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Jun. 27th, 2005 06:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatWriting chapter five of my novel feels a bit like I'm chipping away a huge block of marble. Chip. Chip. Chip. OR rather, word, word, word.
Bad day. Walking outside at lunch felt like walking underneath a leaking ceiling. So I sought shelter in the bookstore beneath the building where I work and hunted for the Guy Gavaerial Kay novels. Only found Vol 2 of the Finovar Tapestery series but not volumn 1. Apparently if I want to read this thing, I will have to order it off Amazon, or lug my lazy ass to the library and hunt it. No rush - I'm completely enraptured by George RR Martin's Game of Thrones at the moment. Bought Vol2 and Vol3 of the Martin series last week during lunch. I think it may be dangerous for me to have a bookstore this close by my workplace.
This morning I read the replies to my last post. Since I was at work, I did not attempt to reply to them for obvious reasons. Now? I'm not sure how to actually. Spent a good portion of my time - reacting, internally, as follows: "No, no, no, that's not what I meant. You missed the entire point of my post. ARRRGH!" or "Yeah, I agree with you but what does that have to do with what I posted?" or "Shit, I did a lousey job of making myself clear, didn't I?" Which, ahem, taught me something. Probably should have figured this out by now but - People have a crazy tendency to read whatever they want to in someone else's writing. We spend a great deal of time talking about writing carefully, but I'm not sure people always read that carefully. I know I don't -heck, that's part of the reason this was a bad work day. Something I did not take the time to read carefully - came back and bit me in the ass. So trust me, I know how important it is to read carefully.
The other thing it taught me, which I already knew, but it helps to be reminded, is this: People bring their own host of experiences to every interaction regardless of what it is. And everyone's experiences are unique.
Where conflict or debate comes in - is when people's experiences of reality conflict with each other. In other words - if you fell in love with an older man at the age of 15, married him, lived a happy life then years later came on the internet and met a person who was molested by an older man at the age of 15, suffice it to say - your experiences may be in conflict. That's an extreme example - but the best I can come up with at the moment.
Some of the posts reminded me a little of a discussion in the movie Kinsey, about the scientist who created the famous Kinsey Sex Report. The Kinsey Sex Report - was a report published in the 1950s/60s (I think) about the sexual activities of men and women. What's interesting is Kinsey had no troubles getting funding for doing a report on men, was actually congratulated for it, but got his funding yanked when he did it on women. At any rate - the discussion was as follows:
Kinsey: I want to do an in depth study on male and female sexual behaviors.
Rockfeller Research Foundation Chief: Okay. But you're focusing on their normal sexual behaviors right? I mean nothing perverse?
Kinsey looks confused.
Wales who is watching the film with me turns to me and says, quite aptly: Kinsey doesn't believe there is such as thing as "normal" sexual behavior.
Me: And he would be right.
That was what he proved with the Kinsey Report. There is no such thing as "normal" sexual behavior. Actually I don't believe there is such a thing as normal period. But that's a whole other debate.
What there is - is socially acceptable behavior and convention. The word convention, or rather my use of the word convention, should not be confused with normal, especially since I do not personally believe there is such a thing. Unless of course you define normal as socially acceptable behavior or whatever trend that society is currently into. And you'd have to be a marketing person/ad guy to keep up with them. We're in a manic phase at the moment, the damn trends are coming at us right and left like baseballs, repeating themselves. One of the big trends - is heterosexual women fantazing about heterosexual or bisexual men having sex with each other and heterosexual men fantazing about heterosexual/bisexual women having sex with one another. Note I say heterosexual/bisexual, not homosexual, if they are homosexual - they can't come back and do it with person doing the fantasizing. People are anything if not selfish. Because this is currently a "trend" and used repeatedly in fanfic, romance novels, tv shows, and movies - I don't think it's kinky. I think it's pretty ordinary. Also it's not a new trend.
Convention has numerous definitions in the dictionary. The one I'm using is (just so we're all clear) - "following accepted practice, customary". For me, customary practice - is basically anything you can find in mainstream bookstores, toy stores, and blockbuster. Stuff you do not have to hunt for. Convention? Stuff I've seen repeatedly on network TV shows, romance novels, etc.
Concerning sex - pretty much all of it is kinky depending on your point of view. When I was 18, I thought a blow-job was kinky. Now it seems sort of conventional. Same with going down on a woman. Sorry for the lingo, but sometimes it works if you're blunt. Bondage? Yeah, kinky. Man dominant, woman submissive? Not so much - unless of course you're doing the bondage thing, but I'm talking generally here not in S&M lingo, which I really can't speak to since I'm not versed in S&M. Get in enough trouble trying to discuss what I do know about. So what I mean is the old fashioned missionary position vs. the woman on top position - just to be clear. If you throw in handcuffs? Sure that's kinky. But that's kinky regardless of who's wearing them. Did read one thing where the two were handcuffed together - still have troubles envisioning it. Some fanfic writers, methinks, need a course in anatomy. Not sex. Anatomy.
Trust me - people can write quite well about sex without ever experiencing it directly. Just because you can't, does not mean someone else can't. One thing I've learned :Do not project your limitations/experiences on others - always gets one in trouble. (She says while she proceeds to do just that. What me, a hypocrite? Nooo...)
At any rate - my point, which I made badly, was: What I see less of on tv, romance novels, fantasy novels, etc right now - is a strong woman controlling things. That could just be me. But I've had to REALLY hunt for it. (And please don't quote back to me Desperate Housewives, Medium, Veronica Mars, Gilmore Girls, or Alias as examples - they aren't women in control of anything in my opinion. The closest I've come to strong women on TV lately are: Farscape, The Closer, and BattleStar Galatica and that is it.)
What unnerves me when I've read Buffy fanfic (and I'm not singling anyone out here - from 2002 -2005 I read more buffy fanfic writers than I care to list) is how many writers have felt the need to punish, degrade, or remove in some way shape or form the female heros power - making Spike the hero or Spike the one in control or the sympathetic party. I understand why some of them do it, no problems with that, really - but it is the way fanfic writers do it that unnerves me. Why for instance do so many writers feel the need to make Buffy pregnant with Spike's baby? Why do so many of them want to have her get off on him biting and drinking from her - draining her power? (As if this is kinky - it's not, somewhat conventional actually. Laurell K. Hamilton, Ann Rice, and half the romance novelists who write Vampire stories do it. ) Why does Spike take a leadership role above her? Why is she put in the domestic/traditional role? It's not kinky that women writers are doing this - because this is actually conventional romance. Most gothic and bodice-ripper romance novels I read in the 70's up until the early 80's fit this. One even had a girl desperado who gave it up to be the lady wife of a count, because she fell in love. Now, don't misunderstand me, I don't mean to say there's anything wrong with this. Heck, I have these fantasies, as a single working woman. But they are conventional ones. Not very original. What throws me is why there aren't more fantasies or stories about the gal in control - the gal becoming and staying the hero? Say what you will about Season 7 BTVS, but I give Whedon credit for doing one thing right, Buffy did not ride off in the sunset with some guy. (Yeah, I know, he ruined it in Angel S5 but let's forget that for a sec.) She did not need to be defined by him. She was perfectly happy to be single. That is rare to see on TV or in books. There've been a few - My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin. But very few.
okay...ran out of words again. Need to eat. Want to read George RR Martin.
Maybe I should delete this? Oh well... do with it what you will. Not sure how much sense it made. Tough day, like I said. And most of this? Internal monologues and rants I had during it.
Bad day. Walking outside at lunch felt like walking underneath a leaking ceiling. So I sought shelter in the bookstore beneath the building where I work and hunted for the Guy Gavaerial Kay novels. Only found Vol 2 of the Finovar Tapestery series but not volumn 1. Apparently if I want to read this thing, I will have to order it off Amazon, or lug my lazy ass to the library and hunt it. No rush - I'm completely enraptured by George RR Martin's Game of Thrones at the moment. Bought Vol2 and Vol3 of the Martin series last week during lunch. I think it may be dangerous for me to have a bookstore this close by my workplace.
This morning I read the replies to my last post. Since I was at work, I did not attempt to reply to them for obvious reasons. Now? I'm not sure how to actually. Spent a good portion of my time - reacting, internally, as follows: "No, no, no, that's not what I meant. You missed the entire point of my post. ARRRGH!" or "Yeah, I agree with you but what does that have to do with what I posted?" or "Shit, I did a lousey job of making myself clear, didn't I?" Which, ahem, taught me something. Probably should have figured this out by now but - People have a crazy tendency to read whatever they want to in someone else's writing. We spend a great deal of time talking about writing carefully, but I'm not sure people always read that carefully. I know I don't -heck, that's part of the reason this was a bad work day. Something I did not take the time to read carefully - came back and bit me in the ass. So trust me, I know how important it is to read carefully.
The other thing it taught me, which I already knew, but it helps to be reminded, is this: People bring their own host of experiences to every interaction regardless of what it is. And everyone's experiences are unique.
Where conflict or debate comes in - is when people's experiences of reality conflict with each other. In other words - if you fell in love with an older man at the age of 15, married him, lived a happy life then years later came on the internet and met a person who was molested by an older man at the age of 15, suffice it to say - your experiences may be in conflict. That's an extreme example - but the best I can come up with at the moment.
Some of the posts reminded me a little of a discussion in the movie Kinsey, about the scientist who created the famous Kinsey Sex Report. The Kinsey Sex Report - was a report published in the 1950s/60s (I think) about the sexual activities of men and women. What's interesting is Kinsey had no troubles getting funding for doing a report on men, was actually congratulated for it, but got his funding yanked when he did it on women. At any rate - the discussion was as follows:
Kinsey: I want to do an in depth study on male and female sexual behaviors.
Rockfeller Research Foundation Chief: Okay. But you're focusing on their normal sexual behaviors right? I mean nothing perverse?
Kinsey looks confused.
Wales who is watching the film with me turns to me and says, quite aptly: Kinsey doesn't believe there is such as thing as "normal" sexual behavior.
Me: And he would be right.
That was what he proved with the Kinsey Report. There is no such thing as "normal" sexual behavior. Actually I don't believe there is such a thing as normal period. But that's a whole other debate.
What there is - is socially acceptable behavior and convention. The word convention, or rather my use of the word convention, should not be confused with normal, especially since I do not personally believe there is such a thing. Unless of course you define normal as socially acceptable behavior or whatever trend that society is currently into. And you'd have to be a marketing person/ad guy to keep up with them. We're in a manic phase at the moment, the damn trends are coming at us right and left like baseballs, repeating themselves. One of the big trends - is heterosexual women fantazing about heterosexual or bisexual men having sex with each other and heterosexual men fantazing about heterosexual/bisexual women having sex with one another. Note I say heterosexual/bisexual, not homosexual, if they are homosexual - they can't come back and do it with person doing the fantasizing. People are anything if not selfish. Because this is currently a "trend" and used repeatedly in fanfic, romance novels, tv shows, and movies - I don't think it's kinky. I think it's pretty ordinary. Also it's not a new trend.
Convention has numerous definitions in the dictionary. The one I'm using is (just so we're all clear) - "following accepted practice, customary". For me, customary practice - is basically anything you can find in mainstream bookstores, toy stores, and blockbuster. Stuff you do not have to hunt for. Convention? Stuff I've seen repeatedly on network TV shows, romance novels, etc.
Concerning sex - pretty much all of it is kinky depending on your point of view. When I was 18, I thought a blow-job was kinky. Now it seems sort of conventional. Same with going down on a woman. Sorry for the lingo, but sometimes it works if you're blunt. Bondage? Yeah, kinky. Man dominant, woman submissive? Not so much - unless of course you're doing the bondage thing, but I'm talking generally here not in S&M lingo, which I really can't speak to since I'm not versed in S&M. Get in enough trouble trying to discuss what I do know about. So what I mean is the old fashioned missionary position vs. the woman on top position - just to be clear. If you throw in handcuffs? Sure that's kinky. But that's kinky regardless of who's wearing them. Did read one thing where the two were handcuffed together - still have troubles envisioning it. Some fanfic writers, methinks, need a course in anatomy. Not sex. Anatomy.
Trust me - people can write quite well about sex without ever experiencing it directly. Just because you can't, does not mean someone else can't. One thing I've learned :Do not project your limitations/experiences on others - always gets one in trouble. (She says while she proceeds to do just that. What me, a hypocrite? Nooo...)
At any rate - my point, which I made badly, was: What I see less of on tv, romance novels, fantasy novels, etc right now - is a strong woman controlling things. That could just be me. But I've had to REALLY hunt for it. (And please don't quote back to me Desperate Housewives, Medium, Veronica Mars, Gilmore Girls, or Alias as examples - they aren't women in control of anything in my opinion. The closest I've come to strong women on TV lately are: Farscape, The Closer, and BattleStar Galatica and that is it.)
What unnerves me when I've read Buffy fanfic (and I'm not singling anyone out here - from 2002 -2005 I read more buffy fanfic writers than I care to list) is how many writers have felt the need to punish, degrade, or remove in some way shape or form the female heros power - making Spike the hero or Spike the one in control or the sympathetic party. I understand why some of them do it, no problems with that, really - but it is the way fanfic writers do it that unnerves me. Why for instance do so many writers feel the need to make Buffy pregnant with Spike's baby? Why do so many of them want to have her get off on him biting and drinking from her - draining her power? (As if this is kinky - it's not, somewhat conventional actually. Laurell K. Hamilton, Ann Rice, and half the romance novelists who write Vampire stories do it. ) Why does Spike take a leadership role above her? Why is she put in the domestic/traditional role? It's not kinky that women writers are doing this - because this is actually conventional romance. Most gothic and bodice-ripper romance novels I read in the 70's up until the early 80's fit this. One even had a girl desperado who gave it up to be the lady wife of a count, because she fell in love. Now, don't misunderstand me, I don't mean to say there's anything wrong with this. Heck, I have these fantasies, as a single working woman. But they are conventional ones. Not very original. What throws me is why there aren't more fantasies or stories about the gal in control - the gal becoming and staying the hero? Say what you will about Season 7 BTVS, but I give Whedon credit for doing one thing right, Buffy did not ride off in the sunset with some guy. (Yeah, I know, he ruined it in Angel S5 but let's forget that for a sec.) She did not need to be defined by him. She was perfectly happy to be single. That is rare to see on TV or in books. There've been a few - My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin. But very few.
okay...ran out of words again. Need to eat. Want to read George RR Martin.
Maybe I should delete this? Oh well... do with it what you will. Not sure how much sense it made. Tough day, like I said. And most of this? Internal monologues and rants I had during it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-06-28 11:29 am (UTC)I don't mean to say there's anything wrong with this. Heck, I have these fantasies, as a single working woman. But they are conventional ones. Not very original.
I can totally understand why these are appealing fantasies. Because they are about surrendering control and surrendering responsibility. One doesn't have to own up to choices or desire or anything else one might be uncomfortable acknowledging - because all of the agency is on another person. It's like Buffy in Dead Things saying, "why do I let him do those things to me" when her dream had shown her as the one wielding the handcuffs and the weapon. I feel safe in saying that any adult can relate to a fantasy of giving up control. The trouble I have is when it seems like people aren't recognizing such things as escapist fantasy and treating it as valid in a larger narrative or even life-wise sense. Can we not get stories where surrendering control does not mean subjugation to another?
no subject
Date: 2005-06-28 01:45 pm (UTC)Thank you - for nailing my point. And what has been unnerving me.
The trouble I have is when it seems like people aren't recognizing such things as escapist fantasy and treating it as valid in a larger narrative or even life-wise sense.
Exactly. It's what disturbed me in reading some of the reponses to my post below and the responses to some of the fanfics posted online recently. This desire for the woman to settle down, have a baby, work part time, but devote herself to her family. To let the guy hold the reins.
Why don't we see the woman in charge more? And why is the romantic fan-fiction surrounding one of the very few TV shows about a woman in charge - placing her in a subservient role?
no subject
Date: 2005-06-28 02:17 pm (UTC)Reversing the dynamics of Buffy and Spike's relationship doesn't make it queer or subversive - it makes it a typical old skool romance cliche. I think there's a lot ambiguity to mined in their relationship as presented onscreen - Dead Things alone has tonnes of interesting things to say about the blurry lines of submission and dominances - but casting it in black and white helps no one. It's never easy to challenge our assumptions about roles and desires but it would make for more interesting fiction.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-28 02:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-28 03:33 pm (UTC)What made it even more interesting - is if you watch closely, you'll see that up until he met Buffy, Spike was the bite-em and leave them type. The only gal he stuck with was Dru, and they weren't always together. Dru was the mother he returned home to more or less. Everyone else? He treated very much like Parker treats Buffy in Harsh Light of Day. A clear parallel is made between Spike and Parker in that episode. The irony is Spike is thrust in the vulnerable role. Suddenly the tables are turned.
Look closer? We discover he always was in that role, more or less. Complete role reversial. We rarely see this type of role reversial onscreen. Usually the vulnerable party is the woman. She's the one whining about the guy calling her, to flip it - is rather interesting.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-28 02:51 pm (UTC)Oh god yes. And to the black and whiting of the relationship. Especially around Dead Things it wasn’t so much that the genders were reversed as the lines between them had completely blurred. Buffy had power over Spike, Spike had power over her. Neither of them had the power to leave and both of them blamed it on the other. It wasn’t healthy but it sure as hell wasn’t conventional.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-28 03:12 pm (UTC)It wasn’t healthy but it sure as hell wasn’t conventional.
Which may be why Dead Things is one of my favorite episodes. IT is about a power struggle between the two of them. The back and forth pull. The adversarial relationship taken on to the sexual plane. And all the complicated emotions inherent within that.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-28 03:08 pm (UTC)Word. Exactly. It drove me to write the post below.
I do not understand why these writers think that the way to deal with their discomfort over Buffy's treatment of Spike is to write fanfic where Buffy is being abused by Spike or Angel? It feels at times as if they are almost writing revenge fic. What disturbs me about it - is I see the larger societial influences at work here. Whenever a woman takes charge, or wins over a guy, our society runs roughshod over her. Hillary Clinton is despised next to nice Laura Bush. It's disturbing.
Reversing the dynamics of Buffy and Spike's relationship doesn't make it queer or subversive - it makes it a typical old skool romance cliche.
Exactly. Why do people think this? Not only is it a romantic cliche, it is also an accepted one. It's in all our advertising. If you flip on the TV, about five commercials will be telling the woman how to please her man, how to serve her man. If you flip through the romance novels in a bookstore - the plots are all the same - the girl is changing herself for him. She's giving up part of herself for him. What bugs me about many of the fics out there is how we have Buffy give up something - but Spike should stay the same? He doesn't have to give up anything? Except well killing people...but that's no biggie, since he can drink her blood instead?
I remember reading a Vampire Romance Novel one of the women in my father's writing group had published. It was about Dracula - he was the romantic lead - and the girl pretty much did everything I've read in fanfic - let him drink from her, catered to his needs, was his sidekick.
Why are all these novels about that? Why do people keep re-writing Jane Eyre, Anna Karenia, Pride and Prejudice...etc. Instead of writing about a woman who is in control and on top?
It makes me wonder how large a part women themselves play in making our world a partriachial one. Are we partially responsible for the treatement we receive as a gender? Are these romances and stories evidence of why that is?
no subject
Date: 2005-06-28 04:09 pm (UTC)Exactly. I admit to being thoroughly bewildered by what was going on in your earlier post. My original comment was just a riff off of your thoughts and I guess I found myself wondering aloud in your journal. Nevertheless, I really didn't intend to trigger a meltdown and I attempted to remain as neutral and non-specific as possible. My dislike of conflict and confrontation kept me out of the fray, but reading on the sidelines. Yet these ideas were running through my head when I started typing and to a certain degree, I think women are often far more effective at policing their own gender than some instances of institutional discrimination. For a woman to be tough, she's seen as heartless; for a woman to be ambitious, she's seen to be deceitful and conniving. Maybe it's the tall-poppy syndrome, but there is no doubt that qualities which are associated with masculinity are less tolerated in women and the backlash is not uniquely male in origin.
In fairness, I really haven't read too much fic in the last year, but the humiliation and punishment themes that are prevalent in a lot of Spuffy fic (that I've read) make me tear my hair out. Buffy often finds herself squeezed into a domestic situation that is clearly ill-suited to her. And to make matters worse, she may even be depicted as being a piss-poor domestic goddess (adulterous, bad mother, bad housekeeper, can't cook etc...), which humiliates the character even more.
And to end on a completely different idea, I can't understand how the Buffy/Spike Mutually Assured Destruction was seen as a one-way street. They both gave as good as they got and I think that it's important to realize that first, sex between the two was only initiated once Spike was back on equal terms with her (i.e. chip didn't fire when he would strike her) and second, in order to make the AR even remotely credible, ME had to weaken Buffy with a trumped up injury, rendering her more as the damsel in distress. Finally, I believe that things only began improving between the two once Buffy decided to walk away and once Spike decided that he should leave for her own safety in Season 7. Season 7 may have been a morass of bad execution, but fundamentally free will was restored to both characters.