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alixtiiMother [about some random person who has come out as gay]: "But he was married, so that means he was really bi, right?"
Me: "Not necessarily."
Mother: "I don't get that."
Me: "I've noticed."
In her world, men who have sex with men and enjoy it are gay; men who have sex with women and enjoy it are straight; men who do both are bisexual. And try as I might, I can't break her of the conviction that every person has a ready-made sexual orientation label which is readily accessible to be applied to them by middle-class middle-aged heterosexual white women. (I'm being harsher than is really deserved, especially since my real frustration isn't directed at my mother at all, but bear with me.)
It really comes down to the fact that people do not get to define other people's experiences. Despite all the feminist theory she has taught me over the years, she still struggles with this. (My mother is so the archetypal "middle-class white 1970's feminist" who Third Wavers love to attack--or rather, that is the culture she grew up in and has internalized.) As do we all, of course, but it is easier to see the mote in someone else's eye.
...
Yes, this example is illustrative, and yes, I've been gnashing my teeth at some particularly frustrating sexual orientation essentialism, this is idea that truly authentic sexuality isn't "just" performative, and no, it wasn't the "Willow is bi!" people this time, and yes, it probably is where you are thinking. But people say things like "People don't just turn gay overnight" and I just shudder at the hegemonic defining of experience.
ETA: Also, and relatedly, the Kinsey scale? Is a wonderful improvation over the gay/straight binary, or even the gay/bisexual/straight trinary. But the Kinsey numbers are not scientific facts, human sexually does not exist along a one-dimensional spectrum, and I am rather disturbed at how often I hear the Kinsey scale mentioned in fandom as if it were some objective measure of some empirically measurable characteristic. (Yes, I realize most of the time it's just a convenient shorthand and use of it should not be taken to endorse the system itself.)
Me: "Not necessarily."
Mother: "I don't get that."
Me: "I've noticed."
In her world, men who have sex with men and enjoy it are gay; men who have sex with women and enjoy it are straight; men who do both are bisexual. And try as I might, I can't break her of the conviction that every person has a ready-made sexual orientation label which is readily accessible to be applied to them by middle-class middle-aged heterosexual white women. (I'm being harsher than is really deserved, especially since my real frustration isn't directed at my mother at all, but bear with me.)
It really comes down to the fact that people do not get to define other people's experiences. Despite all the feminist theory she has taught me over the years, she still struggles with this. (My mother is so the archetypal "middle-class white 1970's feminist" who Third Wavers love to attack--or rather, that is the culture she grew up in and has internalized.) As do we all, of course, but it is easier to see the mote in someone else's eye.
...
Yes, this example is illustrative, and yes, I've been gnashing my teeth at some particularly frustrating sexual orientation essentialism, this is idea that truly authentic sexuality isn't "just" performative, and no, it wasn't the "Willow is bi!" people this time, and yes, it probably is where you are thinking. But people say things like "People don't just turn gay overnight" and I just shudder at the hegemonic defining of experience.
ETA: Also, and relatedly, the Kinsey scale? Is a wonderful improvation over the gay/straight binary, or even the gay/bisexual/straight trinary. But the Kinsey numbers are not scientific facts, human sexually does not exist along a one-dimensional spectrum, and I am rather disturbed at how often I hear the Kinsey scale mentioned in fandom as if it were some objective measure of some empirically measurable characteristic. (Yes, I realize most of the time it's just a convenient shorthand and use of it should not be taken to endorse the system itself.)
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-07 12:19 am (UTC)As someone who constantly fends off heteronormative expectations, oh, so much WORD, I cannot even. Oh, yes.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-07 01:31 am (UTC)I always assumed that she loved Tara and Oz on equal sexual and emotional terms. She doesn't nessisarily have to be bi, but I don't like the people who write off her feelings for Oz as nothing just because she started dating a woman later in life.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-07 02:05 am (UTC)Willow clearly doesn't identify as bisexual in canon (meaning at the end of Season 7), evidenced both by her famous "Gay now!" line and the fact that when in "Him" she is magically compelled to be in love with the guest star she plans to turn him into a woman. The way she constructs the discourse of her homosexuality in canon is one in which heterosexuality is explicitly excluded.
I don't know, nor could I or anyone else know, how Willow felt about Oz sexually, but it seems clear that she at least at the time thought she was sexually attracted to him (or at least behaved like she thought she did), that she loved (and loves) him very much, and that her feelings for him most definitely were not nothing. But adolescence is a screwed up time, so I don't think her behavior that time, especially when that behavior played out according to socially normative scripts, is necessarily indicative of anything significant about her overall sexual orientation.
Similarly, non-bisexual gay men who were married in many cases have no doubt loved their wives (not to mention children) very much.
Now it's perfectly possible that as she continued her voyage of self-discovery, Willow might decide she was bisexual rather than exclusively lesbian. After all, she seems to have originally thought she was straight (a reasonable assumption, under the heteronormative culture which rears us), then realized otherwise. So it's not that characters can't be mistaken about their own sexual orientations, it's that nobody except that character (and thus whoever's writing them) gets to decide they're mistaken, because to do so would be to define that character's experience for them.
In other words, I have no problem with a fanfic story in which Willow ends up bisexual. What I dislike with a passion is the meta claim that Willow as we knew her in canon has to be read as bisexual.
The claim that Willow must be bisexual because she has a certain sexual history (or that Andrew has to be non-straight because he has certain mannerisms, although on repeat watchings I do find more indicators of gayness than I caught as the series aired), and in contradiction of her own identification, rubs me the wrong way quite a bit. It's hegemonic and universalizing, and denies the possibility of a diversity of experience.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-07 05:52 am (UTC)But the big problem I have with the idea that Willow was 100% gay after she met Tara is that it negates what I think was one of the biggest choices she ever made. When she was falling in love with Tara, and Oz came back, she agonized over whether she wanted to be with Oz or Tara (or at least, it seemed to me that she agonized over it), and as we know, she ultimately chose Tara. That choice was a defining moment in her life, and not just because of the sexuality aspect, but because her life would very likely have gone down a completely different path had she chosen differently.
But if Willow is completely gay, then that choice really wasn't a choice at all. There would have been no difficulty, no agonizing. She would have chosen Tara because she simply didn't want to be with Oz anymore in any kind of sexual capacity. And that doesn't mesh with the way her choice was portrayed in canon, in my opinion.
Now, obviously, lots of people will say that Willow's difficulties were because she was still confused about her sexuality. And she almost certainly was, at that point. But I always saw her choice as being more heartfelt than that. It wasn't about resolving confusion, it was about who she loved and wanted to be with.
So it makes much more sense to me for her to be bi.
But then, what the hell do I know? I actually ship Willow/Xander, unlike 99.9% of the fandom.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-07 09:05 am (UTC)That doesn't follow for me. The implication that "completely gay" people don't have difficult, agonizing choices about who they love and who they want to be with . . . I'm not gay myself, so I don't have relevant experience, but it just doesn't sound right to me, although it's something a lot of people bring up when arguing for Willow's bisexuality, this notion (that I don't get) that Willow being exclusively gay somehow diminishes Willow/Oz or Willow/Xander. I mean, the entire trope of WNGWJLEO suggests otherwise.
And I'm not sure what you mean by "completely gay"; sexuality is fluid, so I don't believe it can be measured that precisely (if at all, really). We're talking about--not just an identity here, but a complicated discoursive mantle which is part identity and part behavior and part interpellation--and I believe it's important to have categories that are flexible enough to be able to make room for the diversity of experience.
While bisexual invisibility is a real problem, it's not one that is solved (or at least isn't one that <>should be solved) by appropriating the sexual identities of people who don't identify as bisexual, whether they're gay witches with previous heterosexual experience, or self-identified straight men who cruise for anonymous sex with other men, or whatever.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-07 04:28 pm (UTC)Oh, of course they do, just like everyone else. But if the choice is between a member of the same sex, who they're attracted to, and a member of the opposite sex, whom they have no attraction whatsoever towards - well, is that really a choice? I don't see it. Not that romantic relationships are all about sex, of course, but it is a big component that (usually) can't be ignored.
and I believe it's important to have categories that are flexible enough to be able to make room for the diversity of experience.
I absolutely agree. And I do think it's possible for people to have exceptions in their sexuality, based on feelings, for certain people who belong to the sex that they wouldn't otherwise be attracted to. But some people who talk about Willow as completely gay reject that possibility for her as well (as is their right, of course).
I don't know. Willow's a fictional character, so she's probably not the best example to use when talking about real people's sexuality anyway.
uClznsaGZtFzt
Date: 2012-10-04 09:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-07 04:58 am (UTC)Personally, I like Willow/Giles as a post-series pairing, on the grounds that while they aren't the only two intelligent people in their world, they're the most self-consciously intellectual, and neither of them is in any position to harass the other for being bisexual.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-07 09:18 am (UTC)And some people accept that Willow identifies as completely gay but insist that she is wrong about her sexuality. As I say above to
Post-series Willow het pairings are perfectly possible, of course (which makes sense, if post-series Buffy femslash pairings are possible, and they are).
CCYNqQRNzpPltGO
Date: 2012-10-06 05:30 am (UTC)Willow Rosenberg, c'est moi
Date: 2007-09-07 04:30 pm (UTC)Personally, I love that Willow identifies as gay, for many of the same reasons that people think she 'must' be bi. She *was* in love with Oz -- that was real, but things changed; preferring women and identifying accordingly does not mean that all sexual attractions to and expressions with men in the past are retroactively placed in bad faith. And I don't see how her coming to identify as lesbian has any effect on the difficulty of choosing Tara over Oz; sexual identity is just not that simple, and in a situation like that the feeling of gender preference is just one factor of many.
For a long time I identified as bi because I didn't want to negate the genuine sexual love I had had for my male partners. But eventually it made more sense for me to define my sexuality according to what I want now, not what I wanted in the past. And I have to deal enough with my own doubts about authenticity without people telling me I'm 'not really' gay, or 'not queer enough,' god forbid. Which has happened; though thankfully not for a while.
I still prefer queer or dyke, because they foreground the political aspect of sexual identity; I use 'lesbian' mostly for strategic comings out or when those terms might be perceived as offensive. Which is probably less Willowesque...
Re: Willow Rosenberg, c'est moi
Date: 2007-09-08 03:28 am (UTC)And yet, so many people seem to feel that that it does! Although I don't claim to understand the logic, it certainly does seem to be pervasive.
Re: Willow Rosenberg, c'est moi
Date: 2007-09-08 05:34 am (UTC)Just in case you were referring to my comment here, I should note that I don't think Willow falling in love with Tara (or any woman, for that matter) cheapens her past relationships with and feelings for men in any way. I'm sure they were every bit as real to her as her relationships with and feelings for women.
Anyway, I certainly didn't intend to offend anyone with my comment, and if I did, I apologize.
Re: Willow Rosenberg, c'est moi
Date: 2007-09-08 05:40 am (UTC)Re: Willow Rosenberg, c'est moi
Date: 2007-09-08 07:28 am (UTC)Anyway, thanks for replying. And I'd say that your experience is definitely relevant to the subject.
htGFMjKYbEmZiTxLS
Date: 2012-10-04 08:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-07 04:40 pm (UTC)<Fictional people.......stage personae........real people>
Which is somewhat of a false continuum, because all identities are constructed to some extent, but I think that too easily reducing it to that that doesn't allow for important distinctions between the way Willow Rosenberg is constructed and the way I'm constructed.
1. On the subject of Willow. First, I'm glad that you've clarified your position on Willow het in fic (or that I have seen a clarification, whatever), because it means I don't have to make several points I'd otherwise make, etc). That said, I still think that giving Willow (or, since she is fictional, her authors) absolute authority over declaring her sexual identity limits several possible kinds of discussion. I admit, saying in serious meta "Willow must be bi; there is no other viable interpretation" is not good meta, but I don't think it's poor meta because it claims an identity for Willow she wouldn't claim for herself.
Because Willow is ficational, and because she's fictional there are all sorts of doylist conversations to be had about her sexuality. Like, "Why there was no way there could be a Willow/m relationship in S7 because Joss had just taken (probably much-needed) flack from the lesbian community for 'Seeing Red,' and it is very important for doylist reasons that there exists a lesbian character like Willow on network TV, and in that sense part of her arc is not about Willow but about her glbt-identified fans" and "why are bisexuals invisible on tv?" and "why maybe it might've been better from a bi visibility point of view if Willow had identified as bisexual at some point" and "How do you think Willow thought about her crushes on Xander and Giles and her relationship with Oz during S5 and 6 and 7?"
And it is also possible for fictional characters to be in denial, or lying about all sorts of aspects of their identity. I don't think that's the only possible reading of Willow's arc, but that doesn't exclude the possiblity that of other characters it might be possible to say, "He's gay, but deeply closeted, even to himself," as there are other textual clues other than a character's explicit statements about hir sexuality.
It's also important, I think, not to discount the queer appropriation of nonqueer texts. I am very heavily invested in reading the literature of romantic friendship as "lesbian" though I know it's an anachronistic identification, and while in varying levels of discourse I'm more careful about labeling, on the basic squee level I go, "Emily Dickinson WAS SO GAY FOR HER COUSIN." (Which she was.) And the flipside of your "you can't define other people's experiences for them" is "you can't define other people's experiences of reading text at a slant for them." Queer people do appropriate texts in all sorts of unconventional ways, and that kind of counterhegemonic reading is itself a political act.
Which is why bisexual people (and those of us sympathetic to their [in]visibility) choose to read Willow as bisexual in the canon, even when/if we acknowledge it's a deliberately slanted reading.
2. In truth, I have nothing to say about stage personae but just wanted to be aware that they lie somewhat between fictional people and nonfictional people and there are different issues involved.
& part 2
Date: 2007-09-07 04:41 pm (UTC)3. While I am all for people choosing their own identities, it's still entirely fair to tell someone, "That word you keep using. I do not think it means what you think it means." If a woman is married to another woman and has been for several years and calls herself straight, I think it's legitimate for people -- her friends, members of the lesbian community, her wife -- to question her about her incredibly ideosyncratic identification.
And if, despite frequent relationships with men and obvious desire for men, a woman continues to insist she's a lesbian and sabatoges her relationships with men because she knows they won't last, it's legitimate for her friends or her therapist or her male partners to say, "Hey. You seem to be self-destructing here. Maybe you should think about why you identify as a lesbian and how that's affecting your life."
Which is not to say there aren't also legitimate reasons for ideosyncratic identities (maybe my second woman is a 'political lesbian' and thinks women should choose to be lesbians for feminist reasons, and those reasons are more important to her than her individual romantic happiness. I don't know about the woman in my first example. I think she's cracked.), but people who adopt them might -- not unfairly -- be called upon to explain themselves.
I think this is where I reach my point 2, actually, because the more public a life is, the more widely constructed, the more important identity politics become. What if the woman in my first example is the President of the United States. What if she's publicly closeted about her relationship to her wife? That has an enormous impact on lesbian visibility, and I think there are definitely discussions that can and should be had about the obligation of public figures to be out. (Although there's a difference between "being closeted," which is lying or evading about one's self-identity, and "labeling ideosyncratically," in which case both the fact that Madame President is married to a woman and the fact that she identifies as straight are public knowledge. Which is still weird and makes one ask questions about why Mme President has distanced herself from the lesbian community to this degree and whether there's something hinky going on there, and I think there is.)
So while I acknowledge that it's not cool to invalidate people's experiences or self-identifications, that doesn't mean there aren't a whole host of questions that can and probably should be asked when those experiences and identifications are politically suspect in some way.
Re: & part 2
Date: 2007-09-08 03:26 am (UTC)Oh, absolutely--questions are wonderful things! Alongside problematizations and acknowledgment of idiosyncracy and even criticisms! To draw an analogy, I'm almost always perfectly willing to respond to, "You're a Christian who doesn't believe in a historical [whatever]. Isn't that unusual?" [Depends on who you hang out with] or "How does that work?" [Quite well, thank you.] They're responses that are radically qualitatively different from the gatekeeping which is explicit in "You're not a Christian," which is offensive.
A feminist lens can problematize anything, so I'm sure that we can find plenty of things open to criticism about the way I perform my heterosexuality or you perform your homosexuality. But that doesn't mean our sexualities are somehow inauthentic.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-08 03:17 am (UTC)Because Willow is ficational, and because she's fictional there are all sorts of doylist conversations to be had about her sexuality.
There are conversations to be had, yes, but I'm not sure how they are relevant when the question is Watsonian. The fact that there were sociohistorical reasons Joss had to make Kennedy female doesn't alter in any way the fact that she is, indeed, female. ("How do you think Willow thought about her crushes on Xander and Giles and her relationship with Oz during S5 and 6 and 7?" isn't a Doylist question, as the other examples you give are, but a Watsonian one.)
And it is also possible for fictional characters to be in denial, or lying about all sorts of aspects of their identity.
I agree with this, but I think we need to be careful about who gets to make this determination. Future!Willow does, as does Joss, as does any fanfic writer writing Willow (although of course her determination only applies to the Willow in the fanfic and not to canon!Willow).
My mind is swimming trying to respond to your "queer appropriation of nonqueer texts" point, so perhaps it is best if I wait until morning to try and articulate my thoughts. But it has something to do with how as liberals, we privilege the fiction of selfhood.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-08 04:17 am (UTC)("How do you think Willow thought about her crushes on Xander and Giles and her relationship with Oz during S5 and 6 and 7?" isn't a Doylist question, as the other examples you give are, but a Watsonian one.)
*facepalm*
sexuality alwasy must be a complicated interplay of identity, behavior, and interpellation. Of course, that's as true of you as it is of Willow--even though you've stopped identifying as sekritly bisexual, I haven't magically forgotten that the MMP existed (or that you've written m/m, for that matter--but then, so have I).
I think there are enough lesbians who exclusively write m/m for that to be a problematic indicator of anything other than preferences in ficwriting -- I think that fic can be an important part of someone's sexuality (because many people seem to testify to this), or a minor part, or no part at all. More questionable is the fact that I occasionally -- still -- list fictional male people I'd like to cuddle or kiss or sleep with.
Of course, the MMC is also a pretty good counter indicator (you don't want to know how I almost typo'd that) to Kinsey sixness -- like such a thing actually exists as more than an idea.
I have only Watsonian reasons (as far as I know) for identifying as lesbian rather than bisexual, and apparently I am surprised to discover that "lesbian" does not always necessarily equal "Kinsey 6." In fact I think that lesbian, being a word and not a number, has a much richer, thicker meaning than "Kinsey 6," but also than "bisexual" -- not that bisexual isn't a perfectly good word that lots of people claim, but I can understand why people who are bi-er than I might choose to identify (exclusively, or additionally) as lesbian. (I have a friend, who identifies as bi, who also tends to name any queer female of our acquaintance as "gay.") I can also understand why people in long term relationships with persons of a particular gender identify as monosexual, and less readily why they identify as bisexual (this is in fact a source of continual confusion for me; I have a friend -- female -- who was married to a man, got divorced, came out as bi, and then married another man.)
Hm. I think that important relationships that are contrary to one's primary identity are confusing -- to oneself, to one's intimates, and obviously to curious bystanders. Because sexuality and desire are very complex and often confusing, it's hard to make sense of Willow/Oz, or me/MMC, or you and your mother's acquaintance/his ex-wife.
There was a bit in my userinfo at one point not too distantly that said, "I identify as a lesbian because my strongest attachments are and always have been to girls and women," which is true; it's also all most people need to know about my sexuality -- I have had crushes on girls in the past, am currently dating one, and will most probably continue to be romantically involved with female people for the rest of my life. People who know me better know more of my history, and I think know *me* better as a result; then our uses of "lesbian" when applied to me are a closer approximation of equal.
& part 2
Date: 2007-09-08 04:18 am (UTC)(There are contexts in which my visibility as a lesbian is very important to me. I recall with fondness that my freshman year of college, I refused to squee over male pretty of a fannish variety with two of my friends, feeling very much that if I did, I'd be lying about my sexuality; three years later we were all fannish and all identified as queer, and of course one of the other girls was Gvambat. And I feel completely unabashed about squeeing over pretty of any gender with them, and on LiveJournal, because I also frequently mention my girlfriend and lesbian identity.)
(When I first came out, a lesbian friend of mine -- who was older and more experienced -- thought that I had the feeling that coming out was an obligation, something I owed to the queer community. Which is apparently entirely true. And relates more to Willow's Doylist reasons for being a lesbian than the Watsonian ones, which I suspect in some part at least are, "Okay, Xander, stop hitting on me.")
I agree with this, but I think we need to be careful about who gets to make this determination. Future!Willow does, as does Joss, as does any fanfic writer writing Willow (although of course her determination only applies to the Willow in the fanfic and not to canon!Willow).
I think as applies to Willow, I would have to agree (I do think that Willow is pretty seriously ignoring some past and current emotions, completely aside from the word(s) with which she chooses to name herself, but I acknowledge that other interpretations are possible.
I'm having trouble since I'm mostly thinking of a construct I will call "My Willow" after the meme that occasionally reasserts itself; My Willow is halfway between canon and fanfic. Others' Willows exist who are canon-compliant -- including Willows who are bi and Willows who are not -- but My Willow is bisexual in desire and ambiguous in identification, and she's the Willow who's stuck in my head after two years of only occasionally watching the show, and the Willow I draw on when I write fanfic.
Anyhow. As does not regard Willow, I will make a lengthy digression about a character from a series you've never read. Because Ducky McCrae is gay, and deeply in denial about it, and gay, and the text supports this, and also, he's gay. No, this is not the only valid reading of the text, and no, I've no idea if Ann M. Martin and her ghosts meant that as the preferred reading, but Ducky's gayness is something I believe in as an important reading of the text unrelated to My Ducky or to any potential fanfic or to any future books (I am living in my dreamworld now, where Ann is planning a whole series of sequels and possibly crossovers with her new series. And canon gay. And Joss will cowrite. And it will be set in outerspace!) -- I can understand why one would be very hesitant to analyze characters -- and moreso nonfictional characters -- who do not analyze themselves, but I think overzealous avoidance of the intentional fallacy makes it possible to ignore potential unreliability of narrators.
Odds on I split the comment AGAIN.
BixFnHHtOT
Date: 2012-10-04 03:57 pm (UTC)[tw: rape]
Date: 2012-10-04 05:14 pm (UTC)Don't do it! Willow only dated people who were shorter than her, and see how well that worked out for her.
Actually, Kennedy was her shortest personfriend, and that seemed to be going okay at the end of the series. I retract my earlier advice. It's okay to date someone who's shorter than you.
. she also told me that before she was with me that shes had so many gfs and had sex with them and she doesnt care !!!
Think of Buffy! Angel had not only had many girlfriends in the past, he was also a serial killer who'd raped and murdered many girls, and Buffy didn't care. And see how well that worked out for her.
why doesnt she make me smile or get butterflies????
She's a zombie.
nlvgHgUrmqFEkzNGWb
Date: 2012-10-06 05:49 am (UTC)