fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5908 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5908 ⌋

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

01.

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02.

[Tombstone - Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer]

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03.

[The Other Boleyn Girl]

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04.

[Mass Effect]

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08. [SPOILERS for Iron Widow]

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09. [WARNING for inevitable JKR wank]

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10. [WARNING for discussion of antisemitism]

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11. [WARNING for possible discussion of sexual abuse]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #845.
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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

04. https://i.imgur.com/ujly5gE.jpg
[Mass Effect]

heh, I wanted to post something like this in the menwritingwomen vs womenwritingmen thread earlier this week(?) that ignored this aspect entirely... but I think we're outnumbered here

I feel you though

It's just sort of hard to know how to respond to this without knowing more specifically what you have in mind.

I was thinking the same thing

Yeah, people use the word "fetishize" so broadly and incorrectly, and there's a very vocal subgroup that does this with m/m in particular, that my first assumption about this secret was that someone was uncomfy because women were gushing about how sweet/hot the ships were. See, that's considered "fetishizing" because women aren't gay men, so if they enjoy m/m then it's bad.

Right - but at the same time it also is absolutely possible that people are being shitty about it! It's just tough to know.

I so rarely see m/m shippers fetishizing mlm relationships in the true sense (to be clear, you cannot "fetishize" a ship itself), and so often see false accusations of it, that I am totally assuming the OP is the one being shitty until I have concrete accounts of the fans being literal fetishizers.

You absolutely can fetishize a ship. Is not woobiefication a form of fetishization?
Isn't the very act of writing porn about two characters in a relationship literally fetishizing that ship?

Nope! Fetishizing is to dehumanize in a sexual manner. You can write porn without dehumanizing the characters, and woobification is just making someone OOC.

Woobification seems pretty dehumanising to me?

It stops being about the character as written and more about a blob of traits that strokes the ff-writer's id.

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+100

I see a lot of people using "fetishizing" to just mean "being turned on by" or "writing smut about" and that is not even remotely what it means. "Fetishizing" means focusing on one specific trait to the extent of denying someone's humanity. It also goes with stereotyping a lot of the time, like fetishing Asian women as ultra-feminine and submissive for example.

Woobiefication can be a form of fetishization if it's always the bottom that's the woobie and they're always made more short / more slender / more feminine in general / totally helpless and on and on. Which happens a loooot in m/m lol

Whether it's "dehumanizing" to totally ignore a characters canon personality and shoehorn them into your preferred personal kink dynamics is arguable, but when authors follow the same heteronormative formula in all their gay ships, forcing it when necessary, it's certainly worth a side-eye and an eye roll

"so and so is such a bottom XDDddddddd my pretty gay boi" maximum cringe

"so and so is such a bottom XDDddddddd my pretty gay boi" maximum ~~cringe~~ strawman

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No, and no. This is exactly the kind of incorrect use of "fetishizing" that's making people skeptical of the secret.

Yeah, this. Is this about porn about fictional characters, or are people being shitty about gay men in the real world?

I don't know anything about this fandom/this 'ship, so I have no clue about how it's written, but I do wish it was a bit more specific....

I've tried as a writer not to 'fetishize' m/m sex scenes and m/m sex in general, but where is the line? What does it really mean? Is the simple fact of me, a cis bi-sexual woman, writing bout m/m sex mean i'm fetishizing?

I sympathize, I truly do, but I guess I'd like it to be more clear-cut.

It's porn. Yeah, there's going to be some fetishization here and there. It's best to get over it because no, it will never stop because porn will always be a thing and there will always be someone who looks at that porn, regardless of its content, and deem it as fetishizing.

This. It's not as though all (or even most) M/F fic is written to be even remotely realistic, either.

I'll join the other comments and ask if you could be more specific. I'm very suspicious of anyone calling woman fetishizers for writing m/m, but also, don't want to invalidate you.

Feeling uncomfy with the porn someone kinks on is totally valid, but fiction is fiction and YKINMKATIOK still applies.

If people are talking about actual real world M/M relationships and dynamics in fetishizing ways, then that's problematic and I don't blame you for taking issue with it. But if what they're "fetishizing" is fictional characters and those characters' fictional relationships and dynamics, then they aren't actually doing anything wrong and therefore I'm not surprised they don't welcome people trying to correct them.

+100

ngl, when I was first venturing into fanfiction back in the 2000s - I felt a little bit like this about the femslash I would come across in the X-men fandom that was definitely written by guys for the same reason.

As a cishet woman, there's something about the way that some of my cishet fannish women friends would talk about their assorted m/m ships that made me uncomfortable, in that it felt...dehumanizing? exploitative? Look, I know it can't ACTUALLY be exploitative because they're just writing Stargate SG-1 fic and not, like, in any kind of position of power, but I can't think of a better word at the moment. "Oh gay men are my hot Barbie dolls that I can smash together because I think that's hawt, not really interested in examining the underlying dynamics of that." #NotAllFans and so on, but I don't think it's a strawman or an exaggeration to point out that some fan attitudes aren't great and I can understand why gay men in fannish spaces would be uncomfortable with that dynamic.

That was in my high school and college years and I don't hang out in that particular fan space anymore so who knows what they're up to now. But the fact that one of them was a hardcore evangelical Christian always kind of made it extra yikes for me.