(no subject)
Sep. 29th, 2003 09:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wisdomeagleThis rant is in no way, shape, or form procrastination, since it relates directly to my topic for my paper, and there is no way I will be able to write the prospectus/bibliography until I get this off my chest.
Summation of rant: on romantic friendship, its history, meaning, personal resonation, and current application, with side-rants on slash, with examples from Stargate, Harry Potter, and Anne of Green Gables. I also get into biblical and literary criticism and social constructionism. Good stuff for all.
You might be interested in this rant if you:
1) are queer.
2) slash in any of my fandoms.
3) are or ever have been my best friend.
(there, I think that includes everyone on my friends' list.)
So Romantic Friendship. What is it? Romantic friendship is a 17th-19th century idealized friendship between women. Lillian Faderman describes them as "intense, passionate female-female relationships... allowed to flourish unmolested by social proscriptions" (5). She goes on to describe the conventions surrounding these kinds of relationships, and the literary works associated with romantic friendship-- poems, letters, novels, diaries, and the like. Often the participants in these relationships were married. Their love was often described in terms of purity, especially when compared to impure heterosexual romantic love.
Katherine Philips basically invented romantic friendship. I'm writing a term paper on her. I read this article that essentially removes Philips from the canon of romantic friendship by saying that romantic friendship is not lesbian writing while Philips's writing is. Or something. This makes no sense to me.
It also makes no sense to me to attempt to call Philips a lesbian, or to say that her emotional connections with other women are "erotic" or "sensual" or "romantic" or anything except what they are--Philips's emotions for other women. I'm not saying they're not romantic. I'm just saying it doesn't make any scholarly sense to me to put them in those categories, especially since Philips certainly wouldn't have.
Let me try to put this in perspective. I first encountered romantic friendship in Lillian Faderman's anthology and I was immediately blown away by how much it resonated with my own experience. I literally stopped reading at several points to note in my diary how much some passage had moved me or how much I knew exactly what the poets were talking about.
So I had this emotional response, and I identified emotions I had always called "lesbian" with emotions these authors were calling "romantic friendship." So doesn't that mean that if these women had grown up in twentieth century America, they would have become lesbians? Well... I don't know. I've always thought my own identity as a lesbian was sort of an anomaly. I've also sort of thought people like me didn't really exist.
To clarify: my identity as lesbian didn't grow out of friendship proper, friendship between equals. It was definitely, definitely a response to emotional attachments to women who were much, much older than me. Now, poets like Katherine Philips and Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz also wrote poems about this kind of love (and it is a qualitatively different kind of love) which sort of got bunched up with the friendship poems, and that's what I primarily identified with on first reading.
Later, when I was involved in an intense romantic friendship for the first time, I reread the poems, and sure enough, I suddenly understood this "two souls knit as one" thing. The paradigm worked for me, at least for that relationship. It hasn't really worked for me since then, and I'm sort of puzzled about why.
I think romantic friendship is a distinct category. I don't think it's synonymous with "best friends who fall in love" and certainly not with "any lesbian relationship." It has a unique structure of intensity, worship, purity, spirituality, yadda yadda. And although basically all my romantic attachments could be categorized as "best friends that were verging on something more," what the "something more" was differed from case to case.
Now, there is a certain universalism to the sentiments described in romantic friendship; I know, I was there. But keep in mind that the relationship I most associate with this paradigm was one of the weirdest relationships ever. It was primarily a correspondence. It was non-monogamous. It was at its best when it was intensely sensual but not sexual. It was, most definitely, a romantic friendship. It's not something I regret, but it's also not something I'd want to do again.
I don't think it happens much anymore, this romantic friendship thing. Why? Letter writing is a lost art. Extravagant praise of the beloved can only last so long in a real life situation. Most importantly, women who experience intense emotional attachments to other women are much more likely to label those experiences as lesbian than as romantic friendship but not lesbian. Someone who said otherwise would be labeled "closeted" or "in denial." Maybe that wouldn't be inaccurate. What I'm trying to say is we simply don't use the paradigm of romantic friendship anymore.
Since I firmly believe that sexual identity is socially constructed, I don't think it's fair to appropriate the tradition without context. I don't think it's accurate, either. These women were not lesbians. They were romantic friends, they used those words and those images to identify and categorize themselves. Today, we use very different words with different social implications and responsibilities associated with them.
There's friendship. There's romantic friendship. And there's romance. And those are three different categories. Of course, there's blurring, and I'm sure that there are some romantic friends who used the terminology strictly for purposes of encoding sexual expression, and maybe there are lesbians today whose relationships are really more in keeping with romantic friendship, but that isn't an available label these days.
Quote from a conversation with someone who shall remain unidentified about an event which shall also remain unidentified: "There's no way to say it. She's my romantic friend? It doesn't sound firm enough. It sounds like something that would make very stable and perceptive people raise their eyebrow."
Romantic friendship simply isn't a category anymore, and we have lost something because of that. It's a designation for a kind of relationship that doesn't exist.
And of course this makes writing about it rather difficult. We have this tendency to want to identify these writers as lesbian or proto-lesbian, and to say that was their experience; maybe this is because we identify with this experience and so want to say "this woman is just like me." I have issues with this kind of interpretation of canon.
Take the story of Jonathan and David in the Bible. Lots of people, most of them queer, have noticed this whole "great was thy love to me, surpassing the love of women," and decided, "hey! David was gay!" I have no problem with interpreting those lines like that, but I do have a problem with seeing that as their "real" or "original" intent or meaning. I feel this way about lots of interpretation of canon. To say that Jesus was a socialist or that Jesus was advocating equal rights for women or whatever is not the same thing as saying we can interpret those passages that was from our modern perspective. We always bring an interpretive lens to the work. Always. No matter what we're reading. The issue is not, for me, what the author put into a work but rather what I, the reader, am getting out. Since I'm queer and a slasher, that includes lots of queer content for me.
I slash Anne Shirley and Diana Barry. Actually, I interpret their friendship as a romantic friendship and identify it with certain of my own (romantic) friendships, but in modern terminology, I slash their friendship. This does not mean I think L.M. Montgomery wrote it like that (despite the fact that she did have teacher-crushes. At least I think I read this somewhere), but that's simply how I see it. When I interpret Katherine Philips's work as lesbian (and believe me, I do) I simply mean that her experience of romantic friendship resonates with my lesbian experience. It does not mean I think she was a lesbian or even that she'd identify as such if she were living today.
I've been thinking a lot about friendship and about romantic friendship lately and have come to no conclusions except I still don't know the difference between friendships and relationships and am beginning to wish I did.
I do think best friends can become lovers. I do think that friendship sometimes leads to romance. This is the primary theoretical orientation I write from when I slash; it's how I see the Jack/Daniel dynamic. Were I to slash in the Harry Potter fandom, I'd slash Sirius/Remus or Harry/Ron--more pairs of best friends. I also still think the line between friendship and love is drawn in eyeshadow (thanks to Becky, who coined that phrase.) I no longer think, though, that the line should be identified with romantic friendship. I think romantic friendship is a category of itself, something that's, for the most part, dead, something which is difficult to sustain in today's society, and something that was beautiful. I really do think that. I think we demean it when we simply equate it with lesbianism, and I don't think that's an appropriate response.
I think I've taken my theoretical orientation as a slasher and applied it to all of life--or maybe I've just always had this mentality and finally found a group of people who share it. But I think the way slashers interpret canon is my methodology for approaching a text much of the time.
Yea verily. Rant over. Must now write prospectus.
Summation of rant: on romantic friendship, its history, meaning, personal resonation, and current application, with side-rants on slash, with examples from Stargate, Harry Potter, and Anne of Green Gables. I also get into biblical and literary criticism and social constructionism. Good stuff for all.
You might be interested in this rant if you:
1) are queer.
2) slash in any of my fandoms.
3) are or ever have been my best friend.
(there, I think that includes everyone on my friends' list.)
So Romantic Friendship. What is it? Romantic friendship is a 17th-19th century idealized friendship between women. Lillian Faderman describes them as "intense, passionate female-female relationships... allowed to flourish unmolested by social proscriptions" (5). She goes on to describe the conventions surrounding these kinds of relationships, and the literary works associated with romantic friendship-- poems, letters, novels, diaries, and the like. Often the participants in these relationships were married. Their love was often described in terms of purity, especially when compared to impure heterosexual romantic love.
Katherine Philips basically invented romantic friendship. I'm writing a term paper on her. I read this article that essentially removes Philips from the canon of romantic friendship by saying that romantic friendship is not lesbian writing while Philips's writing is. Or something. This makes no sense to me.
It also makes no sense to me to attempt to call Philips a lesbian, or to say that her emotional connections with other women are "erotic" or "sensual" or "romantic" or anything except what they are--Philips's emotions for other women. I'm not saying they're not romantic. I'm just saying it doesn't make any scholarly sense to me to put them in those categories, especially since Philips certainly wouldn't have.
Let me try to put this in perspective. I first encountered romantic friendship in Lillian Faderman's anthology and I was immediately blown away by how much it resonated with my own experience. I literally stopped reading at several points to note in my diary how much some passage had moved me or how much I knew exactly what the poets were talking about.
So I had this emotional response, and I identified emotions I had always called "lesbian" with emotions these authors were calling "romantic friendship." So doesn't that mean that if these women had grown up in twentieth century America, they would have become lesbians? Well... I don't know. I've always thought my own identity as a lesbian was sort of an anomaly. I've also sort of thought people like me didn't really exist.
To clarify: my identity as lesbian didn't grow out of friendship proper, friendship between equals. It was definitely, definitely a response to emotional attachments to women who were much, much older than me. Now, poets like Katherine Philips and Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz also wrote poems about this kind of love (and it is a qualitatively different kind of love) which sort of got bunched up with the friendship poems, and that's what I primarily identified with on first reading.
Later, when I was involved in an intense romantic friendship for the first time, I reread the poems, and sure enough, I suddenly understood this "two souls knit as one" thing. The paradigm worked for me, at least for that relationship. It hasn't really worked for me since then, and I'm sort of puzzled about why.
I think romantic friendship is a distinct category. I don't think it's synonymous with "best friends who fall in love" and certainly not with "any lesbian relationship." It has a unique structure of intensity, worship, purity, spirituality, yadda yadda. And although basically all my romantic attachments could be categorized as "best friends that were verging on something more," what the "something more" was differed from case to case.
Now, there is a certain universalism to the sentiments described in romantic friendship; I know, I was there. But keep in mind that the relationship I most associate with this paradigm was one of the weirdest relationships ever. It was primarily a correspondence. It was non-monogamous. It was at its best when it was intensely sensual but not sexual. It was, most definitely, a romantic friendship. It's not something I regret, but it's also not something I'd want to do again.
I don't think it happens much anymore, this romantic friendship thing. Why? Letter writing is a lost art. Extravagant praise of the beloved can only last so long in a real life situation. Most importantly, women who experience intense emotional attachments to other women are much more likely to label those experiences as lesbian than as romantic friendship but not lesbian. Someone who said otherwise would be labeled "closeted" or "in denial." Maybe that wouldn't be inaccurate. What I'm trying to say is we simply don't use the paradigm of romantic friendship anymore.
Since I firmly believe that sexual identity is socially constructed, I don't think it's fair to appropriate the tradition without context. I don't think it's accurate, either. These women were not lesbians. They were romantic friends, they used those words and those images to identify and categorize themselves. Today, we use very different words with different social implications and responsibilities associated with them.
There's friendship. There's romantic friendship. And there's romance. And those are three different categories. Of course, there's blurring, and I'm sure that there are some romantic friends who used the terminology strictly for purposes of encoding sexual expression, and maybe there are lesbians today whose relationships are really more in keeping with romantic friendship, but that isn't an available label these days.
Quote from a conversation with someone who shall remain unidentified about an event which shall also remain unidentified: "There's no way to say it. She's my romantic friend? It doesn't sound firm enough. It sounds like something that would make very stable and perceptive people raise their eyebrow."
Romantic friendship simply isn't a category anymore, and we have lost something because of that. It's a designation for a kind of relationship that doesn't exist.
And of course this makes writing about it rather difficult. We have this tendency to want to identify these writers as lesbian or proto-lesbian, and to say that was their experience; maybe this is because we identify with this experience and so want to say "this woman is just like me." I have issues with this kind of interpretation of canon.
Take the story of Jonathan and David in the Bible. Lots of people, most of them queer, have noticed this whole "great was thy love to me, surpassing the love of women," and decided, "hey! David was gay!" I have no problem with interpreting those lines like that, but I do have a problem with seeing that as their "real" or "original" intent or meaning. I feel this way about lots of interpretation of canon. To say that Jesus was a socialist or that Jesus was advocating equal rights for women or whatever is not the same thing as saying we can interpret those passages that was from our modern perspective. We always bring an interpretive lens to the work. Always. No matter what we're reading. The issue is not, for me, what the author put into a work but rather what I, the reader, am getting out. Since I'm queer and a slasher, that includes lots of queer content for me.
I slash Anne Shirley and Diana Barry. Actually, I interpret their friendship as a romantic friendship and identify it with certain of my own (romantic) friendships, but in modern terminology, I slash their friendship. This does not mean I think L.M. Montgomery wrote it like that (despite the fact that she did have teacher-crushes. At least I think I read this somewhere), but that's simply how I see it. When I interpret Katherine Philips's work as lesbian (and believe me, I do) I simply mean that her experience of romantic friendship resonates with my lesbian experience. It does not mean I think she was a lesbian or even that she'd identify as such if she were living today.
I've been thinking a lot about friendship and about romantic friendship lately and have come to no conclusions except I still don't know the difference between friendships and relationships and am beginning to wish I did.
I do think best friends can become lovers. I do think that friendship sometimes leads to romance. This is the primary theoretical orientation I write from when I slash; it's how I see the Jack/Daniel dynamic. Were I to slash in the Harry Potter fandom, I'd slash Sirius/Remus or Harry/Ron--more pairs of best friends. I also still think the line between friendship and love is drawn in eyeshadow (thanks to Becky, who coined that phrase.) I no longer think, though, that the line should be identified with romantic friendship. I think romantic friendship is a category of itself, something that's, for the most part, dead, something which is difficult to sustain in today's society, and something that was beautiful. I really do think that. I think we demean it when we simply equate it with lesbianism, and I don't think that's an appropriate response.
I think I've taken my theoretical orientation as a slasher and applied it to all of life--or maybe I've just always had this mentality and finally found a group of people who share it. But I think the way slashers interpret canon is my methodology for approaching a text much of the time.
Yea verily. Rant over. Must now write prospectus.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-09-29 06:36 pm (UTC)eloquent as ever, I see...
Date: 2003-09-29 07:29 pm (UTC)The idea of "female romances" really does suit what the queen of France did, a lot more than lesbianism. Especially given her psychological situation.
I also agree that the best, most lasting, and most profound romances do grow out of friendships.
Another example of a modern interpretation in this might be Sam/Janet. I can see how their relationship would be like this. Especially since they co-mom Cassie and are so easily intimate together.
- Meg
Sam/Janet
Date: 2003-09-29 07:35 pm (UTC)I wrote a rant awhile ago about how fandom tends to denigrate friendship by either ignoring it or making it sexual; I think this sort of connects to this rant.
Now.. must. write. paper.