To the righties on my Trusted list, or, rather, the Righties whose opinions I trust:
I'm assuming I'm in with this lot, although I'm mildly curious as to who else would be...
The question is, do you know anyone who's comfortable with slash [snip] while not comfortable with homosexuality as a practice in her real life?
Well, it's not me, really, but I have this friend, y'know, and this friend...
Ahem.
(I'm going to answer this a bit differently than I might, if I wasn't going out of town for a week. So. Cards on the table.)
I note that you go on to clarify the question as 'practiced by other people she knows in real life' rather than 'practiced by her in her real life.'
And I'm *not* sure, exactly, what sort of conclusions we can draw from what we read/what we find is hot to read, vs what we find non-squicking in RL. Partly because I'm not sure what relationship this has (as I've said before at length) and partly because I get the impression from many of the bib'philes on my reading list that it's how the author tells the story rather than the actual plot.
As for me, well...Yes, I write (a little) and read (more than a little) slash - m/m more than f/f. I have friends (not acquaintences) of both genders het and not in orientation. (Plus all you crazies out in lj land.)
There are friends who, if they were to announce they were gay, I would fall down laughing. And some that such an announcement would greatly disturb me, 'cause, hey, four years crawling the same bars after guys, two kids and eight years married to a guy (and you never ever hit on *me*, bitch!) would leave me to wonder, with unease, just *what* was going on in their heads.
Other friends, not so much with the shock or the upset.
As for actual physical details squicking me, well, yeah. Because het or not, some things I do not Need To Know. And some pictures I do not need in my head. Love them dearly as a friend or buddy, do *not* need to see them neekid and flag a-flying.
And, with all that, I am not supporting same-sex marriage. Due more to an extreme case of reactionary knuckle-dragging re: what I consider marriage about and for than the actual gayness of it. But there might be some of that mixed in, too.
I completely get the contradiction between 'don't have sex unless you're married' and the 'but if you're gay you can't get married' camps. Meaning that I know it's a contradiction, and I'm still trying to muddle my way out of it.
When I make up my mind as to what I (and hence the rest of the world *g*) should think on this, I'll let you know.
But hey. Bring on the whiskey and the evil temptresses - especially the whiskey - and we'll see how well it works. (kidding. really.)
first, if there IS a set of slash writers who are uncomfortable with homosexuality in the "real world" but not in fiction, then -- why that is, exactly.
Ummm. Because one is a story and one is real life, and we apply different standards to our own behavior than we do to the characters we write?
'Standards' isn't, quite, the best word here. Qualities, perhaps. We can write about characters that go off and fight in interstellar wars, knowing full well that given the chance, we ourselves would point our spaceship in *exactly* the opposite direction. We write a character that longs to have a child while we view the topic with something like 'acck! Not me!' And so on.
We are not the characters we write. We are not the characters we read. It is *not* required, I think, that I be Danish, royalty, male, living in the 1400's or actively searching for my father's murderer for me to feel the pain, confusion and bitter despair of Hamlet. Nor was ol Mr Bill, either, now that I think on it. Except the male part. (And there are people who will debate that with you.)
And the human part.
Take genre far enough, though, and we're not talking 'human' anymore. So, it's a Klingon on the screen, does that mean we can't cheer or boo him/her on? I'm not thinking so. And it doesn't, I think, mean that we would have to endorse the Klingon pattern of 'kill first, torture the corpse'. Or even want our best friend to marry one.
So. There you go. Muddled and every thing. You did ask.
oh, the stories you'll tell
I'm assuming I'm in with this lot, although I'm mildly curious as to who else would be...
The question is, do you know anyone who's comfortable with slash [snip] while not comfortable with homosexuality as a practice in her real life?
Well, it's not me, really, but I have this friend, y'know, and this friend...
Ahem.
(I'm going to answer this a bit differently than I might, if I wasn't going out of town for a week. So. Cards on the table.)
I note that you go on to clarify the question as 'practiced by other people she knows in real life' rather than 'practiced by her in her real life.'
And I'm *not* sure, exactly, what sort of conclusions we can draw from what we read/what we find is hot to read, vs what we find non-squicking in RL. Partly because I'm not sure what relationship this has (as I've said before at length) and partly because I get the impression from many of the bib'philes on my reading list that it's how the author tells the story rather than the actual plot.
As for me, well...Yes, I write (a little) and read (more than a little) slash - m/m more than f/f. I have friends (not acquaintences) of both genders het and not in orientation. (Plus all you crazies out in lj land.)
There are friends who, if they were to announce they were gay, I would fall down laughing. And some that such an announcement would greatly disturb me, 'cause, hey, four years crawling the same bars after guys, two kids and eight years married to a guy (and you never ever hit on *me*, bitch!) would leave me to wonder, with unease, just *what* was going on in their heads.
Other friends, not so much with the shock or the upset.
As for actual physical details squicking me, well, yeah. Because het or not, some things I do not Need To Know. And some pictures I do not need in my head. Love them dearly as a friend or buddy, do *not* need to see them neekid and flag a-flying.
And, with all that, I am not supporting same-sex marriage. Due more to an extreme case of reactionary knuckle-dragging re: what I consider marriage about and for than the actual gayness of it. But there might be some of that mixed in, too.
I completely get the contradiction between 'don't have sex unless you're married' and the 'but if you're gay you can't get married' camps. Meaning that I know it's a contradiction, and I'm still trying to muddle my way out of it.
When I make up my mind as to what I (and hence the rest of the world *g*) should think on this, I'll let you know.
But hey. Bring on the whiskey and the evil temptresses - especially the whiskey - and we'll see how well it works. (kidding. really.)
first, if there IS a set of slash writers who are uncomfortable with homosexuality in the "real world" but not in fiction, then -- why that is, exactly.
Ummm. Because one is a story and one is real life, and we apply different standards to our own behavior than we do to the characters we write?
'Standards' isn't, quite, the best word here. Qualities, perhaps. We can write about characters that go off and fight in interstellar wars, knowing full well that given the chance, we ourselves would point our spaceship in *exactly* the opposite direction. We write a character that longs to have a child while we view the topic with something like 'acck! Not me!' And so on.
We are not the characters we write. We are not the characters we read. It is *not* required, I think, that I be Danish, royalty, male, living in the 1400's or actively searching for my father's murderer for me to feel the pain, confusion and bitter despair of Hamlet. Nor was ol Mr Bill, either, now that I think on it. Except the male part. (And there are people who will debate that with you.)
And the human part.
Take genre far enough, though, and we're not talking 'human' anymore. So, it's a Klingon on the screen, does that mean we can't cheer or boo him/her on? I'm not thinking so. And it doesn't, I think, mean that we would have to endorse the Klingon pattern of 'kill first, torture the corpse'. Or even want our best friend to marry one.
So. There you go. Muddled and every thing. You did ask.
- hossgal