[ SECRET POST #3519 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3519 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 41 secrets from Secret Submission Post #503.
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)]

I'm trying to be careful with my words here, because it is tricky. And I want to be very emphatic that the narrative of Gay For You is not at all homophobic. There's nothing close to homophobic about it. The idea of "really gay" is problematic and probably kind of nonsensical, and I'm not endorsing it.

But I do think those ideas and narratives have, at times, been in the heads of some fan writers writing slash. And that for those writers, Gay For Only You was something that they understood as distancing the characters they were writing from homosexuality, and it appealed to them because they weren't entirely comfortable with homosexuality, and so you had a specific kind of fic where Only Gay For You was used in problematic ways. Even though the trope itself isn't problematic, it was used to produce problematic fic. And so the perception of that kind of fic conditions the way that people think of the trope.

[(Anonymous)]

nayrt

Yeah, I recall reading somewhere - probably some sociological study of fandom from 20+ years ago - that slash writers often liked to avoid making characters "really gay" for those reasons. It could be used as kind of an out - "They're not gay, they're just in love!"

[(Anonymous)]

Yes! This right here. I was in fandom back in the day and there was definitely a homophobic flavor of...they're in love, not really gay - don't get that icky gay on my masculine, purely hetero male macho characters I love, they're just hot for each other because love.

And so I think this trend toward writing characters as bi but it happened between the scenes, maybe they had boyfriends (or girlfriends if it's femslash) that just weren't in canon, is healthier than the olden days of "gay just for you." Sorry for OP, though.

[arcadiaego]

The context is exactly this, in my memory.