fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2756 ]

[ SECRET POST #2756 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2756 ⌋

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Notes:

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Can you give an example of something that is fine in a same sex relationship but not in a het relationship?

I still feel like it wouldn't change anything but I want to understand why so many people here think it would.

i said above most of my ships are military or fictional military, so the characters get aggressive and physical a lot and that's definitely part of the universe's culture

if you suddenly make one a woman it does change things if only because she probably won't be, for example, a 6'6" 250lb guy any more. she'd be a tall and muscular woman, as comparatively tall and muscular as a 6'6" 250lb guy would be, but even between a "tall and muscular woman" and a "tall and muscular man" there is a big comparative physical difference and the power dynamic changes especially in an environment where physicality and physical strength is a huge deal

the other option is to have her be a 6'6" 250lb woman with the exact same upper body strength et cetera as a man but that's literally physically improbable

I just think it makes more sense to look at the individuals rather than the genders. It's true that men tend to be stronger than women but it bugs me that people take it as a given that any random man is going to be stronger than any random woman. There are plenty of scrawny guys and muscular women out there. Obviously your case is different since it assumes that both of them are in good shape so that man will still be stronger, but this is something that gets carried over in cases where that isn't guaranteed. Just a pet peeve of mine. Along with considering physical strength more than any other trait that would even things out (endurance, speed, etc). I'm getting off topic now though.

Basically, if someone is hurting their partner without their consent then that's a problem no matter what the combination of genders is. I understand why a weak woman giving her strong boyfriend a playful slap isn't anything like that boyfriend punching the woman. But the difference is in the effect of those actions not in the identities of the people. I think a man who knows his own strength and makes sure he's not hurting her can play around with a woman the same way everyone is fine seeing guys do with each other, and a woman who injures a man is just as bad as a man who injures a woman.

and i would agree with you about the het couples, but i think that's different in slash-to-het as well... a relationship between physical equals where they're both ribbing each other about how fast or strong or tough they are suddenly becomes pretty shitty and sexist of one of them if you make one clearly physically different from another and they're laughing at the other one for not physically keeping up, so the dynamic is impacted as well. idk, gender is more than identity, it's also how the world treats you and how it impacts interactions with others

i guess you could argue that she could be a 6'6" 250lb woman with the exact same upper body strength as a man. but then that changes her character into a girl who grew up into a 6'6" 250lb woman which is not usual in the least and how she dealt with that during childhood and adolescence which changes her character. she goes from being a tall and heavy man her whole life to being "really improbably huge" her whole life which changes her character. it's like changing a character's race, you can't leave everything exactly the same :\

i guess i would say 'abuse is abuse no matter what or who' but NOT 'if its not abusive it stays not abusive' because things definitely could be depending on circumstance

I was definitely only acknowledging one aspect of the relationship. You're right that there are a lot of other areas where things would change. I still feel like the important thing is the effects on the characters though. Your hypothetical man who is being ribbed about being weaker by another man could be insecure and hurt by that. Whereas the hypothetical woman could be confident and not care at all because she knows that she more than makes up for it in other areas.

But again, you're right that I'm ignoring the way gender influences the way people are perceived. What I just said works when you assume the sexes are equal but gets a lot more complicated when you remember how men and women have been expected to stay in their little boxes and often still face problems when they stay inside them.

I'll have to think about this more.

I said my thoughts in the comment below yours, but in short, "change in how others perceive the relationship" =/= "change in the relationship itself". Just because we tend to laugh off female-on-male abuse as "harmless" doesn't change the fact that it is abuse and shouldn't be laughed off. Respecting your partners' requests, boundaries, and capabilities are far more important than just what those capabilities actually are.

I agree with you. I just also agree with anon that I was simplifying before and that perceptions do enter into it. It's not about "people think it's fine so it is", or at least that's not what anon's comment had me thinking of. I was thinking more about how people are affected by the oppressive messages they are bombarded with and how that impacts the way they can handle things that can either be harmless or hurtful depending on various factors (like the ribbing about being weak that anon was talking about).

I can understand that. I really was just thinking about the relationship itself, rather than how people perceive the relationship, because I'm so used to dismissing other people's perceptions of a relationship anyway (I do not care how often its played for laughs, female-on-male abuse is still abuse and female-on-male rape is still rape, and fuck so much of fandom and popular media for believing or trying to make us believe otherwise).

relationship between physical equals where they're both ribbing each other about how fast or strong or tough they are suddenly becomes pretty shitty and sexist of one of them if you make one clearly physically different from another and they're laughing at the other one for not physically keeping up, so the dynamic is impacted as well

Uh, my boyfriend and I mock each other for physical capabilities all the time, and he's about 270 lbs to my 105 lbs. We mock each other for nearly everything, except for specific topics/areas that we mention, and the other one stops mocking. Stopping the ribbing about a topic on request is more important than what the playful teasing is about in the first place.

I can't cook for shit, and he mocks me for it, while he can't drive and I mock him for it. He also respects my wishes that he not mock my difficulty in learning a new language because I've told him that's a sensitive topic for me, and I respect his request to not say anything about his writing skills when I edit his work because he told me that's a touchy subject for him.

If we switched genders or even body types, all of this stuff would apply.

gender is more than identity, it's also how the world treats you and how it impacts interactions with others

While I definitely agree with that, within the context of a specific relationship, it doesn't mean that much in terms of automatic skeevyness or abusive levels.

If we go to the roughhousing example, then in any situation, you can easily have two characters with vastly different body types, strengths, and/or capabilities, and still have very affectionate and unharmful rough play. Conversely, you can have two characters of equal size, strength, and/or capability, and have an abusive situation if, say, one of them just happens to get rougher with the other one, or doesn't stop when the other one asks. Disparity in size and strength doesn't mean anything as long as both/all partners know to watch their strength/moves and to listen to their partner's requests to stop if they make such a request.

For an MCU context, Captain America will always be bigger and stronger than Iron Man out of the suit - whether that's Steve and Tony, Stephani and Toni, or some combination thereof. The onus will always be on Captain America to watch his/her strength when fooling around with Iron (Wo)Man out of the suit. And on the flipside, Clint may be bigger and possibly stronger than Natasha, but Natasha has far more combat capability/training. Generally speaking, they're evenly matched. Both of them need to watch themselves when horsing around because they can do some serious damage, but both of them would absolutely stop if the other one requested it (and, y'know, they weren't brainwashed).

In both cases, changing the gender might change the way others perceive the relationship, but it does not change the relationship itself. As long as both partners take care to not do (serious) damage to the other one and respects their limits, boundaries, or requests, then they're fine. And this extends to other areas of a relationship (financial power, domestic skills, anything; i.e. Steve/Stephanie will always be stronger than Tony, but Tony will always be richer and have more legal power).

you missed my point i think

For an MCU context, Captain America will always be bigger and stronger than Iron Man out of the suit - whether that's Steve and Tony, Stephani and Toni, or some combination thereof. The onus will always be on Captain America to watch his/her strength when fooling around with Iron (Wo)Man out of the suit.

the two guys im talking about are originally equals. nearly exact equals. they have a rivalry, the point of the ship is that they push each other to the limit and beyond. that onus on one of them to hold back was not there. if the ship were kept AS IS, then it would be perceived as abusive because both characters would keep the same limits when one of them is suddenly physically smaller and there are things she's not physically capable of and the guy keeps pushing her to the same limits

if you change it so that the onus is on the guy to hold back, that changes the ship dynamic so you can't judge it the same. it's not the same ship any more

everything else you said is irrelevant, with that said

Even if they are equals, they still have a responsibility to a.) understand that their partners has boundaries and limits, and b.) respect those boundaries and limits. That my hypothetical partner has the exact same boundaries and limits as myself doesn't change that I still have to respect them when they are made known to me.

And trust me, you can be drastically different in the same field and still have a lively rivalry - and as long as you still respect the boundaries and limits that you should have been respecting when you were equal, then pushing someone to their limit and beyond doesn't change whether their limit is the same as yours, more, or less.

Though quite frankly, I have yet to hear of a ship, slash or het, in which the characters were completely equal in the way you describe - or that the relationship is as shallow as the one you imply. Physical equals pushing each other on is a superficial detail, not a core element of a relationship.

look wow im not gonna write you a ship manifesto for a fandomsecret thread

you and your boyfriend have a dynamic. it sounds healthy and lovely and cool. your steve/tony and clint/natasha also have dynamics that sound healthy and lovely and cool. none of them are like the ship i'm talking about and it's not relevant at all to compare them?

like the ship is a healthy ship BECAUSE they are equals, since they are equals there are things that are acceptable to do and lines that are further down, than if there was a power imbalance to start with. when you change the gender of one of them it adds an imbalance that wasnt there and obviously if you kept equal-dynamics while adding that imbalance, something goes off and can be perceived as unhealthy and abusive and possibly could be

idk how that's so hard

Being equal doesn't automatically a healthy ship make. You can have absolute equals and still have a very unhealthy relationship. A relationship that's healthy "because" they are equals makes no sense.

And as I've mentioned upthread, every argument I've made here has been specifically about the actual state of the relationships, now how others perceive a relationship. That's a different can of worms altogether, and one that I'm just ignoring when we are discussing these ships predominantly in cultural contexts that regularly dismiss female-on-male rape and abuse.

I think you and I may be operating on very different definitions of things like "lines", "limits", and "dynamics". Because if we have two sets of partners who physically push each other to their limits and beyond, who rough house in a safe and consensual manner, and who affectionately mock each other all the while, then I don't see a difference in dynamic between the one where they are equals and the one where they are very different in size/capability.

If that kind of relationship is healthy because they're equals, then that implies you are pushing your partner to your limit, not their limit, and that's disrespectful and unhealthy anyway. If you are actually pushing your partner to their limit and not yours, then it won't matter what their limit actually is in relation to yours.

and if you say 'well you could balance out the gender thing by suddenly giving the newly female character piano playing skills' or something its not that easy, that means changing their backstory to include pianos, lessons, the capability and ability and time to even learn ...

the question was saying genderswap then evaluate the ship, not genderswap, come up with entire new backstories, then evaluate the ship

Genderswapping does, by default, alter a characters' backstory in some manner in at least 95% of the contexts they occur in (and I'm just throwing in 5% to account for the fact that just because I have yet to hear of a fandom in which men and women are completely and utterly equal doesn't mean they don't exist - but I have yet to hear of a fandom where this was the case, so from both experience, heresay, and second/third person analysis, it's still 100% of the time).

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #2756 ]

Re: Genderswap and abusive ships

Re: Genderswap and abusive ships

Re: Genderswap and abusive ships

Re: Genderswap and abusive ships

Re: Genderswap and abusive ships

Re: Genderswap and abusive ships

Re: Genderswap and abusive ships

Re: Genderswap and abusive ships

Re: Genderswap and abusive ships

Re: Genderswap and abusive ships

Re: Genderswap and abusive ships

Re: Genderswap and abusive ships

Re: Genderswap and abusive ships

Re: Genderswap and abusive ships

Re: Genderswap and abusive ships