First, thank you! Both for helping out with the project and for taking the time to send me congratulations on it.
Re my use of the word "de-sexualizing," I stand by it because it is literally what I mean. Without placing any value judgement on this fact one way or another: canonically, textually, there is nothing that tells us that Xena and Gabrielle's relationship was sexual. Nothing. We can watch it and say that it *seems* like it would have been, that there are *indications* that perhaps it was, but the way that Xena as a show survived was through plausible deniability. Lesbian sex? Where? We certainly do not know what you mean! *wink, wink, nudge, nudge* So the de-sexualization I was speaking of was the process of making Xena and Gabrielle's relationship the textual centerpiece of the show, but carefully airbrushing out anything that might force a resistant viewer to believe or accept that they were having sex. In a show all about their feelings for each other, no episode ever addressed the subject of whether or not one of those things they felt was lust. And that was deliberate, and, I think, both positive and negative in its consequences. In some ways it's neat to have subtext and to enjoy multiple readings, and on the other hand there are times I would have preferred the show to come right out and say, "No, they've never slept together and they don't want to sleep together," rather then go the way they went, because ultimately what it seemed to me to do was to behave as though lesbian sex was so invisible and unimportant that no one might even really care whether they were having it or not -- or if you cared, that was your business, and you could make up whatever answer you like because it didn't ultimately matter. Like I said, I at least have some good and some bad feelings about Xena's sexual politics -- which is a thing you get used to after you spend a while in media fandom *g*
As for the whole issue of being "defined" by your sexuality, I'm not quite sure how to answer that. Clearly I'm not only my sexuality either, and my relationships, even those that involve sex, are not entirely about sex. I don't think anyone would deny that. However, my issue with X:WP is about the dishonesty imposed on the text for political reasons; the show tried to pass this idea under the table to a lesbian fan base that Xena was actively bisexual, and then shot a hundred and fifty hours of footage about her where they kind of never got around to that part. To me, that's -- either they were shopping a lie to the fans and Xena *wasn't* into doing girls, or they deliberately kept that aspect of her life a secret where they didn't conceal anything else about her. She wasn't definable *only* as a murderous privateer, either, but they weren't scared to deal with the fact that was there, so why be scared of this?
To me, the idea that sexuality is only relevant when you're either having sex or thinking about your sexuality is -- just really not true. In my own case, at least, it's not *all* that I am, but that doesn't mean it just up and goes away when it's not the current focus of all my attention, either. You cannot possibly understand who am I, how I think, what I want, or what matters to me if you don't know that I'm queer. You can't. You would be wrong about me on a major, profound level that would impact your understanding of a number of things I've done and gone through in my life. That's always my fear when people say they want characters' sexuality to be "incidental" -- I don't think your relationship to your erotic, sexual, and romantic life is about a series of incidents. I think it's about how you have become the person you are, and I think that's true of everyone, regardless of orientation. With most straight characters, even if their sexuality is not the "focus" of the story, we do know something about their romantic history, we often get to know who they're attached to or attracted to now, and the text assumes that we'll translate that into other kinds of knowlege about the character. That's never called "defining a character by their sexuality" when the character is straight, you know? So why would it be if the character is queer?
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Date: 2004-12-03 05:50 pm (UTC)From:Re my use of the word "de-sexualizing," I stand by it because it is literally what I mean. Without placing any value judgement on this fact one way or another: canonically, textually, there is nothing that tells us that Xena and Gabrielle's relationship was sexual. Nothing. We can watch it and say that it *seems* like it would have been, that there are *indications* that perhaps it was, but the way that Xena as a show survived was through plausible deniability. Lesbian sex? Where? We certainly do not know what you mean! *wink, wink, nudge, nudge* So the de-sexualization I was speaking of was the process of making Xena and Gabrielle's relationship the textual centerpiece of the show, but carefully airbrushing out anything that might force a resistant viewer to believe or accept that they were having sex. In a show all about their feelings for each other, no episode ever addressed the subject of whether or not one of those things they felt was lust. And that was deliberate, and, I think, both positive and negative in its consequences. In some ways it's neat to have subtext and to enjoy multiple readings, and on the other hand there are times I would have preferred the show to come right out and say, "No, they've never slept together and they don't want to sleep together," rather then go the way they went, because ultimately what it seemed to me to do was to behave as though lesbian sex was so invisible and unimportant that no one might even really care whether they were having it or not -- or if you cared, that was your business, and you could make up whatever answer you like because it didn't ultimately matter. Like I said, I at least have some good and some bad feelings about Xena's sexual politics -- which is a thing you get used to after you spend a while in media fandom *g*
As for the whole issue of being "defined" by your sexuality, I'm not quite sure how to answer that. Clearly I'm not only my sexuality either, and my relationships, even those that involve sex, are not entirely about sex. I don't think anyone would deny that. However, my issue with X:WP is about the dishonesty imposed on the text for political reasons; the show tried to pass this idea under the table to a lesbian fan base that Xena was actively bisexual, and then shot a hundred and fifty hours of footage about her where they kind of never got around to that part. To me, that's -- either they were shopping a lie to the fans and Xena *wasn't* into doing girls, or they deliberately kept that aspect of her life a secret where they didn't conceal anything else about her. She wasn't definable *only* as a murderous privateer, either, but they weren't scared to deal with the fact that was there, so why be scared of this?
To me, the idea that sexuality is only relevant when you're either having sex or thinking about your sexuality is -- just really not true. In my own case, at least, it's not *all* that I am, but that doesn't mean it just up and goes away when it's not the current focus of all my attention, either. You cannot possibly understand who am I, how I think, what I want, or what matters to me if you don't know that I'm queer. You can't. You would be wrong about me on a major, profound level that would impact your understanding of a number of things I've done and gone through in my life. That's always my fear when people say they want characters' sexuality to be "incidental" -- I don't think your relationship to your erotic, sexual, and romantic life is about a series of incidents. I think it's about how you have become the person you are, and I think that's true of everyone, regardless of orientation. With most straight characters, even if their sexuality is not the "focus" of the story, we do know something about their romantic history, we often get to know who they're attached to or attracted to now, and the text assumes that we'll translate that into other kinds of knowlege about the character. That's never called "defining a character by their sexuality" when the character is straight, you know? So why would it be if the character is queer?