On Marginalization, Escapism, and "Just Entertainment"

[hector_rashbaum]

I have two options when I pick up a book/rent a movie/watch a tv show: I will be ignored, or I will be stereotyped.

Okay, I guess there's a third: I'll be represented as a character like everyone else, as opposed to a lesbian. But more often than not, I have to actively seek that out; the onus is on me to make the effort.

And it's tiring. It's exhausting and demoralizing in ways I'm not sure someone who's never had to think about seeing their lifestyle treated as a valid - as an existing - one that isn't inherently harmful can see. And that sounds a lot more dismissive than I want it to.

"But," people say when this gets brought up, "I'm not anything like the vast majority of straight people in the media - I can't really identify with most, if any!"

And, yeah, okay, I get that. And I think the problem comes from when I say "someone like me" or "I'll be represented"...it sounds like I'm talking about a whole, about appearance and personality traits and everything. But I'm not talking about entire packages, I'm just talking about this one thing, about the lifestyle.

Because most of the time? I don't even get someone I'm supposed to identify with. I think people take for granted those default signs that this character is who you're supposed to be - I don't know how often people really think "okay, that's the straight white middle-class businesswoman", "that's the Joe Average", etc. It's not noticeable, it's not supposed to be noticeable...until it's not there. Until it's never there. Until it shows up and it's not a character, it's a cardboard cutout with a big neon sign over her head screaming THIS CHARACTER IS ABNORMAL. Because most popular entertainment? Will have a bunch of straight white middle-class businesswomen, with different personalities (and I'm simplifying, because women get stereotyped too, as do men), or a whole town of Joe Averages. At best, if I'm "lucky"? One lesbian. And I promise you the sterotyping, even though it happens with any character, is far more noticeable when it's not "seven different archetypes with a few quirks each", but one "what can we do to make it blindingly obvious this woman is different?".

"But people just write/create their experiences - you can't demand that they create what you want to see."

Okay, so, if you wanna read a novel about the experiences of a straight woman dating - not specifically a Romance, but maybe just something a little fluffy and mindless, what Kelly Ripa calls "beach trash" - what section do you go to? The "straight" section, right?

...No? Because if I want to pick up a book about a lesbian dating, I have to go (unless I'm in a particularly progressive bookstore, or it's a bestseller - exceptions, though, that prove the rule) to the "gay and lesbian" or "glbt" section.

For shits and giggles, let's say it's the same novel. Or same basic idea, anyway - upper class woman, sick of being single, on the hunt for Mr/Ms Right, goes through a bunch of hijinks only to discover he/she was right under her nose the whole time. Or she doesn't need a significant other to be fulfilled, even, that's a good one.

The straight person who wants to read about this woman dating men goes to the "fiction" section, where all the novels normal people want to read sit. Change the potential Mr. Right to Misses, though? And all of a sudden it gets shelved somewhere else, because while straight relationships are of interest to everyone, who but a lesbian would want to read about a lesbian?

Two people fall in love against all odds, but societal pressures force them apart no matter how hard they try to be together.

That's 90% of romance movies out there. That's The Notebook.

And it's Brokeback Mountain. Guess which one wasn't marketed as a nice straight date movie?

So most people aren't bothering to create realistic, identifiable lesbian characters, and the ones that are get sequestered to a separate shelf, channel, etc.

(And I'm, again, oversimplifying. Novels about women too often get relegated to "women's fiction" or "chick lit".)

"Okay, but it's just entertainment. It's supposed to entertain, not address social problems."

Nothing exists in a vacuum. Creators are affected by the world they live in; work is affected by the creator in ways he or she isn't aware of. All entertainment says something about the person who created it (not in the seemingly-obvious "if you write rape YOU'RE A RAPING SICKO" sense, of course) and the world it was created in.

Torchwood is an excellent example. There is no more mindless entertainment, I swear - crappy plothole-laden scifi action with a side helping of gratuitous makeouts.

And it's, in some ways, pretty progressive - there's a healthy straight relationship (plagued with the sorts of issues that make for good tv, of course), a reasonably healthy gay one (and if you don't think Jack/Ianto is a relationship, or healthy...pick any one of Jack's anecdotes for an example of gay sex free of manipulation, portrayed non-negatively).

Two instances of lesbianism on Torchwood: in Day One, there's the sex alien who takes over a girl's body and needs orgasms to live so she makes out with Gwen, and that's eighteen kinds of skeevy; in Greeks Bearing Gifts, when Mary/Philoctetes uses, in part, sex to take advantage of Tosh's self-esteem issues and manipulate her way into the Hub.

(And, interesting to note, Gwen's never been anything but straight aside from one forced makeout, and while I believe Tosh is meant to be bisexual she only ever interacts on a romantic level with men before and after GBG)

So we've got charmingly average straight couple, gay couple with, okay, some issues...and manipulative advantageous aliens abusing sex for their own gain. Whoops, I mean lesbians.

And the fact that those troublesome portrayals exist doesn't mean I think Russel T. Davies set out to create a social commentary, or that Torchwood is ever anything but mindless entertainment. But the portrayals are still troubling, and to say because something is meant to be entertaining its entertainment value must necessarily override anything offensive or troubling unintentionally contained within is to give society a free pass to not only not change, but to slide backwards.

So far in my quest to find some lovely escapist entertainment, I've had to either settle for a) nothing b) a cardboard stereotype c) an unsettlingly negative portrayal d) an identifible character! If I stay away from the "normal people" section

"But you admit it's unintentional. Are you trying to call someone a homophobe for something he accidentally did?"

So this is where these discussions always get tripped up. People read "worryingly negative portrayals of lesbians" and think I'm accusing the person of actively hating lesbians.

And it's one of those things I have trouble arguing because I never had any problem wrapping my head around the concept of "intention doesn't change the end result". Which I'm not saying to blow my horn, or degrade anyone else - I just have trouble when I can't see the other side. I have no idea how to explain something that just...hit me.

But here's the best way I've ever managed to come up with.

I'm walking along and there's a gun on the ground. Um, that's not a good place for a gun, so I'll pick it up and, I dunno, turn it into the police. Except when I pick it up...something startles me, or my finger slips, or something, and it goes off. And hits someone.

Did I fire it on purpose? Absolutely not. Would I plead guilty to premeditated murder if the guy died? Absolutely not - I didn't mean it. But whether I planned to fire or not, whether my finger hit the trigger or there was just some glitch and boom there it went, the gun in my hand blew a bullet into someone. And all the "I didn't mean it" in the world doesn't change that someone got shot, and wouldn't have if I hadn't picked up that gun.

If you say, or do, something that offends, that marginalizes, that hurts, it doesn't matter if your intention was offense. Because an offensive phrase is only offensive in that it offends someone - someone who would not have been offended if you'd said something else. If someone says "you offended me when you did x", are they saying "you meant to offend me, you did that on purpose"? Absolutely not. And if someone is, should you "plead guilty"? Absolutely not.

When you unintentionally hurt someone, you are a person who unintentionally hurt someone. When you start screaming I DIDN'T MEAN IT SO YOU COULDN'T POSSIBLY BE HURT, then you're an ass.

Accidents happen, mistakes are made. But what people seem to misunderstand is this: the fact it was an accident doesn't mean it didn't happen.

So I guess all I wanted to do with this post was...give a little insight. Maybe it's not needed, maybe it's not welcome. But this is stuff I deal with every single day - and this is just when I wanna lose myself in a story or movie for a little while. This is what I go through when I need an escape. God knows what would happen if I thought lesbians should be treated like real people in real life, right?

(I'll stop being so OMGSERIOUS soon, I expect)

Comments

[heatherwells.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

When you unintentionally hurt someone, you are a person who unintentionally hurt someone. When you start screaming I DIDN'T MEAN IT SO YOU COULDN'T POSSIBLY BE HURT, then you're an ass.

I don't know if I would have reached a point where the light bulb just went on anyway or if it only came on thanks to all my LJ/metafandom/whatever reading, but I totally didn't used to get that, and over the past year or two, I've started to.

(Of course it doesn't mean that I'll never write anything that might offend someone, and it doesn't mean that I'd rush to change something if I did offend someone--I would have written the story I'd wanted to write, after all. It just means that I listen to what people are saying (particularly with regard to many of the race/gender/religion/whatever discussions on metafandom), and whatever I learn (usually about myself) will stew in my brain, where it will change the shape of future stories, just like everything else I encounter changes the shape of future stories.)

But what I meant to say was, you should make a t-shirt out of that.

[heatherwells.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

Oh and also: I hate when I go to the gblt section and all I have to choose from is porn and Literature. And nonfiction. WHERE IS THE IN-BETWEEN?

We should write lots of in-between and trick bookstores into shelving them with the other fiction books.

[hector-rashbaum.livejournal.com]

Oh God there is nothing. Anywhere. Like I was writing about my example book going "omg if this book actually existed I wouldn't even care it was in the HEY HEY DON'T FORGET YOU'RE NOT NORMAL! section.

I would just really like to walk into a bookstore and walk out with a book about a protagonist who is lesbian but otherwise completely normal. Or who is completely fucked up but not in the stereotypical/because-she's-gay way. UGH JUST ONCE.

[hector-rashbaum.livejournal.com]

It might not have been as OMGDUH OF COURSE for me as I think; the concept was probably worming its way into my head for months.

But I just...have never understood how people don't get it. There are a few other things like that, that I can't effectively discuss because I just have no idea what's going through the other person's head. Like, if you get into a car accident would you claim there's no dent in the other car because you didn't intend to hit it?

[heatherwells.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

I don't know if the car and gun analogies come close to hitting the mark. It's sort of like using the "stealing music is like stealing a car" comparison--it doesn't work because one thing is material and the other is not. Better might be if a small group of people are taking up excessive space, like on the floor at a concert, and their doing this puts other people, who could have been closer to the show if space were being used properly, farther away. Whether the people are doing it on purpose or they just didn't realize they were doing it, the result is the same: other people are put out. It is less pleasant if they're are doing it on purpose, but it's just as unpleasant if the people didn't realize they were doing it--and then tell you it's your perception that's wrong.

[heatherwells.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

(Or maybe they're not taking up excessive space. Maybe they're holding their camera up right in your freaking line of sight through half the show. You get the picture.)

[hector-rashbaum.livejournal.com]

I dunno. I think it works because the only reason one makes sense and the other doesn't is tangibility. Problem is, the fact that the offense taken is intangible doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It's just as real as the dent in the car - and stealing a car vs stealing music are fundamentally different.

Shooting someone and offending/hurting/marginalizing are both doing damage to a person; I don't think the nature changes because the visibility does.

[kelpierocks.livejournal.com]

It's obvious that you've put a lot of time and thought into this issue, and that it's very important to you. And I think I understand the societal implications of the lack of lesbian characters or role models or whatever you want to call it.

I have a question. At this point in time, how would you primarily identify yourself? Are you a lesbian, or are you Heidi?

I hope the world can reach a point where labels aren't necessary.

Just my scrambled thoughts, which I hope make some kind of sense to you.

[hector-rashbaum.livejournal.com]

Primarily? I'm Heidi.

But Heidi is the sum of a variety of parts, some of which impact my daily life more than others, some of which impact the way I interact with the world more than others, some of which I never notice, or take for granted, but are still essential.

I wouldn't be Heidi were I not a lesbian. In the same way with a different sexual orientation you'd be a different Kelpie, or if you didn't like photography you'd be a different Kelpie.

I certainly wouldn't need to justify feeling marginalized were I not a lesbian; but that's because straight people aren't marginalized.

And really, I could write this about a thousand different things. I could have written about how if a fat person shows up in pop culture more often than not she's a joke, how frustrating the anti-intellectual movement is. That doesn't mean I consider myself Fat, or Intellectual, solely. It means when I see any one of those things I consider important to the sum of HEIDI maligned, it affects me.

[mayqueen517.livejournal.com]

You made some really good points, and this line, People read "worryingly negative portrayals of lesbians" and think I'm accusing the person of actively hating lesbians. really is the one that resonates, I think.

It sets people off because all they see or hear in a lot of cases is, "worryingly negative...lesbians." and THAT'S what they get up in arms about. And I don't think that's the case at all, I think it's simply that you're worried about the images of lesbianism that's being brought across, right?

And you know, there are a good few role models for both lesbians AND gays. John Barrowman and Ellen DeGeneres are perfect examples.

But is that accessible to us? No. It is from interviews and the like, and certainly some people can quite probably identify with Captain Jack Harkness but...I have to admit, I did notice that there wasn't that much lesbianism in the show.

Tosh and Mary was something that I think...could have been revealed more, instead of straight into the second season, for the 'Tosh' episode, there she is with Tommy. BUT, it is interesting to see that the same reservations she had with Mary do carry over to Tommy, which suggests that it's not the person she's uncomfortable with; rather the act.

...Did I make sense there? (whee, allergy meds...don't mind me)


I think people take for granted those default signs that this character is who you're supposed to be - I don't know how often people really think "okay, that's the straight white middle-class businesswoman", "that's the Joe Average", etc.

I agree, actually. Certainly, even within TV shows, there are people we are supposed to identify with. Again, let's use Torchwood.

Ianto's a good one, because after all he did to save Lisa - it was done out of love. That all powering emotion etc. And it backfired in an extreme way. BUT it led him to Jack, and whatever it is they have.

It's...at it's most simplified it's, "boy meets girl, girl gets sick, girl dies. boy mopes, boy cries, boy meets someone else," only in this case, this someone else is a guy. And really, that's not seen in fiction.

But some people identify with that, because Ianto's the type of character that makes him easily known.

And...I can see where it's disturbing to not see anyone you personally can identify with. Actually, the more I keep thinking on it, the more I'm just a little..."whoa.." about it. (Side note, I even mentioned it to Gramma and she hadn't even realized that about Torchwood, as far as the instances of lesbianism)




....And aw man, I totally just lost my train of thought. Damnit. But what I'm trying to say here is that you make some fantastic points and that...people should really look at this and really take away from it that there's...something of a double standard within our media and even within our lives.

And I'll be on later, I've gotta reinstall some things before I get online.

[artmusicsoul.livejournal.com]

First off - you don't have to stop being OMGserious if you don't want to be. But you probably already knew that. ;-)

And you guys have a GLBT section? In our local Books-A-Million all of the gay stuff is filed under the "politics" section. Even "The Whole Lesbian Sex Book", which is quite fun to browse through when the politics section is filled with social conservatives...

[hector-rashbaum.livejournal.com]

It depends on the size of the store, and how chain-y it is, and where you are, too. Like, up here and in Providence, if I went to a smaller, locally-owned bookstore I'd either find a glbt section disproportionate (in a good way - more than you'd expect, not less) to the size of the store, or the glbt books mixed in where you'd expect them to be - like the Whole Lesbian sex book in with the other "Relationship" or whatever books, or my dream-beach trash book in with the other beach trash. But RI and VT are both pretty progressive, gay-wise (we had Civil Unions first EAT IT EVERYONE). And I've never been in a Borders without a glbt section.

[purplejamish.livejournal.com]

I kind of want to simultaneously cry and hug you. This is EXACTLY MY ANGRY LESBIAN RANT. You know I love Supernatural, right? It's a great horror-movie show, and so far it has featured two outright-stated gay characters and one who I read as gay but everybody else in Christendom reads as straight because she ... exists therefore is into guys? She has only been shown having sexual interest in one person, who was another woman, and therefore I read her as gay. If I ever see her show sexual interest in a man I'll amend the reading to bi. Fandom, however, assumes she is straight. Based on ... I don't know, evidence I haven't seen?

The other two gay characters were brief guest stars in one episode -- the first one was in a handful of scenes, and one of her final lines was a completely unnecessary mention of a girlfriend, which had no bearing on the rest of the scene and was clearly thrown in to say "Hey look, our characters have diversity! See, a lesbian!" In the next scene, she is killed. A season later, there's a guy who has a crush on a male friend; most of that part of the story is played for laughs, and the gay character dies after a few scenes. I'm pretty sure it's not intentional, maybe they even think they're being awesome and diverse and aware by featuring gay characters at all, but the fact is, the only characters they've explicitly stated in the text have same-sex romantic interests quickly and horribly die. Thanks for that message there, Kripke. They'd probably say something like "It's a horror movie, lots of people die!", to which I would reply "Every single straight character who has ever appeared on the show? Um, no." :/

And I'm just. I am so sick of having to go for "lesbian fiction" if I'm to see any experience I actually recognise. Or lesbian shows. The L Word and Queer As Folk are all well and good, but the primary function of the characters is to be gay. Protagonists who are everything usual protagonists are, and also gay, just don't happen. At which point in any rant about this, the person I am ranting at brings up Torchwood, which I would argue a) seems to largely serve as A Bisexual Show, and b) I am not interested in. I've seen a couple of episodes, and I just don't like it. It seems to be my only option for a show featuring same-sex relationships where they are not the point of the show, though. *HEADDESK*

This is why I like slash. I mean, aside from loving all the ways you can look at characters and stuff, it's the only place I can go and get stories about same-sex relationships where they're just normal people who happen to like people (or one person, even) with the same sort of genitals as themselves. Why must it be so hard to find that anywhere else? AUGH.

[hector-rashbaum.livejournal.com]

Hugs are good! I'll take the hugs *squishes you*.

And I'm just. I am so sick of having to go for "lesbian fiction" if I'm to see any experience I actually recognise. Or lesbian shows. The L Word and Queer As Folk are all well and good, but the primary function of the characters is to be gay.

ugh yes. The L Word is one of my huge guilty pleasures, but all the characters are "a lesbian who also [x]". I JUST WANT ONE "AN X WHO HAPPENS TO BE LESBIAN", people, come on.

And Torchwood...man I love it, it's the only FPFandom I've ever wanted to write fic for, having otherwise only cared about RPF in a ficcing sense, but ugh sometimes I feel like I got squee'd into it under false pretense. Because fandom's all OMG YAY IT'S ALL BISEXUAL and ugh there are so many problems with its presentation of bisexuality I'm not sure it deserves the squee.

But then I've learned time and time again there are large swaths of fandom who give little to no shit about actual social implications, so I shouldn't be surprised that mankissing is enough to get some people absolutely frothing over the idea that maybe, just maybe, Jack Harkness is not exactly doing homosexual love any favors. Because in canon, he only commits to women - his encounters with men, aside from Ianto and John Hart (which was all corrupt and skeevy anyway and were it the only example of m/m on the show I'd have bitched about that along with the lesbianism), are all lolarious anecdotes.

And the only other m/m on the show was all date-rapey (but God forbid someone call it out for being date rape because OMG SQUEE HARSH. News: It is possible to be madly in love with a character and still admit he does stupid shit). Although Ianto's actually pretty awesome - he seems to just love who he loves and that's that. So, y'know, one good example on the OMG YAY BISEXUALS show.

This is why I like slash. I mean, aside from loving all the ways you can look at characters and stuff, it's the only place I can go and get stories about same-sex relationships where they're just normal people who happen to like people (or one person, even) with the same sort of genitals as themselves. Why must it be so hard to find that anywhere else? AUGH.

Yes! And I have issues with slash, too, mostly stemming from the fact that there are so few awesome women to write in the fandoms I'm in I'm SOL unless I want to write it myself and come up with SRSLY tenuous crossovers (Bridget Regan/Lorenza Ponce! They've never met but they both play the same instrument omg. Of course...that's the same reasoning I use for wanting to see David Bryan/Mika, so whatev).

[hector-rashbaum.livejournal.com]

Also: ICON. Eee awesome.