feuervogel (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
feuervogel) wrote2009-09-02 02:30 pm
feuervogel) wrote2009-09-02 02:30 pm
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(fantasy/future sf) World without homophobia = uninteresting?
To borrow an internet phrase, ORLY?
OK, as a matter of de gustibus, as the saying goes, non disputandum est. You don't like, you don't read, but don't disparage other folks' pleasure reading.
Yesterday, John Scalzi posted as his Big Idea du jour Malinda Lo's Ash, a retelling of Cinderella, where Cinderella's a lesbian. And no one in the story cares. Because queer folks need fairy tales, too, wherein there's no one yelling hate at them or forcing them into loveless marriages, and they all live happily ever after.
Some people take issue with this, saying that it's uninteresting to have a world without homophobia. Others say it's forcing heteronormativity onto a lesbian. The comment thread is pretty interesting.
So the first, as mentioned above, is a matter of taste. The second... I'm not sure. When you say a lesbian must XYZ or else it's heteronormative, that's stereotyping. Lesbians must be oppressed or you're heteronorming them.
Really? We can't posit that, say, 100 years in the future the desert patriarchal religions and their followers, as well as most major cultures, get their heads out of their asses and say "hey, love is love, and it doesn't matter which bits you have"? Of course, as we learned with the civil rights movement in the 60s, you can't legislate away hate, but you can encourage society along a more friendly path. So 200 years in the future, it's plausible that 95% or more of people just plain don't give a shit who other people sleep with.
Why is that a bad thing?
Why is it a bad thing to posit a fantasy world where nobody gives a crap about who's fucking whom? If we assume that most homophobia in the real world stems from the desert patriarchal religions (which led to the development of patriarchal societies), why would a fantasy world, which doesn't have that religion, necessarily have homophobia?
Someone over on Scalzi's blog said (paraphrase) that they were tired of all stories about GLBT characters being coming out stories or stories about dealing with oppression. They wanted to read about something that *isn't* what they deal with every goddamn day. What's so wrong about that?
And, as I said above, as a matter of taste, if a story about GLBT characters not dealing with oppression doesn't appeal to you, fine. Don't read it. But don't tell the rest of us that we're wrong to want that sort of thing.
Don't we want society to view being queer as normal? As a non-issue? Isn't that the goal of increasing visibility and awareness? So I'm seriously befuddled as to why positing a society that considers sexuality a complete non-issue is a bad thing.
I'm positing in my space future a world that doesn't give a shit whom you sleep with, at least in most of it. And now I've spent a good 45 minutes writing this when I should have been writing that, so back to it.
OK, as a matter of de gustibus, as the saying goes, non disputandum est. You don't like, you don't read, but don't disparage other folks' pleasure reading.
Yesterday, John Scalzi posted as his Big Idea du jour Malinda Lo's Ash, a retelling of Cinderella, where Cinderella's a lesbian. And no one in the story cares. Because queer folks need fairy tales, too, wherein there's no one yelling hate at them or forcing them into loveless marriages, and they all live happily ever after.
Some people take issue with this, saying that it's uninteresting to have a world without homophobia. Others say it's forcing heteronormativity onto a lesbian. The comment thread is pretty interesting.
So the first, as mentioned above, is a matter of taste. The second... I'm not sure. When you say a lesbian must XYZ or else it's heteronormative, that's stereotyping. Lesbians must be oppressed or you're heteronorming them.
Really? We can't posit that, say, 100 years in the future the desert patriarchal religions and their followers, as well as most major cultures, get their heads out of their asses and say "hey, love is love, and it doesn't matter which bits you have"? Of course, as we learned with the civil rights movement in the 60s, you can't legislate away hate, but you can encourage society along a more friendly path. So 200 years in the future, it's plausible that 95% or more of people just plain don't give a shit who other people sleep with.
Why is that a bad thing?
Why is it a bad thing to posit a fantasy world where nobody gives a crap about who's fucking whom? If we assume that most homophobia in the real world stems from the desert patriarchal religions (which led to the development of patriarchal societies), why would a fantasy world, which doesn't have that religion, necessarily have homophobia?
Someone over on Scalzi's blog said (paraphrase) that they were tired of all stories about GLBT characters being coming out stories or stories about dealing with oppression. They wanted to read about something that *isn't* what they deal with every goddamn day. What's so wrong about that?
And, as I said above, as a matter of taste, if a story about GLBT characters not dealing with oppression doesn't appeal to you, fine. Don't read it. But don't tell the rest of us that we're wrong to want that sort of thing.
Don't we want society to view being queer as normal? As a non-issue? Isn't that the goal of increasing visibility and awareness? So I'm seriously befuddled as to why positing a society that considers sexuality a complete non-issue is a bad thing.
I'm positing in my space future a world that doesn't give a shit whom you sleep with, at least in most of it. And now I've spent a good 45 minutes writing this when I should have been writing that, so back to it.
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Especially in fantasy and sci-fi, if your society isn't like this society we live in, why should it have homophobia just because. It's not any more interesting than any other kind of conflict and the Cinderella has a class and family conflict built into the story that gives the interest and makes people continue to read that story and archetype. It doesn't need anything else unless you really want to put it in and then it might be sort of... stuffed full of unnecessary conflict that detracts from the Cinderella story quality of a Cinderella story.
My thoughts are very rushed, just had to get it out before I disappear for a few hours. I really like this post.
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Early tales in the Cinderella line were always pretty much along these lines. There was a couple of high rank with a daughter. The mother dies. The new step-mother starts treating Cinderella as someone of low rank, while giving preferential treatment to her daughters. But she ends up getting the prince to fall in love with her and she is restored to a position of high rank. Those who attempt to upset the class system are punished and those who belong to high rank will be restored to it.
They were fundamentally about the importance of maintaining the status quo of class.
In many modern Cinderella stories she is of low rank/class from the start and it's about how the prince falls for a good person as who you are matters more than your class and that socioeconomic status is flexible and changeable.
I strongly support the creation of new fairy tales and the modification of old ones. I don't want to lose the old versions. I just don't see why we should suddenly stop changing them when we've been adapting fairy tales to what our culture wants for centuries. I love to read old fairy tales and also modern stories in the fairy tale structure or reworkings of classic tales in creative ways.
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Why would it be uninteresting for it to be two women without added conflict from that fact, yet somehow not uninteresting when it's a man and a woman who don't have that particular social issue to begin with?
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The issue is, most likely, that he left off "to me" from the end of his statement.
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Personally I'd love to see a fairy tale or a romantic story between two men or two women where there wasn't homophobia involved somewhere. Unfortunately I think things like that being common will require a lack of hate on all sides.
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And at least the person discussing heteronormativity has the grace to point out that they haven't read the book and therefore can't reasonably comment on the portrayal of the queer aspect. However, it seems to me that if the author unintentionally wrote the book in such a fashion that there was chemistry between the two female characters... then those characters are more likely to be portrayed as real people than if she'd said "Hm, this is kinda dull - how could I dyke it up a bit and risk tanking my sales for the sake of being accused of insensitivity?"
I do like one commenter who "isn't sure that true medieval folks were anti-gay" and "not even sure that the terms “gay” and “straight” were defined in that era." Because, y'know, not even having a term for something in your lexicon totally precludes stoning someone for it.
The tabus against homosexuality, however, aren't just in revelatory middle-eastern religions. I know being "taken like a woman" was a bad thing in Viking society, and crossdressing was at least legal grounds for divorce, etc.
I think there's an annoying current of "pagan = matriarchal/gender-equal/enlightened" and "monotheistic = patriarchal/misogynist/repressivein fantasy circles that just, frankly, doesn't ring true. You can have a homophobic pagan society that treats women poorly. You can also have a monotheistic religion that's body-positive, gender-equal, and sexually free. You just have to understand the anthropology enough to justify them that way. It's just another decision you have to consider about the culture you're building.
So, yeah, in the end, it's fantasy. It's speculative fiction. Sure, it's often used to comment on our society, but it doesn't have to be bound to our society in every way. That's the whole point.
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(Then there's Japan. Which doesn't have the Christianity-related homo taboo, but there are no gay people in Japan. It says so, on the label. But Japan is a lot more interested in conformity in general, so.)
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(There are also, IIRC, some east Asian/Pacific cultures where it doesn't matter if you follow the gender-role you were biologically born into, but you damn well better conform exactly to one of the gender roles.)
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I don't think the responses on the blog were actually that reductive about the issue.
I'm probably going to read that book at some point.
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The problem I had with the first comment I linked was that it read like a value judgement. It's uninteresting & makes a bad story. If he'd said he wasn't interested in it, or didn't like those types of stories, that would be more subjective, and not up for debate. It's not his thing; cool. He can not read it.
Tal's comment made me twitch, though, and subsequent commenters addressed it with varying levels of skill. Isn't it stereotyping to have a black character (for example) listen to gangsta rap and wear low-slung trousers? If that's your character, sure, but saying that a black person who listens to classical music and wears a suit isn't really black ... sounds like calling him an oreo.
There's always the issue of good or bad characterization. If your real world story contains non-[white cis straight] male characters, it's good characterization to think about how X aspect of the world affects them. The aforementioned "oreo" character could perhaps reflect on how his peers consider him, and who his peers are. But if it's a non-real-world story, aspect X may not apply or may apply differently.
*I'm never going to get this novel finished. Hell, I'm never going ot get it *started* at this rate.
ETA: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/09/01/the-big-idea-malinda-lo/#comment-161713 is an awesome comment.
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The fact that they are both male is never especially relevant. Nobody reacts to that aspect at all. And that seems exactly the way it should be.
It was nice to see, especially as it came out well before same-sex marriage was legal anywhere in the US.
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I don't think the source would be much of a spoiler, but it is the case that akiko hasn't watched it yet (though I may have already told her about that scene).
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It's so refreshing for me to read anything that views being queer as normal and as a non-issue.
This reminds me
Part of me wants to join in the "WHY PEOPLE GOTTA BE HATIN ON ME JIS CUZ I GOT A WHITE/BLACK/NOT-THE-SAME-COLOR-AS-ME BOYFRIEND/GIRLFRIEND?!?!"
But whenever I bring up the point that by glorifying our SO's difference from us only among us, and not really venturing outside of our little safety camp, the problem that forces us to congregate so we can pat ourselves on the back for being "subversive"...persists, they go "But, but, but!!! We HAVE to!"
Conflict can be fun, but it also gets exhausting. I guess in lit, it depends on a lot of factors how we react. As for me, I guess I'd have to decide which is more important: relating deeply with a character or stepping into a world where I don't have to acknowledge that pain/frustration/etc.
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http://www.malindalo.com/2009/09/ash-news-and-reviews/
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