queer.
And there was this whole other bit about same-sex desire, but I ran out of energy (and am no more inspired to write than I was three hours ago.)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-12 10:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-12 10:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-12 10:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-12 10:25 pm (UTC)Don't have (read: shouldn't take) time to recreate, but it was rather a rather incoherent speculation, mainly about Buffy ships. Buffy/Angel is rather much more vanilla, forbidden, but more because of consequences and Angel being an ex serial killer (completely inappropriate quote "You're like a serial killer in prison" "Women marry them all the time!" -Buffy and Spike, "Crush")...everyone's rather cheering them on (exception being Xander, but the Slayer/Vampire dynamic is more an excuse for him than a reason), then afterward the objections are based more on probable consequences (death, evilness). Conclusion: relationship is other than the norm, but it's more along the
Spike/Buffy is much more focused on the fact that this is "dirty and twisted and wrong", that they don't belong together (I'm ignoring badness that makes me go eeeugh and hate characters). It's crossing the line which I'd rather draw as good and evil ('nother example being Wes/Lilah), and I think that ends up being more important to all of them, participants and spectators, than the Slayer/Vampire thing.
Anyhow, hope that makes some sort of sense, now off to homework...
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-12 10:55 pm (UTC)Though I haven't seen canon in long enough, I kind of think that Giles was not 100% on board with the Buffy/Angel-ness. And I think there was definitely in S3 a lot of that star-crossed oh we shouldn't feeling that yes, has flabatnumable reasons in the 'verse itself, but on a metaphorical level, I think it comes back to This Abnormal Relationship Cannot Work Because It Is Abnormal (which, wow, problematic!) more even than Spuffy, which as you said has more to do with the characters proper than with their identities as slayer+vampire.
Um. But both of them definitely have this feeling of this-is-wrong-I-shouldn't-feel-this-BUT-I-DO that is both a romance trope and possibly a queer trope. :/
Ewww, homework.
*licks roommate*
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-12 11:48 pm (UTC)Not 100% on board, iirc, but not particularly off board either--a bit worried, but rather trusting and not saying anything.
I guess I'd say it reads as queer in S1, not really in S2 (ignoring the Buffy/Angelus, as that's another discussion), and not really in S3 either.
S1 is the "you're a vampire and I'm a slayer, doesn't mean we can't just be friend?" "Or possibly more."...anyhow, Romeo and Juliet type thing, which yeah, one can see as metaphore.
S3 iirc (and I've tried to forget these bits) isn't focused so much on the fact that they're different, it's based on consequences and such. Which reminds me more of political romance types...'we can't love each other or our entire country(s) will fall apart/get slaughtered'. Metaphore, sure, but it's not one of the one's I'd usually associate with queerness...think that's streaching it a bit.
*shrugs*
Now, that's much more fun.
*kisses roommate*
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-13 12:35 am (UTC)Honestly I see S1!Bangel as more typified het romance tropes -- Angel=older (though that's just totally problematic given distinction between actual age and apparent age and yeah) male somewhat dangerous mysterious protective, etc, and Buffy is, well, Buffy, and S1, the name really says it all.
But yeah. I think Angel reads as somewhat queer (in the metaphorical sense) because he's liminal, a contradiction in terms, a vampire with a soul, but that's unrelated to the Buffy-thing and I gotta go, the Brat wants the computer.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-13 01:05 am (UTC)Actually wasn't thinking of fantasy, what sprang to mind was an opera I know only by rough summary...anyhow.
:p That works too...although sometimes (specifically "Angel", the episode, and damn it needs a more descriptive name) I think the queer metaphor works better.
Somehow, I doubt that's accidental.
"Stop calling me pastries!" -Angel
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-12 10:26 pm (UTC)And for this:
v. questioning people -- people who don't identify with any of the above groups currently but possibly will in the future/have in the past/are open to the idea/like rainbows.
vii. allies -- straight people who care about these issues.
Yay. :-)
*feels included*
*is happy*
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-12 10:56 pm (UTC)And it's a big umbrella. Plenty of room for all!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-12 11:23 pm (UTC)I will attempt to come back to this later with a coherent response. I've just written a Philosophy of Biology final which has me wanting to deconstruct your umbrella, discuss potential reasons why it's been thrown together into that particular nominal kind and then toss in a discussion about possibly more appropriate nominal kinds which could lend more light to the discussion. Plus, of course, yammering about intersex in generally because it's such a neat topic (Sexing the Body by Anne Fausto-Sterling so rocks) as well as my completely unenlightened thoughts of queer narrative.
Unfortunately, my brain is fried, So, poke at me if I forget! Because I like babbling! *babbles*
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-12 11:36 pm (UTC)Please to deconstruct the umbrella! To that end, some more thoughts on its existence:
The places I've seen it used in my life are 1. Jersey Pride, as I mentioned and 2. on Queertopia, my old message board, which was a catch-all and inclusive of everyone. It's that inclusive of everyone thing that is problematic to me since at some point your terminology ceases to have any meaning at all and queer just means -- well, that you like rainbows. I am rah! for identity, much more than many people my age, because having an identity renders me visible to other people like me and vice versa. And I know that on QT, the umbrella was helpful in that it drew us all together to one place and we did have points of commonality (and it's those points of commonality that I'm intrigued by re: queer narrative) -
But I've got to run. Looking forward to your thoughts!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-12 11:24 pm (UTC)I know that you're describing narrative, but that one part? Sums up my current self-awareness quite well.
I love reading your thoughts on queerness because you make me think about what the hell's going on with my own identity - and I agree that the 'discovery' is a good hook, a wonderful (if well-written) piece of narrative, and it's something I'd be drawn to, too. And it's also something I enjoy about your stories, I might add.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-12 11:42 pm (UTC)And I'm so glad to have realized that the idea of coming-out-to-self doesn't have to be negative or even angsty, and am now thinking of the possibilities of Joyful Self-Discovery and how cool that might be.
(And by the way re:your own identity/journey/self-discovery -- you offered to email me re: first times if I needed data [which I didn't because the whole question was probably ill-phrased and ill-constructed], but I should have mentioned that I would be more than happy to have you email me about it if you wanted to. :) )
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-12 11:50 pm (UTC)The Joyful Self-Discovery - god, that would be cool, and it would be really interesting to write.
And thank you for the offer. :) It's really something I need to start talking out, but I'm still quite unsure as to what I could say -- if I do ever write it up, you'd be someone I'd show. Honestly, thank you for saying so.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-13 12:33 am (UTC)Well, you had a huge acronym, and my eyes always skim over those and I just assume there's a B in there somewhere. And you include bisexuals in your list. And only some of your talk was explicitly about single-sex-attraction (like, the queer discovery metaphor works for bi-folk, too -- I mostly thought of myself as not particularly sexual and at one point I got a major crush on a boy and some years later I got a major crush on a girl and I was like "Oh, I like both, and gee, Lauren Martin's essay on queer as a fluid category fits me really well, yay, moving right along").
[P.S. You have to include an http:// in the link or else LJ wonks it up.]
I find including taboo sex under the umbrella of "queer" to be problematic -- and the "queer" umbrella has enough problems already, the primary of which is the fact that most people (rightly, I think) think of queer as a sexual orientation issue and trans (and intersex) is not a sexual orientation issue (though both could be arguably sexuality issues).
I think it's useful to have an umbrella term for non-straight people, but I think that including kink or whatever in that umbrella makes the term so watered-down as to be almost useless, because almost any sex that somebody's having is gonna be considered taboo or kinky or whatever by somebody, and while it certainly is bad that people get looked down upon for mentioning going to a bondage store or something, the issues are on the whole far more private whereas societal naying of same-sex relationshps is a hugely public thing with huge ramifications (from not being able to talk about who your partner is to not being able to get shared health benefits, whereas the information one hides when it comes to what you do in your bedroom is usually information you wouldn't be sharing anyway, and stuff like not being able to talk about going to Arisia is far more minor that not being able to talk about the fact that you have an ex-samesexpersonfriend or something... and I feel like I'm marginalizing the tribulations of non-normative-sex-having/desiring people, but I honestly do think it's a different battle than the non-hetero one -- and really that's the big thing, whether one is a "bigger" problem than the other or not, they are *different* ones, and battle get fought more effectively if all parties are clear on just what the battle is).
Using "queer" as a metaphor for very public taboo relationships like Slayer/Vampire I am okay with, however.
I would also like to go on record as being miffed that you can ramble on in a vaguely coherent fashion and get a chorus of "omg you r teh brilliant", because I am a jealous validation-ho.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-13 01:47 am (UTC)I honestly do think it's a different battle than the non-hetero one -- and really that's the big thing, whether one is a "bigger" problem than the other or not, they are *different* ones, and battle get fought more effectively if all parties are clear on just what the battle is)
Hmm. I guess LGB activism means same-sex marriage, anti-discrimination (on the basis of sexual orientation, which then becomes a circular definition, but skimming over), right-to-adopt (which goes in hand with all the same-sex-marriage rights) and, er, generally, rights for same-sex couples. Which is important yes!
I think my thinking in general here was less political (which is cos, well, I'm less political), and. Er. I'm having lots of thoughts but not writing all of them down so I feel like I've written more than I have in response to this.
But I guess my basic thing is that while the umbrella is generally a political device and obviously problematic there (even the lesbian+gay combination has been problematic since gaymen's and lesbians' issues have not always been the same), as a literary device it makes queer a useful way of thinking about other non-normative relationships + identities.
queer as a sexual orientation issue and trans (and intersex) is not a sexual orientation issue (though both could be arguably sexuality issues).
Well, I think trans* usually gets included in the queer umbrella, though rightly or not, I don't know (and since queer is just a nominal distinction anyhow, I don't know if "rightly" is really even the right word), and probably because by the nature of trans*, it's going to overlap with issues of sexual orientation.
Using "queer" as a metaphor for very public taboo relationships like Slayer/Vampire I am okay with, however.
Hm. I am thinking about Spike/Buffy and since I very much use S6 as my point-of-entry for the pairing, I'm having difficulty attempting to define 'public' since the world of S6 is very insular and the Scooby-space is space halfway between public and private already and to those outside the Scooby gang, Spike's vampire-ness is not visually obvious.
Um. But I don't know.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-13 02:18 am (UTC)Yes, trans does usually get included in the queer umbrella (the default acronym is GLBTA -- gay, lesbian, bi, trans, allies) and I heard lots about the problematics of that the year I was involved in Tangent (Smith's trans group).
I'd skimmed the comments and seen the Buffy/Angel mention, so that's more of what I was thinking of when I mentioned the Slayer/Vampire thing ('cause with Spike/Buffy I feel like it's more human/vampire that's the issue, whereas with Angel it's all "But you are a Slayer, this is your destiny, he is the enemy, etc. etc." whereas come Spike it's like "vampire=bad, remember?"). And yeah, the public parallel fails somewhat since the public aspect doesn't extend to the society at large, but it has parallels to Willow's relationships (which of course are made explicit in Buffy's conversation with Riley) insomuch as there's this issue of hiding relationships/aspects of yourself from your people whom you expect would reject it/you.
as a literary device it makes queer a useful way of thinking about other non-normative relationships + identities.
*nods* (And I can still plug thorough informativedness in this context, as the more paradigms one has, the more options one has for parallels and ways into an idea and so forth. *fails at coherent sentences*)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-13 02:37 am (UTC)Um, sorry?
the default acronym is GLBTA -- gay, lesbian, bi, trans, allies
My default acronym is LGBTQIA -- q for queer/questioning, i for intersexed -- quick googling shows:
LGBTQA: 13,700 results
LGBTQIA: 19,600 results
GLBTA: 25,700 results
GLBT: 4,030,000 results
So, um. Totally not the point except that queer-as-umbrella does not actually have a default definition?
cause with Spike/Buffy I feel like it's more human/vampire that's the issue,
Yeah, total point. That is a distinction that needs to be made.
ps: I really am sorry I wasn't more coherent with the thought-dump. *guilts*
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-13 02:53 am (UTC)So, um. Totally not the point except that queer-as-umbrella does not actually have a default definition?
Which of course is another reason why it's problematic ('cause everyone has their own ideas, so people think they have a shared vocabulary when really they don't).
No fair guilting when I was trying to *not* be a bitch. I mean, yes, I had frustration that I didn't really know where you were going with it, but my parenethetical response was intended as an explanation of why I went the political route rather than the literary metaphor route -- though of course in part it's just *me* [in which "it" is "the reason I went the political..."]. The bitter was more for the chorus of love ('cause I am a bad person with superiority/inferiority complexes). And you warned that it wasn't gonna be the most coherent thing ever. So I wasn't actually *expecting* uber-coherency (which obviously didn't preclude my being frustrated by not finding coherency, but that should be *my* problem).
See, I fail at being a bitch 'cause I get all apologeticy when people I care about hurt.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-13 06:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-13 01:15 pm (UTC)For what it's worth. I doubt that it's a coincidence that the more letters one adds, the more the hit count goes down, though.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-13 04:05 pm (UTC)Trans-relationships are almost by definition queer because *somebody* is gonna read them as non-hetero, so yeah, I can definitely see the argument for including trans under the sexual orientation umbrella. It does get problematic, however, as many trans folk *do* wanna get read as hetero -- not to mention the fact that the vast majority of trans issues don't overlap with the issues of gay/lesbina/bi folk (and when they do overlap it's usually to a much lesser degree for GLB folk).
I think for political purposes both grouping and coalitioning are useful, and I reiterate what I said before about it being useful to be specific in descriptions of what the problem is, what the effects are, what a proposed solution would look like, etc. Terminology can be useful shorthand, but it too frequently leads to misunderstandings, elisions, etc. So "queer" can definitely be a useful term, but it can't just be tossed about; one has to explain what one means by it and why one is using it at that moment for that situation and so on.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-13 04:39 pm (UTC)I use/deploy queer differently than you do in this post, so I had to keep translating back and forth, but I think your look at Dawn in Blood Ties is spot-on. That episode is eerie to the max - not simply b/c of her own self-knowledge, but how knowledge of her state changes *others'* reactions to her.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-13 05:27 pm (UTC)I would like to see more fics like that.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-13 05:40 pm (UTC)For fiction, there's the way the characters feel about their relationships and the way others do--I basically write about people who've been out for 10-20 years. That doesn't mean that they have perfect relationships (any more than heterosexuals do) and it doesn't mean that if they're happy about being gay that those around them are.
And, specifically in the Jossverse, don't forget the "coming-out" dialogue between Buffy and Joyce, where it's Slayerdom rather than vampirism that is "queer."
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-14 03:49 am (UTC)I had that scene in my head the entire time I was writing this. No cookie for me for forgetting to actually think it out loud.
For fiction, there's the way the characters feel about their relationships and the way others do--I basically write about people who've been out for 10-20 years. That doesn't mean that they have perfect relationships (any more than heterosexuals do) and it doesn't mean that if they're happy about being gay [or] that those around them are.
Interesting!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-14 11:34 am (UTC)IMO one of the ways to write good slash is to choose a fandom where there are characters who are believable as bisexual or exclusively homosexual, although I know I've had (and lost) this argument many times before.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-13 07:15 pm (UTC)I think(have thought) a lot about "queer" as an umbrella designation, because through all the changes my identity's gone through, it's the only labelish thing that keeps fitting on me.
Queer is a lot about self-identifying (inward --> out), a lot about cultural identifying (outward-->in), and somehow always somewhat to do with sex/sexuality/gender... there are people who are non-normatively identified about other things, that don't intersect with sex/sexuality/gender, and they sometimes allies (if their non-normative POV has made them thoughtful & deconstructivist) but we don't call them queer.
Indy, right now an androgynous female person in a commited relationship with a bi(omni?)sexual kinky feminine female person, a kinky straight male person with pretty hair, and a totally nonkinky straight male person who's really good at talking about feelings. No vampires, or slayers, that I know of, but maybe they just haven't come out yet.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-13 08:17 pm (UTC)in which I ramble and write too-long sentences
Date: 2005-12-13 09:42 pm (UTC)I think your model makes for a good interpretive platform to think about how we might consider not just particular experiences of some characters as metaphors for queer experience (Oz as werewolf, having to hide and repress the wolfy nature, the way he gets in control by harnessing/denying the wolf all the time instead of allowing the requisite turn-as-wolf each month seems a great example for this) but also the experiences of some couples as analogous to/metaphor for queer experience (though Buffy/Angel don't seem particularly queer to me as a pairing -- one might argue that rather they fit into a romance novel model of relationship "Theirs was a forbidden love, and yet they could not resist each other...").
I do wonder, though, about the queer metaphor for a couple's narrative versus the less nuanced and harder to sustain claim that couple that seems straight is queer. This isn't anything you've posited, but rather something I've seen discussed briefly here and there (it may have been discussed quite fruitfully at greater length, and I've just been unaware of those posts). For example, someone asked in
Re: in which I ramble and write too-long sentences
Date: 2005-12-14 03:43 am (UTC)That is honestly how I read Buffy/Angel as well, though I've seen both Buffy/Angel and Buffy/Spike theorized as queer by others. There was/is a discussion-kerfluffle about queer het that makes
Re: Tara/males -- I did think of it while writing and touched on it extremely briefly in saying To return to bisexuality, though: it can function as queer narrative from both sides; the discovery that one is not exclusively straight -- or the discovery that one is not exclusively gay. Any Tara/male fic, for me, would probably be intently focused on the redefining of sexuality issue -- "I thought I was gay, but in fact, not entirely," -- which to me is an essentially queer narrative in some way.
I think that lots of interesting stories can be told about how love and desire function for people identifying in various ways. On the other hand, I don't think that all Tara/male fic or pairings are neccessarily queer because we-as-fandom identify Tara as a lesbian -- I don't think that meta-identification is enough to make a narrative queer.
And I am a fan of Tara/Giles and Tara/Xander, but understand totally why many people are reluctant to pair her with male people.
A personal preference of mine is for May-December relationships; sometimes in reading (f'rinstance) Buffy/Giles, the moment when Buffy suddenly sees Giles as both a person and a potential sexual partner is a queer moment for me because it's a moment of redefining the field of potential sexual partners.
Thanks for weighing in. :)
Re: in which I ramble and write too-long sentences
Date: 2005-12-14 01:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-15 02:59 am (UTC)I've thought a lot about what makes us queer, and arrived at something very much like your definition of the narrative of self discovery. I think what makes someone queer is that they did the work of self-discovery. When I feel solidarity with other queer people, or like I have something in common with someone I've only just met - I think the thing that makes that happen is that we both dug in and did the hard work of figuring out that we are something that society did not tell us we were meant to be.
To me, that's a classic narrative, the basis of so many works of literature, infinitely variable and innately interesting.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-17 10:59 pm (UTC)