Meta on "Why I Love the Het"
Sep. 15th, 2005 08:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nell65The lj world is overflowing with 'why I like m/m slash' or 'why women like m/m slash' essays (and the odd, 'why I don't like m/m slash' essay in answer), but het fanciers, like myself, haven't had to produce much meta about why they like what they do.
Some of this is the straightforward result of the dominant heterosexual culture in which we all live, that is, you don't have to explain why you like what the majority of people around you and the culture at large assume you like, because, duh, of course you like that, doesn’t everyone? This is also at least part of the reason for all the "why I/women like m/m slash" essays and questions out there - it isn't the standard assumption that women like to read and write m/m romance or porn and so it does seem to beg explanation and exploration, even and perhaps especially by those who are drawn to it and find that they need to understand for themselves why they are swimming against the tide, as it were.
The thing about the lj fanfic world however, and especially the meta fanfic conversations (which I totally enjoy and follow almost more avidly than all but my primary fandom these days), is that it is dominated by the m/m shipping conversations, so much so that the het fanciers are starting to feel a little tossed about as the tide pulls in the other direction.
Which you know, is good for us. A little self-exploration of why you like what you like, and why certain things ping for you, never hurt anyone and probably helps many.
Now - I freely admit I am not a 'standard' het-shipper (assuming such a creature actually exists, as with the m/m fans, everyone has their own take on why they like what they like), and I may even be pretty much an outlier in the sense that I am pretty self-conscious about the particular sets of issues that fascinate me and hold me steady and fixated on the het as a writer and a reader. But I thought if I tossed this out, it might start at least, all the 'yes, but....' conversations that are so interesting. To me. *g*
That being said, some of the things that hold me to het, (and to a smaller degree the f/f) are pretty standard among het-fanciers at large, at least if I've been reading my meta+comments correctly. I love women, all shapes and stripes and sizes, and I want stories that feature women front and center. All of the fandoms that interest me most these days (with a few exceptions I could talk about later) have in canon a variety of strong and interesting women. I want them in my fic, just as I adore them in the canon source. Het and f/f and the rarer still gen (by which I mean stories without a central romance plot, rather than simply stories without sex) are therefore my stories of choice.
Second, when it comes to porn, I may be sufficiently unimaginative (though I don't really believe this, I just think it's the way I'm wired), but - in general - if there are not girl parts getting all wet and sticky *in the fic* generally mine don't either, metaphorically speaking, of course. ;-) There are certainly some exceptions, but as a general thing, this holds up over and over again. The identical, average, vaguely OOC BDSM situation, for example, leaves me unmoved when it features m/m, but when it's f/f has me squirming in my chair. That just is - it's not a defense or a rationale, just an observation about my preferences.
So - there are two incredibly basic reasons for my het-centric reading and writing tastes. Nothing terribly remarkable or unpredictable about them. Or particularly meta-ish!
If that's *all* it was, I probably wouldn't be writing this, of course. My love for the het is also political and intellectual and even at some level philosophical (in the metaphysics of the human condition sort of way).
I'm a feminist. And overwhelmingly heterosexual in orientation and life experience. I suspect had the 'right woman' ever come along, things might be different - but she didn't and the right boys did, and so here I am. A married, duel-career + family het woman. Which means that I'm riveted to the intellectual and political challenge of how, given all our cultural baggage, bulging with centuries worth of expectations for how 'men' and 'women' are supposed to behave, men and women actually create and maintain meaningful and mutually satisfying relationships, now or in any time.
Het-fic strokes this jones of mine in every story, from the awesomely good to the horrifyingly bad - at their core - *all* het stories struggle with this problem. And so, in my own home fandom - La Femme Nikita the Series, which is overwhelmingly het in orientation for a whole bunch of reasons I'd be happy to discuss later if anyone is curious, I have read completely or in part almost every story ever written and archived. Which means I've read a ton of het fic, ranging from the awesome to the really sappy and silly, through the horrifyingly awful, to the absolutely enraging. And I keep reading it - because in every one of those stories, the issues that fascinate me are raised - from how a man and a woman, given all their confusing and conflicting needs and desires and expectations, manage to get it on at all (lust of course usually gets things going - and I love reading stories where the female character gets to acknowledge and revel in her lust for a truly hot guy), to how they sustain the relationship beyond lust - in particular how does the woman cope with the ripe-tide of expectations that her first function is to put the relationship above all else vs. her own need to maintain herself and her own identity, separate from the 'we' of the relationship.
Now, I freely acknowledge that in far too many het-focused stories this conflict between self and couple has been reduced to series of clichés that are alarmingly rigid and often do damage to stories that began on an interesting premise. We have willful misunderstandings, interior monologues about what will be/was lost when commitments are made, whiny stupid refusals to accede to reasonable requests, and agonizing over stepping over the line to make a life choice that signals that one party has capitulated to the other's self-needs. Often with result that one of them, usually the woman, has to be rescued from some really silly, self-inflicted scenario by the dashing, manly hero. In far too much of the forgettable fic, this is all resolved through mind-blowing sex and a return to frighteningly conventional notions of m/f couple hood that seem to come right out of a promise-keeper's handbook to happy marriages. So, the conclusion is often irritating - but what keeps me reading is the ways that the authors, overwhelmingly women, raise the issues in the first place.
What does the female want, in this story? What does the male want? Why? How do they go about trying to get it? How do cultural expectations help or hinder them? How do they manage to communicate to their lover what their needs and desires are, if they've even managed to figure them out? What if all their needs and desires simply can't be met? What if they have fundamental differences in the way they see their world or want it to be shaped? How do gender expectations play into it? How don't they? If you love him/her, is it okay to do something that otherwise you wouldn't? Is it imperative that you do so? If you make a commitment - to, say conventional marriage - does that mean you have accept the traditional patterns, or can you continue to buck them and make your own way?
In my fandom, for example, Nikita wants to not be an uber-secret undercover agent more than almost anything else. Never gonna happen, she is a slave, in very literal ways, held by her spymasters until she dies. So - given that she can't have that and her lover, Michael, can't really give it to her, no matter how much he would like to, what, if anything, can they settle on instead? Can he give her the next thing she wants? The freedom, in Section, to operate independently of the rules that bind them with regard to whose lives they save and whose lives they don't? Sometimes. When it suits his needs. Or at least doesn't interfere with them. Can she accept this partial freedom of action? Will she? Will she challenge him about it? As she grows in professional knowledge and competence, will she challenge him less out of understanding? Or more, out of confidence in her own judgment? How will each of them use gender expectations to get what they want? From outsiders or from each other? By acceding to them or defying them? Seeing how each new story featuring them tackles this problem has kept me in this fandom for nine years - since 1997. (Counting *that* out on my fingers was a little scary!) ((Madeline/Operations stories also deal with this, and I read them too!))
I read and write het-fic for the exploration of the conflict between self and couple, between mine and ours, me and we, between a woman and a man.
I'm enough of a post-modernist, intellectually, to read all this conflict, all human relationships, as essentially about power - who has it, under what circumstances, and how do they use it? Wisely, carefully, carelessly, to heal, to harm, to bully, to build? Add to that gender-based confusion and conflict, and I love it all.
Even formulaic Harlequin lines acknowledge these sites of m/f conflict, on their way to a resolution. Het-centric fanfic does it using characters and situations that are almost always more interesting than anything hack romance authors have to offer - which is why I read here, and not in the grocery store - though as I grow more self-conscious about my own reading issues, I actually pick these up with more curiosity than ever - though I can't bring myself to pay for one when I can get the equivalent for free, online!
I understand, from the meta, that what draws many readers/writers to the m/m is the tantalizing possibility of avoiding all the things I just talked about - for me, the love of the het is the inverse. I embrace all this, and I want to read and write about it.
Some of this is the straightforward result of the dominant heterosexual culture in which we all live, that is, you don't have to explain why you like what the majority of people around you and the culture at large assume you like, because, duh, of course you like that, doesn’t everyone? This is also at least part of the reason for all the "why I/women like m/m slash" essays and questions out there - it isn't the standard assumption that women like to read and write m/m romance or porn and so it does seem to beg explanation and exploration, even and perhaps especially by those who are drawn to it and find that they need to understand for themselves why they are swimming against the tide, as it were.
The thing about the lj fanfic world however, and especially the meta fanfic conversations (which I totally enjoy and follow almost more avidly than all but my primary fandom these days), is that it is dominated by the m/m shipping conversations, so much so that the het fanciers are starting to feel a little tossed about as the tide pulls in the other direction.
Which you know, is good for us. A little self-exploration of why you like what you like, and why certain things ping for you, never hurt anyone and probably helps many.
Now - I freely admit I am not a 'standard' het-shipper (assuming such a creature actually exists, as with the m/m fans, everyone has their own take on why they like what they like), and I may even be pretty much an outlier in the sense that I am pretty self-conscious about the particular sets of issues that fascinate me and hold me steady and fixated on the het as a writer and a reader. But I thought if I tossed this out, it might start at least, all the 'yes, but....' conversations that are so interesting. To me. *g*
That being said, some of the things that hold me to het, (and to a smaller degree the f/f) are pretty standard among het-fanciers at large, at least if I've been reading my meta+comments correctly. I love women, all shapes and stripes and sizes, and I want stories that feature women front and center. All of the fandoms that interest me most these days (with a few exceptions I could talk about later) have in canon a variety of strong and interesting women. I want them in my fic, just as I adore them in the canon source. Het and f/f and the rarer still gen (by which I mean stories without a central romance plot, rather than simply stories without sex) are therefore my stories of choice.
Second, when it comes to porn, I may be sufficiently unimaginative (though I don't really believe this, I just think it's the way I'm wired), but - in general - if there are not girl parts getting all wet and sticky *in the fic* generally mine don't either, metaphorically speaking, of course. ;-) There are certainly some exceptions, but as a general thing, this holds up over and over again. The identical, average, vaguely OOC BDSM situation, for example, leaves me unmoved when it features m/m, but when it's f/f has me squirming in my chair. That just is - it's not a defense or a rationale, just an observation about my preferences.
So - there are two incredibly basic reasons for my het-centric reading and writing tastes. Nothing terribly remarkable or unpredictable about them. Or particularly meta-ish!
If that's *all* it was, I probably wouldn't be writing this, of course. My love for the het is also political and intellectual and even at some level philosophical (in the metaphysics of the human condition sort of way).
I'm a feminist. And overwhelmingly heterosexual in orientation and life experience. I suspect had the 'right woman' ever come along, things might be different - but she didn't and the right boys did, and so here I am. A married, duel-career + family het woman. Which means that I'm riveted to the intellectual and political challenge of how, given all our cultural baggage, bulging with centuries worth of expectations for how 'men' and 'women' are supposed to behave, men and women actually create and maintain meaningful and mutually satisfying relationships, now or in any time.
Het-fic strokes this jones of mine in every story, from the awesomely good to the horrifyingly bad - at their core - *all* het stories struggle with this problem. And so, in my own home fandom - La Femme Nikita the Series, which is overwhelmingly het in orientation for a whole bunch of reasons I'd be happy to discuss later if anyone is curious, I have read completely or in part almost every story ever written and archived. Which means I've read a ton of het fic, ranging from the awesome to the really sappy and silly, through the horrifyingly awful, to the absolutely enraging. And I keep reading it - because in every one of those stories, the issues that fascinate me are raised - from how a man and a woman, given all their confusing and conflicting needs and desires and expectations, manage to get it on at all (lust of course usually gets things going - and I love reading stories where the female character gets to acknowledge and revel in her lust for a truly hot guy), to how they sustain the relationship beyond lust - in particular how does the woman cope with the ripe-tide of expectations that her first function is to put the relationship above all else vs. her own need to maintain herself and her own identity, separate from the 'we' of the relationship.
Now, I freely acknowledge that in far too many het-focused stories this conflict between self and couple has been reduced to series of clichés that are alarmingly rigid and often do damage to stories that began on an interesting premise. We have willful misunderstandings, interior monologues about what will be/was lost when commitments are made, whiny stupid refusals to accede to reasonable requests, and agonizing over stepping over the line to make a life choice that signals that one party has capitulated to the other's self-needs. Often with result that one of them, usually the woman, has to be rescued from some really silly, self-inflicted scenario by the dashing, manly hero. In far too much of the forgettable fic, this is all resolved through mind-blowing sex and a return to frighteningly conventional notions of m/f couple hood that seem to come right out of a promise-keeper's handbook to happy marriages. So, the conclusion is often irritating - but what keeps me reading is the ways that the authors, overwhelmingly women, raise the issues in the first place.
What does the female want, in this story? What does the male want? Why? How do they go about trying to get it? How do cultural expectations help or hinder them? How do they manage to communicate to their lover what their needs and desires are, if they've even managed to figure them out? What if all their needs and desires simply can't be met? What if they have fundamental differences in the way they see their world or want it to be shaped? How do gender expectations play into it? How don't they? If you love him/her, is it okay to do something that otherwise you wouldn't? Is it imperative that you do so? If you make a commitment - to, say conventional marriage - does that mean you have accept the traditional patterns, or can you continue to buck them and make your own way?
In my fandom, for example, Nikita wants to not be an uber-secret undercover agent more than almost anything else. Never gonna happen, she is a slave, in very literal ways, held by her spymasters until she dies. So - given that she can't have that and her lover, Michael, can't really give it to her, no matter how much he would like to, what, if anything, can they settle on instead? Can he give her the next thing she wants? The freedom, in Section, to operate independently of the rules that bind them with regard to whose lives they save and whose lives they don't? Sometimes. When it suits his needs. Or at least doesn't interfere with them. Can she accept this partial freedom of action? Will she? Will she challenge him about it? As she grows in professional knowledge and competence, will she challenge him less out of understanding? Or more, out of confidence in her own judgment? How will each of them use gender expectations to get what they want? From outsiders or from each other? By acceding to them or defying them? Seeing how each new story featuring them tackles this problem has kept me in this fandom for nine years - since 1997. (Counting *that* out on my fingers was a little scary!) ((Madeline/Operations stories also deal with this, and I read them too!))
I read and write het-fic for the exploration of the conflict between self and couple, between mine and ours, me and we, between a woman and a man.
I'm enough of a post-modernist, intellectually, to read all this conflict, all human relationships, as essentially about power - who has it, under what circumstances, and how do they use it? Wisely, carefully, carelessly, to heal, to harm, to bully, to build? Add to that gender-based confusion and conflict, and I love it all.
Even formulaic Harlequin lines acknowledge these sites of m/f conflict, on their way to a resolution. Het-centric fanfic does it using characters and situations that are almost always more interesting than anything hack romance authors have to offer - which is why I read here, and not in the grocery store - though as I grow more self-conscious about my own reading issues, I actually pick these up with more curiosity than ever - though I can't bring myself to pay for one when I can get the equivalent for free, online!
I understand, from the meta, that what draws many readers/writers to the m/m is the tantalizing possibility of avoiding all the things I just talked about - for me, the love of the het is the inverse. I embrace all this, and I want to read and write about it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-09-16 09:13 am (UTC)I've not heard many people talk about this - I know it's not something *I'm* looking for in fic. Now I'm wondering if it may have something to do with my own utter disregard for what is termed 'masculine' or 'feminine' in society.
On a tangent, you really should watch Buffy. As a self-proclaimed 'feminist' show (altho, it's version of feminism
can be alternately heavy-handed/downright problematic/just badly written), it plays around with a lot of ideas on womanhood which you should find interesting. Plus, damn good show with loads of interesting female characters. *tempts*
Swatkat
no subject
Date: 2005-09-16 10:03 am (UTC)I live inside academia - we talk about the social construction of gender all the time, and I'm fascinated (if sometimes horrified) by how gender expectations are playing out in my own life, particularly with regards to my roles as wife and mother.
So, I see gendered behavior everywhere - which is fine with me because I'm fascinated by it.
I don't see gender as 'bad' either - not only is it inescapble, it is marvelous in its complexity and confusion and I can't imagine anything ickier than a world where everyone is the same, with regard to how they are expected to behave sexually or socially.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-16 11:32 am (UTC)I don't see gender as 'bad' either - not only is it inescapble, it is marvelous in its complexity and confusion
I don't see it as bad either - as you said, it's inescapable, and there are plenty of good things about it. *g*
I'm fascinated (if sometimes horrified) by how gender expectations are playing out in my own life
I got horrified by gender expectations, and how they affect me as an individual, at a very early age - I'm afraid I never quite recovered from it. *g* Lately, I *have* been taking interest in gender studies (because, after all, my identity as an individual is inescapably tied to my identity as a woman, and I need to know), but there's a lot more I need to read before I could even begin to speak on that topic. I'm not sure if it'll ever be as important to me as it is to you, though - I'm interested in Buffy, the individual: her gender is only a (very important) part of it.
Swatkat
no subject
Date: 2005-09-16 11:52 am (UTC)Well, there isn't much (any?) serious 'het-meta' (to turn an ugly phrase!) out there.
But I certainly have read many a pro-m/m manifesto that points to the freeing absence of gender expectations as part of the appeal of the m/m, that claim writing m/m as a feminist act of imaging a loving human relationships without the 'distortion' of 'power imbalences' of m/f relationships. Gender and it's affects, in other words, is central to many expressions of love for the m/m - but it is usually construed negatively, as in this presentation, as something to be escaped.
I don't want to escape it (because I don't think it is possible nor do I believe that men stop struggling to be "men" just because they are in the company of other men. Just the opposite tends to happen, in fact, in both my research and my life observations....). I want to explore it, and all the challenges it offers.
Which is part of what led me to write this, actually, gender theory is such a prominent sub-theme in the pro m/m musings that I wanted to write about how it is part of my love for the het, but not to escape but rather to wallow in. *g*
no subject
Date: 2005-09-16 04:50 pm (UTC)There is a lot of interesing Dan/Casey (Sportsnight) fic, for example, that wrestles with their profesional rivalries and jealousies and what kind of hurdles these put before them as they struggle (and sometimes fail) to build a statisfying romantic relationship. Or Aragorn/Boromir stories that acknowledge and include the tensions between them with regard to Aragorn's claim to rule the city that Boromir once expected to inherit. So, when I'm scanning rec pages for things to read, I do look for these pairings and read them with interest and enjoyment, especially the ones that explore the messy and unresolved parts of their relationships. I just don't read them for the 'hawt!' .... *g*
no subject
Date: 2005-09-16 10:06 am (UTC)But I do know I haven't rushed out to embrace it because I am a bit skeptical about just how much I'm going to enjoy a show that features teenagers, and is told from their POV, with all their teenage issues.....
no subject
Date: 2005-09-16 10:42 am (UTC)Oh, but the teenage/highschool issues are really tied up to more important issues, and the show is really all about Buffy's journey to womanhood and responsibility! And Buffy is just your type! And Willow! And the canon f/f! And an inexhaustible supply of pairings! Do I need to ask
Swatkat
no subject
Date: 2005-09-16 11:01 am (UTC)*flings up hands in surrender*
Date: 2005-09-16 11:20 am (UTC)I'll let you know what I think about it after I see it. Deal? *g*
N
no subject
Date: 2005-09-16 11:39 am (UTC)Of course, you must also remember that S1 isn't the strongest Buffy season (and there are only 12 eps in it), and that you need to watch S2 before you decide on whether you'll continue or not. *g*
Swatkat
no subject
Date: 2005-09-16 11:36 am (UTC)I heart Willow too, but eeeeee!Faith!
Swatkat
no subject
Date: 2005-09-16 05:14 pm (UTC)(Btw, I hate you for pimping all these fandoms! I don't have time for them! Arrrrgh!)
no subject
Date: 2005-09-16 08:07 pm (UTC)I'm surprised that you like her (YAY!). I thought you might be annoyed by a lot of things about her character.
Btw, I hate you for pimping all these fandoms! I don't have time for them! Arrrrgh!
What can I say? I'm just a caring-sharing person. *innocent smile*
Swatkat
no subject
Date: 2005-09-16 08:13 pm (UTC)This is even more surprising. But yes, I *know* Nell will like Buffy - she's got every issue you're interested in.
Swatkat
no subject
Date: 2005-09-16 09:25 pm (UTC)Faith doesn't annoy me, either, and she's messed up enough that I actually find her quite interesting.
But I'm sorry, I get a tremendous urge to smack Willow whenever I see her. I think it's her mannerisms and way of speaking.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-18 10:43 pm (UTC)Faith doesn't annoy me, either, and she's messed up enough that I actually find her quite interesting.
She's irresistible. Also, Buffy/Faith OTP!!!1!!
Swatkat
Here via metafandom
Date: 2005-11-04 10:34 pm (UTC)That's how I felt about the show, too. Until I watched it. It is about teenagers, but intelligent teenagers, and not at all silly. Actually, it's about human beings, who just happen to be teenagers. I loved the show, and cried so many times over it, and I'm in my 50s.
Re: Here via metafandom
Date: 2005-11-05 10:54 am (UTC)