![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethSo there was a thing somewhere around the web that I was reading that mentioned being in the fanfic closet, or coming out as a slasher, and reasons one way or the other.
I was thinking sort of back to basics: What kind of things do you have to 'come out' about? Well the kind of things where people are going to make an opposite assumption about you without knowing anything at all. And couple that with some sort of value judgement, yesno?
So... you don't generally have to go around declaring that you cook. But if you happened to have to tell people that you can't cook, to the extent someone has to turn up and make meals for you, that would be a Thing. But it's probably not combined with a sort of structural social Thing that would put you on the sharp end of a bad judgement from many people. Yesno? I mean someone might think you were odd, or a bit swanky, or something, but they're unlikely to think you're A Bad Person.
Being queer is something where people will tend to make the opposite assumption (with exceptions for context), and some of them when corrected will then assume a whole raft of stereotypes that may include Bad.
Being a fan? We've got some stereotypes going on. The whole 'get a life' thing. The assumption of bad personal hygeine and lack of social skills. That kind of thing.
Without knowing you as an individual, mostly people aren't going to assume you're in fandom. (Unless you're at a convention.) Once they do know you're in fandom, they're going to assume a bunch of other stuff about you. Maybe. And some days you feel like being an education, and sometimes you don't.
Writing fanfic? There's a whole lot of debates around it, and a lot of those have sides that could impact negatively on perceptions of an individual, even in a job context. Like, the whole 'is it legal' issue, and allegations of plagiarism. If an introduction can include a short education in transformative works then you can be sure everyone knows you're not saying you rip off the work of others. But just 'I write fanfic'? That's going to carry an unknown degree of baggage.
Slash fic? Brings in all the garbage as could be called 'homophobia', plus the fanfic issues, plus some stuff like misunderstanding the slash goggles joke. I personally don't think people reading for subtext are delusional. But I've seen bad-fan depictions that seem to think the other way. See: Andrew from BtVS.
Do we want the world to think we're Andrew? *shudders*
Stuff where you have to 'come out' about it is stuff where just saying 'I'm queer, I'm a fan, I'm a slasher' isn't going to be enough, because you don't know which texts have given your audience their definitions. You might be saying a lot of good things in your personal connotative language, but the connotations of others might be hearing every negative stereotype you ever heard. And how to fix that? Go around with little introduction cards that cover all the issues?
Well on LJ that kind of works, cause you can get into detail on your userinfo, like I did about religion (another one with a broom closet - I had enough of satanist jokes when I was a teenager. And that was my mother!)
In the wider world? If we don't want to have this long explanation a few thousand times each every time we introduce ourselves? One of the helpful things is for some group of people to stand up and say it quite loud the once, or in some lasting way that a lot of other people will go look at.
Another is to make sure it's us saying it, for whatever group you're talking about, people who are identifying self, not some unknown to them person putting labels on others. But that one gets a bit grumpy around the edges. I mean, when I talk about me, I can be pretty sure I'm speaking for and from the me community. But when other people talk about their community they might be speaking from, but some people will read it as speaking for, and trying to deny other voices. Biiiiiig argue. Other people speaking for me not a good thing. Well, unless I'm having a day I'm not doing words and I need to use a telephone, but even then they need to have got my input first and be faithful about passing it on. But other people speaking from a community to which I also belong, no problem. Many people, many voices, many differences, all speak at once. (One reason I like writing better - our words don't smush together like this!)
And maybe eventually the dominant discourse about *label* will become one that *label* can live with, their ways. Yaays!
... Until then, much arguing, and some people wanting to not be argued at. Closet shuts an individual in somewhere safe. Safe spaces for a community shuts the argue out but lets a bunch of people in together. They combine somewhat shakily, with cooperation. And then the 'make a loud voice say good things' plan combines extra shaky with the other two, because look, people know the doors are there! What if they get inside!
The problem with the quieter plans is things will stay the same. If same is a bad place for some people, they wish change, they maybe wish loud.
So, okay, that was me taking that thought for a wander. I probably leave a lot of stuff out.
Thing is a lot of that stuff, especially the for/from who-is-this-'we'-you-speak-of stuff, is a lot like the textbooks I've been reading. Specifically about ethnicity of late, but lots of other stuff too. There's argues about who gets to say who has arrived. And while of course everyone's voice is valid, it would improve some arguers no end if they knew that too. Make it easier to be sure texts will be kept somewhere and not thrown out, for example. Keep the author names on things. Not be looked down on for not using proper English when they were using proper their-words instead. And then texts produced by that group might be the first place people look to find out about that group, instead of texts by some white guy.
Some of this 'female space' stuff seems to me to be like 'stop asking the guy what the lady will order' or something - saying we've been speaking for ourselves a long while plenty well, so please to be listening to it.
If everyone had read the same textbooks then argument could happen quicker, and with quotes. Like the way you can refer to a whole episode by the title and not recap for that audience. This is what I like about studying stuff at college - the arguments have been going on an awful long while, people have been doing smart thinking already, and it's like someone found a bunch of roads already and started making a map and you only have to go offroad once you really disagree with someone. Everyone else can catch you up quickly and follow the offshoot instead of starting way back up the road and puzzling it out.
Mind you, fairly often, if everyone read the same textbooks and caught up with the arguments then they'd all realise the map so far looks kind of like when you get the pencil out and squiggle and make a graphite monster like in Fear Her. And also most of the labels are found nowhere else and are used to mean a half dozen different ways anyway depending on who is talking. And then maybe they :eyeroll: and go write something. Possibly with porn. So that works out.
... I'll go away now...
I was thinking sort of back to basics: What kind of things do you have to 'come out' about? Well the kind of things where people are going to make an opposite assumption about you without knowing anything at all. And couple that with some sort of value judgement, yesno?
So... you don't generally have to go around declaring that you cook. But if you happened to have to tell people that you can't cook, to the extent someone has to turn up and make meals for you, that would be a Thing. But it's probably not combined with a sort of structural social Thing that would put you on the sharp end of a bad judgement from many people. Yesno? I mean someone might think you were odd, or a bit swanky, or something, but they're unlikely to think you're A Bad Person.
Being queer is something where people will tend to make the opposite assumption (with exceptions for context), and some of them when corrected will then assume a whole raft of stereotypes that may include Bad.
Being a fan? We've got some stereotypes going on. The whole 'get a life' thing. The assumption of bad personal hygeine and lack of social skills. That kind of thing.
Without knowing you as an individual, mostly people aren't going to assume you're in fandom. (Unless you're at a convention.) Once they do know you're in fandom, they're going to assume a bunch of other stuff about you. Maybe. And some days you feel like being an education, and sometimes you don't.
Writing fanfic? There's a whole lot of debates around it, and a lot of those have sides that could impact negatively on perceptions of an individual, even in a job context. Like, the whole 'is it legal' issue, and allegations of plagiarism. If an introduction can include a short education in transformative works then you can be sure everyone knows you're not saying you rip off the work of others. But just 'I write fanfic'? That's going to carry an unknown degree of baggage.
Slash fic? Brings in all the garbage as could be called 'homophobia', plus the fanfic issues, plus some stuff like misunderstanding the slash goggles joke. I personally don't think people reading for subtext are delusional. But I've seen bad-fan depictions that seem to think the other way. See: Andrew from BtVS.
Do we want the world to think we're Andrew? *shudders*
Stuff where you have to 'come out' about it is stuff where just saying 'I'm queer, I'm a fan, I'm a slasher' isn't going to be enough, because you don't know which texts have given your audience their definitions. You might be saying a lot of good things in your personal connotative language, but the connotations of others might be hearing every negative stereotype you ever heard. And how to fix that? Go around with little introduction cards that cover all the issues?
Well on LJ that kind of works, cause you can get into detail on your userinfo, like I did about religion (another one with a broom closet - I had enough of satanist jokes when I was a teenager. And that was my mother!)
In the wider world? If we don't want to have this long explanation a few thousand times each every time we introduce ourselves? One of the helpful things is for some group of people to stand up and say it quite loud the once, or in some lasting way that a lot of other people will go look at.
Another is to make sure it's us saying it, for whatever group you're talking about, people who are identifying self, not some unknown to them person putting labels on others. But that one gets a bit grumpy around the edges. I mean, when I talk about me, I can be pretty sure I'm speaking for and from the me community. But when other people talk about their community they might be speaking from, but some people will read it as speaking for, and trying to deny other voices. Biiiiiig argue. Other people speaking for me not a good thing. Well, unless I'm having a day I'm not doing words and I need to use a telephone, but even then they need to have got my input first and be faithful about passing it on. But other people speaking from a community to which I also belong, no problem. Many people, many voices, many differences, all speak at once. (One reason I like writing better - our words don't smush together like this!)
And maybe eventually the dominant discourse about *label* will become one that *label* can live with, their ways. Yaays!
... Until then, much arguing, and some people wanting to not be argued at. Closet shuts an individual in somewhere safe. Safe spaces for a community shuts the argue out but lets a bunch of people in together. They combine somewhat shakily, with cooperation. And then the 'make a loud voice say good things' plan combines extra shaky with the other two, because look, people know the doors are there! What if they get inside!
The problem with the quieter plans is things will stay the same. If same is a bad place for some people, they wish change, they maybe wish loud.
So, okay, that was me taking that thought for a wander. I probably leave a lot of stuff out.
Thing is a lot of that stuff, especially the for/from who-is-this-'we'-you-speak-of stuff, is a lot like the textbooks I've been reading. Specifically about ethnicity of late, but lots of other stuff too. There's argues about who gets to say who has arrived. And while of course everyone's voice is valid, it would improve some arguers no end if they knew that too. Make it easier to be sure texts will be kept somewhere and not thrown out, for example. Keep the author names on things. Not be looked down on for not using proper English when they were using proper their-words instead. And then texts produced by that group might be the first place people look to find out about that group, instead of texts by some white guy.
Some of this 'female space' stuff seems to me to be like 'stop asking the guy what the lady will order' or something - saying we've been speaking for ourselves a long while plenty well, so please to be listening to it.
If everyone had read the same textbooks then argument could happen quicker, and with quotes. Like the way you can refer to a whole episode by the title and not recap for that audience. This is what I like about studying stuff at college - the arguments have been going on an awful long while, people have been doing smart thinking already, and it's like someone found a bunch of roads already and started making a map and you only have to go offroad once you really disagree with someone. Everyone else can catch you up quickly and follow the offshoot instead of starting way back up the road and puzzling it out.
Mind you, fairly often, if everyone read the same textbooks and caught up with the arguments then they'd all realise the map so far looks kind of like when you get the pencil out and squiggle and make a graphite monster like in Fear Her. And also most of the labels are found nowhere else and are used to mean a half dozen different ways anyway depending on who is talking. And then maybe they :eyeroll: and go write something. Possibly with porn. So that works out.
... I'll go away now...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-01-21 04:30 am (UTC)/bow
no subject
Date: 2008-01-21 03:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-21 06:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-21 03:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-21 03:00 pm (UTC)If everyone had read the same textbooks then argument could happen quicker, and with quotes
is just- yes. That's exactly how I feel, because the issues that have been around in academia- women's history springs to mind, with the feminist historians becoming the gender historians and then look at putting the women back into history and the domestic sphere- are being discussed here. Only it's messier and sprawling and really kind of scary, because not everyone's read the source material, or the same book and so one side's read King Lear and the other side's read Titus Andronicus and leadership in Shakespearean drama's being argued about at right angles.
I don't know if we'll ever find the right words to explain it to people in a way that makes everyone feel fairly represented.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-21 03:19 pm (UTC)*makes a note to read this Shakespeare dude*
since there's people that can find offense in IDIC I don't think it's even theoretically possible to fairly represent all people.
*from metafandom*
Date: 2008-01-21 03:32 pm (UTC)here from metafandom...
Date: 2008-01-22 07:52 am (UTC)I'm hearing a lot of people complaining that there is a textbook at all, that there is a wider lexicon besides the words they already know, and that people use those other words.
Some of this 'female space' stuff seems to me to be like 'stop asking the guy what the lady will order' or something - saying we've been speaking for ourselves a long while plenty well, so please to be listening to it.
*loves you for this*
Re: here from metafandom...
Date: 2008-01-22 02:37 pm (UTC)words are one way of shutting people out of a conversation, so I get how it can be annoying, but sometimes they really are the only words that say that thing without a page of explanation.
*is loved... basks*
;-)
Re: here from metafandom...
Date: 2008-01-22 05:38 pm (UTC)All my life, I assumed that, given time, I could puzzle out the meaning in any sentence written in English-- until a more-intalekshual friend gave me Philosophy books. This is me, throwing them across the room. :p
But-- the fandom dialogue means more to me. It's important enough, that I've begun to learn the language...