Fandom Secrets Was MADE OF WORD

[redbrunja]

117: Fuck yes.

Also, author of 115: please come over to my lj. You are completely dead-on and I would LOVE to discus the awesomeness of Sai x Sakura with you, as well and find out where you found that amazing fanart.

160: While I feel your pain, HINATA knows Naruto quite well. It's him that has no idea who she is.

(Also, I was gone all day so I couldn't answer comments - I'll be responding to comments tomorrow. Also, remember to set your clocks forward.)

Comments

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

#117 could have been worded better, but most of the comments are a massive failure at comprehensive reading and a clear impressionthat any criticism is evil bashing and oppression.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't expect anything less from fandom secrets.

[digthenym.livejournal.com]

155 was adorable! <3 There's been an explosion of Sai x Sakura shippers lately and it makes me happy :D

160- I don't know, you could argue that maybe she has him too far up on a pedestal to actually know him as a person more than her ideas of him. But yeah, Naruto doesn't know much about Hinata either way (the reread has me totally shipping KibaHinata now >.>)

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Well, it's true that she does have Naruto on a bit of a pedestal. But I think that all her time observing him would have given her a good, general idea of who he is - more than Naruto has of her, at the least.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

I like Naruto knows a little about her, but I don't think he really has any idea of what her life was like or who she is at a deeper level. Part of it is his personality - I don't think Naruto thinks much about WHY he likes or doesn't like people.

I also agree that Kiba does probably care very much for Hinata, and that it wouldn't be so terrible if he saw her in a romantic light.

Certainly not. I have to admit, though, that I tend to think that both Naruto and Kiba would be a little to 'easy' for her - but that's kinda my Neji/Hinata shipper talking.

[ivy-chan.livejournal.com]

I completely and totally disagreed with 117. Slash, which I understand is writing male/male relationships, is no more anti-feminist than femmeslash is misandrist. Choosing to focus on one gender in a story should not be immediately labeled sexist. There is sexism in the slash community, but it is not exclusive to that 'genre' alone. The same kind of sexism shown in slash is also shown in het, and is not inherent to the gender dynamics.

[strange_quark]

I don't think the secret was saying that slash was anti-feminist, just that it wasn't feminist. Not pro or con, simply neutral.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

That's exactly what the secret was saying. The first thing the secretmaker says is that there isn't a contradiction between being a feminist and liking slash. I spent most of yesterday following responses to the secret, and most were truly baffling.

[ivy-chan.livejournal.com]

See my response below.

[ivy-chan.livejournal.com]

They reeeeaaaally could have worded that better. As it was, the exact statement was: "You can not be a slash fan AND be feminist." Which states that being a slash fan (person) keeps you from being a feminist (person). Which indirectly states that either feminism is anti-slash, or slash is anti-feminism, since both states can not simply exist at once.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

"I think you can be a slash (m/m) fan and be a feminist. I don't see how it's an automatic contradiction."

I do think the secret is badly worded (and it was probably by someone who hasn't had these discussions much) and have thought so since I first saw it last weekend, but, while it seems to be anti-slash-or at least, against using female characters and fictions poor treatment of them as justification-it isn't condemning people for liking it, just saying that the two don't go together. Most people wouldn't want hot sauce on their ice cream, but that doesn't make them natural enemies, or mean that a person can't like both without being a hypocrite. "Not feminist" isn't the equivalent of "anti-feminist," just like "about women" doesn't automatically equal "feminist." The fact that two things don't automatically go together doesn't make them natural enemies.

[ivy-chan.livejournal.com]

Ahhhh! Yeah, totally misread. I just CAME from an argument with someone who hated slash but loved femmeslash, while claiming to hate romance, while stating that all het was sexist because of the patriarchal culture. Disregard above statement, please.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I think that most people are seeing "slash" and" feminist" close together in something that isn't encouraging the connection, and automatically jumping to a conclusion that, combined with a few word choices (I would have replaced the bit where it says slash diminishes and ignores female characters with it prioritizing male characters over female characters) does make a degree of sense,but it results in most of the responses being a response to something that isn't in the secret at all.

[ivy-chan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, like I said in my journal, I still don't agree with the secret's opinion of slash.

[strange_quark]

There are parts that could have been worded better, yes, but it does not in any way say that you can't be a slash fan and a feminist at the same time. Like, really. In fact, the first thing the secret says is that one can.

I think there is a leap of logic in the third paragraph of the secret that might not be easy to follow--from the idea that slash is inherently not a feminist thing to the poor justification some slash fans use for maligning female characters--but it certainly does not say that.

[ivy-chan.livejournal.com]

*response to meganbmoore* Right, I totally misread. Sorry about that. XD

[strange_quark]

No worries ;)

As to your response, and the person you were arguing with... uh, whut? I'm not a fan of slash and I love femmeslash as much as anyone, but seriously, whut?

[ivy-chan.livejournal.com]

I think the argument went that slash was bad because it was about guy characters only, which makes it sexist and misogynistic. But femmeslash was good because it was all about the women controlling themselves without any men at all, which meant it was good and not sexist at all. Romance was basically defined as Harlequin romance, I think, or fluffy, sentimental romance. This person liked hardcore stuff and dysfunction and power imbalances and the occasional rape.

(Guys can actually rape each other without it being sexist, and girls can rape each other without it being sexist, so that's okay. Guy/girl rape or girl/guy rape is sexist either way.) And heterosexuality was bad because of a long history of abuse and oppression, and no one can write it without that seeping in. Apparently.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I read that as "And while I'm on the subject STOP ENCOURAGING THINGS THAT TREAT YOUR GENDER BADLY AND FIND THINGS THAT DO IF IT'S GOING TO MATTER TO YOU!" (Which is kinda my mindset, but if I were writing secrets, I would have made it a separate thing instead of randomly tangenting off into another thing." But then, I also did to just completely slide off most things where I don't like the female characters or how they're treated, often without even noticing.)

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

She's not saying that slash IS automatically anti-feminist. She's saying that a lot of the reasons people give for being slashers and the way that they write slash CAN be anti-feminist, which I have found unfortunately to be true.

I cannot tell you the times I have talked to slashers and come away with the opinion that they have issues with women in general and being women themselves. It's gotten to the point where if I find out someone is a slasher, I ASSUME they have issues with women until proven otherwise.

[ivy-chan.livejournal.com]

I must be lucky in having a wide bunch of slasher friends (I've written slash myself, but it's not my main genre) who aren't anti-feminist. I've heard of the ones who are, mostly in rants from the slasher friends and in ffrants.

I try not to make assumptions of people because of ships or genres, mainly because I ship things like Zutara (which gets bashed) and Harry/Hermione (which gets bashed to high heaven) and femmeslash (while not being a lesbian, which surprises people somehow). Sometimes, though, you run across a walking negative stereotype and it's really, really annoying.

[ivy-chan.livejournal.com]

Especially if it's a negative stereotype of YOUR ship. "Stop being on my side! YOU MAKE MY SIDE LOOK STUPID."

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

I try not to make assumptions, but I lot of the time I know I do, simply based on prior experience.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

I think your inferring a lot of things that I am not saying.

What I said was "I try not to make assumptions, but I lot of the time I know I do."

I'm not acting like I have moral high ground; I'm being honest about the fact that I don't always manage to not make snap judgements about people based on prior experience with people who share those same traits.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

"I acknowledge that this is similar to behaviors I don't approve of, but it's okay because I've had bad experiences with misogynistic slashers". If that wasn't what you meant to say, I can accept that, but please take note that that is exactly how it came across.

This isn't what I meant to say at all, and I'm sorry that that is how it came across.

I'm sorry that you've experienced homophobia in the het community and I don't recall the details of the prior conversation or why I stopped replying but I do know that it's wasn't a deliberate slight or a way to ignore what you were saying.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Was it LAST december or january? Because I vaguely recall getting into a debate right before I left for France, and then when I finally had internet, I ended up deleting a lot of comments that were very, very out of date.

And I will think about how the reverse of my opinions would sound to me.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

You're welcome.

Cute icon, by the way.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

It could have, but I think her point is valid.

[lykomancer.livejournal.com]

HINATA knows Naruto quite well. It's him that has no idea who she is.

I would disagree with that; they haven't even had any kind of extended conversation and only even worked together once (iirc). She's been observing him a long time and admiring him, but that's not a good substitute for real understanding or knowledge of who he is...

...or at least, it wouldn't be, in real life. Hinata's flawless "understanding" of Naruto's character merely from watching him, without a single misinterpretation of who he is or what he thinks or what he's feeling, is kind of, well, fictional.

*shrugs* Ah... Never mind.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

While I agree that simply observing someone is not a substitute for actually interacting with them, I DO think that people show who they are by what they do, and that Hinata would have, if not a perfect understanding, a good idea of who Naruto is.