POLL: Spot the homophobia!

[apple_pathways]

Once again, it's time to play: "What Would YOU Do?", the fantastic play-at-home webgame wherein I ask you, dear flist, to make my life choices for me.

No, I'm kidding! But I do want opinions.

I just discovered the "legacy story stats" feature at fanfiction.net, because I am WAY on top of things. (Seriously, I don't know who designed their user interface and whether or not they have a deep-seated hatred for humanity, but DAMN is it hard to navigate when you want to post a story!) This feature lets you see which communities and collections your works have been added to.

Two of my Sherlock stories have been added to a community called "Non-Slashers Unite!" which is described thusly: (copy and pasted from the comm's description)

For those of you who don't like to read slash stories then I have a place for you! NSU is your place to find all stories that a) aren't slash, b) don't have really strong/prolific language, c) any sort of explicit sex scenes—m/m, f/f, m/f—, and d) some pretty awesome Sherlock fics! If any of a-c start to appear then it will be taken off and if you awesome readers find something we missed please let us know! If you don't want your stories put into NSU then please let us know and we will remove them! Thanks!

I have thoughts:

a. I do not remember being solicited to "unite" with anyone, and am disturbed to discover I have been "united" with this community for about five months. (They added my stories back in February.)

b. I am rather offended and also discouraged to find my stories are considered to be devoid of "prolific language". Hey buddy: my stories contain hundreds, if not thousands of words! Some of them three syllables even...

c. Is this homophobia at work?

Now, before I ask for your opinions, I would mention:

I don't find the idea of excluding slash (and only slash) from an archive to be necessarily homophobic, in and of itself. For me, it has more to do with the reason slash is excluded and the attitude that accompanies the exclusion.

I can also sympathize with the comm's desire for PG fare without explicit sex or language. (Though Mrs. Hudson does call Moriarty a "son of a bitch" in one of my stories.)

As far as I can see, this comm has not made any explicit judgment of slash, LGBTQ persons or relationships--they've simply stated "this is an archive for all that is not-slash". HOWEVER, if they are operating under the pretense that slash is "gross" or "wrong" or are projecting any implications other than "it's just not my personal preference", I do not want any part of it.

With all that in mind, what do you think?

[Poll #1762536]

Any issues you want to raise, feel free to bring them up in comments. I'm especially interested to hear what people make of the general tone of this comm.

I tend to write mostly gen in the Sherlock fandom, with the odd bit of Molly/Moriarty thrown in. My stories are generally appreciated, but then I do also get a few Weirdos who think that because I write Sherlock and John as platonic friends I'm somehow morally opposed to the idea of them fucking. I'm not: I'm just not particuarly interested in reading or writing about it. I don't consider myself a Non-Slasher, but rather someone who tends to prefer other types of fic ahead of most slash fics. (The balance is rapidly shifting as regards Eleven/Rory though. But that's a whole 'nother fandom...)

Comments

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

Ok, so whatever points they may have won by flattering my ego (I wrote a "pretty awesome Sherlock fic"!) they have now lost with my discovery of this story summary posted to the archive:

Sherlock got drunk- twin daughters are the result. Can John cope with feelings for their father and motherly feelings towards the twins?

I just...I can't...brain...

Here's an excerpt:

"Well…" Sherlock squirmed in his seat "About….a year ago my brother Mycroft… he had a big party…with lots of alcohol….and according to this letter and the baby's obvious similarities to me….. I slept with a young lady name Louise…. Who apparently doesn't want them…. So she left them to me to look after." John rolled his eyes – trust Sherlock to get a girl pregnant the only time he ever drinks.

Discuss?

[roh-wyn.livejournal.com]

So this sort of thing happens at least twice a month in the Lord of the Rings fandom, or at least it used to, when the fandom was a bit busier.

Non-slash archives or comms were perceived to be per se homophobic, which (IMO) was a really unfair assessment. In many cases, the desire to keep slash off the archive was motivated not by homophobia, but by a desire to focus on het relationships that the archive owners liked, and that were being (in their view) drowned out by the massive quantities of slash fic at other archives.

So my approach would be to (a) ask, and (b) if asking reveals a possibly homophobic reason for the exclusion of slash, then dissociate yourself.

You may want to dissociate yourself from the archive anyway, if the snippet you posted above is anything to go by, lol.

[creativeaminot.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping they're not so problematic as they sound; maybe they just suck at advertising what sort of lj comm they are? If not, yeah, I say it's time to find a way to dissociate your fic from them.

[alt_universe_me.livejournal.com]

As someone who likes slash, femslash, and het, I don't really see a problem with 'het only' or 'slash only' comms. But to define themselves by what they don't like, i.e. 'non-slashers' versus, say, 'genfics only' or 'het-shippers', seems as if they are going out of their way to be actively anti-slash. I wouldn't want to associate with them, but I wouldn't necessarily judge anyone who did based on that summary.

Plus, they didn't ask you if you wanted to join, and that just seems kind of rude that they couldn't be bothered to ask you if you wanted your fic included in the first place.

But that's just me. It's your fic, and you should do what makes you happy :) Fanfic should not cause stress, lol.

[evilhippo.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I understand exactly how the archive is homophobic. I think the thing that's tweaking everyone might that it's named for what it excludes, rather than just calling itself a genfic archive. (And it's full of badfic, but it's on ff.net and is probably run by a 13-year-old...) I mean, it sounds like it was set up by a 13-year-old. I remember enthusiastically pitting myself against fandom forces that I thought were boring in my early teens, and that included all shippy fic for a very long time. It didn't mean I was afraid of it (though most kids don't make the distinction)... I just didn't like it (and I thought everyone was missing out on all the good plotty fic, because I completely didn't understand what appeal there was in reading just about two people sexing each other. I thought people were reading it because it was all everyone kept posting. Let's not go into exactly how long ago this was...).

I can see how it'd be embarrassing to be associated with them (and I'm with you on those grounds), but going by the introduction there, it just states (with enthusiasm but no particular eloquence) that it's for people that don't want to read slash or explicit stories... it doesn't say anything specifically against those types of stories. In fact, it makes more sense if you read "slash" as meaning explicit fic in general... which is a definition I don't think anyone ever used, other than me when I was young and confused. But it's possible this person is also young and confused.

[ladylovelace.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I can see how the reason matters.

Remember how we were discussing m/m sex getting a higher heat rating with a publisher just by virtue of being m/m? That seems like another case of this, really. Which to me is perhaps not homophobic, within the exact meaning of the word, but it is definitely bad for real gay people, and tends to betray an attitude that gay people are strange aliens.

I'm about as okay with het-only comms as I am with restaurants who won't serve black people, honestly. I am fine with people liking het and having no interest in slash/a particular slash pairing, I just think it's a bad thing to make it socially okay to exclude gay people. (I don't think all het-only comms do this, but I think the culture of het-only comms does it. It is exactly like saying gay people aren't welcome here, even if it comes from a place of disinterest).

Actually, now I'm starting to get annoyed with the words het and slash. Can't we just call it sex? Is the built-in equipment that important?

[zolac-no-miko.livejournal.com]

Based on the snippet you've copy-pasta'd, it looks to me like this community is less anti-gay and more anti-porn. I mean they specifically ban m/f along with m/m and f/f. It seems like the admins are twelve-year-old girls looking for safe, PG-rated genfic, only they've never heard/don't understand the term 'genfic' and are using slash as a blanket term for all possible sexual relationship combos. I could be wrong, but that does seem to be how they're presenting themselves. I would say talk to them about it before stamping them with a label that they might not deserve.

[katyscarlett76.livejournal.com]

I think calling it Non-Slashers Unite sends a really wrong signal. I can kind of see their reasoning behind the comm as it can sometimes be a bit hard to find het and gen stories within some fandoms as the slash can drown them out but that's what specific gen or ship communities are for surely? For me it's about the couple rather than the sex they are, there's some couples I like to read about and others I don't.

I just find it really odd to define yourself by what you are not, maybe they just don't realise the implications of that so maybe give them the benefit of the doubt and ask. I wouldn't say that a comm that only includes het stories is homophobic in itself, some people just aren't interested in reading same sex relationship stories and there's nothing wrong with that, we don't all have the same interests it's what makes the world interesting. But I do have a problem with a comm set up to be anti something, they've made a wrong step there, hopefully in naivety not homophobia.

I would say to withdraw your fics from the comm, I really don't like the idea someone could attribute something like that to you when you had no control over your fics being there!

[inkdancer.livejournal.com]

It doesn't seem there's much I can say that hasn't already been said: the comm seems to have been intended as a pg-rated haven, and the term "slash" misused. I'd ask to be sure. Perhaps the founders should just be informed of the image they're projecting, and that might be enough to make them think. You may wish to get a response before requesting that they withdraw your fic, and request that they start asking authors before adding fics to their community. Perhaps they'll surprise you with innocent intentions.

[switchbladesis.livejournal.com]

:(

It's possible that they're just not that savvy and really don't have any issues with slash pairings, but that's a stretch. And if they don't mean for it to be homophobic, they're probably interested in knowing that it does come off that way.

Mostly-why don't they just refer to themselves as gen lovers? Why single out slash instead of het? Except they're not against all het, just explicit het-which is already setting a double standard.

Also, they archived your fic without telling you? I'm not really familiar with fanfiction.net or its ways (maybe that's a common and acceptable thing to do there), but that still seems really, really weird to me.

[kel-reiley.livejournal.com]

I answered your poll, but I would like to add to my answers :)

First though, as with ppl who "warn" for slash, it's not always overtly homophobic on their part. Sometimes they just don't realize that it is offensive, but once that is pointed out they are contrite and will change it.

From the comm's description, it looks like they are just not interested in any explicit sexual material, and I wonder if perhaps it's not more of a "GEN" comm, rather than just non-slash. Or does it allow "HET" relationship stories?

Also, "prolific language" ...that confused me, yeah. I think that word does not mean what they think it means.

And to your poll questions:

1. I answered "I don't think so." but only in the sense of it being intentional. It's possible to be bigoted and offensive without meaning to, and sometimes when that's pointed out it's possible to change that attitude. So, you know, pointing how this could be "misconstrued" to the mods might go a ways in fixing it.

2. I answered "Yeah, you probably should." only b/c it's clear you are uncomfortable with it, otherwise you wouldn't have brought it up. The fact that they went ahead and added it (is it just a link to your story or is it actually IN their archive?) without asking first seems pretty rude to me. I'd talk with the admins about your concerns first, though.

3. Obviously, I think you should contact them. Find out what they consider "slash" firstly. Are they defining it as only m/m pairings? All same-sex pairings? Or any non-canon pairings? Are the stories there mostly casefic, and not pairing (of ANY kind) fic, as in focused on plot not relationships? So, should it be labeled a "Gen" community?

I do think that fandom is a place for everyone, to experience however they want and be able to find whatever they enjoy (and avoid the things they don't). Recent experiences have taught me that not everyone feels this way. That some ppl feel the need to force their own opinions or project their own issues onto everyone else.

Is it possible that this NSU is homophobic (whether intentionally or not)? Yes, absolutely. But I think they should be able to create their own space for the things they like and govern it however they choose. You have the choice to not be a part of it.