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feldmanI must admit it's taken me a while to let that visceral reaction settle out to leave the more reasoned response below.
Queer het seems to mean the stuff that's outside of the boundaries of preconceived notions of heterosexuality--thing is, how much territory must fall outside of the boundary before we can all agree to step back and question how useful those preconceived notions really are?
One or two folks have pointed to "Scientist, Astronaut, Nymphomaniac: The nine lives of John Crichton" as an example of what they might call "queer het"; het that is unconventional to the point of no longer being true het. Leaving aside the reactions of the POV character overcoming the niggling after-effects of his American male homophobia vaccination and also coming to terms with bodily penetration, my argument re: " 'Nine Lives' as 'queer het' " specifically is that gender play is just as much a part of heterosex as it is homosex. We don't tend to assume other fetishes or explorations are the home territory of one vs. the other (right? I mean, I don't, and while I'm not fresh off the farm truck I'm no wild child either). So why this need to label heterosex that plays with the conventional "ideals" of gender roles?
Just because our society takes a greater stake in prescribing certain roles for each heterosex participant doesn't mean that those strictures and rules apply in private, or that the blurring of those lines is therefore automatically outside of the territory of heterosex. It may be outside of the expectations of some particular portions of our society, yes. But outside of the very nature of heterosex? Hardly.
The point I'm seeking to make is that these stories/ideas/experiences are not transgressive of heterosexuality. If they are trangressive at all, it's of the structures and strictures that some people/institutions/traditions have perennially sought to impose on the expression of heterosexuality.
These people and/or institutions wouldn't have to fight so hard to keep heterosex "in line" if it were naturally restricted to missionary-style penetration in order to conceive. But there has always been a push/pull dynamic in heterosexuality between the pleasure, the intimacy, the societal power of women vs. men and the fact that fucking very often results in babies (if anything, that fact has through history been a prime motivator to explore avenues of sexual expression other than the old in-and-out). Effective birth control is a relatively new thing, and our society is going to be figuring out the ramifications of this for generations.
I find I'm also concerned with the use of the word "queer" to denote interesting expressions of heterosex. It's a hurtful word that has been reclaimed and embraced by many in the community it used to be targeted at, redefined (it seems to me in context) as something both joyful and assertive. We're here, we're queer, get used to it; it's another way to be. It's a great word and a useful one. But I think using it as a modifier in "queer het" leads to ambiguity and confusion, and it allows for inferences that the speaker may not be aware of or support.
It's unclear what lines are being blurred with this deliberate oxymoron, or whether that blurring is even deliberate. Is it supposed to reflect the continuum of sexual expression; that there is no pure het or pure homo? Then why coin more labels at all, why not simply point to the wide variety of expression and say, "yes, this shows the continuum, this is what I like to see"? What about slash that conforms to traditional gender role expectations, would that be "het slash"? Wouldn't that mean conflating gender-preference with gender-role rigidity? If the purpose of a label is to clarify, "queer het" fails miserably.
One of those inferences that can be made, which was unfortunately one of my knee-jerk reactions to the phrase when I first read these discussions, is that by segregating "queer het" from "het", one condemns the whole of heterosexuality to the very worst of those gender role strictures I mentioned above. I don't think this has been supported by much of anyone in these discussions, but it remains a ramification that I can't help seeing and getting riled up about. It's as if those folks who keep trying to shove my unparalleled favorite flavor of sex into that small marriage/procreation box are right to do so; that the width and breadth and depth of heterosexuality can be pruned without killing the tree.
There's a struggle in this society over the roles of women and men, over the use and the nature of sex and marriage and family. It doesn't just involve gay marriage, or abortion or the right to die with dignity; it involves everyone who gets married, everyone who uses contraception, everyone who works, dates, expects protection from the law, seeks medical care, is a member of a family, everyone. I realize this is not what is under discussion, that "queer het" is a fluffy fandom label that has no truck in the real world, but it struck me as another stab at labeling and segregating, at defining the Squares as the negative space around the Cool Kids, and that it only muddied the waters and raised hackles instead of fostering any kind of useful discussion about: what the hell is het, anyway, if it also encompasses this weird shit?
Ziggy Stardust vs. the new Starbuck; androgyny in pop culture. It's a discussion still waiting to happen, it seems, and it's the one I really want to have. If you didn't know before, if it weren't apparent from the story linked above, I've got a bit of a gender kink myself.
So here's my stab at discussion: Have we been sold a bill of goods on het? Perhaps we have; so how about those nifty new androgynous characters in tv, you know, the ones who hook us like trout because they're so much like real people? Have we come far enough now as a society that the androgyny that sells is no longer the ethereal David Bowie Starman ideal, but something far more meaty and visceral, expressively male and expressively female, like Starbuck?
Discuss.
I guess I should catch up on that BSG now, huh?
edited for clarity, 10:32am 4-15
Queer het seems to mean the stuff that's outside of the boundaries of preconceived notions of heterosexuality--thing is, how much territory must fall outside of the boundary before we can all agree to step back and question how useful those preconceived notions really are?
One or two folks have pointed to "Scientist, Astronaut, Nymphomaniac: The nine lives of John Crichton" as an example of what they might call "queer het"; het that is unconventional to the point of no longer being true het. Leaving aside the reactions of the POV character overcoming the niggling after-effects of his American male homophobia vaccination and also coming to terms with bodily penetration, my argument re: " 'Nine Lives' as 'queer het' " specifically is that gender play is just as much a part of heterosex as it is homosex. We don't tend to assume other fetishes or explorations are the home territory of one vs. the other (right? I mean, I don't, and while I'm not fresh off the farm truck I'm no wild child either). So why this need to label heterosex that plays with the conventional "ideals" of gender roles?
Just because our society takes a greater stake in prescribing certain roles for each heterosex participant doesn't mean that those strictures and rules apply in private, or that the blurring of those lines is therefore automatically outside of the territory of heterosex. It may be outside of the expectations of some particular portions of our society, yes. But outside of the very nature of heterosex? Hardly.
The point I'm seeking to make is that these stories/ideas/experiences are not transgressive of heterosexuality. If they are trangressive at all, it's of the structures and strictures that some people/institutions/traditions have perennially sought to impose on the expression of heterosexuality.
These people and/or institutions wouldn't have to fight so hard to keep heterosex "in line" if it were naturally restricted to missionary-style penetration in order to conceive. But there has always been a push/pull dynamic in heterosexuality between the pleasure, the intimacy, the societal power of women vs. men and the fact that fucking very often results in babies (if anything, that fact has through history been a prime motivator to explore avenues of sexual expression other than the old in-and-out). Effective birth control is a relatively new thing, and our society is going to be figuring out the ramifications of this for generations.
I find I'm also concerned with the use of the word "queer" to denote interesting expressions of heterosex. It's a hurtful word that has been reclaimed and embraced by many in the community it used to be targeted at, redefined (it seems to me in context) as something both joyful and assertive. We're here, we're queer, get used to it; it's another way to be. It's a great word and a useful one. But I think using it as a modifier in "queer het" leads to ambiguity and confusion, and it allows for inferences that the speaker may not be aware of or support.
It's unclear what lines are being blurred with this deliberate oxymoron, or whether that blurring is even deliberate. Is it supposed to reflect the continuum of sexual expression; that there is no pure het or pure homo? Then why coin more labels at all, why not simply point to the wide variety of expression and say, "yes, this shows the continuum, this is what I like to see"? What about slash that conforms to traditional gender role expectations, would that be "het slash"? Wouldn't that mean conflating gender-preference with gender-role rigidity? If the purpose of a label is to clarify, "queer het" fails miserably.
One of those inferences that can be made, which was unfortunately one of my knee-jerk reactions to the phrase when I first read these discussions, is that by segregating "queer het" from "het", one condemns the whole of heterosexuality to the very worst of those gender role strictures I mentioned above. I don't think this has been supported by much of anyone in these discussions, but it remains a ramification that I can't help seeing and getting riled up about. It's as if those folks who keep trying to shove my unparalleled favorite flavor of sex into that small marriage/procreation box are right to do so; that the width and breadth and depth of heterosexuality can be pruned without killing the tree.
There's a struggle in this society over the roles of women and men, over the use and the nature of sex and marriage and family. It doesn't just involve gay marriage, or abortion or the right to die with dignity; it involves everyone who gets married, everyone who uses contraception, everyone who works, dates, expects protection from the law, seeks medical care, is a member of a family, everyone. I realize this is not what is under discussion, that "queer het" is a fluffy fandom label that has no truck in the real world, but it struck me as another stab at labeling and segregating, at defining the Squares as the negative space around the Cool Kids, and that it only muddied the waters and raised hackles instead of fostering any kind of useful discussion about: what the hell is het, anyway, if it also encompasses this weird shit?
Ziggy Stardust vs. the new Starbuck; androgyny in pop culture. It's a discussion still waiting to happen, it seems, and it's the one I really want to have. If you didn't know before, if it weren't apparent from the story linked above, I've got a bit of a gender kink myself.
So here's my stab at discussion: Have we been sold a bill of goods on het? Perhaps we have; so how about those nifty new androgynous characters in tv, you know, the ones who hook us like trout because they're so much like real people? Have we come far enough now as a society that the androgyny that sells is no longer the ethereal David Bowie Starman ideal, but something far more meaty and visceral, expressively male and expressively female, like Starbuck?
Discuss.
I guess I should catch up on that BSG now, huh?
edited for clarity, 10:32am 4-15
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no subject
Date: 2005-04-15 01:59 pm (UTC)Yeah, what you said. I avoided the original discussion but QH strikes me as another aspect of the mindset that says "OMFGBBQ!!! Starbuck wouldn't ever, ever, never want to have kids 'cause she's such a cool tough fighter jock girl!!!"
Uh, no, please.
I find it interesting that having witnesseed the role of women in genres such as scifi/cop shows progress from outright tokenism and marginalization to fully integrated and realized particpants, so much time and effort is being put into narrow definitions and characterizations of female behaviour that are more limiting and one-dimensional than the cheesecake or the girlfriend or the faithful assistant archetypes of a generation ago. And what disturbs me is that so many of these new, "girl-less" stereotypes (to borrow a phrase from Thea's upcoming SMRT-TV column) is that they're being perpetuated, in many cases, by women.
Uh, does this make sense?
no subject
Date: 2005-04-15 04:00 pm (UTC)::jumps up and down::
yes! Yes! That's what I would have wanted to say, if I was smart enough to think it through. Naming something "queer het" boxes in the rest of het, makes your story only het-with-a-qualifier. You get to be chocolate chip, but the rest of het is just plain boring vanilla. And anyone who reads, say, Thea's stuff, fr'instance, knows that's not really true.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-15 04:28 pm (UTC)> Have we come far enough now as a society that the androgyny that sells is no longer the ethereal David Bowie Starman ideal, but something far more meaty and visceral, expressively male and expressively female, like Starbuck?
Which "we" did you have in mind? The people who worry that Spongebob Squarepants is too queer for their precious children? My feeling is that outside a rarefied subculture that can instantly identify "gender is performative", gender identity is very much taken for granted in the society as a whole. I spent ten years living in the Bible Belt, and I swear to you that the culture is very, very different in its norms and expectations. This isn't just liberal stereotyping of people they disagree with.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-15 04:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-15 04:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-15 04:49 pm (UTC)Which, I know, isn't a lot to offer to the conversation, but I'm still not at the point where I can really discuss it politely.
It's like not only do I have to fight the phantom of "mainstream parochial society's vision of womanhood" to be the person (note: person, ungendered) my parents raised me to be, I also have to fight the vision of the liberated, open-minded new society. Which, umm, happens to match the vision of the old, oppressive society.
*is obviously incoherent*
*throws up hands, decides to be silent if she can't make sense*
*comes back for one last shot*
And don't get me started on the sheer silliness of assuming that Hollywood gets the portrayal of *anything* down right.
- hg
PS
Date: 2005-04-15 04:50 pm (UTC)- hg
no subject
Date: 2005-04-15 05:06 pm (UTC)Oh thank god. No, thank *you*. I am now your devoted slave. It's about frelling time someone said this.
Then why coin more labels at all, why not simply point to the wide variety of expression and say, "yes, this shows the continuum, this is what I like to see"?
It's interesting to me that the sort of person who would normally declaim against labels and believes in continuua of human experience (not just sexual experience) still needs to come up with some kind of short, handy name for things. I do see why it's useful in discussion to have a label, but if the meaning of the label isn't immediately clear to everyone in the discussion, or if it in and of itself conveys more ambiguity than a longer, more precise description, it's kind of losing what usefulness it might have had.
how about those nifty new androgynous characters in tv, you know, the ones who hook us like trout because they're so much like real people? Have we come far enough now as a society that the androgyny that sells is no longer the ethereal David Bowie Starman ideal, but something far more meaty and visceral, expressively male and expressively female, like Starbuck?
I think I want you to define androgyny before I get too deeply into this. (:
Like you, I am kinked for genderplay, and have always been attracted to men in makeup and women with muscles. I'm also, however, into men with big muscles and women in makeup and heels. I have lately wondered whether this isn't a preoccupation with gender fluidity as much as it is a preoccupation with the *trappings* of gender, and indeed with the *extremes* of gender: butch and femme.
And I do see these types in the media, all four of these extremes (though men in makeup have been sadly on the decline since the 1990s). What I don't think I'm seeing much of is androgyny.
Starbuck? I find your use of the phrases "expressively male" and "expressively female" interesting, because my brain wants to go: she's a butch, (presumably) heterosexual woman. The "expressively male" part is the butch part. I'm not sure what I'd call "expressively female" about her: she is a woman, so some of her characteristics must be what we think of as female, and obviously she has a woman's hormones, which will affect her behavior to a degree. I guess the only thing I'd call "expressively female" about her was the way she dolled herself up in the blue dress. If she had been wholly butch, wearing a dress that night would have been going in drag, but she didn't wear the dress like drag, so I'm assuming she's somewhere near the butch end of, yes, a continuum of gender expression.
I don't know that we've "come far" in terms of androgyny, though. Strong women have been trendy since the mid-90s, especially on TV, but in general they are awash in traditional femininity: long hair, makeup, impractical flesh-baring clothing, and often a focus on romantic relationships over and above their professional and personal callings. And androgynous men are (still) even harder to find, unless they're actually gay, which is the only case in which they're allowed to be femme.
Blah blee blah. I have no idea if any of this is what you were trying to get at, but I sure can ramble about it ad nauseam. (:
no subject
Date: 2005-04-15 05:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-15 05:11 pm (UTC)I did say "the new black", not "basic black".
no subject
Date: 2005-04-15 05:20 pm (UTC)I love that we come at this from two distinct political viewpoints and end up at the same place: it pleases my sense of irony.
What I think is interesting in sf is that the best female characters on the tube these days seem to be written by guys or written by writing staffs headed by guys. Maybe it's just a function of the number of men in biz versus the number of women.
I'd say more but I'm too tired to think.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-15 05:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-15 08:16 pm (UTC)Though, something I've noticed, romantic literature slanted for female readers is full of descriptions of men doing things to women in the sex act. Attention to that detail. (Raises hand - personally guilty on that account.) Some of the depictions are of the reciprocal goings-on, but it confused me because (TMI) men sometimes do appreciate a little prep and play from their partners, too. And men can have lots of fantasies. Lots. So can women.
I read a column, more than a decade ago (Ask Ann Landers, Dear Abby?) where a wife was writing in, a tad shameful because she had asked her husband to indulge her 'rape fantasy' (violent, forceful sex), and he had, and she had *enjoyed* it. Enough that she wanted to ask him to do it again on occasion, but she was worried how that would come across. I think the advice ran in the vein of need for some honesty and both realizing this was safe zone fantasy, not the real deal.
Maybe it was in a Dr. Joyce Brothers column...
Anyway, great entry. Fic stratification is mindboggling enough with a few readers acting like disappointed customers because they weren't warned enough, or something. I don't want to have to learn abbreviated codes that diagram a het sex act so that arena can be even further divided into tailored tastes and preferences.
Hmm, example. Het BM/BF, Non-M, FT & CL, W-S w/ 2nd M-P. (Heterosexual black male and female, not married, mutual oral sex, woman superior followed by missionary position.) At that point, why even bother writing it? The reader's just checking off a score card with such advance information.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-15 08:27 pm (UTC)Carry on. :)
no subject
Date: 2005-04-16 03:05 am (UTC)http://www.farscapeworld.com/fanfic/stories/talyn7.php
no subject
Date: 2005-04-16 03:42 am (UTC)Having spent more than half my life in the Bible Belt (and having young gay kinfolk who live in more rural parts of the Heartland) I second jonquil's observation about the view from other subcultures.
The majority of folks around here -- including plenty of college grads and PhDs -- do indeed think there's a very bright line between "male" and "female," and a pretty sharp one between "queer" and "het." And "queer" hasn't lost its sting, either -- I hear it primarily in insult or disgust and not too often yet locally by activists who've taken the word back. To call yourself "queer" in these parts can still be a fairly radical act.
I've racked up a few decades of faithful, exclusive het monogamy, but have way too many Bad Thoughts and scary ungodly friends to fit the profile that statement suggests. Just being a female professional who throws around f-words (including Feminism and lately even Fannish [g]) still has some power to startle the citizenry.
When I first heard the phrase "queer heterosexuals" I didn't analyze it as you're (nicely) doing here, in a fannish or literary context. It was a couple of years ago, but I remember being struck with pleasure at that juxtaposition, feeling it described something important about my developing identity as a Person of Age. I mean, I live more in harmony with some of the Rules than the average twice-divorced churchgoer does (although for quite different reasons), but in my head and heart I'm deeply and happily Just Not Right... and "het queer" just clicked. There's a "don't get too comfortable" quality to it that appeals to me --"We're just like you, honey, but then again, we're so NOT..."
(And, btw, because I don't say it enough, lj and fandom and fic and vids and clicking around to see what you guys are talking about today have become wonderful things in my life, as you can imagine. Many thanks.)
no subject
Date: 2005-04-16 08:56 am (UTC)The point I'm seeking to make is that these stories/ideas/experiences are not transgressive of heterosexuality. If they are trangressive at all, it's of the structures and strictures that some people/institutions/traditions have perennially sought to impose on the expression of heterosexuality.
Also known as heteronormativity. Yes.
One can reject queer theory, but the connotation of "queer" as more than homosexual is not fandom specific. Queer includes homo- and bisexuality, but it also includes drag shows, criss-cross/androgynes, transvestism, transsexualism, intersexualism and probably a whole bunch of other things I can't remember right now. Meaning that if a man dresses up in women's clothing and his wife in men's clothing and they have sex, while it is still heterosex, it is also queer. Basically, the purpose of queer is to question heteronormativity, not to fuck a member of the same sex.
So to me, while "queer het" is a questionable fandom label that needs to be further defined, it's not an oxymoron and it's not the same as saying "slash het" or "gay het".
And of course you can claim that "queer" as meaning anything involving heterosex is bad and wrong and so forth, but in that case that's a question you need to take up with the queer theory itself.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-16 01:40 pm (UTC)But, I'm just waiting for the day when the guys writing Kara as all butch and strong and gender-fucking get stuck for a plot, dig deep, and pull out the Perils of Pauline - the power of cultural drift can suck down even the best of intentions. If they get really stuck, they will dredge up the old soap opera standby of crisis pregnancy/who is the daddy wangst.
Nell
no subject
Date: 2005-04-16 02:29 pm (UTC)The problem with it I had, inarticulate at first and articulated not especially well in the weeks since I first saw the term bandied about, is not that I was rejecting some oxymoronic reading along the colloquial line - but rather the way the term seemed to squish "het" from the vast category of m/f sex of whatever stripe, into a tiny little one in which the name June Clever was bandied about. It also seemed to imply a set of judgments about which was the 'good' het and which was the 'bad' het. And that the cool slashers were now about to appropriate all the cool, good het, further boxing the het fanciers out of the 'good' and 'interesting' sections of the fanfic world. This last was the part that had me muttering 'fuck you' at the screen.
It also irked me because it seemed to me that the only way to have the discussion was to limit het, unmodified, to the PG-13 rated romance series of Harlequin or Mills and Bloom.
Which suggested to me that, despite being well read in gender theory, the person who coined the term was not especially well read in not just romance fiction write large, but vast quantities of fiction, period.
Where, for example, does Scarlett O'Hara fit? Because, by the definitions posited - Gone with the Wind could be an example of "queer het." The only thing Scarlett doesn't have is modern language to describe all the gender fucking she does. Or to go futher back, what would you label The Bostonians? It is het romance, but it the entire subject is gender-fucking. I mean, yeah, sure, the herione eventually rejects her 'queer het' identity and runs away with the butch guy, but if 'queer het' is het that interogates gender norms - well, that's largely what Henry James was writing.
At which point, "queer het" just seems to mean any interesting het - because, at least in my view, what move m/f romance, in any era, from boring to interesting is that the heart of the relationship is the struggle of two complex individuals to come to terms with each other, their expecations, and the larger cultural expectations that surround them. Or else it only means m/f porn with a strap on. Which seems absurdly narrow, because that's a kink - not a sub-genre.
Het was always interesting as a genre, so to have those who have loudly declaimed it as dull and boring, suddenly discovering the complexity and richness that *was there all along* and claiming it for themselves as though they just invented it - yeah. Irks me.
/rant
Sorry - it's just - I do understand the term. And in many ways I am sympathetic to it in this context. It's just - this type of fiction has been around for two centuries *at least*, and just because someone didn't notice till now, doesn't make it new. Or necessarily require a new - and as it has turned out - divisive name.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-16 03:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-16 03:30 pm (UTC)Personally, I think het is het whether it's queer het or not. I don't see queer het as "not really het", just as "het which also does this other thing." For that matter, I don't consider all slash "queer" either. And while I haven't been using "queer het" I can see potential uses for it that extends quite a while back in time.
Do I consider "Gone With the Wind" queer? Not particularly. Do I consider "Twelfth Night" queer? Boy, howdy, do I ever.
I think there are plenty of ways to write about complex, interesting m/f relationships without making it queer as such. As I said in a comment in someone else's journal, someone claiming that Wash/Zoe is queer because Zoe is stronger than Wash is an ass. But claiming that Wes/Illyria is queer because Illyria is an androgyn in a woman's body is another matter entirely.
Which is why the term needs more definition. Are we with "queer het" to understand something that *specifically* addresses the fluid state of gender and sexuality, and the restrictions of heteronormativity? Or anything with a character who is more than June Cleaver? If it's the latter, the term is pointless. If it's the former, we'd do well to consider "queer" and "unqueer" slash.
Of all my stories, the one I'd be most comfortable with calling "queer" is a het/gen story that includes hobbit/uruk-hai romance and identity questions. And even that one's just queer on a metaphorical level. My slash stories, I don't know that I'd call particularly queer.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-16 07:22 pm (UTC)Exactly. If queer denotes a subset of fiction (or the other arts, or life in general, but so far, we're mostly still talking about fiction), which is focused on the fluidity of self-conscious gender and self-consious sexuality as experienced by individuals, in relationships or not, then it is potentially very useful term in the fanfic world.
Because, as you say, there would be queer and unqueer slash, as well as gen fic that had a strongly queer sensibility/awareness of the ways in which gender and sexual identities can slip around - and there is a lot of fanfic that does explicitly play with this idea, and a category to describe it and compare it across fandoms would be both fun and interesting. And it could very well apply to comparision with older literature as well. (And no, I don't think "Gone with the Wind" is the least bit queer - even though it isn't at all hard to imagine queer fanfic for it - Scarlet/Melanie f/f, or Scarlet using a strap on with Ashely and having him loving it - though hating knowing that he did... *g*)
Bah. Terminology. So central and so likely to cause as much trouble as offer clarity.
Nell
no subject
Date: 2005-04-16 10:03 pm (UTC)Damn. Don't know what to say now.
*grin*
no subject
Date: 2005-04-17 01:24 am (UTC)Ah gawd, and I used to know some of the hankerchief codes. Back in the days of suggestive Adam Ant videos.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-17 02:25 am (UTC)Ziggy Stardust vs. the new Starbuck; androgyny in pop culture. It's a discussion still waiting to happen, it seems, and it's the one I really want to have. If you didn't know before, if it weren't apparent from the story linked above, I've got a bit of a gender kink myself. I don't want to talk about queer theory or gender theory, partly because having successfully extricated myself from academia, I realize that labeling happens there even more than in less enclaved sorts of worlds and labeling it makes it arguable, seems to make it more real, but what we're talking about here is representation and interpretation in writing and media, in what we see and how we parse it. I think Starbuck is a great example of this meaty androgyny. We're supposed to follow her because she is, techincally, a girl. But she's not girly, she's not feminine - although she does at one point express herself as feminine - yet she's still a girl. I'd say that she's a represenation of someone transcending gender, and yet her literal meta role as someone replacing the hotshot early '80's ideal of playboy flyboy is also transcending gender identity, even more so than the character itself. I'm still not entirely sold on Starbuck herself. I think I like the idea of her more than the character, but I feel that way about most of the younger characters on BSG. They are representative more than fully realized. Starbuck is absolutely butch, but she's not sexual. She was engaged, she has romantic feelings for another man, but there isn't anything sexy about her as a girl. Her sexuality is tom cat sexuality, the same flyboy stuff. It's not a female sexuality, or at least I don't read it as such. And that I find interesting. I hope that she ends up as a fully realized character, because she is interesting. She's totally a fighter jock, strong capable, and is being used as a deus ex machina far too often for my comfort and yet she's also the only "real" human woman who has sex in the public's view. There are overtly feminine, overtly sexual characters that serve as foils, which is a whole different discussion, but she's the epitome of a girl transcending everything that we typically think of as girlish.
I think it's interesting, yeah. But, well, I'm a girly girl, and I'm more interested in how a woman can remain female, remain feminine and still transcend expectations, still be butch if you will and still show skin, still be sexual in a feminine way. In some ways, I think Aeryn is a better example of that transcendance of expectations, but then I think that Farscape did a marvelous job of fucking with gender expectations.
I'd like to see the Ziggy Stardust ideal, but I'm not sure that as a society, we're ready to deal with men who transcend gender expectations without transcending sexual expectation. It's must easier to deal with the idea of a feminine man who sleeps with men (or trasversely a masculine woman who sleeps with men), than it is to deal with an androgynous or feminine man who sleeps with women. I think, and this is a huge generalization, that women are more comfortable with gender fucking than men are, and male writers find it easier to write women who are transgressiver in their gender and sexuality than to write men doing the same thing.
And dude, you know I agree with you about the heterosex, about the vast complexities of it, about the way that sex between men and women can be just as transgressive and interesting and not be forced to fit into a queer or gender theory box. We lose the ability to discuss those complexities when we spend so much time trying to prove we're playing in the cool kids sandbox, that we're doing more than writing hot sex, like there's something inherently wrong with that, like it has to be serving a greater purpose:) Shouldn't writing hot sex of any sort be reward and meaning enough:)
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Date: 2005-04-17 02:28 am (UTC)But exactly. Between you and F., I feel much better about this whole concept and discussion. Because how many fandom fights have there been about labels and warning and boxes and just because those boxes are more clever, just because they show how frelling educated the lot of us are, doesn't mean that they're any less damaging or limiting.
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Date: 2005-04-17 02:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-17 05:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-19 04:13 pm (UTC)I was cleaning out ancient, overflow email boxes - and realized, we've exchanged comments on other meta conversations - so, you know, I thought I should introduce myself!
I'm Nell, and I've friended you (b/c most of my lj is fairly tightly friends locked - old history there) - so stop on by if you're so inclined! (I have to warn you, my journaling has gone waaaay down of late, RL and all that.....).
Anyway - this seemed the easist way to reach you.
Have a good day,
Nell
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Date: 2005-04-19 05:16 pm (UTC)