Bingo!

[branchandroot]

*just kind of stares*

Okay, let's get something straight (Ha. Ha.). There is a small (quite small) portion of slash fiction that manages to overlap with queer fiction. But the vast majority of slash? Is not queer fiction.

No. No, it's not. No, shut up and quit making asses of yourselves while you demonstrate at length that yours is very probably not.

Queer fiction deals with queer people, emphasis on people. It does not deal with the paper-doll id-fic that constitutes the vast majority of slash, and against which I have nothing. Id-fic is a lovely thing; I write it myself. But it's not queer fiction. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the experience of queer people, of whom I suppose I should say I am one.

Given all this idiotic howling, I find the initial issue, which is the Lambda awards committee specifying that award candidate fiction must be written by people who identify themselves as queer, makes perfect sense. It becomes abundantly evident that there are plenty of clueless straight women (mostly) who are so willfully blind to the appropriation they perform that they will stampede right over a queer-affirming community space if measures are not taken to defend it.

As has been demonstrated.

Comments

[laughingrat]

Hm! This is all over my Network page right now. I'd only skimmed the posts until I reached yours, since I read slash. :) I'm really shocked! Why would straight people think they should be part of the Lambda awards? They're not gay. How hard is that? I'm genuinely puzzled and disappointed that anyone is actually upset that Lambda's restricted to, you know, queer authors.

Privilege is a hell of a drug!

[branchandroot]

*shakes head* I am fictionally buggered if I know. Initially the Lambda requirements were "has to be about gay people" (because, really, only gay people were writing not-exploitative-straight-porn fiction about themselves), and apparently some straight writers of slash have their panties in a twist because now they can't argue that their origi-slash should be eligible. Despite the fact that what they're writing is still, by and large, exploitative straight porn. Oi.

[kaigou]

So there is wank about it. I'd heard rumors, but the only place I've really come across it was on the post over on Dear Author -- which (with the exception of a single troll) was a rather civilized conversation. (Ironically, the ones bitching the most about the ambiguous language being potentially exclusionary for women-writing-men was, well, we bisexuals, but then, we already had reason enough to be pissed at LLF for only giving us a single freaking category, among many other things... so it was mostly the straight women saying, "well, it is their award..." and a few random bis going, "great! one more thing we can become invisible for! yay us!" and so on.

Where else does the wank exist? Bored and needing-distraction minds want to know. I have a craving for trainwreck this evening, please.

[branchandroot]

Break out your popcorn, babe.

Big one here, be sure to read the comments, just be careful of your bloodpressure.

More here.

[kaigou]

The first one is making all the comments we already made at Dear Author, basically (and is by someone who popped in on that thread, too). I mean, hell, I was the one who first raised the question of whether the new-and-improved rules would be all that pleased about a bi-woman writing gay characters. The rules are just plain ambiguous, and though I didn't say it there, you know as well as I do that if I, a married woman who says I'm bi but, gee, I'm married to a guy, so in the eyes of 90% of the LGTIQ-not-B community, I might as well stop waffling and admit I'm het, or something... you know if I, or someone like me, won, there would be wank the likes of which we've not seen since, well, the last time FMA blew up. Or the last great GW was-Trowa-raped war. I mean, melodramatic dramaqueen dragqueen finger-snapping wank, baby.

Frankly, I think LLF should just stop waffling and admit it's a misogynist, anti-everyone-but-gay-guys org that only wants Serious Literature, Folks and hates entertainment, and we could all get back to what we were doing. Mostly, ignoring LLF. Though I wouldn't mind (and would be more than happy to help) someone organizing a cross-group diverse pansexual awards where the content gets the bed check, the judges are out and diverse, and there are separate categories for bi, poly, and coming-of-age, and multiracial, and multicultural, and... okay, I need to stop dreaming now and get back to coding. *cough*

[branchandroot]

*wry* Yeah, that would be nice, wouldn't it?

cathexys brought up the genre issue, too, the capital-L Literature thing. Which makes me wonder whether that's one of the reasons the idiots are so het up (besides being idiots); that one of the few loci of Literary (and commercial let us not forget) validation for m/m has told them to take a hike.

[cathexys]

See, but that's where I'm so confounded. Like in a way by excluding that genre (and I love your description...very much like my own, let's own up to what we do :) they've given it literary validity where they could/should have just let it run up against the capital L criteria and fail. The decision thus was kinda counterintuitive...and I think I was trying to argue only understandable in a way where they REFUSE to acknowledge their own limitations (effectively what kaigou was describing).

[branchandroot]

*snorts* Yeah. I'm endlessly entertained by the suggestion that id-fic would do anything but fail smashingly when judged against the usual Literary metrics. Which does suggest the rule change was more for the sake of identity push-back--of making the awards a space for identity consolidation. *pauses to laugh rather hollowly, given the factionalism of the queer 'community'*

[kaigou]

I think what actually gets me the most about the LLF is that they're obviously so up-in-arms about the het-writer-in-gay-fic category, and yet they can't get their own house organized. I mean, there's only one category for all of the B, and one for all of the T, but the L and the G get like twelve categories each. So busy worrying about the G and ignoring parts of their own community they've been excluding all this time!

And actually, the only comment so far that's really sent my blood pressure through the roof was someone on (yet another) "they're just such speshul snowflakes for despairing women writers Can Do It Better" blah blah blah, where someone replied, That is very exclusionary, and will just mean that people will hop into the het closet to get their work publish. Cause it doesn't take much to be bi. [emph mine]

Boy, it's a damn good thing it isn't really physically possible to reach through the computer screen and freaking PUNCH someone. Cause if it were, I would be replying with, "and I bet it doesn't take you much to pick up your teeth with those broken fingers, does it?" But since I can't, I suspect the only way to deal with the insanity of it all is to sit over here and remain invisible to both sides.

Freaking morons.

[kaigou]

(though the second post needs to be kicked in the teeth. stfu, damn twit, you're spoiling my corner of the intarweebs. sheesh.)

[elizacake]

I made the mistake of trying to point out that the changes to the LLF submission guidelines are a good sign. It is confirmation that there are now enough books being written by queer identifying writers to justify the awards without having to rely on the contributions of non-queer writers to pad out the nominations.

I got stomped on.

I'm stunned and bruised, and am very glad to see I'm not the only one going WTF over this reaction.

[branchandroot]

You are not the only one. The fail is... well, no it's not astonishing, unfortunately, but it's definitely stunning.
*offers a hug*

[elizacake]

I'm going to ask your indulgence in allowing me to put on record that I don't actually support the decision that the LLF made. I would have preferred that the awards be as inclusive as possible, but I can see the reasoning behind the change and appreciate that a particular activist approach is being taken. I wouldn't accept an award myself (not that my id-fic will ever get close) but I wouldn't spit on anyone who did.

It's not the disagreement that's baffling me, it's the polarization that this seems to be causing.

On second thought.... *shakes head*

[branchandroot]

*nods* I can understand that. It seems like this thing is an example of two agendas working at once: the Literary scorning pop-fic, and the desire to defend community boundaries. I, too, can understand the former causing resentment and the latter disagreement. Now, if only the loudest disagreement were on other grounds than blind privilege...

[kaigou]

Hey, since you deal with literature/composition stuff as academic: isn't it generally accepted that for a work to be included in, say, "women's literature" that the author must be female? Or that for a work to be considered part of the body of "native american literature" that the author must be "native american"? I mean, when it comes to drawing the line for inclusion in, say, a women's literature class, or similar.

[branchandroot]

*nods* That is, indeed, the standard. In some cases, things written by not-those-people may be included, but it's usually as a dreadful example of appropriation cum attempted preservation, eg "On the Shores of Gitchi Gumi" in a Native American Lit course.

[kaigou]

I also ran it past the SO -- who, honestly, I really should be introducing you two b/c your academic interests align so neatly -- as to whether "Asian Literature" would ever include something like Madame Butterfly, or Goodnight Saigon. Answer: no, not written by Asians (and then some snark about Madame Butterfly not being literature but caricature, but hey). Although, he added, Madame Butterfly might be included as a contrast of "and this is what appropriation looks like (and not very good at that)". Heh.

[branchandroot]

*grins* Yes. Just like that.

[ldybastet]

I read some of those posts/comments and... urgh. :( It really goes too far for my taste when the comparisons to completely other and unrelated things (racism, for instance) start to show up.

[branchandroot]

Oh yeah. The bingo card for this might have to be double sized for all the idiocy that's getting borrowed from other areas.