(no subject)

[solitary_summer]

I'm not all that comfortable posting this, because while I generally follow the big fandom ---!fail debates, most of the time I'm too scared to offend someone or make a fool of myself to speak up, but between aviv_b's (now locked) RTD-finds-out-about-homophobia story, and the recent debate about (straight) women writing m/m fiction I have this sort of theory why TW fandom blew up so spectacularly after CoE, and it has a lot to do with this slightly uneasy alliance between gay people and the straight part of slash fandom, since both want the same thing, more gay storylines, and there's strength in numbers, and numbers count when it comes to TV. On the other hand that common interest doesn't mean that gay people (fans as well as those involved in the creation, especially in the age of the internet and fandom becoming increasingly mainstream and public) aren't aware of the more problematic aspects of slash fandom (fetishisation/appropriation), or that straight fandom doesn't tend to forget that for gay people it's also very much a matter of identification and representation, and not just, and that's putting it as politely and generally as possible, of fanish squee. (Cf. the 'But It's not about gay men, it's about female sexuality' argument.)

And for the straight side it all worked rather well ('Yay! Canon slash!'), and I'd hazard a guess that even after Ianto's death the greater part of TW fandom would probably have got over it after a while, if RTD hadn't spoken up about what he thought was problematic about—straight, beecause 'people picking up gay rights as an issue' clearly doesn't refer to gay fans—fandom, and suddenly it wasn't one happy family any longer.

So, yes, the 'hysterical women' comment was sexist and misogynist, everyone can agree on that, but after six months fandom can maybe start to look beyond that, and realise this was also coming from somewhere, namely a gay writer thinking he wasn't just dealing with straight women fetishising homosexuality and making judgements about what gay relationships were supposed to be like, but straight women now explaining homophobia to him. Now clearly the situation was more complex than that, clearly there were gay people as well as straight people who disliked CoE for a wide variety of reasons, but I think this was the main impression that came across, and I doubt anyone involved in TW fandom can honestly say that it was wholly unfounded in reality.

And considering that he stated this very explicitly more than once (here and here and probably elsewhere, too, but I wasn't following media that religiously and only picked up what was generally linked in fandom) I find it a bit worrying how this got swept aside almost unanimously by the straight part of fandom. Admittedly emotions were running high all round, and no one was thinking very clearly at the time, but after half a year maybe it's time to acknowledge that among other things there was also a lot of hurt privilege and entitlement in the post-CoE fallout. Because when straight people are gleefully writing RPF subjecting RTD to homophobia they honestly believe he doesn't know about, and are convinced they're doing it in the name of gay rights and karma I think this is a problem that isn't just limited to one writer, but symptomatic of the wider state of TW fandom.


*breathes* Okay. Now everyone tell me how hard I've failed.



[Obligatory disclaimer: I don't consider myself straight, but I'm also too not-much-of-anything-sexual to feel justified claiming any kind of queer label.

Obligatory disclaimer the second, for those who aren't on my friendslist and don't know me. Yes, I cried. Yes, I cared. Click the tag.]


ETA: I'll be at my sister's for the afternoon, so if I'm not replying to comments it's not that I'm ignoring anyone.

ETA2: Addendum, sort of.

More ETA, since my brain is slow and some things only untangled themselves in my head replying to the comments. If I wrote that post now, I'd phrase it a bit differently, because even while I thought I was being clear, different issues did in fact get jumbled together. The 'hysterical women' comment— and while we're at it, I was getting curious and looked for the exact source, and now I'm left wondering, was this ever said more publicly than (possibly off the record?) to the AfterElton writer who put it into his editor's note without giving the context or even a full quote? In any case, that comment is one thing, and I'm not going to tell anyone they can't be offended by its sexism, even if personally I can't bring myself to be very outraged, given the context, situation and the fact that we're all human and fuck up occasionally.

OTOH, the two interviews I've linked where he is clearly pissed off about straight people lecturing a gay man about gay rights and homophobia—that's a separate issue and a legitimate concern about what was happening in TW fandom, and something I don't think straight fans should immediately react to with outrage and discard as nothing but hurt vanity. It's an issue that deserves consideration, whether or not someone is willing to forgive killing Ianto or the 'nine hysterical women'.

The one is about male privilege and prejudice, the other very much about straight privilege, as is using the sexism as an excuse to ignore the anger, lumping it all together; and they don't cancel each other out. This is essentially what I should have made clearer from the start. And I'll really shut up now; but on some level I keep naively hoping that attempting to untangle this whole mess might also eventually help a little bit towards making TW fandom a less toxic place again. I know, I know. *sigh*

Comments

[solitary-summer.livejournal.com]

I've always felt that RTD was like Whedon in his tendency to see popular characters as dramatic fodder without really understanding (or maybe being impatient with) just how deeply some fans identify with them.

IMO writers just can't allow themselves to get as close to their characters as fans do, because they always have to think of the story as a whole. Not all, but most fans will focus on one or a few characters; there are people who identified with Ianto so much that they completely lost interest in TW when he died. I doubt any good writer, no matter what their own history as a fan is, can ever fully understand that kind of reaction. The story always has to come before the characters for them. Literature allows maybe a bit more self-indulgence in this respect, but TV, where there's more money at stake and you have to appeal to a wide audience, doesn't. And despite the reaction from online fandom, from what I've seen CoE was on a whole lot of Best of TV 09 lists...

I think I know what you mean by using characters as dramatic fodder, but personally speaking, I have more problems in this respect with JW. There are a few instances in both Buffy and Angel where I felt characters were simply jerked around to suit the plot in ways that didn't exactly make them OOC, but certainly stretched the limits of their prior characterisation; I've never had that problem with RTD so far.


Maybe you can help me out here - The 'nine hysterical women' comment - was that ever said in the fans' face? Because I got curious and googled around and I only found it as an editor's note on that AfterElton interview; not even a full quote, taken out of context, and very likely assumed to have been said off the record. Not that this changes the fact that it probably was said in one form or the other, but for me that would make a bit of a difference.

Generally speaking, I'm not saying anyone should get a pass, but in most cases, if one isn't dealing with people who are bigoted on a very profound level, but are already making an effort in their work, even if the results aren't always perfect, I think it does help to consider context and where the other person is coming from. And while I do understand women being offended at being called hysterical, I also do think that straight women should stop for a moment and think, when RTD says he finds it condescending when straight people are trying to lecture him about something he's been dealing with his whole life, instead of also immediately being offended about that, because while it all got mixed up in the mess that was the TW fallout, the former is a somewhat sexist insult, the other a rather legitimate concern about something that definitely was happening in TW fandom.

Long comment - part one

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I'm finding this line of argument very convincing. Specifically, I disagree about the "nine hysterical women" being a spur of the moment insult and about the conclusions you seek to draw about its "very likely" having been said off the record and its being taken out of context also seem hard to sustain given its history (set out at some length below).

The first instance of RTD losing his rag publically over fan reaction to COE which I'm aware of is here: Entertainment Weekly 24 July 2009 (http://ausiellofiles.ew.com/2009/07/24/backlash-shmacklash-thats-torchwood-creator-russell-t-davies-reaction-to-the-outcry-over-the-death-of-gareth-david-lloyds/). Here the two key passages are:

What do you make of the fan backlash?

DAVIES: It’s not particularly a backlash. What’s actually happening is, well, nothing really to be honest. It’s a few people posting online and getting fans upset. Which is marvelous. It just goes to prove how much they love the character and the actor. People often say, ‘Fans have got their knives out!’ They haven’t got any knives. I haven’t been stabbed. Nothing’s happened. It’s simply a few people typing. I’m glad they’re typing because they’re that involved. But if you can’t handle drama you shouldn’t watch it. Find something else. Go look at poetry. Poetry’s wonderful.

and

Question: One of my readers wondered if you were under pressure to de-gay Torchwood and that’s why you killed him off.

DAVIES: I think you can forget about people picking up gay rights as an issue. It’s rather like children picking up nursery blocks and waving them in the air but having no idea what it entails. We’re talking about issues in my entire life here, not just one small television program. If they did research they’d go and look at the history of gay and lesbian characters that I have put on screen. They should simply grow up, do some research, and stop riding on a bandwagon that they actually don’t know anything about.

Now, that's the kneejerk response, and while it's possible to see those quotes as dismissive and arrogant, they make no inherent assumption about the gender of the fans he's complaining about, but they do make a clear assumption that those fans know nothing about gay rights or homophobia and that they are themselves straight ("do some research").

Long Comment: part two

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

The next relevant interview is the After Elton one here (http://www.afterelton.com/TV/2009/7/russeltdavies), an interview which appeared on 31 July (after the show had aired in the States) but was based on an interview conducted with RTD after it had aired in the UK but before it had aired in the US, so a more immediate response to a predominantly British fan reaction. Now, in dealing with After Elton RTD cannot possibly assume that his interviewer is unware of gay rights issues or is looking at it from a straight perspective. And yet he still commented in a way which assumed he was leaping to conclusions about the nature of the reaction to Ianto's death:

AE: I understand Ianto dying in order to push Captain Jack to do what he needed to do. But a lot of fans felt like they never got to see Jack and Ianto as the full-fledged couple that they wanted to see them as. We only began to see that in this miniseries. So how do you respond to viewers who feel cheated that they got the tragic death without seeing the relationship.
TD: That’s the point actually. Both in fiction and in life. When someone dies you lose all that potential. You grieve over everything they could have been. Everything you hoped for them. Everything they might have achieved with their lives, everyone they could have loved. Every job they could have had. Every joy they could have had. It’s gone.

That’s proper grief. I think what you’re talking about there is people lamenting the fact they never saw what could have been. That’s grief.

I think you’re being polite and part of what you're saying is that it wasn’t a properly sexualized relationship … that we didn’t show enough details … I think that’s absolute nonsense. [Editor's note: I wasn't referring to their sexual relationship, but their romantic/emotional one.]

Therefore, even in an interview conducted by an out gay man for a publication aimed (predominantly) at a gay male audience he was obviously blocking out suggestions that there was a legitimate beef about the death scene and the plot development, and projecting onto his audience and his questioners views they had not expressed. That continues further down the interview.

At San Diego Comic con the figure "nine" appears for the first time:You know the campaign to send [packets of] coffee [to the BBC] to save Ianto's life? There's a campaign, because he was a coffee boy. But do you know how many packets of coffee they've received so far? Nine. So I think people writing online might sound like thousands of people, but they are nine. And they have the proof in the office, they are nine. (http://io9.com/5324964/we-asked-russell-t-davies-our-most-pressing-doctor-who-question)

Again, not gendered as a comment originally made - but also, provably untrue at the date when made. Euros Lyn and John Barrowman at the very same con made a point of praising the efforts of the Save Ianto Jones campaigners (who were, from what I could see incidentally, doing their best to distance themselves from the lunatic fringe who'd been appalling to James Moran on his blog and on twitter) for raising £4200 at that date for Children in Need.

So when the Editor of the After Elton said

Editor's note: I subsequently had a chance to speak with Davies again at the Television Critics Association tour in Los Angeles on Wednesday evening. Curious if his appearance at Comic-Con, as well as the passage of a little time had softened his point of view about the fan reaction, I asked Davies if he stood by all of his previous statements. He did so emphatically saying he believed the "controversy" over Ianto's death was bascially "nine hysterical women."

that seems to be an attempt to see whether RTD's views had changed following the initial kneejerk reaction, and the fact that it was expressed to be a follow-up to an interview conducted some weeks earlier and that these provably mythical "nine packets of coffee" have now become "nine hysterical women" really shows RTD's attitude hardening and, in fact, what looks like ex post facto rationalisation of some genuine and widely held artistic complaints about COE.

Re: Long Comment: part two

[solitary-summer.livejournal.com]

I've actually read all these interviews. Downplaying the negative fanreaction is a different issue, and I guess he could have handled that better, although I doubt any writer/producer who after all has to sell his/her show will publicly dwell on the number of people who hated it and their reasons for it. That just isn't very clever and politic, especially when they have an interest in keeping this particular show alive. Count your losses and move on. Discussions about how Jack/Ianto was written are also a separate issue. And it's not much of an assumption that straight fans throwing accusations of homophobia at a gay writer are maybe 'well meaning', but in fact don't know a lot about homophobia or gay rights.


What I was wondering, was the 'hysterical women' comment, if it was only said this one time, meant to be public? It does make a difference, because almost everyone will be blunter and more direct in a private conversation, or what they consider to be one.

Re: Long Comment: part two

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

Anyone who gave an interview which has been published and who is contacted by the person to whom he gave the interview while he is on a public promotional tour and who is specifically asked, "Have you changed your position on any of the matters which were included in the interview?" and who doesn't assume that this is a follow-up interview (and hence likely to be made public) is too stupid to be in the media, imho.

Furthermore, provably lying about adverse fan reaction, as opposed to downplaying it, is far worse than ignoring it. "Only a small minority of viewers responded in that way," is both inherent unprovable and probably true, "Only nine responded that way" fails on both counts. "Only nine hysterical women responded that way" managed to add bigotry to falsehood.

And, finally, the After Elton interview raised the homophobia question, too. As appears also in some of the comments above, while it's not at all clear-cut, people raising concerns about what they see as worrying use of tropes in COE are neither necessarily straight nor necessarily ignorant.