metaphortunate son (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
metaphortunate) wrote2012-06-11 08:22 pm
metaphortunate) wrote2012-06-11 08:22 pm
Entry tags:
transitional objects
I find it fascinating how much time and energy people have put into discussing, on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
freece's blog and at f_fa and elsewhere, whether Laurent is the one who takes it up the butt or not. (Question answered now, obviously.) I think there's a reason for it.
It starts with Laurent's literary pedigree: his father is Lord Peter Wimsey; his brother is Vampire Hunter D; his mother is Francis Crawford of Lymond. You see the issue, here: he had to be an assbaby. Female characters get beat with the Mary Sue stick but there ain't no Sue like a boy named Sue. The only female character I can think of in English literature who shares the family traits of infuriating rightness and superhuman versatility and so on to the same over-the-top degree is Mary Poppins. And she had no children. Bert is a nearly offstage character; the central characters who stand in the same inferior yet fascinated relationship to her as their various lovers and admirers do to Wimsey and Lymond and so on are the Banks children. Which says something about that type of relationship.
So Laurent as a character has no female parent, nor is he himself female, but I put it to you that in Captive Prince he is doing the closest thing possible to playing a female version of that type of character. It isn't quite a female role. If Laurent were a girl the story would be quite different, and I'd love to read that goddamn story. I'm waiting to read that story. I'd love to know what it would be like, because I can't imagine it. Well, I've been trained not to since birth, obviously. Every part of my culture down to the most casual teaches me that a strong and romantically successful woman is not the one who beats everybody - that paper bag princess goes alone into the sunset - she's the one who achieves her natural place two paces to to the rear of her just slightly more awesome man.
(And this takes me back tohradzka and others complaining that women are using gay men to tell their stories, and how that makes me want to laugh until I fall off the sofa. Why yes, we've been trained since birth that all the stories worth telling are about men, and now we tell our stories using men, and you complain? Give it up. Like this commenter complaining to yuki_onna that people are appropriating! British-Celtic! culture! As if it somehow just happened that in America I grew up never hearing any Olmec or Aztec myths but I sure did learn Scottish and Welsh and Irish and English fairy tales and fantasy stories? As if it were accidental that all the fantasy I grew up reading was set in Vaguely Europe, that I was taught to dream of dragons? Ha! No. Europe imposed its culture on everybody: now it's ours too. If you shove something down people's throats, it's too late to demand it back when they chew and swallow.)
In the meantime, Laurent sounds like a transitional object (another thing I learned about from Are You My Mother?:) it's not you, but it's not not-you, either. Like Toni Morrison's famous characterization of Bill Clinton as the first black president. Clinton wasn't black. But, in retrospect, he was a step on the way to Obama.
So the question of whether Laurent tops or bottoms is at least a little bit the question of to what degree he is a female character, and furthermore, the question of how female a female version of his role gets to be. Because Laurent is definitely cool. He's a badass; he's openly the most capable person in four countries. And the question is: to be a cool, capable badass, do you have to top? Do you have to take the male role in bed? Does it lessen the character if he likes to get fucked? Bitchy Jones addressed this in her complaint about how het female doms, if they are ever even acknowledged, are always supposed to be all about pegging their male subs. That's an activity in which the woman's pleasure is mostly symbolic. There's nothing wrong with it; but why is it the sine qua non of female sexual dominance? It would be as if male doms were overwhelmingly known to most favor keeping their pants on and going down on their female subs, eschewing any activity that actually involved their penis. To understate the obvious: that's not the way male sexuality is constructed. So it was a very interesting question whether Laurent in his hermaphroditic role would perpetuate his dominance by being the fucker rather than the fuckee, or whether he would somehow try to reconcile a very male type of dominance with a female type of sexuality.
freece's blog and at f_fa and elsewhere, whether Laurent is the one who takes it up the butt or not. (Question answered now, obviously.) I think there's a reason for it.It starts with Laurent's literary pedigree: his father is Lord Peter Wimsey; his brother is Vampire Hunter D; his mother is Francis Crawford of Lymond. You see the issue, here: he had to be an assbaby. Female characters get beat with the Mary Sue stick but there ain't no Sue like a boy named Sue. The only female character I can think of in English literature who shares the family traits of infuriating rightness and superhuman versatility and so on to the same over-the-top degree is Mary Poppins. And she had no children. Bert is a nearly offstage character; the central characters who stand in the same inferior yet fascinated relationship to her as their various lovers and admirers do to Wimsey and Lymond and so on are the Banks children. Which says something about that type of relationship.
So Laurent as a character has no female parent, nor is he himself female, but I put it to you that in Captive Prince he is doing the closest thing possible to playing a female version of that type of character. It isn't quite a female role. If Laurent were a girl the story would be quite different, and I'd love to read that goddamn story. I'm waiting to read that story. I'd love to know what it would be like, because I can't imagine it. Well, I've been trained not to since birth, obviously. Every part of my culture down to the most casual teaches me that a strong and romantically successful woman is not the one who beats everybody - that paper bag princess goes alone into the sunset - she's the one who achieves her natural place two paces to to the rear of her just slightly more awesome man.
(And this takes me back to
hradzka and others complaining that women are using gay men to tell their stories, and how that makes me want to laugh until I fall off the sofa. Why yes, we've been trained since birth that all the stories worth telling are about men, and now we tell our stories using men, and you complain? Give it up. Like this commenter complaining to yuki_onna that people are appropriating! British-Celtic! culture! As if it somehow just happened that in America I grew up never hearing any Olmec or Aztec myths but I sure did learn Scottish and Welsh and Irish and English fairy tales and fantasy stories? As if it were accidental that all the fantasy I grew up reading was set in Vaguely Europe, that I was taught to dream of dragons? Ha! No. Europe imposed its culture on everybody: now it's ours too. If you shove something down people's throats, it's too late to demand it back when they chew and swallow.)In the meantime, Laurent sounds like a transitional object (another thing I learned about from Are You My Mother?:) it's not you, but it's not not-you, either. Like Toni Morrison's famous characterization of Bill Clinton as the first black president. Clinton wasn't black. But, in retrospect, he was a step on the way to Obama.
So the question of whether Laurent tops or bottoms is at least a little bit the question of to what degree he is a female character, and furthermore, the question of how female a female version of his role gets to be. Because Laurent is definitely cool. He's a badass; he's openly the most capable person in four countries. And the question is: to be a cool, capable badass, do you have to top? Do you have to take the male role in bed? Does it lessen the character if he likes to get fucked? Bitchy Jones addressed this in her complaint about how het female doms, if they are ever even acknowledged, are always supposed to be all about pegging their male subs. That's an activity in which the woman's pleasure is mostly symbolic. There's nothing wrong with it; but why is it the sine qua non of female sexual dominance? It would be as if male doms were overwhelmingly known to most favor keeping their pants on and going down on their female subs, eschewing any activity that actually involved their penis. To understate the obvious: that's not the way male sexuality is constructed. So it was a very interesting question whether Laurent in his hermaphroditic role would perpetuate his dominance by being the fucker rather than the fuckee, or whether he would somehow try to reconcile a very male type of dominance with a female type of sexuality.
no subject
"Europe imposed its culture on everybody: now it's ours too. If you shove something down people's throats, it's too late to demand it back when they chew and swallow."
That thread on Cat's journal made me so angry, and here you've summed up in one sentence all my incoherent frustrated flailings.
no subject
Laurent is from Captive Prince by
no subject
...I guess I should not be surprised that it turns out to be a manga (anime?) series, but I am a little disappointed that I don't get to see the various hard-headed characters of fandom (always sidekicks, have you noticed?) line up to bop Crawford of Lymond on the head. Or to offer him modern cotton pants; I imagine he'd find them a relief after all that itchy.
I sadly have no other comment on your point, except to be glad there's a name for the weirdness of Are You My Mother?. I've never seen another children's book like it.
no subject
It's not a manga, it's..um... I guess original slash would be the best term? It's not fanfic of anything specific, but it's veeeeery ficcy.
And the Are You My Mother? I meant was not actually the children's book but Alison Bechdel's latest memoir! It's very weird and very good.
no subject
SPOILERS FOR CAPTIVE PRINCE HERE
It will be interesting to see if the topping/bottoming thing is discussed again by the characters; I was a little taken aback when everyone inside the story, including the two guys who were about to have sex, assumed Laurent would be bottoming, especially since Damen is the slave in this story.
The way their power gets allocated is a fascinating thing about the story, and I wonder what else the author will do with it in later books, and there's a lot of potential there.
I'm always a little annoyed when there's no discussion of who's the bottom and who's the top when men have sex -- because it's not a foregone conclusion. As you say, there is definite symbolism to it, and if it's discussed in the story it can make the symbolism, and the meaning of the acts to the participants, even more interesting to the reader. But only if the author is aware of the symbolism and not just thoughtlessly following the culture. Whatever it is.
And thanks for that take on appropriation... much to think about there. Once again!
Re: SPOILERS FOR CAPTIVE PRINCE HERE
Re: SPOILERS FOR CAPTIVE PRINCE HERE
And you're right; the symbolism is there and it's fascinating to compare the outside of the frame with the inside.
no subject
It's not so much the use of male characters to tell female stories that weirds me, or even the idea of a transitional mode. I do find it increasingly odd that that feminists, who are normally very vocal about the immorality of appropriation, become much less vocal when doing so would interfere with the pleasure they take in appropriating, objectifying, and fetishizing gay men's imagined bodies and (more and more) gay men's emotions and concerns. I mean, this isn't *too weird,* because it's a very human thing to do, but given that so much of modern activism focuses on the fact that people morally should not do that, it seems an odd tack to take.
The transitional item you bring up is interesting -- I just read ARE YOU MY MOTHER? as well. My critique there is that if it were transitional we would be seeing much more of the end product than we are. And people who write slash don't transition. They don't shift out of writing slash to writing about women; they write slash until they stop. (Men in slash do often occupy an intermediate gender position -- emotionally female, physically male -- but to me it reads more like wish fulfillment or unconvincing character work, sort of like those male writers whose female characters check out their own bodies in the mirror.) If it were a transitional thing, I would expect to be seeing much more of the presumed end product than we are -- more women, or more gay men who are really believable as gay men, not slash men.
Because that's the thing about transitional states. They are significant. And important, and meaningful, and full of all kinds of deep emotion.
Also, they end.
transitional?
real gay if men write it, fake gay if women write it, even if they write the same thing
You know, I noticed the how a writer's characters are percieved dependson the writer's gender. I am reminded of the comic hero Rage and his love BT created by Justin and Michael in Queer as Folk. BT, based off Justin, is a "dude in distress" saved by the "top" gay character, Rage, based off Justin's lover, Brian.
A similar story like this written by a woman would be immediately criticized for being "not really gay".
I think you see political problems where there aren't any. There are all types of people,among gays, straight, women, men. Millions of sexual preferences, varied views on dominance, equality, and sex.
I enjoy my life and sexual pursuits, and I enjoyed Captive Prince.It's simple. And to the author, it is simple as well.
Actually, I have a small club of gay literature inspired by the 1950's Swiss exclusive magazine, the Circle, and among Mary Renault, Harlan Greene, Denton Welch, the Men on Men issues, and even Quinn Brockton's Queer as Folk, I proudly added Captive Prince to the list of literature we recommend to other gay men. Mostly young men and teenagers struggling with not only the political stigma on their sexual orientation, but gender identity and how they might pursue their own sexuality, what sort of things they like, what preferences they discover they have.
Didn't once see Laurent as a woman. Bottoms aren't women, unless they want to be. Which is perfectly fine.
Re: real gay if men write it, fake gay if women write it, even if they write the same thing
But as a fellow fan, I hope you know that the third book is finally coming out on Feb. 2!
Re: real gay if men write it, fake gay if women write it, even if they write the same thing
I do know about the third volume! I already preordered it. :)
What got me hot was hradzka's comment for several reasons. One: there is no such thing as a real gay man and there is no such thing as a slash man. Slash is a genre. Let's not overcomplicate things to suit political views.
Two: my sister writes slash and when asked she said she has no interest in the romance of a woman. She is an outsider to her own characters and has no mental incliniation of putting herself in them. Although, considering that she admits to fingering and using phallic toys on her man, I jokingly tell her she's a top in a woman's body.
Not all (female) slash writers share her personal preferences. Every mind is its own universe; we may share interests but never for the same reasons.
Third reason: I knew a Muslim girl way back in college who told me of the dangers women faced in Tehran if they were caught reading - let alone writing! And here I see Hradzka using specious and twisted psycho analysis disguised as literary criticism in an attempt to shephard what free women write - because there is not enough reading material that caters to her feminist interests.
There is no such thing as transitioning literature, just as there is no such thing as a frog evolving into a bird in biology. She should remember that if you are not a heterosexual white man, our voices were cut down until only ninety years ago. As we enter this new century, blacks, women, and gays are rising in all ventures. It doesn't necessarily mean that a woman who writes slash should be a feminist or transition from gay romances to hetero romances, no more than a black person should transition from writing all Japanese characters to more black characters.
If you are a free woman, write freely. If you are a critic, approach literature with humility, curiosity, and above all REVERENCE. When you read, you enter someone's mind/universe. You are a visitor, whether for pleasure or to study - not to demand how things be done there for any reason or excuse - that is not a critic's job.
As a feminist, you might be interested to know that women have strongly (often times lasciviously :)) supported the romance between two men since the age of the Sumerians. There have been excavations from Asia to the West of cups, plates, vases, with images depicting two men embracing and a woman or pair of women peeping on them. In pre-Christian eras, sexuality was not repressed or compartmentalized, even so there is an equal number of such images in the Renaissance era. Women have always been writing "slash" before "slash" became a genre, for centuries, even millennia past. It is NOT new trend; it is being more widely recognized after centuries of repression as society progresses.
I highly recommend Mary Renault. Strong woman in the forties, wrote well-informed and beautiful historcal novels based on Greek homosexual culture. Persian Boy is my favorite, then The Last of the Wine.
And if we share the same taste for stories like Captive Prince with beautiful men and powerful women, you will enjoy Katherine Kerr's Deverry and Westland series. Rhodry, a banished prince with a gorgeous face, his lover,Jill, a young swordswoman, daughter of a mercenary, political intrigue, battles, some homosexual elements (soldiers that are smitten with Rhodry. Unfortunately for them, he's straight). Oh and Jill is blond, tough, doesn't bullshit, and has a potty mouth. You'll love her:)