thuvia ptarth (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thuviaptarth) wrote2007-04-03 10:13 am
thuviaptarth) wrote2007-04-03 10:13 am
Entry tags:
Fantasy and safe space
Preamble
I'd like to emphasize that I'm ... noodling, sort of; trying to work out what I think as I say it. And what I'm trying to do here is to not to declare a particular set of fantasies or generic conventions wrong or right, but to consider how we can communicate better about these fantasies, conventions, and responsibilities to other fans, rather than perpetually ending up with hurt feelings, pre-set opinions and prejudices, and the rather frustrating sense that other people are not hearing what we're trying to say.
And whenever I say "we" above, I definitely do include myself.
Fantasy and safe space
I've been trying to niggle out some connections I feel but cannot easily articulate among recent fandom brangles about the harshing of squee, incest in Supernatural, race in SGA, fandom as a safe space, and what I see as the fairly complicated relationship of fantasy and reality. My predominant impression, as someone has friends and respected acquaintances on all sides of most of these debates, is that we--media fans--have a lot of trouble not interpreting disagreement as disapproval, or disapproval as insult, and that we have some difficulty separating out disapproval or criticism of our beloved objects (whether canon or fandom) from disapproval or criticism of ourselves. And as someone who finds criticism (both in the analytical and the negative connotations) an important mode of fannish engagement, I personally plan on working on that.
I've seen a lot of discussions of fandom as a "safe space," and I think that's a lovely idea with some very problematic implications, not least of which is that different people want and need spaces safe from different and sometimes mutually exclusive things. Some people need a safe space for fantasy and play, and some people need a safe space from the oppressions (of race, of gender, of sexual violence) that are an inescapable fact of their daily life, that are not simply toys for fantasy for them. Fandom can be very valuable as a free space for fantasy -- but there's a reason we don't let the id out to play in the streets with children, and that's because, unrestrained, it can hurt people. Sometimes our pleasure does hurt other people. Sometimes that hurt is our responsibility, and sometimes it's not -- I really do not have a blanket statement of permission or refusal here, I do not think that repression of the fantasy is value-neutral or unproblematic, either; the repression of fantasy is one of the world's most basic means of social control.
I told you I was having trouble articulating these connections.
I guess if I had to boil it down into a few sentences, I would say that fantasy is inevitable and it can be reactionary or it can be revolutionary and it can be other things entirely; that sometimes fantasy is entirely divorced from the real world, but sometimes it is not; and that, as responsible adults who seek to behave rightly by other people, when we publish our fantasies, our thoughts, our opinions, it behooves us to consider their impact on other people, even if we decide that the positive impact of expression for us outweighs the negative impact of the expression on other people. What I feel like I'm seeing, a lot of the time, is an automatic defensiveness and fear at being asked to consider how we or what we've said appears to other people, a defensiveness that comes out of the fear that we're wrong, or the inherited shame and discomfort we feel about our positions of relative privilege or fantasies we ourselves may find problematic, or out of the startlement at being called on a sense of entitlement we didn't know we had and may not be ready to confront.
I'd like to emphasize that I'm ... noodling, sort of; trying to work out what I think as I say it. And what I'm trying to do here is to not to declare a particular set of fantasies or generic conventions wrong or right, but to consider how we can communicate better about these fantasies, conventions, and responsibilities to other fans, rather than perpetually ending up with hurt feelings, pre-set opinions and prejudices, and the rather frustrating sense that other people are not hearing what we're trying to say.
And whenever I say "we" above, I definitely do include myself.
Fantasy and safe space
I've been trying to niggle out some connections I feel but cannot easily articulate among recent fandom brangles about the harshing of squee, incest in Supernatural, race in SGA, fandom as a safe space, and what I see as the fairly complicated relationship of fantasy and reality. My predominant impression, as someone has friends and respected acquaintances on all sides of most of these debates, is that we--media fans--have a lot of trouble not interpreting disagreement as disapproval, or disapproval as insult, and that we have some difficulty separating out disapproval or criticism of our beloved objects (whether canon or fandom) from disapproval or criticism of ourselves. And as someone who finds criticism (both in the analytical and the negative connotations) an important mode of fannish engagement, I personally plan on working on that.
I've seen a lot of discussions of fandom as a "safe space," and I think that's a lovely idea with some very problematic implications, not least of which is that different people want and need spaces safe from different and sometimes mutually exclusive things. Some people need a safe space for fantasy and play, and some people need a safe space from the oppressions (of race, of gender, of sexual violence) that are an inescapable fact of their daily life, that are not simply toys for fantasy for them. Fandom can be very valuable as a free space for fantasy -- but there's a reason we don't let the id out to play in the streets with children, and that's because, unrestrained, it can hurt people. Sometimes our pleasure does hurt other people. Sometimes that hurt is our responsibility, and sometimes it's not -- I really do not have a blanket statement of permission or refusal here, I do not think that repression of the fantasy is value-neutral or unproblematic, either; the repression of fantasy is one of the world's most basic means of social control.
I told you I was having trouble articulating these connections.
I guess if I had to boil it down into a few sentences, I would say that fantasy is inevitable and it can be reactionary or it can be revolutionary and it can be other things entirely; that sometimes fantasy is entirely divorced from the real world, but sometimes it is not; and that, as responsible adults who seek to behave rightly by other people, when we publish our fantasies, our thoughts, our opinions, it behooves us to consider their impact on other people, even if we decide that the positive impact of expression for us outweighs the negative impact of the expression on other people. What I feel like I'm seeing, a lot of the time, is an automatic defensiveness and fear at being asked to consider how we or what we've said appears to other people, a defensiveness that comes out of the fear that we're wrong, or the inherited shame and discomfort we feel about our positions of relative privilege or fantasies we ourselves may find problematic, or out of the startlement at being called on a sense of entitlement we didn't know we had and may not be ready to confront.