[ SECRET POST #2893 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2893 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 012 secrets from Secret Submission Post #413.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

because the "gay people can be turned straight"/"the right man/woman can turn you straight" concept actively hurts real life gay people and a lot of us (especially with personal history) are unable to divorce it from fiction easily.

[(Anonymous)]

This. A million times this.

No it doesn't affect canon, but it damn well affects the people reading.

[(Anonymous)]

Do you also worry that slash fanfiction is going to convince people that you can be converted into being gay

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT

I'm fairly sure your average straight person will never have had a real-life encounter that was along the lines of "If you just met the right gay person, I bet they could turn you gay."

The reverse isn't true. The concept of 'curing' homosexuality is sadly alive and well, and perpetuating such harmful ideas even in fanfiction is going to be something people have a very visceral reaction to.

[(Anonymous)]

Except that there are people IRL who are scared of being "turned gay" or having one of their family members "turning gay".

[(Anonymous)]

They don't generally treat it like a good thing, no, but there are in fact hella homophobes who talk about people being converted to being gay. It's a definite thing. So, again, if your concern is legitimizing homophobic beliefs - which I think is ridiculous, to be frank, because the idea that the vast majority of people in fandom are the same people who are going to be perpetuating these ideas is kind of ridiculous to begin with - but if that's your concern, doesn't slashing straight characters contribute to that just as much?

[(Anonymous)]

it's not about "legitimizing homophobic beliefs," it's about being a reader with enough experience being told I can be turned straight that I can't divorce that harmful concept from fictional characters just because they're fictional. and I'm allowed to find people who use that fictional scenario gross.

so no, you've completely misread my concern.

[(Anonymous)]

Buh.

Apparently I'm not understanding your concerns, no. It's tricky because there's so many things to dance around. But, like, I can completely understand why someone might not want to read it themselves. That, obviously, makes total sense. It's at the point where you (apparently? maybe? this is where the lines start getting blurry) want to launch a broader critique of it that you just absolutely lose me.

Here's where I'm coming from, I guess. To me, the idea of writing fanfiction where a gay character is straight has very little resemblance to the idea that the character can easily be turned straight. It's just as easy, to me, to imagine that you're writing an AU where the character has always been straight, or frankly a million other things. I can see why it could make someone think about conversion therapy and that kind of thing. But I don't think that's intrinsic to it. So the connection to the real-life concept of conversion therapy is, to me, extremely tenuous. Maybe some people are writing it in a pray-away-the-gay way, but I don't think that's the norm at all. Writing a gay character as straight, to me, has pretty much no connection whatsoever to whether the character is 'really' gay or not.

So I don't think that it's bad in itself - it's a bit of fantasy that's relatively divorced from those issues of representation etc. So if it's not bad in itself, then the reason to say it's bad is because it has bad effects. But as we both agree, it's not being used to legitimize homophobic beliefs. So I just don't see why it's bad or gross in and of itself, I guess. And I don't think that the fact that it makes you, specifically, and personally, think of conversion therapy makes it bad and gross and no one should write it.

[anonymous4]

nayrt

I was just about to say that that trope is something that has always disturbed me about slash.

I've always assumed it was because most slash is (supposedly) written by straight women, and reflects their motives for getting two men together -- someone said the other night that one of her friends only likes slash between 'straight' men.

[(Anonymous)]

I assume at least a healthy percentage of those women who only like slash between "straight" men are operating under a homophobic mindset that gay men 'act' a certain way that they don't find masculine or attractive.

[(Anonymous)]

While there isn't enough data to actually have a definitive answer, there have been several fannish surveys that have revealed that a lot of slash fandom is made up of lesbians and bisexual women.