I was thinking about how Larries might have made things harder for Harry and Louis by noticing and talking about their queerness and love. But my feeling is that the blame isn’t in the mostly young, queer ppl noticing and talking about queer love, it’s in the homophobic institutions that directly or indirectly punished Harry and Louis for even somewhat visibly displaying those things.
So I want to place blame on the institutions but I also feel like I need to allow space for the possibility of individuals (I guess by this I mean Larries) doing harm. I think harm can come from lots of places. I guess I’m trying to figure out how much responsibility as individuals we have to mitigate any harm that might come from our acting within a homophobic etc culture?
I don’t think it’s usually useful to look at a particular action as being solely harmful - Larries made things harder for Harry and Louis, And they made a community, saw themselves represented, etc. Maybe ‘who is to blame?’ isn’t a good framework in this context or in general?
As you can see this is all muddled in my brain so I would love to hear what you think the most useful way of thinking about these things is. I hope you’re doing well, I always learn so much from you.
Thanks for sending this ask anon - I think it raises a lot of interesting questions.
I think that the basic principle of looking at structures rather than individuals is a really important one and a really solid foundation to build the rest of your analysis. But as you say the question then is how do you discuss individual behaviour.
I think the first point to make is that 'does harm' is quite a difficult category in terms of developing a framework for how to interact with other people. Because the starting point seems to be that you can, or should try, avoid doing anything that might harm other people. And unless you define 'doing harm' way less broadly than the impact that talking about a celebrity can have on them, there's going to be lots of examples where trying too avoid doing any harm would make both action and inaction impossible. One example that I think is quite illustrative is anxiety - people have to be able to act in a way that might cause someone else anxiety. Another is just the mundanity of work - supermarket check out operators can't give food to people unless they have money. That's a hugely harmful act, but it's absurd to conclude that nobody should be a supermarket check out operator.
One important boundary is that none of us are responsible for the whole world. In this context, I think it's useful to think about fandom as a whole. Having fans can be incredibly damaging to people's wellbeing. That doesn't mean that being a fan is wrong.
In addition, as you suggest, being able to talk about queerness is an important part of queer culture and history. And erasing hte possibility of queerness is really harmful.
I think another point about boundaries is that even though something may be important and necessary for you that doesn't mean that everyone has to be happy about it. It's important to escape black and white thinking. The flipside of 'I must make other people happy at all times' (dangerous idea) is 'If something is necessary to me then nobody is allowed to be unhappy about it'.
I think a boundaried way of thinking about all this is that fans who are understanding the world, including their sexuality, through Harry and Louis are risking doing harm to Harry and Louis. Accepting that risk is part of being a fan with good boundaries. It's accepting that we're different people from Harry and Louis, with different interests.
I think a key part of boundaried fandom is giving up the idea that what you are doing is righteous. There is quite a common belief within Larrie fandom that there is something inherently righteous about what we're doing. That usually comes from either the idea we're fighting for Louis and Harry's interests (we're not) or that the act of getting together and talking about queerness is always righteous (for people who believe this I do recommend the podcast Bad Gays as a good antidote)
One reason that this is important is that almost anything is justified if you persuade yourself you are righteous. There was a horrible anon going around a few days ago that started 'Remember you're not alone'. I got it but didn't post it. The people who sent that had persuaded themselves that it was OK to talk to Larries that way because Larries were wrong and bad and the righteous thing to do was to try and stop them. A fandom where everyone accepts that nothing they're doing is so righteous is much less harmful to everyone.
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