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opera142This is not news: the kink memes disappointed me. And the only thing that kept me from wanking a whole lot more was I'm unsure if I'm dismissive of the requests--- all the cuddling and first-timing and romance cliches-- because I don't share those kinks or because it's been socially ingrained into me that these things are unworthy. So in thinking about fandom sexuality, I wanted to consider the need for calling bullshit on myself for devaluing other women's interests/preferences. Women and girls take enough shit in real life about things they adore: boy bands, romance novels, chick flicks. If the preferred fan fiction of the majority is heteronormative storytelling chock full of weddings and cuddling and cherry-popping and babies and true love and Big Daddy Top heroes who rescue socially (and emotionally and intellectually) cloistered receptive sexuality and happy endings reeking of heteronormative satisfaction, perhaps I should be politely bowing out instead of suggesting change.
Should I call double-bullshit on myself because while I'm no fan of heteronormative storytelling chock full of weddings and babies and true love and Big Daddy Top style heroes who rescue socially (and emotionally and intellectually) cloistered receptive sexuality, I understand that craving, and I'd likely share it if it was presented in a less melodramatic, less stifling way? I would adore fics that show how wrestlers get a decent meal and clean clothes and a warm bed while on the road. So in talking out the issues upsetting me here, I want to satisfy myself that I'm actually seeing a problem and trying to open up discussion about it, and that problem is more than A Lot Of Fic Isn't Written To Please My Exact & Finicky Tastes, or simply, boringly, that all I'm doing is producing yet another essay on the wank I can't get past: hyper-naivety in characters.
And while I have bullshit on speed dial, maybe I need to I call triple-bullshit for attempting to squawk about women's issues through a discussion of male characters. The thing is though, the predominant themes/story types in fanfic are blatantly, unrepentantly heteronormative, and because writing Mary Sue fic means social stigmatising from greater fandom (how many mock-Mary Sue communities are there?) and because canon females are largely ignored, it's bottom-cast male characters getting stuck bearing fandom's boorish notions of receptive sexuality.
In slash fanfic, authors' favorites are almost always cast as a bottom. POV almost always comes from the bottom. Bottom-cast male characters get away with oodles more sobbing, vamping, man stealing, self-absorption, and sparkly nail polish than a canon female or Mary Sue ever does. All the hate that goes to Mary Sue (and a huge part of that hate is that she steps out of her bounds) is never flung on bottom-cast males who behave in similar or worse manners. In other words, one depiction of receptive sexuality doesn't know her place, and the other does.
As stupid-seeming, frilly and canon-intrusive as Mary Sue is, she represents a step up for the female author (at best/worst there is the gain of magical or superhuman powers or mad skillz, and at the very least, stupid, frilly, hawtness, and ultra beloved in WWE or TNA or ROH is better than stupid, frilly, average-looking and not-all-that beloved at home in a nondescript suburb). In contrast, the usual portrayal of a bottom-cast male represents a step down for the canon male, in terms of his emotional maturity, intelligence, self-sufficiency, confidence, and worldliness.
If it were a case of all fanfic males suffering a downgrade--- well, I don't know if I'd condone that either. I'm not into wholesale degradation of any group, even white males. But it would be interesting to see the plot dynamics in a genre that forgoes the alpha-male. However, the Top or secondary male characters are rarely stripped of self-empowerment. Only males who bottom, the ones in the role of receptive sexuality.
These quieter, dumber, less self-sufficient, more easily lead characters have been called "Men, only better." Would the phrase be quite so tasty if the blank-eyed and boob-jobbed chicks in Playboy were described as "women, only better"? How can the unapproved suppression of personality traits of anyone in order to make them more sexually appealing be called "improvement"? (unapproved meaning not coming from within a character, such as steps taken to overcome anger management issues) And, worse, these sanitized bottom-cast males are not given other characteristics to make up for what was scoured away. They are written as pretty, and that prettiness is often grossly misrepresented so as to conform with beauty standards set for young women: petite, (remember 6'4 Chris Nowinski "cuddled" in Bono(U2)'s lap?), delicate, and pale, and they are given emotional states: lonely, angsty, afraid. All reaction, no core. They don't create the situations these emotions emanate from. They simply, passively receive them, and they don't do anything on their own to remedy them.
I get that chicks dig stories about unhappy boys with overwhelming emotions. We fetishize aspects of personality and emotional states just as easily as physical attributes. Who am I to incite revolt against others' fetishes or declare certain fictional personality traits as substandard? It's just that these stories are rarely about receptive sexuality dealing with their emotional states or personality traits for good or bad. It's NEVER about that personality aspect creating or affecting plot or aiding the outcome/resolution. You know, the way a naive character survives an ugly world, the hardship of staying sweet in a business that relishes bitterness, the cutie-pie triumphing over the grumpies on his own terms. Those in receptive roles are not written as their own heroes. Stories told from a receptive-role angle are almost always ones of helplessness, befuddlement and an inability to cope. Bottom-cast characters don't attempt to overcome or even pinpoint their sources of helplessness, befuddlement or non-ability to cope. They don't recognize or acknowledge it.
Even as readers and the remaining characters do. Worse, as much as they're fetishized, these unhappy boys overwhelmed by emotions, they are supposed to be pitied first and foremost, and their emotions are presented as shortcomings. I don't like that. I don't like the subtle homophobia--- any guy who takes a dick instead of using his own is obviously dumb, lacking confidence, void of self-realization, a push-over, hindered in nearly every aspect of life and unhappy with himself.
I despise the messages it sends about the proper social roles of receptive sexuality. Especially the notion that a life without a boyfriend/husband/Big Daddy Top is one of abject, utter loneliness, and that once Big Daddy Top comes around that's all the social circle receptive sexuality needs. A feeling of completion is needed in romance, I guess. Love is a good thing, and I understand a character of any orientation craving it. But, it's never shown as the frosting on the cake, as the last piece of the puzzle. It's shown as the only thing. Before Big Daddy Top, the bottom-cast character had nothing. Now he has one thing, and it's supposed to be enough.
Forget friends, interests, dreams, goals and a sense of self. It's the love of a man, or it's nothing. A shy character may not be the center of everyone's social circle, but why can't he have a few, deep friendships (snarky me usually has to ask what's so wrong with Mr. Shy that no one, not even other shy and lonely people want anything to to do with him, and if the rest of the characters can't be bothered to include a lonely person at their lunch table, then why am I suppose to root for a hook-up between anyone)? Same with naivety. Naivety is never shown as a blessing, a novel way of showing how, perhaps, a less-jaded character is better able to appreciate the nighttime starfields of South Dakota versus the nothing shining through LA's smog, or more wrestle-ficcy as a subtle form of rebellion against all the awfulness the business can lead a person into.
It's not that I'm demanding all males swagger through fic, testosterone drunk, waving fists and cock. Can we move beyond that view of self-possession? Can we move beyond the fucking dumbass notion that showing smarts or beliefs or opinions makes a person aggressive, and that reasonable aggression makes a person unlovable? Qualities are like cliched coins; there are two sides to them. I'm tired of reading receptive sexuality always getting the suppressive side of the coin and doing nothing about it.
Why does a bottom-cast character's naivety (or any other shortcoming) have to be so life-squelching? Enforcing hyper naivety on a character denies experience in non-sexual aspects too. Passion isn't just for sex, and a life well-lived requires passion for something. A few somethings. To portray a modern character (male or female) so completely unexposed to any random aspect (but usually it's sexual matters) implies unexposure to huge chunks of life. For most people, I think, sexual discussion and experience happens casually. It comes up in conversation, scenes that are sexually compelling (though not sexually explicit or even intended to be sexual) pop up in the most unlikely of movies or books. Magazines at the grocery check-out lanes are sexually suggestive. Obscene things get yelled in bars, at the beach, on bike trails, in the gym, in college libraries, in songs, in books. An innocent internet search for X often brings up XXX (My favorite band is Big Black. A search for "Big Black" on YouTube gets many non-musical results). Has the naive character lived without friends, movies, choosing his own food, bars, the beach, bike trails, music, the internet, books, conversation? What a sad life.
While there are always going to be forces conspiring to dampen quality of life, wrestlefic has wealthy and mobile characters. and if, for any reason, a character lacks one of those, he or she usually has the other in abundance (Shane McMahon doesn't travel as much, but he has millions; indy circuit folks don't make much money, but they travel everywhere) So my point here isn't don't write inexperienced characters in wrestlefic, it's let me in on the reasons why someone who makes 100 G year and criss-crosses the globe isn't taking advantage of the gadgets and opportunities and cultural bounty his income and traveling allows him. Because not letting me in on those reasons forces me to draw my own conclusions-- a fanfic portrayal of Shane Helms as total sexual innocent either means he's not the comic book geek I love him for being (because comics have sexual aspects, both overt and subtextual) or he's got zero reading comprehension skills. Dumb doesn't do it for me either.
Or, I may come to the nastiest conclusion of all: the character has self-censored. The bottom-cast character is committing intentional head-in-the-sanding because, you know, a natural lust for life is abnormal behavior for receptive sexuality. If a character isn't "slutty" or "bad", then any sexual passion felt by receptive sexuality is so indecent and improper that other passions must be extinguished as well, if only to keep sexual passion from firing. Good girls don't. Good bottoms don't even think about it.
I wonder what fanfic readers find so appealing in that hideous notion. I'm reminded of "Happy Housewife Heroine" the second chapter of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (a truncated version is available here.) The similarities between the short stories she discusses and the content of wrestleslash I read are disappointing, and what's more disappointing is with Friedan's examples, it could be hypothesized it was likely men editing the magazines or at least having some sort of supervisory power over the female editors listed on the masthead that contributed to all those fluffy housewife stories and to: [published text] for over 5 million American women, almost all of whom have been through high school and nearly half to college, [containing] almost no mentioned of the world beyond the home. No male overlords in fandom and yet, how much wrestlefic is set in some variation of home? How many fanfic bottoms are locked away like Rapunzel, stuck in a hotel room tiny tower while an interesting, vibrant canon carries on without them.
Why are love and occupation so mutually exclusive in wrestlefic? Why must love supersede other interests, concerns and expressions of self for the bottom-cast characters? A common wrestlefic example pops up in Taker/Jeff fic, Taker's interest in motorcycles is often mentioned; Jeff's almost never. Guess who bottoms in all the Taker/Jeff fics I've read. Why is something that should theoretically make Jeff more appealing to Taker eradicated from his personality?
Icky message, there. For those in the role of receptive sexuality inexperienced and blank is preferable over having any-- even compatible-- interests or experiences. Work, interests, any self-identifiers (athlete, Christian, crime fighter, even wrestler) are seen as barriers to acceptance and love, and by extension, any bottom-cast character who dares have them is unlovable. Receptive sexuality cannot participate in crafting or deepening interests, hobbies, or the self. He cannot live a wide-open life. He must remain pristine and locked away in an aseptic box until Big Daddy Top turns up with a penis-shaped key.
And this is presented as romantic rather than stifling-- the ultra-naive bottom does not thrive beforehand (shown in states of deep loneliness or sadness; no interests, no passions, no experiences beyond daily tasks of staying alive) and will not grow independently afterward, not only limited to what Big Daddy Top can teach, but what BDT decides to teach (we'll assume that BDTs like most people have had a few 'meh, not for me' experiences and doesn't deem them worthy of passing along, a dependent-on-BDT-bottom won't get a chance to experience those things due to the human tendency to filter), and if the top oh-so graciously decides to use his absolute power to "protect" rather than exploit, he gets to decide what to protect from--- he is the controller of information and the moral authority.
Gross.
Is that the kind of "hero" or love interest fanfic writers admire and want? A man who wants someone not-so-smart and dependant? A man who doesn't look for an intellectual or emotional equal? A man who does not wished to be challenged, out-thought, or out-done in any aspect. So much so that he'll go out of his way (out of his way because the sad little bottom isn't actively pursuing him) to find someone who is obviously hampered? Wrestlefic writers focus creative energies on stripping courage and daring and curiosity and cleverness and pluck from the characters we identify with, rather than crafting for them partners who value in their lovers that courage and daring and curiosity and cleverness and pluck, or writing plots and situations where courage and etc. are required from both. Gross too, right?
Why is it more appealing for writers and readers of fanfic to drag receptive sexuality down? Why do we drag receptive sexuality down to the plot rather than lift the plot to them? I've been asked before: what fun is a love story without a hero? Well, why can't the receptive role be the hero? Why can't there be two heroes, and whose dick ends up where is meaningless until it's time to get under the sheets? Why can't each hero bring something unique and personal to the plot, and the story and their lives become richer for having worked together?
I'm not calling for unrealistic equality here. No two characters are ever going to be exact equals. No two people are going to have the same intelligence matched with same education matched with same school experience matched with same parental involvement in education matched with you get it. (And if they were that's probably a whole 'nother wank about expanding one's horizons) and yes the top may be the smarter, pluckier, whatever-er one. Someone has to be, yes. But, always the top?
And always with such disparity? Really? Because that says so many awful things about fanfic writers' views of receptive sexuality. It says so many awful things about fanfic writers and readers' views about the proper role of receptive sexuality, what behavior, thoughts and goals are ideal and which are wrong. Bold Mary Sue is bad; excessively innocent and sexually repressed bottoms are good.
Yes, back to that.
Why are the very attributes we love in certain characters the ones we strip away from bottom-cast characters when prepping them for love? It's like saying these attributes rock when attached to males who use their dicks like they're suppose to, but they are inappropriate traits for receptive sexuality. Why is a genre crafted by women so dedicated to telling women receptive sexuality is about not doing, not controlling your fate, not making your own way in the world, not being an equal in any matter? Why isn't receptive sexuality ever the hero, doing what others can't or are afraid to try? Why does fandom, for all the talk about the transgressive nature of fanfic feel so compulsory heteronormative and out-dated?
no subject
Date: 2010-04-17 07:13 am (UTC)Um, have you seen some of the latest kink meme stuff? It's kinda of...out-there. Bad quality though. And I do admit that I was the one who requested JoMo/CM Punk cuddling, because that's a kink in my definition of the word - something you like to see in fic but that doesn't happen very often. But I definitely see them as equal in their relationship, should they have one.