and it's contagious

[aria]

Some fairly random miscellany to dump. In no particular order:

i. In the spirit of procrastination, I'm rewatching a Best Of Flashpoint. To my vague surprise I actively ship Ed/Greg this time, and my crush on Jules may be bigger than my crush on Ed. Possibly this calls for one of those "fictional women I have crushes on" posts; I am not doing one right this second only because I don't have crushes on any of the women in due South exceptmaybevictoria and Fraser in a dress does not actually fix this terrible problem.

ii. A fic rec: Three of Cups, which is a Harry/Dumbledore fic but please, please don't let that stop you. I went in to beta it expecting to put on crackfic goggles to spare myself the pain, and instead between beta corrections found myself typing things to the tune of, "Why didn't JKR follow through on these themes?? My god this is AMAZING," so yes. It comes really, really recommended.

iii. I didn't hear about it until today, but it's sure as hell worth mentioning: there's this neuroscience survey about fandom going around. It wants to examine the innate biological differences between male and female brains; it's condescendingly fascinated by fandom phenomenons like Kink Bingo; it's written by people who are outside the fandom and obviously don't know how to even begin dealing with fandom discourse. DON'T TAKE IT. Here is an in-depth explanation; here are some helpful links to discussion. I wanted to see what the actual survey questions are (at the moment; they keep changing, which should let the methodology speak for itself) and it's possible to go through the survey without answering any of the questions, but I did this in the knowledge that they do have my IP address logged now.

I think there were actual Emma-Watson-circa-GoF eyebrow gymnastics going on while I was reading through the survey. There were the out of left field questions; there were your usual "We assume you must read slash for a particular set of reasons, listed below, and we want you to chose from them without additional input space" questions; there were the "obviously all slash has a dom and a sub character; it's time for a heterosexual assumptions party!" questions; there was fabulous question 5, What is your relationship status? for which the only responses were married, single, in a committed long-term relationship, and other, which kind of boggles me because even Cosmo and, um, possibly Facebook, know better than that.

I am really particularly fond of question 20, though. It wants to know if you can remember a number of seemingly arbitrary things, the last of which is the first time you felt guilty about a sexual feeling, and this kind of sums up the whole problem for me, that assumption. Most, if not all, of the other things listed there are apparently normal things that one might have memories of, although I can't say what my favourite TV show in sixth grade was because we didn't have TV, and it's entirely possible that someone taking the survey won't yet have a first kiss to remember, and &c. Am I supposed to have felt guilty about a sexual feeling? I'm sure it's all tied up (argh unintentional pun forgive me) with Kink Bingo and with enjoying slash and all those other funny fandom practices! There must be some guilt in there somewhere. And you know what? No. Fuck that noise.

In the main when people outside of fandom try to talk about fandom -- the perennial and recurring "wow, slash! what a strange little subculture! how those heterosexual white women in their thirties like to spend their free time, golly!" article blurbs, the recent School Library Journal article that appears to believe that fanfic is the province of Harry Potter and Twilight, and that if you tell your middle schooler to simply google 'fan fiction' you might have even the slimmest chance of not turning up some porn on the first page -- I find it ... I don't know what word I'm looking for. I hear the tone of condescension and rather than getting my hackles raised I mostly just feel condescension in return. In this particular case, though, I want to firmly escort the survey-makers the hell off my lawn, or whatever the appropriate metaphor is; I think I'm finally tired of being qualified and explained away by people who have no idea what the fuck they're talking about.

Comments

[endofthewest]

Why is it that male sexuality is taken as a given no matter how weird it is, while female sexuality must be studied and quantified because it's OMG SO STRANGE?

OH RIGHT because women totes don't have sexual feelings of their own, they exist entirely as receptacles for the sexual attentions of TEH MANS. Which is also why girls don't masturbate, or have sex with other girls. Sexuality cannot exist in the absence of a peen, and if it does there must be a pathological explanation for it. (Y)

Seriously, what the fuck.

[aria]

I'm particularly fond of this thread; someone calls bullshit on the het&male-assumption-skewed language, and the surveyor's response includes the gem as an outsider to slash, my initial formulation of the question about identification made no reference to this. Other slash fans suggested that I frame the question this way. Which is great, they tried to get an insider's opinion, apparently, except that a ton of slash fans are coming up and going, "Actually, no," which of course they proceed to wave aside as irrelevant because their source of information said something different.

That's actually a recurring defense; "I asked some slash fans and they told me how to put it!" It reminds me very much of the "I have gay friends so my outsider's opinion of queerness is just as valid/probably more valid than yours!" defense, and ... augh. *scrubs brain*

[endofthewest]

But Aria, don't you know that anyone who isn't a white heterosexual male is defined entirely by their minority status? NO REALLY, WE'RE A HIVEMIND. Women/queer people/people of color always feel exactly the same way about things as other women/queer people/people of color, and are collectively responsible for each other's opinions! And female sexuality is totally weird and Other and should be put under a microscope to prove how weird and Other it is!

BRB, feeling a sudden overwhelming urge to take a shower.

[marina]

I don't even think it qualifies as a defense. It's their stated policy (in one of the other comments on page 1) that they have no interest in reading about fanfic (or actually reading fanfic) and they plan to rely completely on what fandom tells them about itself.

My favourite WTF moment that I just can't wrap my head around is that apparently they're certain this survey will help FANDOM. They're here to be of use us and are concerned they may not be able to help!

[aria]

It did seem they were trying to use it as a defense for the validity of their opinions, but wow, I somehow missed the part where they admitted that not only are they outsiders, they're actively trying to remain so.

YES YES THANK YOU, SURVEY-MAKERS, YOU'RE HELPING FANDOM OUT SO VERY MUCH. WE ARE EXTREMELY GRATEFUL THAT YOU ARE VALIDATING OUR FASCINATING MARGINALIZED EXISTENCE! gkskfd grrrr.

[marina]

Bb, I don't know if you saw the convo that went:
minisinoo: um, actually, I write novel length fic, not only short stories, so you should ask me my word count not just number of stories
them: ...fanfic that's novel length?! We didn't know this existed! Is it still fanfic or do you hope to publish it?

And after everyone started fuming about this they kept repeating: we are not here to talk about culture, we are not here to study fanfiction, we are here to study the female brain, through fanfiction. So, you know. People kept trying to point out to them that researching through a field you're ignorant of, even if you're not actively researching the field itself, is SCIENCE FAIL but apparently they degrees are written in crayon, idk.

[aria]

Oooh, yes, I saw that! But I didn't read the whole thread because my brain melted at about "do you hope to publish it." I wasn't aware that they were so actively resisting any sort of fannish understanding. *facepalm*

[marina]

I have this 4 page essay I wrote a while ago and keep putting off posting about the things I learned about modern psychology from being a Psych major at a very intense, very prestigious Psych program before deciding it wasn't for me, and the MAIN POINT OF THAT essay is what we know about gender differences based on neuroscience vs. what pop psychology promotes as our knowledge of gender differences based on neuroscience. I wrote all these examples of awful, bad pop psych and I kept thinking people wouldn't believe me about how bad it was.

THANKS FOR PROVIDING ME WITH AN EXAMPLE UNIVERSE. THANKS VERY MUCH.

(ahem, sorry for the ranting, it's... late here)

[aria]

I'd love to see that! I bet people would believe you after all this craziness.

[marina]

Well, it appears your wish is my command

[feverbeats]

First of all, ASDFLKASDF THANKS FOR THE REC, YOU ARE WAY TOO NICE TO ME, ILUUU. ♥

Second, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK? Just, yes to everything you've said. I hate it when people outside of fandom try to talk about it, because it's always condescending and full of assumptions and basically shitty. *lean*

[aria]

DUDE IT IS A GOOD FIC. PERHAPS YOU MISSED THAT I THINK THIS?

It's just -- I'd ask why people inside fandom aren't writing news articles about it or something, except then I realize that it's the sort of thing you don't need to explain or advertise. Anyone who wants to find fandom probably will; anyone outside of fandom probably won't understand your explanation anyway.

That said, I think some sort of actually in-fandom survey project, even specifically about fandom's porny adventures the way this survey is trying and failing to do, would be pretty awesome. For instance -- and I've lost the link now, damn, because I found it a while back -- I once stumbled across a pretty fucking fantastic survey dealing with what words in porn are hot/acceptable/make you giggle inappropriately/make you click the back button; it was entirely awesome and informative. And I think by that same token it might be really cool to, say, make a big old list of kinks from Kink Bingo and have people check all the ones they really love; it would be totally unscientific but also fun and interesting. As an IN-FANDOM thing. Sensemaking y/n?

[feverbeats]

<33333333333

God, YES. I am actually thinking all the time about porn words, and how some authors use the rarer ones and make them work anyhow, etc. etc. etc. And I'd kill for some big, fun kink survey thing, aaah.

[aria]

YESSS. Also, and I know this will ASTONISH you, dS is making me think about porn words, because for instance Kowalski would laugh at me if I tried to put the word "erection" in his narration but Fraser is very skeptical of the word "cock" and it is all very fun to figure out without also saying the same word a billion times. (This: is also secretly the reason I cannot write hetporn. WHERE ARE THE EVEN DECENT GIRLPART WORDS. They are all either silly or clinical or really loaded.)

Fun kink survey thing: someone should do it! But not me. XD

[feverbeats]

lol Fraser. \o/ And yeah, het porn is hard that way! I generally do my best to vague it up whenever possible, which usually works well.

[salienne]

Yup, in total agreement about the survey. There's really no word to describe it but bad for so many reasons it's not even possible to count them all, from assumptions to methodology.

Although it was sort of entertaining in a train wreck-y way, and the comments provided some fascinating reading.