{"id":906,"date":"2016-08-03T15:47:42","date_gmt":"2016-08-03T19:47:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/?p=906"},"modified":"2016-08-03T15:47:42","modified_gmt":"2016-08-03T19:47:42","slug":"acceptance-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/acceptance-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"Acceptance Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"dslc-theme-content\"><div id=\"dslc-theme-content-inner\"><p>This is gonna be a short post, but it was a discussion I had with some friends last night and I feel like the points I was making to them were broadly applicable enough that I wanted to get them down in a slightly more coherent way than a couple tweets.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a push lately, particularly in games, to care less about &#8220;Representation&#8221; (with the capital R). Which is to say, arguments that focus on &#8220;can we get [x] characters&#8221; aren&#8217;t actually useful. I have complicated feelings about that, but I do think that it&#8217;s easy to get lost in quota-esque &#8220;well there&#8217;s a [choose one: woman, disabled person, queer person, non-white person] in the cast! Look at how diverse it is!&#8221; presence\/absence frameworks that are indeed unhelpful. But I also think we\u00a0<em>do<\/em> need to keep arguing for the presence of marginalized characters.<\/p>\n<p>Last night there was some discussion of what constitutes &#8220;queerbaiting&#8221; &#8212; a situation where a work&#8217;s creators feed fans the\u00a0<em>possibility<\/em> of a character being queer to keep their interest while simultaneously having absolutely no intention whatsoever of making their queerness &#8220;canon&#8221; (a term we&#8217;ll come back to in a second). If you want a real obnoxious example of actual queerbaiting in action you need look no farther than BBC&#8217;s\u00a0<em>Sherlock<\/em>, even though showrunner Steven Moffat recently shut that down in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.themarysue.com\/johnlock-is-doomed\/\">the most obnoxious and insulting way possible.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Queerbaiting as a practice relies very heavily on the almighty power of\u00a0<strong>CANON\u2122<\/strong>, that nebulously defined state in which something in a fictional universe is considered to be unarguably true. For queerbaiting to be happening, you have to have a combination of&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A character with no <em>explicitly<\/em>-defined\u00a0<strong>CANON\u2122\u00a0<\/strong>sexuality\/gender identity\/etc.<\/li>\n<li>A fanbase that has both&#8230;\n<ul>\n<li>A queer reading of that character and<\/li>\n<li>A desire to see that queer reading confirmed by the\u00a0<strong>CANON\u2122.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Considering that queer audiences have been&#8230; well, queering characters all their lives, and that heteronormativity guarantees that there&#8217;s always going to be characters that have no &#8220;explicit&#8221; (as in, literally spoken) sexuality, these conditions are not difficult to satisfy. But they&#8217;re not the only sufficient and necessary conditions.<\/p>\n<p>You\u00a0<em>also<\/em> need showrunners\/writers\/etc. who continually acknowledge or engage that fan desire, which is important. The idea of queerbaiting is that there is a certain degree of intentionality involved; we consider it particularly bad because the act of saying &#8220;well they\u00a0<em>could<\/em> be queer! :D If you want them to be! :D&#8221; while refusing to actually make that part of the\u00a0<strong>CANON\u2122\u00a0<\/strong>is effectively exploitation of its audience&#8217;s marginalization. &#8220;We know you want queer characters because you are queer and want to see queerness reflected in what you consume, so we&#8217;ll\u00a0<em>imply<\/em> queerness, but we won&#8217;t\u00a0<em>confirm<\/em> it.&#8221; They are basically trading on your desire to see your fan interpretations Made Official which is, in a word, gross.<\/p>\n<p>The sun that all of this orbits is\u00a0<strong>CANON\u2122\u00a0<\/strong>and as a dyed-in-the-wool British cultural studies type, this presents a complicated thing. Because we now have two competing cultural forces at work:<\/p>\n<p><strong>1.)\u00a0<\/strong>We derive meaning from what we consume in a negotiated way (I am loathe to link a wiki article, but <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Encoding\/decoding_model_of_communication\">Stuart Hall&#8217;s encoding\/decoding model<\/a> is a reasonable starting place), one that is informed by our personal context as much as what the creators &#8220;build into&#8221; it. What this means is that the idea of an always-accurate\u00a0<strong>CANON\u2122\u00a0<\/strong>is inherently unstable. Basically if you watch something and they seem queer to you, then: cool. Rather than framing interpretations as &#8220;correct&#8221; or &#8220;incorrect,&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Textual-Analysis-Beginners-Alan-McKee\/dp\/0761949933\">Alan McKee<\/a> talks about interpretations being more or less &#8220;supported&#8221; by the text.<\/p>\n<p><strong>2.)\u00a0<\/strong>However,\u00a0<strong>CANON\u2122\u00a0<\/strong>is still useful because it is a signpost or barometer for\u00a0<em>what the creators view as important or relevant<\/em>. That is to say,\u00a0<strong>CANON\u2122\u00a0<\/strong>represents the set of norms, ideas, concepts, and identities that the creators see fit to put their cultural capital behind. When creators make something\u00a0<strong>CANON\u2122<\/strong><strong>\u00a0<\/strong>what they are effectively saying is &#8220;We support this interpretation.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Thus we&#8217;re in a situation where I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s useful to rely on\u00a0<strong>CANON\u2122\u00a0<\/strong>for whether or not characters &#8220;are&#8221; or &#8220;are not&#8221; queer because that&#8217;s bound up in the reader&#8217;s subjective experience of the text. However, it\u00a0<em>is<\/em> useful to look at\u00a0<strong>CANON\u2122\u00a0<\/strong>as a barometer of the work&#8217;s views on queerness and the place queerness has in the universe the creators are building.<\/p>\n<p>Part of the reason that queerbaiting is such an asshole scenario is that it actually frames the discussion\u00a0<em>away<\/em> from fan interpretation while seeming to give a lot of power to it. Queerbaiting relies on and utilizes uncertainty: &#8220;they might be! they might not be! wink wink nudge nudge.&#8221; And in the process, it de-centers the interpretations of the fans &#8212; who I&#8217;m pretty sure\u00a0<em>are<\/em> certain, which is why they want confirmation &#8212; and gives it back to the creators in a\u00a0<strong>CANON\u2122<\/strong>-oriented way. Queerbaiting puts the focus on &#8220;They might be!&#8221; rather than &#8220;They definitely are.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Swinging this back around to capital-r Representation, what I realized as we were discussing what constitutes queerbaiting is that I am less interested nowadays in the\u00a0<em>presence<\/em> of diverse characters &#8212; particularly queer ones &#8212; than I am with the\u00a0<em>acknowledgment<\/em> of queer characters.<\/p>\n<p>Not every situation where characters read queer but the creators don&#8217;t acknowledge it is queerbaiting. That&#8217;s important; there&#8217;s a level of intentionality or purposefulness in queerbaiting that I don&#8217;t actually think is present in a lot of media. Which is to say: just because creators aren&#8217;t naming our ships doesn&#8217;t mean they&#8217;re queerbaiting if they occasionally give us something about those ships.<\/p>\n<p>That being said, what I crave nowadays is\u00a0<em>acknowledgement<\/em>. I am tired of the &#8220;they might be queer&#8221; thing. I want authors to have to name it. I want them to put it to words. I want it to be explicit. Not because that would make it\u00a0<strong>CANON\u2122\u00a0<\/strong>and thus a number we can point to (&#8220;look! a queer character!&#8221; like it&#8217;s gay <em>Pok\u00e9mon Snap<\/em>) but because the explicitness means it cannot be &#8220;explained away.&#8221; It means the creators acknowledge not just the character&#8217;s existence but by extension\u00a0<em>my<\/em> existence.<\/p>\n<p>What you have to understand is that, at least on the gender\/sexuality axis, heteronormativity and cisnormativity mean that cisgender and heterosexual people\u00a0<em>don&#8217;t need this<\/em>. They are &#8220;acknowledged&#8221; by default. We don&#8217;t question their existence, their place, or their presence. Comparatively, the rest of us kinda do need it.<\/p>\n<p>And this does not necessarily mean that you have to have every queer character scream &#8220;I&#8217;M GAY! :D&#8221; in the first 120 seconds of their appearance. You\u00a0<em>can<\/em> signal it firmly but gently &#8212; for an example of this, read the first 6-7 issues of <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/kateleth\">Kate Leth&#8217;s<\/a>\u00a0absolutely fantastic\u00a0<em>Patsy Walker AKA Hellcat<\/em>. Pay attention to how the book signals, say, Tom and Ian&#8217;s sexualities. There&#8217;s very little doubt about it, but it&#8217;s also not an in-your-face hammer. But it&#8217;s definitely\u00a0<strong>CANON\u2122\u00a0<\/strong>in an unambiguous way.<\/p>\n<p>I also want to point out that like&#8230; I can understand this desire for &#8220;acceptance&#8221; on my part as a primarily\u00a0<em>political and social<\/em> desire, rather than necessarily my desires\u00a0<em>as a media consumer<\/em>. I still love lots of stuff that&#8217;s never gonna give me the queer acknowledgment I want. And that&#8217;s fine! I can still enjoy those things (and still think my faves are hella fucking gay) without guilt.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a special place in my heart, however, for those creators who will go the mile and make things explicit, who will\u00a0<em>acknowledge<\/em> this. Queerbaiting is the pretense of acknowledgement; it is saying &#8220;we see you, but we&#8217;re only pretending to care.&#8221; I want to reserve my energy and passion for people who will actually make the effort to fully acknowledge, to make explicit, to put their weight behind it.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is gonna be a short post, but it was a discussion I had with some friends last night and I feel like the points I was making to them were broadly applicable enough that I wanted to get them down in a slightly more coherent way than a couple tweets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":907,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[29,52],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/acceptance_poster.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3NfdI-eC","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=906"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":909,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906\/revisions\/909"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chaoticblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}