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Siiigh.
It's never fun to see people who you normally respect and even admire ending up like everyone else on the internet.
As a side note, I like Ani Difranco, and I especially like one lyric from a song that goes, "Privilege is a headache you don't know that you don't have". I think that I've rarely heard the concept summed up better. There are a lot of headaches I don't have. I'm white, I'm straight, I'm apathetic about religion, and I'm solidly middle class (and have been perceived as such even when I /wasn't/, because I don't have much of an accent, and my conversational patterns are heavily inspired by my readings), so I can be one of the powered majority in almost every context except the gendered.
I think there are conversations that Fandom (in general, and in specific fandoms) needs to have about our inclusiveness; fandom has tended to view itself as a comforting, accepting venue for the 'weird ones'. However, what that usually ends up /meaning/ is the 'white, straight, male weird ones'. You can vary 'male'...online and modern media fandom tend to skew female, but gaming fandom still tends to be pretty male-dominated, particularly in the live venues. I can't really answer for how welcomed or unwelcomed gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender fen feel within fandom; I can point out a few things that make me deeply uncomfortable (not least of which is the fetishization of gay men or gay male stereotypes for the sexual gratification of straight women and I could write a whole essay on the course of my drifting away from slash fandoms from my discovery of them in the early nineties all the way to today), though. And I've long been dissatisfied with the way I see a lot of cons: namely, a sea of white. There simply isn't a lot of diversity in, at least, the con-going fandom that I've seen (I live in the Southern United States. This may be different in other parts of the country).
I'm not sure how to improve the situation, but there's a lot of defensiveness about just the observation, and I think that's wrong. And, for that matter, I'm not sure it's even my place to say how to 'improve the situation', since I'm not one of the ones being discouraged from joining fandom, consciously or unconsciously. But I'm pretty sure that the right way has nothing to do with refusing to acknowledge the issue, nor with getting all defensive and pissy because you're made to feel like now you have to think about whether you're being offensive. Nor does it have to do with trotting out the old canards about being 'colorblind' (because, again, if you're white, you have the /privilege/ of being colorblind, because society assumes your color is the default), or diverting the conversation to how you feel as a white person being forced to think about these issues, or about that time someone you know was once treated unfairly because he was white and how that proves that racism is an equal problem for everyone. Not. Helping.
God, this was a bit of a ramble.
I suppose my only point is...I wish fandom were as open and accepting as we claim we are.
As a side note, I like Ani Difranco, and I especially like one lyric from a song that goes, "Privilege is a headache you don't know that you don't have". I think that I've rarely heard the concept summed up better. There are a lot of headaches I don't have. I'm white, I'm straight, I'm apathetic about religion, and I'm solidly middle class (and have been perceived as such even when I /wasn't/, because I don't have much of an accent, and my conversational patterns are heavily inspired by my readings), so I can be one of the powered majority in almost every context except the gendered.
I think there are conversations that Fandom (in general, and in specific fandoms) needs to have about our inclusiveness; fandom has tended to view itself as a comforting, accepting venue for the 'weird ones'. However, what that usually ends up /meaning/ is the 'white, straight, male weird ones'. You can vary 'male'...online and modern media fandom tend to skew female, but gaming fandom still tends to be pretty male-dominated, particularly in the live venues. I can't really answer for how welcomed or unwelcomed gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender fen feel within fandom; I can point out a few things that make me deeply uncomfortable (not least of which is the fetishization of gay men or gay male stereotypes for the sexual gratification of straight women and I could write a whole essay on the course of my drifting away from slash fandoms from my discovery of them in the early nineties all the way to today), though. And I've long been dissatisfied with the way I see a lot of cons: namely, a sea of white. There simply isn't a lot of diversity in, at least, the con-going fandom that I've seen (I live in the Southern United States. This may be different in other parts of the country).
I'm not sure how to improve the situation, but there's a lot of defensiveness about just the observation, and I think that's wrong. And, for that matter, I'm not sure it's even my place to say how to 'improve the situation', since I'm not one of the ones being discouraged from joining fandom, consciously or unconsciously. But I'm pretty sure that the right way has nothing to do with refusing to acknowledge the issue, nor with getting all defensive and pissy because you're made to feel like now you have to think about whether you're being offensive. Nor does it have to do with trotting out the old canards about being 'colorblind' (because, again, if you're white, you have the /privilege/ of being colorblind, because society assumes your color is the default), or diverting the conversation to how you feel as a white person being forced to think about these issues, or about that time someone you know was once treated unfairly because he was white and how that proves that racism is an equal problem for everyone. Not. Helping.
God, this was a bit of a ramble.
I suppose my only point is...I wish fandom were as open and accepting as we claim we are.
no subject
I just don't know what the answers would be if you managed to put together a poll to see if the overlap of "Yay Yaoi" and "Yay, gay marriage" is a big one or a little one.
I'd also love to see various research paper/thingies on whether The Exotic Other in fiction is a necessary/helpful phase in moving from X-ism to acceptance, or if it's a stumbling block of tokenism, making it harder to get to real acceptance. Or if it's useful at the beginning of the process and a stumbling block further along... Uhura on the bridge of the Enterprise at that era was wonderful; if we never got to Captain Janeway and Tuvok (and hopefully better examples in stuff I'm not watching) because "just one is fine," that would be bad...
Er, don't mind me. I'm just wallowing around in meta.
no subject
Another question would be cause: of course women (and men!) more open to gay relationships would be more accepting of slash and yaoi; it doesn't immediately hit their "WRONG!" buttons. Some women (and... well, you know, I've never seen this one propounded by a male before, but it could happen!) safely stuff it into the realm of fantasy and keep it there.
no subject
Guh, I'd need to also check if there's much about what gay men think of Yaoi...
no subject
Admittedly, that applies for just about anything in Japanese media: it's a strongly sexist culture that has far more strong/competent female protagonists than American media, too.