fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #818 ]

⌈ Secret Post #818 ⌋

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

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[Homefront]

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[Louis Theroux and Jael Phelps]

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[Code Geass]

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(Family Guy/Seth Macfarlane)

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[Elite Beat Agents]

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(Princess Resurrection)

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[Harry Potter]

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[Watchmen]

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[Where The Wild Things Are]

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[Eminem/Green Day/The New York Dolls]

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[Wolverine and the X-Men]

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[Fallout 3]

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[FFX]

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[Silent Hill]

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 077 secrets from Secret Submission Post #117.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 2 3 4 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 3 - too big ], [ 1 - repeat ], [ 1 - doing it wrong ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

In non-fandom areas, yeah, absolutely. And people do care.

I haven't seen it happening a whole lot in fandom, though.

I'm guessing the reason that women care when men do this is because throughout human history men have oppressed and abused women, often with social approval/encouragement from other men and with no real consequences. Heck, that's still true to some extent. When men write stories about violence toward women in some way, it's very much an expression of a real system of oppression (whether they intend it that way or not), and comes with a sense of "hey, this could really happen" which some women find threatening and off-putting. The reverse just simply isn't true, no matter how you look at it. Nowhere in the world is there a millenia-old history of women perpetrating systemic, institutionalized, and socially acceptable abuse and oppression toward men. So when women write stories in which bad/abusive things happen to men (usually at the hands of other men, I might add) there isn't an entire history of threatening baggage tacked along with it.

I'm a pacifist and absolutely do not condone violence of any kind toward any person of any gender for any reason. In real life men can be the victims of abusive relationships just as women can, and that's not something to make light of. However, I do think that fictional stories that depict abuse (especially if it's sexual), are and should be viewed differently depending on the gender of the author.

I agree on that, but we're not talking just about violence.

I don't think it's so much about violence as it is that there's a depressing history of female characters, even in the most "legitimate" works, as existing only to express male fears and fantasies. Even the most "enlightened" guys I know in the arts say that they find it hard to write female characters who actually exist and matter on their own terms. And how many movies and sitcoms are there already where "lesbian" action exists solely for male viewership?

Oh, I agree. That's all also the result of "throughout human history men have oppressed and abused women, often with social approval/encouragement from other men and with no real consequences." There's still this pervasive undertone that women exist for the pleasure/convenience/entertainment of men. This is exactly why I think the portrayals of men and women characters do need to be treated differently depending on the gender of their creator.

ETA: I just realized this sounded sort of confusing; I was working off the assumption that the OP DIDN'T think this difference should exist.

Edited 2009-04-02 23:34 (UTC)

Sorry. I didn't see this comment before I made mine below. But actually, I would say that I've been in quite a few male-dominated fan spaces and the misogyny there far outstrips the dismissiveness of this single secret which, incidentally, plenty of people are speaking out against.

In general, I don't think it helps when confronted with the much less-common happening of prejudice against men to counter with a genderswap. The two aren't really comparable because sexism doesn't work equally in both directions. And also, gender discrimination isn't a zero-sum equation. Can't we counter it in every iteration without turning it into a battle of the sexes?

Well, yeah, there's misogyny in fandom but I rarely see this kind in large chunks in mainstream fanfiction in the same way that you see it with slash.

The two aren't really comparable because sexism doesn't work equally in both directions.

I don't think anyone's trying to make it a battle of the sexes.

In any case, if we were talking about straight WASP men, that'd be completely true. And while it's still not the same, it's a bit different with what we're talking about here. Because while gay men may have male privilege, they also face a lot of gender issues/homophobia, whereas a lot (not all, of course) of the women getting off on objectifying them have straight privilege.

I'm not justifying the secret-maker's position in anyway. (Heaven knows, I've bitched long and hard about some slashers' appropriation of LGBTQI causes for a sort of risk-free underdog buzz - c.f. calling people who dislike slash homophobes.)

I think the problem I have with the way your initial post here read is that it implies a criticism of people who do speak up for women's rights for not speaking out for gay men's rights, when really those are two seperate conversations, and I think a lot of the people speak out on both.

Why attack people for objectifying gay men by suggesting that in a completely-impossible scenario which we can never test they'd show their bias by being more outraged? Why bring that into the conversation at all if not to set the two - women's rights and gay men's rights - in competition.

It also caused me to double-take because I can't tell you how many times on comic-book and computer-game boards I've seen guys complain that if had happened to a female character, everyone would be up in arms. Their implication is almost always 'feminists suck because they don't deal with men's issues," as though it's impossible to do both, and as though there weren't countless more egregious sins against female characters with which those engaged in feminism are busy.

I see where you're coming from re: men hijacking feminist discussions, because that's totally true. That's not what I mean with my comment, but I can see how it can off similarly because of how I phrased it.

I just think it's incredibly entitled of a lot of slash fans to think they can co-opt gay men's sexuality and objectify them any way they want regardless of the reality, where that wouldn't be accepted by them if (a) it was anyone else doing it or (b) anyone else being objectified (excluding straight white men, which is totally different) and then baw about it when people criticize it.

[ SECRET POST #818 ]

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