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sciatrix...so I've been bouncing around here all day instead! (I am actually getting some things done work-wise, but clearly not enough.)
One thing that's been on my mind is a conversation I was having the other day with a gentleman I know, in which we were talking about how it can be really awkward and uncomfortable when you try to just... talk about your life and the straight people have no earthly context and stare at you like a deer in headlights, and you know you can either put on your teaching mode or you can just let it go and continue to be reminded that your context and authentic self is inherently uncomfortable or impolite in broader society. Which sucks.
Anyway, he was specifically talking about things like Grindr culture and jokes and dealing with well-intentioned straight cis incomprehensibility of where he was coming from. As an example, he mentioned the kinds of casual tensions in his group of friends that can happen when some people have propositioned other people and been turned down and some people have slept with other people but not necessarily as a long-term Thing and some people in the room really are in a long-term thing, but folks can just... set that aside and ignore it and have a nice dinner conversation anyway.
Which does not seem to be how straight people negotiate sex and sexuality, which, fair, different cultures. The different values about sex and the way that connection via sex is both less important and more important, though--it's hard to not be able to share big swathes of your interior life with huge swathes of the people you interact with, even if it's just gossip and commentary on the funny thing that X said or the way Y is feeling based on such-and-such context.
But it did make me think about the way in which media fandom, which is intricately intertwined with every female-and-enby-dominated* queer space I have ever inhabited (ace or otherwise!) is just as prone to using sex and sexuality as a means of interaction and connection and socializing and friendship rather than fencing it off in a little corner from the rest of everything. Even if actually having sex with one another is much less common in the circles I've personally been in. Stuff like--getting together in a group of three or four people to co-write 30,000 words of porn for a buddy who was feeling down, for example, or talking frankly and cheerfully about personal kinks and squicks (and using those terms broadly, sometimes to talk about both sexual and nonsexual kinks!).
I really like this friendly openness and integration of sexuality with everything else, is the thing--when you saying something about what does and doesn't work for you in fiction doesn't necessarily imply any value judgement on anyone else, or anything other than what works for you. I like the option to have somewhat permeable boundaries among friendships--but not all of them, and not in an assumed-yes way--and not have to figure out how to place every single thing on just one person.
But it does make it very difficult to mention to straight people large swathes of social relationships or communicatory norms. (I am reminded rather of mentioning Tumblr as an aside to my one straight guy friend back in April of 2017 and having him, baffled, respond "Who uses Tumblr these days?" And I thought... almost everyone I know! It's as ubiquitous as Facebook! Then I thought better of telling him that, because casual mentions of fannish things had been treated in the past as utterly incomprehensible and baffling, and I knew better than to bring it up--which is generally how I handle straight people and cis gay men, because this stuff ought to be opt-in.)
I don't really have any conclusions, but the connection stuck out to me and I hadn't thought about it before, so I figured I might put this down before I forgot that it was an interesting thing.
*the main exceptions are various professional organizations largely dominated by cis gay men, who are understandably uncomfortable with the concept of slash and may also be uncomfortable with the kind of Internet culture I sometimes casually refer to as "nerd shit" generally. Even with queer non-dudes I meet through work Twitter or other contacts, things like the recent Tumblr exodus or the concept of slashfic keep coming up in conversation, no matter how fannish the person in question actually is.
One thing that's been on my mind is a conversation I was having the other day with a gentleman I know, in which we were talking about how it can be really awkward and uncomfortable when you try to just... talk about your life and the straight people have no earthly context and stare at you like a deer in headlights, and you know you can either put on your teaching mode or you can just let it go and continue to be reminded that your context and authentic self is inherently uncomfortable or impolite in broader society. Which sucks.
Anyway, he was specifically talking about things like Grindr culture and jokes and dealing with well-intentioned straight cis incomprehensibility of where he was coming from. As an example, he mentioned the kinds of casual tensions in his group of friends that can happen when some people have propositioned other people and been turned down and some people have slept with other people but not necessarily as a long-term Thing and some people in the room really are in a long-term thing, but folks can just... set that aside and ignore it and have a nice dinner conversation anyway.
Which does not seem to be how straight people negotiate sex and sexuality, which, fair, different cultures. The different values about sex and the way that connection via sex is both less important and more important, though--it's hard to not be able to share big swathes of your interior life with huge swathes of the people you interact with, even if it's just gossip and commentary on the funny thing that X said or the way Y is feeling based on such-and-such context.
But it did make me think about the way in which media fandom, which is intricately intertwined with every female-and-enby-dominated* queer space I have ever inhabited (ace or otherwise!) is just as prone to using sex and sexuality as a means of interaction and connection and socializing and friendship rather than fencing it off in a little corner from the rest of everything. Even if actually having sex with one another is much less common in the circles I've personally been in. Stuff like--getting together in a group of three or four people to co-write 30,000 words of porn for a buddy who was feeling down, for example, or talking frankly and cheerfully about personal kinks and squicks (and using those terms broadly, sometimes to talk about both sexual and nonsexual kinks!).
I really like this friendly openness and integration of sexuality with everything else, is the thing--when you saying something about what does and doesn't work for you in fiction doesn't necessarily imply any value judgement on anyone else, or anything other than what works for you. I like the option to have somewhat permeable boundaries among friendships--but not all of them, and not in an assumed-yes way--and not have to figure out how to place every single thing on just one person.
But it does make it very difficult to mention to straight people large swathes of social relationships or communicatory norms. (I am reminded rather of mentioning Tumblr as an aside to my one straight guy friend back in April of 2017 and having him, baffled, respond "Who uses Tumblr these days?" And I thought... almost everyone I know! It's as ubiquitous as Facebook! Then I thought better of telling him that, because casual mentions of fannish things had been treated in the past as utterly incomprehensible and baffling, and I knew better than to bring it up--which is generally how I handle straight people and cis gay men, because this stuff ought to be opt-in.)
I don't really have any conclusions, but the connection stuck out to me and I hadn't thought about it before, so I figured I might put this down before I forgot that it was an interesting thing.
*the main exceptions are various professional organizations largely dominated by cis gay men, who are understandably uncomfortable with the concept of slash and may also be uncomfortable with the kind of Internet culture I sometimes casually refer to as "nerd shit" generally. Even with queer non-dudes I meet through work Twitter or other contacts, things like the recent Tumblr exodus or the concept of slashfic keep coming up in conversation, no matter how fannish the person in question actually is.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-23 09:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-27 06:01 am (UTC)