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
Entry tags:
(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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