Words of Wood

I know I just made another post with youtube embeds, but. It's the 29th March in the UK now.



Been ten years waiting
But it's better late than the never
We've been told before
We can't wait one minute more

Ohh, me and my baby driving down
To a hilly seaside town in the rainfall
Ohh, me and my baby stand in line
You never seen a sight so fine
As the love that's gonna shine at City Hall

Me and my baby been through a lot of good and bad
Learned to kiss the sky
Made our mamas cry
Seen a lot of friends, after giving it all they had
Lay down and die
Lay down and die

[...]

Ten years waiting for this moment of fate
When we say the words and sign our names
If they take it away again someday
This beautiful thing won't change

Ohh, me and my baby driving down
To a hilly seaside town in the rainfall
Ohh, me and my baby stand in line
You never seen a sight so fine
As the love that's gonna shine at City Hall.

There is a growing prevalence at the moment for Neal/Diana fic. This upsets me a lot, and I'm going to talk about why.

Disclaimer: I am not censoring anyone (since I am not a government entity, it would be literally impossible for me to do so). It is everyone's personal choice to write what they write. I am just trying to explain why this particular choice is very loaded, and problematic, and capable of hurting people. Not everyone feels like this, obviously. I don't speak on behalf of any group.

(If you're going to comment with YKINMK, or some variety of "don't read, then", please don't bother. I don't need to read the fic to have it glare in my face as I scroll down my flist.)

Diana, you see, identifies as a lesbian, at multiple points in canon. Very clearly and unambiguously. She has expressed her lack of attraction to men in general and to Neal specifically.

Writing her otherwise is erasure.

The obvious (and very tired) retort is "but what about writing straight characters as gay/bi? That happens all the time!"

Firstly, I can only think of two characters I have ever seen who have actually stated themselves to be straight (Pete from Warehouse 13 and John from BBC Sherlock, if you're curious). Because we live in a heterocentric society, characters (and people) are assumed to be straight unless and until they state otherwise. Coming out is hard, and it isn't a one-time event -- if you're lucky enough to have passing privilege you have to come out again, and again, and again, to each new group of people. It's SCARY. Even then, it can be really hard to get people to respect your identity -- think of all the "you just haven't met the right man/woman yet" bullshit.

And secondly: writing a straight or assumed-straight character as queer is an act of subversion. In our heterosexist society, our media suffers deeply from an overabundance of assumed-straight characters, and a lack of meaningful representation for queer people. Taking assumed-straight chars and writing them as queer can be powerful: it's forcing ourselves into spaces which actively try to keep us out. It's saying, We can be main characters. We can be heroes. We belong here.

Taking a gay character, one of the very few textually gay characters, and writing them into a straight relationship is a fucking kick in the teeth. No way to sugar-coat it, I'm afraid, and I don't want to.

I was talking a moment ago about the lack of respect for queer people, and queer identities, and this is a part of that. Writing a gay character in a het relationship does not happen in a vacuum -- it happens in a context where gay characters are already crumbs compared to the spread of assumed-straight characters. Where we all know that creators can and do take them away from us at any moment (Moffat's Irene Adler, I'm looking at you). Where (usually) straight people feel completely justified in continually questioning self-professed queerness, and so many media narratives glorify the gay-identified person finding that they "just happen" to fall in love with someone of the opposite gender. Where "she'd like it if she just tried it" is a meme, one that makes people feel justified into coercing or forcing gay people into sex they don't want. Where we all know that you might not really be gay -- maybe you're just confused, or immature, or waiting for the right man.

There are reasons to write a pairing like Neal/Diana. Because you find the thought of them together hot. Because you enjoy their interactions, and want to write more of them, and a relationship is an easy way of doing that. Because you just feel like it.

There are reasons not to. Because it hurts people to see that one of the few characters they can identify with, that they can count as one of them, other people feel justified in claiming for the over-represented majority instead. Because you respect representations of queer identities. Because, whether you agree with them or not, you realise that writing het ships for gay characters makes people upset and hurt.

You can choose which of those reasons you care the most about. But you ARE making a choice. And you're displaying it in public every time you write this pairing. Please, consider choosing not to.

I have some thoughts for (Inter)National Coming Out Day.

If I'd posted this when I opened this tab, a few hours ago, it would be a happier post. About 70% of my facebook feed today has been taken up friends posting statuses about it, and it's fun, you know, to actually see a load of us all being vocal at once. To talk about issues in public, and have people who normally refuse to listen read the threads because we're talking about something positive. (That said, the thread on my status has devolved into a discussion on tea and on whether it's unforgivably antisocial to read a book during sex.)

But. Something about getting quick, supportive "Likes" or comments from people who feel happy tossing around identities as pejoratives, or from the guy in my gaming group who I've had long, long arguments with about his "right" to call people f*ggots or to be a racist douche -- well. It's that easy, is it, to do your bit and assert you support us. Today. Just today.

There is an LGBTQsoc stand at Freshers' Fair. And every year, lots and lots of straight people come up and say something along the lines of, "I'm not queer, but am I allowed to sign up anyway?"

"Oh yes," the people on the stand say. "In fact, you can also sign onto the mailing list for the activism branch of the society! We're working towards things like improving the uni environment for queer people, writing political letters, and all that sort of stuff. We always need more allies."

"Oh. Actually, I only want to join in on the social side of things. You know, the drinks nights?"

Lots and lots and lots of people. Every time. We'll be your allies while it's fun for us. Not when it's work. When you have to sit back sometimes, and give up things you like, and speak up when no one else does.

I am remarkably privileged. I am white and my parents are comfortably middle-class and I can usually hide my crazy and I can talk about being gay and poly and ace because it's safe for me to do so. I get angry about microaggressions and slurs and I am so incredibly lucky because I am safe.

Acceptance is good. Acceptance is important. Action is more important, because this world is so far from good enough. I can come out, but we have gay kids and trans* kids living on the streets and we have people being murdered in all these countries we live in and we are not doing enough. I am not doing enough. We all need to work so much harder.

Days of Things are all very well, but it's the rest of the year that's important. What you're doing then. Who you're remembering. What actions you're taking to make the world better on all those other days.

Protest report!

( Lots of words and several pictures! )

/flops.

The UK government is currently running a public consultation on whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry.

Go and reply to it. It's very quick - you can just check the boxes, even. (I'm assuming you're all in favour - if you aren't I have to wonder if I'm on your flist by accident :P)

I don't see anything that says you have to be a UK citizen to reply.

Suddenly there seems to be mass OH NOES THE EVIL IMMIGRANTS ARE TRYING TO CANCEL CHRISTMAS panic all over my facebook feed, with a sidenote of THIS IS OUR COUNTRY. Delightful.

Well, I've been considering a friend cull for a while...

ETA: At least one of these people is American. DO YOU KNOW WHAT DAY YOU'RE CELEBRATING RIGHT NOW.

Today, while revising, I realised that one of the majorly influential scientific papers I've studied (and wrote an essay on last term) was written by a woman.  I'm ashamed to say that my first feeling was one of surprise, because I've come to take it for granted that all the important papers and books in the field tend to be written by men.  My lecturers and tutors are mostly men (they're also all white, fwiw).  I'm rather uncomfortable that I've just been accepting this as the natural order of things.

Also, I was reading some articles in Science this afternoon (it's one of the really influencial journals, in case you didn't know that), and this issue contains several stories about how clinical trials and the like are biased towards using men as the standard test subject -- with ratios in the terms of five or six to one.  It isn't even confined to humans -- the same bias holds true in research on lab animals.  Males are much more likely to be used unless females are specifically required.  This leads to treatment for women being far less evidence-based than treatment for men. 

Pertinant quotes (full text here, but it's subscription-only): "Differences in the physiology of males and females, and in their response to disease, have been recognized for decades in many species — not least Homo sapiens. The literature on these differences now encompasses everything from variations in gene expression between male and female mice, to a higher susceptibility to adverse drug reactions in women compared with men. Moreover, hormones made by the ovaries are known to influence symptoms in human diseases ranging from multiple sclerosis to epilepsy.

Funding agencies and researchers alike should also start thinking seriously about how to deal with the most fundamental sex difference: pregnancy. Pregnant women get ill, and sick women get pregnant. They need therapies, too, even though they are carrying a highly vulnerable fetus and their bodies are undergoing massive changes in hormonal balance, immune function and much else besides. Entering pregnant women in clinical trials is problematic in the extreme, for a host of ethical reasons. But ignoring the problem is not an answer either — the result is that physicians will prescribe drugs whose effects during pregnancy are poorly known."

Several of us at college had a picnic on the lawn this evening, at which I brought up this topic, since it was fresh in my mind.  We were mostly girls.  One of my friends (female) immediately tried to shoot me down, saying that she hated feminists, because "they're just a load of women whinging about imaginary problems".  According to her, we're ~allowed~ to complain in private (mostly in the silence of our heads), but she doesn't see why it's in any way important to actually voice concerns in public, where those we're complaining about can hear us.  All we're doing, as women, is making ourselves look easily offended and whingy.  And everyone knows that women complain too much already!

This girl?  She's a PPEist (politcal).  Actually pretty damn likely to end up in parliment, but doesn't think that the underrepresentation of women is any sort of problem.  To be fair, two of the other girls who backed me up were also PPEists, but still.  The guys all stayed quiet, apart from the guy who's FTM who also agreed with me.

Along similar lines, who else has heard about the fail going on at CBS?  They have a show, Criminal Minds, which has excellent plotlines and an excellent cast, including some of the strongest female characters on television.  The male:female ratio is 4:3.  Now it's just been announced that, to "save costs", one of the women is being outright dumped from the show and another is having her screentime dramatically reduced, so that she will only appear in a fraction of episodes.  Non of the male cast members are being affected by the "cost issues".  Coincidentally, or not, the single surviving woman is the one who is by far the most girly of the three.  The fail here is what I'd call pretty dramatic.