ZOMG BREAKING GAY NEWS!!11!!1!

[dragonlady7]

(in re: Martha Wells discussing characters' sexuality and quoting Neil Gaiman discussing J.K. Rowling's revelation. Also, the lolcat.)

I just meta'd my meta. Also my lolcatter is broke.


They're both absolutely right, of course, and it shouldn't matter.
I feel like a complete idiot, however, because just last week I posted to one of Martha Wells's "ask me questions about writing" posts, and asked about homosexuality in the Syrnai, and her answer was, in short, Of course it's complicated, and It doesn't matter, and I completely see her point and also feel like a bit of an idiot for asking, but I really was curious how homosexuality would work in a culture where men cannot own property.


And so I am forced to disagree with myself. Yes, as a human, it doesn't matter if one is gay or not-- to be probably unwelcomely honest, it's something I've never quite decided about myself (I am in a happy relationship with a man, but have never entirely come to believe that said happiness is indeed caused by his secondary sex characteristics, which are of course spectacular [I believe I'm legally required to insist on saying that] but not entirely the focal point of our relationship-- since I was 18 I've insisted that genitalia really shouldn't be one's primary selecting factor in life partners, and before that I truly honestly didn't care about genitals one way or the other).
And as a writer, a character's gayness-or-not is usually something that reveals itself in its own particular way, much as their left-handedness or blond-or-not-ness or whatever, and is usually far from the most significant thing about them.

But as a fan?
For some reason, it is important. I'm sorry to have to say that.
I'm not at all disagreeing with the authors who say it isn't. It shouldn't be, to them. But it is to fans. Just as a character's left-handedness is (as a southpaw, I tend to take that sort of thing to heart), or non-blondness (that was a major decision for me, to stop writing blond heroines just because I myself was blond, and marked my transition from adolescent writing-for-me-ness), or any of it. Everything about a character is important. Especially if a reader identifies with that character. Any character who has so seized the imagination, any world that has so drawn one in-- everything about it is important, and that is why we slaver over details and spend hours, weeks justifying A/Us and our Ship Of Choice.
It's important.


And I'm not just saying that because last week I was pondering Niles and Giaren and wondering if there was something there or I was just reading too much into it. (Did I blog that? Fie, I think I did not, and now I have no proof that I'm not just saying that now.)
The one I wonder about is Gerard. Not whether he was gay, but what the hell anyone sleeping with him would even be like.

Comments

[heebiejeebie.livejournal.com]

oh baby I <3 your secondary sex characteristics!

[tehta.livejournal.com]

Hi. Just wanted to say that I reread Cool Waters last night, and really liked it.

Also, of course I agree that gayness/hetness is rarely important to a story in which it's not a plot point. Unless it's one of those stories where the characters have lengthy internal monologues about everything including the colour of their favourite socks and how they feel about lint. Then leaving out their "thoughts on yaoi" seems odd.

Also with you on the genitals thing, although I understand that this is a rather rare attitude. (Even people who like both options sometimes go on about how they fulfill different parts of them or something.)

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

I'm glad there's enduring appeal. I still don't know where that story came from. Except maybe that I knew you wouldn't have written it. But it was totally your characters.
> not a plot point
Yeah. I write so damn much erotica that it's hard for it not to be a plot point, when it comes down to it, but I know what you mean.

I have been considering it more and thinking that well, gender is important, but I still don't know how much. I have weird relationships to gender simply because I was raised almost exclusively among females so I'm still not good at understanding Otherness in that way-- so I often process these things without having thought them through entirely.
I know things matter to other people that don't to me, and things matter to me that don't to other people.
But I think people make too much of Sexual Orientation as if it were an innate physical thing that was actually to do with genitals. I don't think it is. I know fine well there are things that are very different about having a sexual relationship with a man and with a woman, but the main and primary thing is not the penis or vagina, and I am a bit grossed out by the people who claim it is. There are more differences between a man and a woman than what's in their pants. Being with a man is very nice because one does not have to worry about homophobes being offended etc. But being with a man sucks because everyone assumes I am going to marry him and breed with him, and i also have to be careful about societal disapproval because I am not married to him so it's not even that it's all that easy. Being with a woman is nice because women pay attention to things men don't [and also women don't accidentally impregnate you]. Being with a woman sucks because women pay attention to things men don't.
Etc.

I am going on and on and not making a point, but I think the point I wanted to get to is that even when it matters who you're sleeping with, I don't think there's enough acknowledgement that it really isn't actually about the genitals. I mean, from what I know of other people's relationships, it really, truly isn't about the genitals, though I know in many cases I may not have all the information. And relatedly, there are many women who are more like men than some men, and men who are more like women than other women, and I may have the parts of me that like being with a man more satisfied by a particular woman than by a man, etc. And it's not about the genitals.
But I don't know where I'm going with all that, except that gender is less about genitalia than everyone makes it out to be.

Eck, I'm going on too long because the server here is down and I can't actually get into any of my work-- just intermittent Internet. Do forgive the rambling.