slash/gen: I would like to ship it
Jul. 2nd, 2009 10:36 am![[personal profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thingswithwingshmmm, there's a bit of a thing going on in the vidding community at the moment about vidorama, a vidding community that specifically excludes not only slash vids, but also fandoms where there might be any evil gay cooties that could get on the het vids. For more, I refer you to luminosity's post and morgandawn's post on the subject, the latter of which also gives some context in terms of historical treatment of slash vids at vid cons. I'd like to hear more about that last subject, actually.
Of course I'm disgusted by the whole thing, and get hurt and angry and then ANGRY whenever someone tells me to keep my gayness to myself because they don't want to have to LOOK at it. But here's another little tiny thing that I've seen crop up a couple times, and that occurs elsewhere in fandom as well, and it's starting to really, really annoy me.
het/gen vs slash: why slash doesn't get to be slashed with gen
so, this community is a "het/gen" community. There are lots of places in fandom where one sees this appellation. One of my favourite recs sites, for example, polyamorous recommendations, classifies its recs into three possible categories: gen/het, het/slash, and slash. I don't say that to single out polyam, which is a lovely site that I've frequented for years and that is OBVIOUSLY pro-slash. This is a classification system that polyam inherited from someone who inherited it from someone who inherited it from someone, and it's everywhere in fandom.
but when an obviously homophobic/heterosexist community like vidorama says that it's het/gen, it reveals the nastiness that is always, always behind the coincidence, the partnership, of those two terms. Even when they're grouped together by someone who thinks they're doing it innocently.
The thing is: if I'm writing a gen Smallville story - by which we mean, usually, a story that is not about sexual or romantic partnerships, but is rather something plot-driven or single-character-driven or something that you might see on the show itself - I might end up writing a story that includes the canon pairings of the show, that mentions Lex/Lana or something as part of the general background. So then the story sort of IS gen/het, isn't it? Because I'm not writing a Lex/Lana story, but they're just there.
Yes; but also, NO NO NO NO. Heterosexuality is the background, the default, the "general" to homosexuality's "specific," the assumed condition, the assumed state of affairs. Any kind of queer sexuality is an add-on, an extra, a supplement, a sudden influx of eroticism.
This is why, like I said over at Lum's post, het makeouts on screen are treated differently by censors than gay makeouts on screen.
This is why I am told that the gay children's book I gave my nephew "contains sexuality," but the dozens of children's books that he already has where mommy and daddy love each other do not contain sexuality.
This is why Amazon.com "accidentally" classified all their non-explicit gay autobiographies and gay adoption manuals as "explicit" -- because homosexuality IS sexually explicit, by default, while heterosexuality is not.
This is how these things are set up, conceived of. This is how heterosexual power is maintained, how homophobia is institutionalized. You can be gay, but keep it over there. You can be queer, but I don't want to have to see it, to look at it, to acknowledge its existence. I, as a queer lady, can never ever be "general," for general consumption, appropriate for children; a story about queer dudes or ladies can never be defined by its plot or by a single-character story. Slash stories can never be gen.
But - oh dear - a problem! What if I write a Torchwood story with Jack/Ianto in the background, in which the focus of the story is an alien invasion that Tosh deals with on her own? Is that not the same situation as the Smallville story described above? Labels in fandom do deal with this - some people do label stories "slash, gen," or I might write, "Characters: Tosh, Jack/Ianto background" or something. But I think it's interesting that slash/gen as a larger, more commonly used category does not exist; and that, even when you see them used together in a label, they're seldom slashed with each other the way that het/gen often is.
I am so serious about this: het/gen, the slashing of het and gen, het and gen making out with each other, is a system that reinscribes heterosexuality as the norm and as normal, a system that excludes queer sexualities from representation, from general interest. A system that says: either you're here for the gay porn or you're here for the normal stuff. And the thing is, even people who are here for the gay porn, people who are politically pro-queer and who are gay or queer themselves, use this system, probably unthinkingly. But maybe we should think about this system more, and think about the assumptions it makes. Think about how heterosexual power is supported and maintained precisely by the assumption that het is the gen condition.
This is why I don't want to hear anymore about how it's perfectly acceptable to have a "het/gen" community or a "het/gen" challenge. That shit is NOT perfectly acceptable. Have a gen challenge - in which queer characters can also do gen things - or have a het challenge - because hey, you get off on a lady making out with a dude, that's fine! - but please stop trying to tell me that those two categories are the same. Everything I see, everywhere I go, all of my life, all the time, everything tries to tell me that those two categories are the same, and I am really, really sick of it.
eta: I also encourage you to read![[livejournal.com profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rm's post, Oh Noes! There's Gay People in My Fandom!, which is dealing with a lot of issues related to this one, and which satisfyingly pinpoints a lot of things that I encounter in fandom that make me feel uncomfortable, upset, and pissed off.
Of course I'm disgusted by the whole thing, and get hurt and angry and then ANGRY whenever someone tells me to keep my gayness to myself because they don't want to have to LOOK at it. But here's another little tiny thing that I've seen crop up a couple times, and that occurs elsewhere in fandom as well, and it's starting to really, really annoy me.
het/gen vs slash: why slash doesn't get to be slashed with gen
so, this community is a "het/gen" community. There are lots of places in fandom where one sees this appellation. One of my favourite recs sites, for example, polyamorous recommendations, classifies its recs into three possible categories: gen/het, het/slash, and slash. I don't say that to single out polyam, which is a lovely site that I've frequented for years and that is OBVIOUSLY pro-slash. This is a classification system that polyam inherited from someone who inherited it from someone who inherited it from someone, and it's everywhere in fandom.
but when an obviously homophobic/heterosexist community like vidorama says that it's het/gen, it reveals the nastiness that is always, always behind the coincidence, the partnership, of those two terms. Even when they're grouped together by someone who thinks they're doing it innocently.
The thing is: if I'm writing a gen Smallville story - by which we mean, usually, a story that is not about sexual or romantic partnerships, but is rather something plot-driven or single-character-driven or something that you might see on the show itself - I might end up writing a story that includes the canon pairings of the show, that mentions Lex/Lana or something as part of the general background. So then the story sort of IS gen/het, isn't it? Because I'm not writing a Lex/Lana story, but they're just there.
Yes; but also, NO NO NO NO. Heterosexuality is the background, the default, the "general" to homosexuality's "specific," the assumed condition, the assumed state of affairs. Any kind of queer sexuality is an add-on, an extra, a supplement, a sudden influx of eroticism.
This is why, like I said over at Lum's post, het makeouts on screen are treated differently by censors than gay makeouts on screen.
This is why I am told that the gay children's book I gave my nephew "contains sexuality," but the dozens of children's books that he already has where mommy and daddy love each other do not contain sexuality.
This is why Amazon.com "accidentally" classified all their non-explicit gay autobiographies and gay adoption manuals as "explicit" -- because homosexuality IS sexually explicit, by default, while heterosexuality is not.
This is how these things are set up, conceived of. This is how heterosexual power is maintained, how homophobia is institutionalized. You can be gay, but keep it over there. You can be queer, but I don't want to have to see it, to look at it, to acknowledge its existence. I, as a queer lady, can never ever be "general," for general consumption, appropriate for children; a story about queer dudes or ladies can never be defined by its plot or by a single-character story. Slash stories can never be gen.
But - oh dear - a problem! What if I write a Torchwood story with Jack/Ianto in the background, in which the focus of the story is an alien invasion that Tosh deals with on her own? Is that not the same situation as the Smallville story described above? Labels in fandom do deal with this - some people do label stories "slash, gen," or I might write, "Characters: Tosh, Jack/Ianto background" or something. But I think it's interesting that slash/gen as a larger, more commonly used category does not exist; and that, even when you see them used together in a label, they're seldom slashed with each other the way that het/gen often is.
I am so serious about this: het/gen, the slashing of het and gen, het and gen making out with each other, is a system that reinscribes heterosexuality as the norm and as normal, a system that excludes queer sexualities from representation, from general interest. A system that says: either you're here for the gay porn or you're here for the normal stuff. And the thing is, even people who are here for the gay porn, people who are politically pro-queer and who are gay or queer themselves, use this system, probably unthinkingly. But maybe we should think about this system more, and think about the assumptions it makes. Think about how heterosexual power is supported and maintained precisely by the assumption that het is the gen condition.
This is why I don't want to hear anymore about how it's perfectly acceptable to have a "het/gen" community or a "het/gen" challenge. That shit is NOT perfectly acceptable. Have a gen challenge - in which queer characters can also do gen things - or have a het challenge - because hey, you get off on a lady making out with a dude, that's fine! - but please stop trying to tell me that those two categories are the same. Everything I see, everywhere I go, all of my life, all the time, everything tries to tell me that those two categories are the same, and I am really, really sick of it.
eta: I also encourage you to read
rm's post, Oh Noes! There's Gay People in My Fandom!, which is dealing with a lot of issues related to this one, and which satisfyingly pinpoints a lot of things that I encounter in fandom that make me feel uncomfortable, upset, and pissed off.
het/gen, the slashing of het and gen, het and gen making out with each other, is a system that reinscribes heterosexuality as the norm and as normal, a system that excludes queer sexualities from representation, from general interest
This is a fantastic post, articulating a lot of my long-held grumbles and irritations, and the passage above is *beautiful*. I love that you're calling for attention to the system, the infrastructure, the categories that condition our thinking.
Maybe you and I could throw that? Or I could throw it and you could help me with the mechanics of doing it well?
I've thought for a while that maybe the dichotomy shouldn't be slash/het, but slash/canon. Because I really don't see a valid reason why a non-canonical het pairing is any less off the canonized path than a non-canonical same-sex pairing. So Jack/Ianto isn't slash (really, Jack/anybody isn't slash), but Sophie/Elliot is.
I'm not proposing a functional redefining -- too much work, too wanktastic -- but does that make sense?
the central theme of slash fiction (and for slash fiction, read the lives of queer people) is automatically assumed to be explicit sexuality.
beautifully put. That's the crux of it.
Yes. This. Only you've articulated this infuriating thing way more eloquently than I ever could've.
This is my understanding, although I wasn't there.
Media*West is huge and used to just show all vids at the same time. Someone at some point made a vid that interpolated actual gay porn (or other explicit sex scene not from the media source) to depict the slashy m/m relationship of the media source. Media*West overrreacted and declared that, going forward, all slash vids would be segregated. That separation continues to this day, although they have been getting fewer and fewer vids submitted. (Overall submissions are down, but slash submissions have decreased more.)
Most other cons that showed vids were slash cons, or fandom specific cons (for e.g. Starsky & Hutch) where requirements varied by con: some would only show slash vids, some would show slash and gen but only for their source and related sources. I'm not aware of any cons other than Media*West doing the whole showing but segregating of vids. There may have been an older het only or het and gen con that showed vids, but I'm not coming up with one -- the history of vidding is very slashy. (One big exception would be Soap Opera conventions -- they have their own history, and were making het vids -- but I don't know much about it.)
Escapade in particular starting attracting more vidders who wanted to vid they wanted to vid: audience reaction could be mixed. Gen vids often get "but where's the slash?" comments, m/m/f three-somes get some complaints for the icky het. (Examples: New Frontier by here's luck, Come Together by laurashapiro.) There's a weird divide going on there: audience expectation (especially among newcomers) that a slash con should only show slash vids, against the long-standing tradition of it not being a slash-only vidshow. (People also complain about new slash pairings, e.g. Don't pimp your favorite new show ... unless it's one that I also like. See Killa's first Jeremiah vid.) Escapade audiences complain a lot, and there used to be dead time in between the vids where the audience wrote on comment cards, which the vidders would look at later. Het vids have shown as well (Icebound Stream by sisabet) -- and while a beautiful vid that most enjoyed -- Due South is a favorite fandom of slashers -- I'm pretty sure a few complained about it being het.
Connexions was infamous for showing e.g. five LOTR Sam/Frodo vids back to back. (That is hard on your audience).
VividCon wasn't formed in a vacuum, it was founded by people who attended Escapade and were aware of the situation at MediaWest and Connexions(even those who didn't attend were up-to-date via the vidder Yahoo! group). Vividcon is very multifannish, 18 and over, and mixes gen/het/slash vids together in the same show. It also tries to space out vids in the same fandom in the premieres show and encourages VJs not to double-up on vidders/fandoms. And it attempts to keep the premieres show to 2 hours. This is all born out of the experiences people had at other cons.
Newer multifandom cons such as CON.TXT, MuskratJamboree, and Bitchin' Party (aka Pacificon) have gone the route of having juried vid shows, chosen in advance by the concom (in some cases with suggestions by the members). Vidshows: CON.TXT is slash-only, MJ is mostly slash, Bitchin Party is slash-friendly but *not* a slash con (they love Farscape) and has a lot of vidders on staff and in attendance. They've all put together excellent vidshows. CON.TXT and MJ now allow pre-approved premieres.
Newer fandom-specific cons: I think one of the SPN cons has a no slash/incest policy and the other is primarily slash. (Before the current season, the SPN slash pairings were all also incest pairings). Although, when it comes to single fandom cons, all slash all the time makes for a repetitive vidshow! I'm sure that Winchestercon allows gen. The recent Merlin mini-con made an effort to find gen and female-character vids in addition to the m/m ones they were already familiar with, which was nice to see.
VidUKon, like VividCon, shows all kinds of vids. They did have one slash-only* vidshow (something that VividCon probably would not do) (*which did include femslash). It's the only other vidding con. (VidCon, in Florida, is a media con.)
Disclaimer: General impressions and trends. Not gospel. YMMV.
What I think your post has made clear to me is that I find that unfair because there just aren't a hell of a lot of queer relationships in any canon (QAF/The L Word aside), so it's not an even equation. There are tons of canonical het pairings out there, and it feels wrong to me that they get a "free pass" into the gen neighborhood in spite of being totally shippy, just because so-called general audiences are okay with het but not with queer relationships.
I'm still twitchy about labeling anything that has any element of romance or pairing or a non-canon pairing "gen", and, I mean, I get that that's overly strict. It means that episodes of TNG like "Parallels" aren't gen (Worf/Troi het), and episodes of DS9 like "His Way" aren't gen (Odo/Kira het), when canon itself is almost universally considered to be gen. But it bugs me to think that people with a less strict view of gen are excluding slash from the entire category, because if canon isn't the sticking point, what is? And of course you totally have it pegged right. It's the notion that queer relationships are somehow different from het relationships, less "acceptable". Crazy talk! But so pervasive!
I also have a similar definition of genfic that includes (background) portrayals of canon ships, and uncomfortable with how it ends up excluding (background) queer relationships with a few canon exceptions. And I think it's only in predominantly slash fandoms and heavy subtext/implicit text canons where you can have genfic with background queer relationships. Hm, while I'd question the presence of non-canonical pairings in genfic, I'd view fanfic about a character coming out to friends and family as essentially genfic since romance/shipping isn't the focus.
On the other hand, I've seen het/gen run a gamut where an ensemble adventure fic is labeled as shipfic because it contains non-canonical ship pairings, to fanfic with a heavy focus on het shipping and romantic triangles labeled as genfic, which--hell, no.
*furrows brow in puzzlement*
*tries to fix*
And yes. What I've been trying to explain to some people for the last few days!
I hope you don't mind I've linked this to my posts at dreamwidth and lj?
"Can you even be gay by yourself?"
I would love to read some queer/gen. In the past, I have always avoided anything labeled gen because of that whole "background het pairings are perfectly gen" loophole.
Thanks for posting this :D
It looks like
The idea that queer people get interpellated as sexually explicit regardless of whether they're exhibiting sexual behavior (in fic or in their lives) is part of how heterosexist society supports homophobic threats and violence. There are people who *do* think you're eating your yogurt "queerly" and they have a problem with that--somehow it's their business to police how we look and act even in nonsexual situations!
I've been called "dyke!" and had threatening gestures made at me while walking down the street ALONE--nevermind the things that I've dealt with while holding another woman's hand in public, or worse! presenting as gender indeterminant.
"We don't want to see that/you here" is an attitude that I find actually dangerous, threatening, for that reason. That's why I'm not on board with the folks who are suggesting "ignore it and it'll go away". We've learned the hard way that people NOT calling out homophobia openly is how heterosexist oppression functions. It disturbs me to see it in a fannish context (though I know there are homophobic people here as there are everywhere), though I think (naively hope?) the fannish tide is pretty firmly pro-queer.
Also I'm eye-rolling at the person who started that comm, anyhow--what kind of challenge only accepts fandoms that the (one?) adjudicator *likes*? What! Fandom is not for you to say "dance monkey dance!" She deserves derision just for *that*.
I'd never considered the het/gen business before, and I agree with your analysis of it. Thank you for posting this.
Though I did once feel impelled to send a note to someone who's been in fandom forever, that "PG-13 for slash" was really not meaningful (or appreciated) in Lotrips. Took me a while to find the right wording, and she took my suggestion graciously, but damn, a pairing says it all.
That kind of thinking - that you can "straightwash" gay relationships out of media and reality and pretend they only exist in the darkened circles of slash fans - parallels so much of real life, many examples which you highlight here. I recently discovered that Photobucket's search engine displays this EXPLICIT CONTENT warning when you type in any search with "gay" in it (I was searching "gay rights" at the time.) I sent them an email, and they replied to say they were "looking into it", which was better than the response some friends got (blah blah blah statistical analysis show people use this term to host explicit content blah blah blah).
Who knows if they will do anything about it. I'm cynical, but we'll see.
The unmarked category. I love the way you put this. Also I now kind of want to make a t-shirt: A Sudden Influx of Eroticism.
I guess I've been doing it wrong. Suddenly some of the reviews I've gotten at ffnet make more sense. And you know what, I'm GLAD I do it wrong, cause I'd rather be like me than like THAT.
Fuck 'em. You know, I'm done trying to cater to readers' sensitivities. Why does everything have to be broken down into who characters might have sex with? In real life, people just ARE.
*hugs* for you. I share your frustration.
Any kind of queer sexuality is an add-on, an extra, a supplement, a sudden influx of eroticism.
Yes. Because queer sexuality is thrown in with the dirtybadwrong and NOT taken at face value - as EQUAL to, if you will, Het sexuality. This is wrong!
My parents drive me up the wall because they say how they just "don't want that stuff in their face" and so on -- and I have a hard time articulating why that fills me with so much rage. As if it's OK that the closet exists - that the closet is perpetuated because people just don't want to SEE IT.
Think about how heterosexual power is supported and maintained precisely by the assumption that het is the gen condition.
That too.
I have two partners, one male, one female. I am incredibly bothered by the ways in which my relationship with my female partner is held to different standards than my relationship with my male partner to the extent that even acknowledging our existence is somehow a shockingly transgressive act.
And I hate that even in the relatively queer-friendly and enlightened space of fandom, I still have to fight against being written out of existence.