a couple of follow ups
Mar. 9th, 2011 03:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jlhI just want to note that I am incredibly paranoid about internet accusations, basically, and that's why I worry. I want to be accusation-free as much as possible.
Anyway here's where we've ended up, and I feel like it's a good space. After some conversations with folks I thought about how we're always saying that RPF isn't about the people themselves, but about their public personae. Since a closeted or even all-but-out public figure isn't gay as part of that public persona, in order to be consistent we shouldn't be required to take all the rumors or all-but-fact stuff into account when writing stories.
Thenedithmorningstar said:
which is a pithier way of putting that, I think. And I'm on board with it.
What I'm really trying to sketch out is, there's a lot of space between the sort of gay-denying homophobic fangirls who say, "But they can't possibly be gay" and writing rpf het about a public figure about whom there are rumors, especially if that rpf het maintains a queer identity for that public figure. Of course, in saying that there is any gray area gets us into trouble on the internet, which tends to flatten distinctions and set up false dichotomies, but we have to keep fighting the good fight, right?
Shortly after I made my post about online feminism yesterday, I read this post on Racialicious about being an online feminist who doesn't fit the dominant paradigm. Fantastic reading; I highly recommend.
Anyway, thanks to everyone who chimed in! See, this is why I make posts, to start conversations that help me think through my own positions on matters. yay!
Anyway here's where we've ended up, and I feel like it's a good space. After some conversations with folks I thought about how we're always saying that RPF isn't about the people themselves, but about their public personae. Since a closeted or even all-but-out public figure isn't gay as part of that public persona, in order to be consistent we shouldn't be required to take all the rumors or all-but-fact stuff into account when writing stories.
Then
edithmorningstar said:I see erasure as problematic if it has the effect of undermining the claimed identity of a person or character. If an identity is unclaimed, it can't be undermined.
which is a pithier way of putting that, I think. And I'm on board with it.
What I'm really trying to sketch out is, there's a lot of space between the sort of gay-denying homophobic fangirls who say, "But they can't possibly be gay" and writing rpf het about a public figure about whom there are rumors, especially if that rpf het maintains a queer identity for that public figure. Of course, in saying that there is any gray area gets us into trouble on the internet, which tends to flatten distinctions and set up false dichotomies, but we have to keep fighting the good fight, right?
Shortly after I made my post about online feminism yesterday, I read this post on Racialicious about being an online feminist who doesn't fit the dominant paradigm. Fantastic reading; I highly recommend.
Anyway, thanks to everyone who chimed in! See, this is why I make posts, to start conversations that help me think through my own positions on matters. yay!
