#queerness in fandom

[howldean]

You know that feeling, of having been raised a heterosexual and cisgender person, only to now, queer af, go back and consume the same media you watched when you were younger and it’s all just really really gay?

[theanonymous911fan]

gonna go on a small rant here that’s not necessarily about 9-1-1 but is smth i’ve noticed about 9-1-1 as well as the fandom that initially sparked this so it’s semi-relevant to my blog:

i’m so tired of seeing fandom so marred down with fetishization of gay men that they try to pass off as “letting a character explore”

it’s just such a tired, annoying ass trope of trying to turn gay characters into these messy “hooking up and dating a random man because he needs to “learn” how to be gay before he eventually breaks the guy’s heart for the endgame” bullshit stories that just make us look like sex ridden freaks and maybe it’s the demi side of me but i’m so fucking tired of fan pairings and relationships being boiled down to sex and looks? like i genuinely don’t understand anyone who had the mindset of “oh i want _____ endgame but i’m gonna push for this random ass pairing just bc they’re hot even tho they have no chemistry and one of them is boring as fuck and has zero interesting qualities aside from being borderline attractive” like why are yall so sex obsessed it’s so icky to me, what happened to romance? and the few examples of this that aren’t sex related, yall always make it seem like character a is head over heels for the side piece and then slap a “pre-_____” label on it for…. what? appeasing the other fans? you can’t call something “pre-“ if there is absolutely zero indication of it happening!

and like this isn’t even just a buddie fandom thing, this shit is rampant across every single fandom out there and it’s one of those things that like- i get not yucking someone’s yum to a certain extent, but it makes me genuinely question how many of yall actually ship the popular pairing bc you want to see a fulfilling relationship that isn’t just about sex and fucking 24/7 vs how many of yall just wanna see two conventionally attractive men kiss regardless of if they have chemistry or not bc you don’t actually care about them having a fulfilling relationship or not.

the concept of stepping stone relationships and queer people having to be “educated” in how to live as queer people is such a weird concept to me and it pisses me off when i see non-queer people writing it, but it makes me even more livid when i see actual queer people writing it too bc it’s like why are we always so obsessed with applying regressive tropes and stereotypes to ourselves instead of working towards actually meaningful representation?? i’ll genuinely never understand it

again, i would never leave a hate comment on someone’s fic, i would never outright attack or spew hateful things at someone for writing this stuff, and 9/10 times if i see smth i know i wont like i scroll or block, but sometimes morbid curiosity gets the better of me, and i see so many familiar faces from different fandoms in comment sections on fics cheering on a character getting with someone whom they have absolutely zero chemistry with (even in the fic half the time!) and it’s purely just from a sexual gratification standpoint and, again, maybe i’m too demi and neurodivergent to understand it but i just don’t!

[slow-reader-reads-books]

///discussions of terminology of genitalia in a trans context in fanfiction and fandom

Not relevant to anything at all, but one teeeeeny tiny nitpick I will always have with tagging conventions (mainly on AO3) is the use of "afab terminology" or "amab terminology" for characters' genitalia.

That tells me nothing other than you've not graduated queer theory 101 and learned the difference between primary and secondary sex characteristics, social gender identity, and the concept of sex assignment via the strongest visible traits at birth, and how our use of language fluidly intersects with these things and our senses of self.

"Afab/amab terminology"— the actual things you are wanting to describe is "culturally feminine/masculine terminology" or even perhaps "medically direct terminology".

A character can have what is clinically called a penis or phallus, but it described with feminine terms a la clit, etc, but if a character has a phallus and is a masculine character, you wouldn't tag it as "amab terminology" because it's a given and presumed "normal", so you don't specify. Same for a presumably cis female character having a vagina, you wouldn't tag that character's bits being called a pussy as "afab terminology" bc "why would you, that's a female character". Those example characters are both afab and amab tho.

You mark the trans and/or genderqueer body as abnormal or other through this double standard.

By equating assigned gendered sex at birth with culturally feminine or masculine terms, you are communicating the subtext that such feminine and masculine language is indeed tied directly to if not caused by biological sex traits, thus propagating gender bioessentialism (that biological sex determines your intangible nature forever; intangible includes language) and it's relation to language as an enforcer of it.

And by having a double standard between cis and trans/non-cis (fantastical characters who have bodies in ways real life people don't, or at least don't at birth have but can gain through individualized transition is included under this, even if they're not textually or socially trans diegetically) characters' descriptions in this tagging convention implies describing a trans man's clinically-described vagina who calls it that, or a pussy or cunt, as ultimately an unmale thing to do, bc it's "a(f)ab", giving a subtle coding of gender denial to the presentation of the character. At least to me and my idiosyncratic brain.

Not to say that this is BECAUSE a hypothetical fictional trans male character that uses culturally feminine terms to describe what can be called Müllerian genitals (Müllerian = what is usually called "biological female") is misgendering himself. Real people (and depictions in fiction of realistic people) can twist traditionally gendered words for their own uses and comfort and fun; that's what queering language is all about, but calling using culturally feminine terms for medically Müllerian genitals "afab terminology" makes it sound like femininity is originated in biology rather than in the social culture.

Also, transfems with vaginoplasty most def call their vaginas by "afab terminology" 90+% of the time (hyperbolic number taken outta my ass, but generally in the ballpark of what I've seen as true). What does being assigned female at birth have to do with them and their lovely vaginas?

If you simply describe these terms as directly feminine, that puts the origin of how these terms are used in culture, i.e how people habitually use them, which gives power to these terms being fluid in use, because language and culture are fluid tools of expression and framing.

By connecting the language instead to assigned gendered sex, you are putting the cause of this language and the culture of its use onto biological sex, which leads to a supporting of the concrete and permanent destiny of sex locking you into being associated with certain patterns of language and enforcing a limit on how one can express themselves and communicate their body.

Also: intersex people of various stripes are more often than not (tho not always) just like the endosex (non-intersex) population assigned either male or female at birth, regardless of how their genitals are (at birth or after puberty), and despite often being just as amab or afab, can have genitals that often provoke the usage of a more masculine or feminine lexicon. That does not override the gender they were assigned at birth. So being amab and afab inherently has internal variety of genital appearance and function.

By bypassing assigned sex, you bypass using it as a nuance erasing set of categories.

And if you also want to bypass describing what are ultimately culturally neutral body parts as "feminine" or "masculine" you can always use their clinical terms directly. "X calls their vagina/pussy/etc a vagina/pussy/etc"; "X calls their clitoris a cock" and so on.

I do understand why at least fanfiction tends to default to using fem terms for transmasc characters's genitals: using terms as they're conventionally used gives a more clear and straightforward mental image of what things are supposed to look like. If a character is mentioned as having a cock and hole, unless you deftly make it clear without fem terms, one could imagine this equally as either a Wolffian (Wolffian = what most call "biologically male") phallus and an anus, or a post-T phallus which could be derived from a testosterone-influenced Müllerian clitoris, or from phalloplasty, and a vagina.

There is an extra layer of "ok these characters are speaking with a unique layer of gender that attaches itself to physical body parts that are more clinically or conventionally referred to as something else, and you just have to learn through reading how the characters are calling what" that you would have to navigate, and that can be a bitch to take into consideration!

I get why people in erotic writing often default to the conventional terms that align with the body parts' associated assigned sex. I just don't like the shorthand tag for that usage giving credit of that use of language to the perception-at-birth inborn biology rather than the cultural act of gendering. It's still a cultural act of gendering if it aligns with the larger culture. It's not only an act of gendering if it exists in stark contrast with established non-queer cultural conventions. It's just that one is more noticeable than the other.

tl;dr: largely irrelevant personal ick I have is when people describe trans/trans coded characters' who use the default cultural terms for their genitals as "afab/amab terminology" in fic tags bc it flattens how people can have genitals they weren't born with but instead gained later in life regardless of assigned sex, and also people can fluidly describe their genitals with alt gendered terms even if it's not the non-queer norm. "Afab/amab terminology" falsely attributes these terms as only possible or sensible to use if bestowed upon them by being "born with it".

[mallymun]

We need more bisexual women in fandom

Okay actually lemme give context

Fandom is finally being more happy with bisexual men, its usually in hand with calling them whores (affectionate) and explicitly saying he likes to be pegged

But

Bisexual women? Noooo, she was just in the closet and now that she's found a woman, it's obvious she was always lesbian (yes that's what they say and yes I'm upset about it)

Fandom needs more unapologetically bisexual women

And i do specify FANDOM and not MEDIA because Media can hand us an honest-to-Dorothy bisexual and Fandom will decide she's really actually a closeted lesbian

Let the bi-folks be bi for sanity's sake

[sweetwinter]

When I was a Nerdy Youth™, “gay for [character/celebrity]” meant “I am 100% straight but I think this person is unusually attractive” +/- “look how cool and daring I am” +/- “I have genuinely never heard of the concept of being attracted to multiple genders” +/- “I want to have the fun of crushing on a same-gender person without losing an ounce of straight privilege”

therefore I have to assume that the Queer Kids These Days™ are using it ironically--which is fine, that’s a thing that people love to do, but still, every time I read “[bi/lesbian/pan] + gay for [Holtzmann/some Overwatch character/whoever]” my brain just has a small seizure.

[hubblegleeflower]

Why Do Queer Women Ship Gay Men (So Damn Hard)?

So I went to visit some friends in NYC some weeks ago, a good friend from uni and her wife. I am out to my friend, both as being bisexual (she’s my ex-girlfriend, after all, which I think helped tip her off) and as writing erotic gay fanfiction on the internet (a much harder thing to admit, in some circles). 

Both my friend and her wife were curious as to what it was about BBC Sherlock that engages my attention, and why I (and my online consorts) believe it is intentionally gay, so I showed them a few scenes from ASiP. They didn’t take much convincing. At all. (I wrote this post about that experience.)

Another thing my friends found intriguing was when I shared with them the fact that so many of the people I’ve connected with online are, like me, bisexual or otherwise queer women, many of whom are in relationships with men. It seems significant that there are SO MANY QUEER WOMEN participating here

My friend’s wife asked for my opinion as to why that is. Why it is that this fandom (and many others) is full of queer women who ship gay pairings, hard and explicitly.

(And since it’s something I’d been thinking about, I ventured an opinion, in sweeping and unreferenced statements about gender relations supported only by the fact that they ‘sound right to me’. And now I’m going to share them with you, because Tumblr is always forgiving of this kind of ‘scholarship’.)

First of all, it’s compelling to envision a sexual encounter where neither partner expects automatically to be subordinate to the other. Not that there is no dominance dynamic, but if there is, the roles are determined by something other than the person’s gender. Both partners are ‘allowed’ to desire the sexual encounter to the same degree, and both partners (probably) have developed the expectation that their own pleasure and climax are important objectives in sex. 

You can’t count on any of those conditions if either partner is a woman.

Furthermore, I for one find it fascinating to imagine what sex would look like between people who have been taught to see themselves and their partner as fully realized, thinking individuals with complete agency and autonomy in all their relationships. What does it look like to write about sex where respect for the other person’s personhood is automatic? Of course that respect can exist between a man and a woman, but when it does, there’s an undercurrent of man, what a great guy, he’s totally treating her like a human being because it’s not a given at all. 

Even in female-only pairings, women have to struggle so hard growing up in order to see even themselves as fully human, and behave accordingly, so it is conceivably doubly problematic when there are two female partners. 

Whereas men - in general, this being a generalization - are conditioned to automatically attribute personhood to themselves, and to other men. That mutual acknowledgement can be powerfully erotic to people who rarely experience it.

And this isn’t to suggest that I am not treated as fully human by my husband, or that I feel dominated and/or belittled and/or infantlized in our sexual relations (which are just fine, in case you were worried, and feeling the benefit of my year spent reading and writing erotic fiction, in case you needed just a bit too much information). It’s just that I have had and seen and read about a great many man/woman relationships where those issues have applied. In my shipping, therefore, and in my writing, the connections I find engrossing are the ones where I can bypass many of those concerns simply by virtue of the gender of the participants. And I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the same factors were motivating many of the other people I’ve connected with online.

My friend nodded solemnly here, and we both pensively sipped our beers. (Yes, there was beer.) 

After a moment, she added, as if it were inconsequential, “And also, you’re all looking for sameness in a sexual encounter.”

Which hit me quite hard, for some reason.

I’ll tag some smart people who can tell me what they think. Well, team? @platinumkoi, @cakepopsforeveryone, @librarylock , @gunshyvw, @weeesi, @thememacat, @sincerely-chaos, @ladymacphisto @may-shepard @hudders-and-hiddles @gaybrunchthreepwood @doctornerdington @seriously-mary-though

[ruggedpurity]

mghgh

on fetishization of homosexuality, in both the pornography industry and fanworks, on both men and women

oftentimes homosexual relationships are simply used in works because a.) it can be a plot device b.) it's hot.

both are equally fucked up.

not addressing point a because that's more an issue with mainstream media that is SFW. too many cop shows, too many tv dramas, have used queer people as plot devices and we're all pretty aware of this.

now within the pornography industry, most lesbian porn is in fact marketed towards heterosexual males, not lesbian females, the group that's subject. fetishization. and in many, many fanworks, homosexual males are portrayed in such a manner that man heterosexual females find appealing

my problem lies in that this is how women and men who have same sex inclinations are often seen. that these things genuinely make queer people uncomfortable.

exploration of sexuality is fine, and if gay pornographic media gets you going then by all means that's fine.

but this whole "LOL LESBIANS" or "LOL HOMOS" thing makes a LOT of gay/bi/pansexual people incredibly uncomfortable (speaking from personal experience and the opinions of many queer friends)

please take that into consideration. once in a while is FINE but it gets to the point where people are shoving it down everyones throats and people made uncomfortable by it have no voice.

thank you for taking the time to read this, if you did.