Roads to Safe Places

30.

Westerfield, Scott: Cutters
I still enjoy reading about Shay, still don't enjoy the artworks unoriginality.

29.

Westerfield, Scott: Uglies: Shay's Story.
The story presented in this book is fine and interseting, and most of the problems I have with this novel are down to the art work.
I don't have very high expectations of the vast majority of people regarding female characters, even less so for the ones creating graphic novels (Why? Escher Girls). This book is in keeping with that. There aren't a lot of changes from "ugly" characters to surgically prettified characters, and while this is in keeping with the concept of "ugliness" introduced in that world, but I would have expected more diverse characters, and, since we're at it, truly ugly people. It can't be that difficult to draw ugly people, most artists seem to manage drawing ugly men just fine.

28.

Summers, A.K.: Pregnant Butch
Interesting read dealing with some of the thoughts that I have about pregnancy. I'm not presenting butch a lot, but that does not mean that I am dying to be lumped in with the pink soft femmy world that is expecting these days.

27.

Westerfield, Scott: Specials.
I would have really liked a happy ending for Tally and Shay, sad that that was not to be.

26.

Stoker, Bram: Dracula
A band of believable, different and likeable characters interacting in believable ways, using communication and Science(TM), Supernatural Powers as well as Cutting Edge Technology(TM) to achieve their aims in defeating a very complex, intelligent and interesting Big Bad. This is the grandfather of all vampire stories and I thought I would hate it. Then I read it for a Gothic Novel course at uni and fell in love. Not only with Action!Willhelmina or her host of weeping men, but also with the complexity and transgressiveness of Dracula.

25.

Westerfield, Scott: Pretties

24.

Westerfield, Scott: Uglies.

23.

Fforde, Jasper: The Eyre Affair.
Jane Eyre is one of my favourite classics, Wales is my favourite country, Fantasy is my favourite genre, it is a miracle to me that it took me so long to discover this book.
Humorous Fantasy is difficult because its often trying too hard and not particularly funny or crude, this one isn't, the main character is a very believable and female, there is a love plot, but its a mild one, it's got a world in which everybody is as invested in literature as people are in things like sports and movies today, and it reads like paradise (I don't think there's many places on our earth today in which you can strike up conversations with Inn receptionists about which of Chaucer's works they liked best).

22.

Fermer, David: The Pit.

21.

Swindells, Robert: Abomination.
I read this book because I'm on the lookout for a book to read with my students and this seemed like a good choice. It has very good characters, an interesting story, though the ending left me a bit frustrated. It is very realistic and you cannot expect non-adult characters to make adult choices, but it still left me wanting things to be different for them.

The fight between good and evil as told from the refreshing POV of two angsty built white dudes in their twenties. So. Um. Who is this show for?

It's as though they marinated an eighties cop show in current slash fandom for a while and this is what came up. There are these two angsty brothers in their tweens who fight demons, and angst about the (dead) women in their lives, go to hell, and angst, and get tortured, and angst, and torture others, and angst, and kill boatloads of innocent people, and angst. Later on, they acquire an angelic side-kick, and the show seems to be fully aware of the slash potential, at least I find it hard to explain away the way scenes between these three are filmed otherwise.

Much like in most corners of manslash fandom, there just are no female main characters in the show, and if there are women, they are used as bait, as window dressing, as a cause, as a reward, and usually to scream because they can scream at a higher pitch. Every female character is a "bitch" or a "whore", and they all come between the brothers and therefore ultimately need to be destroyed. But they are demons, so that is fine.

The series seems to be aware of the fact that it has a fandom, but also seems to think that they're a bunch of overexcited morons. So... is this aimed at self-loathing or ~self-ironic~ white female slash fandom or really misogynistic white gay men (and neither seems unlikely, given that the series seems to imply that one of the male leads is bisexual)?

Internet, please explain. 

A lot, especially when it comes to her singing and the choirs she can sing in. Her ensemble performed "Lux Aurumque" at their last concert, which is beautiful piece by the conducter and composer Eric Whitacre (here's also a TTBB only version of this here commissioned by the Gay Men's Chorus of LA). 

Whitacre is not only noteworthy because of his beautiful music, but also because of his virtual choir- this is them with Lux Aurumque:



I love the VirtualChoir project, you can join here.

I can't seem to get the hang of keeping track of these challenges. Since my last entry was once again in May I can't remember what I read this year, especially the ones that I borrowed from the school library, but these are the ones that I could either remember or could piece together from my Amazon account. HTML

I left out re-reads if I read them more than once this year and some books by Terry Pratchett, and as always everything I read for school. 

( 25-52 )

Since I'm house sitting, I have the fortune to peruse my brother's steam library, and this game was among them. There will be spoilers in this post, so if you don't want to read about the ending, please don't read this.

To sum up- the gameplay is repetetive and annoying, and the story - all you need to know about the priorities of this game with regards to story and fully fleshed, three-dimensional characters can be gauged pretty much by looking at our heroes: 



I mean, seriously. ( Read more... )

You've all probably heard it already but I'm still slightly gobsmacked at the amount of sense written by this BioWare person (much better write-up over at ontd_p here and sf_d here).

What happened is this: they put out a game in which the fe/male main character can be romantically approached by both male and female NPCs. And everybody sees what's wrong there, clearly not enough content for exclusively straight males! But FEAR NOT, STRAIGHT MALE FANS!

One straight dude takes it upon himself to let BioWare know that they've neglected their main demographic, straight males (emphasis mine):


I'm not surprised, but what did floor me was the reaction of the company. Rather than say things on the lines of "but it's cheaper that way" or "focus on the F/F romance, it's hot", Daivd Gaider talks sense about privilege (with costliness thrown in, though, sadly):


Not that this makes me more likely to buy the game which still sounds pretty failtastic for various reasons, but this is nice.

Lots of sensible things about LGBTQ representation are being said over at sparkindarkness' journal on how problematic subtextual and Word of Gay type of "representation" in canon are.


There are also smart things in the comments on how problematic platonic and asexual relationships are being made if every platonic on-screen relationship is automatically seen as sexual by kazaera  here.

People.

I know that you're all super busy with all your lesson plans and stuff, and I know that most of you sit through their didactics seminars pretty much on autopilot, but I'd like to point out something.

"The boys should focus on Romeo and the girls on Juliet, because all girls can identify with lusting after the forbidden guy."

Think about this for more than five seconds and you'll see that this is a dumb task with a dumber explanation for its existence. It's factually wrong. This is not PC-ness gone wild, this is a factual error that you're making. I think we all agree about the fact that you shouldn't teach kids wrong things. So get a clue, teacher. Especially given the fact that you feel comfortable saying this to me shows such incredible levels of idiocy I don't even know where to start.

I know that you'll say that you can't pay attention to these things all of the time, because the vast majority of people are straight and ID as either of the two, but seriously, do you also not pay attention to misspelt words if students only get one letter wrong because the vast majority of letters in the word are fine?

I know that there is a reason why I'm made so damn uncomfortable by the fact that everybody loves Romeo and Juliet and other straight institutions so damn much, but really, people, there's a fucking limit. 

When his weird American aunt dies, Matthew's cousin Sam comes to live with Matt, his SAHD and mother, and soon makes social life very difficult for him and his friends. They decide to give Sam a second chance if he can prove himself by infiltrating the local girl gang ("The Bitches". Yes.) as a girl, but soon changes and things go ~out of control~, the more so when Sam is predictably hit on by the class heartthrob, gets in touch with his emotions and falls for a girl, etc, etc

This book is one of the recommendations for queer fiction in one of the most popular German textbooks in the country, so obviously I had to investigate. I was disappointed very soon. In my opinion, if there was some kind of shitlist that warns readers of books which include trans- and homophobia in spades, "Boy2Girl" would definitely need to be on it.

I can't even put to words how much I loathe the entire "cross-dressing is hilaaaaarious! Especially if MAAB people do it!! But only so long as they get reaffirmed as cis, straight, manly masculine guys pronto!!"- thing. It's fucking annoying, and I don't get what the appeal of this book would be to cis/het people, either. Does it say to them that cross-dressing is only for wacky comedies? That, following the blurb, "hilarity ensues" once you overstep the reinforced steel boundaries of your gender? Because it certainly doesn't show that it's ok to do just that to me - there are scenes in which that seems to be the case, but mostly, there is a character to add a judgemental voice to the choir as soon as someone does the overstepping, which might be realistic, but unhelpful.

None of this wouldn't be redeemable if it wasn't cut off after the scene in which it is revealed to the general public that our hero is "really a boy" (uuugh big reveal scene ugh), and even though his entire character changed a lot (and for the better, seeing as how he seems to be much happier by the end of the book) it's unclear what will become of this change once he,  back in his male role, is no longer required to be ~girlish.

My biggest problem is that we get to read the voices of all characters apart from Sam, so there's no saying what he takes away from this, what his views and feelings are.

So, did I miss anything? Is this secretly good and I missed something because I was busy facepalming over people going on about "the g-word"?

And why anyone would want their kids to read this mess?

Crocky and I like reading books together, and we are always on the lookout for books likely to make the Bechdel-Wallace-test, but lately, especially when it comes to Fantasy, even those that make it leave me dissatisfied. It's not only that there are hardly any books with and about strong female main characters, it's that as long as the female characters are older than eleven, they usually MUST. FALL. IN LOVE.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love love. I love being in love. I do not, however, enjoy reading about people finding love and engaging in activities related to courtship. Which is what seems to be the only thing going on in most love plots. And there really does not need to be a love plot in every single book. They rarely ever add anything to the plot and they rarely ever influence characters in a realistic way, and tend to be as exciting to read and varied as people making sandwiches. They tend to be tacked on, without point or purpose, just because it apparently is a part integral to the experience of being a woman to fall for a man - any man - because lesbians don't exist, and god forbid female characters get a plot without throwing a male love interest into the mix somewhere, because there might be riots in the streets and people will protest in front of publisher's houses with torches and pitchforks.

Because Crocky has similar inclinations, we started searching. And searching. And searching. Thus, the challenge came about.
It does not sound like much, but try it, and you'll see what I mean.



 niaseath joined it, spent an hour in a book shop and couldn't find one single book that made it. I must be reading the wrong Fantasy books, because without the odd Discworld novel and the Worst Witch series, which is for young children, and a couple of books by MZB, I've drawn a blank. There are slightly more titles that come to mind outside the genre, but it's only a tiny fraction, and that's usually because the main character is considered to be past datable age or too young.

Granted, there are also few books about men without a love plot in them, but how many can you think of that do exist?
That's more than none, right?

There are such a lot of discussions on art and violence these days which make my skin crawl so much I can't speak about them coherently and this probably clouds my judgement on them. Still, I'd like to say this: art can be harmful to people who didn't consent to be a part of it.

( Recent sexual violence in what people say is art, trigger warnings )

If people use one oppression as a ~metaphor~ for another that is harmful to the party whose experiences it exploits to express yourself. It's the limit of freedom of expressing yourself - the moment your freedom touches that of another person and you take on their voice to speak about experiences you made, and I'd like to see more self-limitation at work.

I guess the question I'd like to put to people who argue that things like these are important enough to be made regardless is if they consider the message or artistic value of this particular piece to be more important than the problematic content and exploitation of others and why.

Because I don't see it.

Advertising featured in my brother's oral exam, and for some completely weird reason they never discussed what types of images are used to advertise - female bodies or parts thereof. These weird gender blinkers made me curious - with something as omnipresent as using female, heavily sexualised bodies to sell (other) objects, how can they really arrive at any kind of solid analysis of any kind of advertising, especially in ads about alcohol...?

Crocky and I soon discovered Jean Kilbourne's oeuvre on women in ads through her "Killing Us Softly" series focusing on women in advertising. She also has a documentary on thinness in advertising called "Slim Hopes", and what I liked especially about that "Slim Hopes" is the connection she draws between thinness and moral purity, especially virginity. She has some really neat examples of how the metaphors that used to surround sexuality and moral is now associated with eating because both of those "appetites" have to be controlled.

Some of her main points from the study guide:

She also almost quoted Granny Weatherwax ("There's no greys, only white that's got grubby. I'm surprised you don't know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That's what sin is.")


Hardly news, but the documentary/talk is entertaining and interesting to watch even in spite of the annoying watermark and the miniature size.
I can't wait to see if one of our libraries has it.

"Breeder" is a derogatory term for a cis heterosexual person.

Because, you see, man + woman = babbies, and because no self-respecting queer person would ever be caught having a baby. I have no idea where this term originated, but if I had to hazard a guess I'd say within certain fringes of the cisgay community, given the nice focus on the reproductive organs of ciswomen there, though I am not sure if the main association is meant to be husbandry there. I can't really make myself care, either.

As someone who wants to have children, this term pisses me off incredibly. Not only is it misogynistic, it also completely erases any queer and/or non-cis couples who do have or want to have children, dehumanises children and parents alike and just generally makes you look like a fucking ass if you use it. 

I want children with Crocky. I am not sure how yet, or when, or however we'll be able to afford that, or what kind of bureaucratic nightmare that's going to be, but at some point in my life, I want to raise children with this woman I am married to. And fucking hell, this is not going to be easy, and a lot of it will be every bit as dehumanising as the term "breeder" suggests.

First, getting one half of our child's genetic material united with the other is very likely going to be done in a laboratory, or by a doctor the way it's routinely done by real life breeders on farms. Since it's "sittenwidrig", "against public policy/immoral" under German law, we'll either have to go abroad, where the cheapest ~breeding~ session still costs about €5000 (and there's no saying if this takes off the first time around).

And then, once that genetic material has happily united with its other half and my bank account lost a small fortune and we are reasonably certain that it's going to stay where it's growing, the next nightmare begins - adoption. The process takes at least a year, though stepchild adoption is the same for both heterosexuals and homosexuals. You file for it, and then someone comes round to examine your relationship, as you have to be found capable of taking care of a child by the state. Officials come into your home and interview you to see if you are fit to parent, what your emotional relationship to your child is like, how healthy you are, what your financial situation is.

For all of this, you have to have the all-clear of the errant biological parent. If they're not known, you get a waiver, though, again, the case has to be examined by officials.

And then, there's only the everyday misunderstandings and nightmares when encountering a system in which families like ours are not common (there are around 13k children living with queer parents in Germany), the stereotypes, the idiots who want to debate calmly as to whether it's a good idea at all that people like me have children, and queer idiots who think that the term "breeder" is a good choice of words when referring to heterosexuals.

I have to admit, this abstract really leaves me wanting more and raises some questions, especially about what the point of this is, really. It may be my headache, but I really feel as though I'm not getting something here.


1. Post-closet era. Post. Closet. Era.
2. How, pray tell, do you "use appearance to attain a sense of authenticity"...? I mean, I'm guessing here that they're aiming at the struggles that femme women face to "look gay enough" in the eyes of some people and the backlash that butch women get for "embodying a negative and harmful stereotype", but I'm still left with the feeling that I need to find myself a pansexual outfit ASAP. Maybe some bisexual pants? Does that mean that Crocky has to cut her hair? I just... yeah.

Also, I am not sure why they went for a qualitative study here, and I'd really appreciate if someone enlightened me. And also, the point of this. So twenty people say that they use their appearance to signify their identity ~authentically~. And now?

Good: Mrs Homophone 2010 can pronounce a TH now. No one had explained to her before that the "th" is a lisped s, and now she gets things right at least when she's reading. Her speaking is still largely TH-free, but her reading has improved absolutely beautifully. It's weird how people can imitate speech impediments without problems (I made her read an entire page while "lisping"), and then get it right (and made her re-insert the "s"s afterwards), and the level of improvement completely knocked me out.

Dumb: I swear I'm a good, inconspicuous businessdyke when I'm at work. I don't run around all "LOOK AT MAH RAINBOW BRACELET!", but things follow me and I can't help it. I teach three teenage boys on Fridays, they're between twelve and fourteen. ( Today, my students invited me to join their masculinity affirmation ritual. )

Bad: One of my students failed his exam and I don't really know why. He was doing so well, and even though he still has obvious gaps, nothing prepared me for the total wreckage of his last exam; he's not doing himself justice in the content, and the language is all over the place. He can't even bear to look at the paper and he's really demotivated.

I'll get back into the discussion on home schooling later (thanks for the input!), but right now I have to moan about Hannover's GL(b) pride event. Granted, it's a GL event by tradition, bisexuals sneaked in only later, and trans folks' movements seem to be pretty disassociated from the LGB stuff that is going on in Germany. Still.

See, this year, there's fifty events, many of them sports events organised by our LGB sports club. However, out of these fifty events,  most of which are aimed at everybody, twelve events are for gay men only, and only six events are aimed at women in general. Why is that?

And some of the titles are unintentionally hilarious:

Stadtrundgang „Frauen an der Leine“ (the Leine being a river, though the name has a double meaning, making that either "Walking tour: Women on the Leine" - or "Walking tour: Women on a leash").

Offene Werkstatt! Für Frauen, Lesben und Mädchen. ("Open workshop! For women, lesbians and girls" - cool, lesbians aren't women now. Awesome).

But there are also some interesting events, and I'm thinking about going to some of the events on offer, especially the meeting with the people who do educational events at schools.

You know, if you start your Master thesis by saying that you're only going to consider male homosexuals in your study because they clearly have it worse (oh god I wish this was more of a paraphrase) as well as because there's so little data on female homosexuals (well, fair enough), because there are so many men writing about homosexuals (...?), that doesn't make you look that good to start with, but I was willing to read your paper, anyway.

But then you proceed to make your case, saying that those pesky foreigners, especially muslim foreigners, hate gay people, want to steal from them and beat them up. What the hell. I was looking for a sensitive insight into sex ed aimed at muslim students regarding homosexuality in Germany, not xenophobic garbage.

Well, looks like it's over. Thanks to everybody who signed - 9749 people did.

The first drafts of the DSM-V are out.

I can't say that I wouldn't have expected some of what's in there. Still. WOW. 

Let's start with something positive: I'm glad they're including Binge Eating as an eating disorder now. That's a good thing. I'm torn on Non-Suicidal Self Injury and wonder why they didn't also list this under paraphilias.

Other than that... Wow.

Let's begin with the fact that they've chosen to dispense with listing "distress" in their criteria as a measure for whether something is a disorder or a mere deviation from an abstract norm. I am not sure what is going to take its place - the way things are looking now, there is no telling where the boundary between clinical condition and deviation from the norm lies, really.
Zucker suggests that the likelihood of social ostracism is supposed to be the boundary for the norm here for his field, and my impression is that it will be really down to the estimation of the psych rather than the patient whether they have a condition that ought to be cured than the patient's distress with their situation.

Nearly all of the criteria regarding GI in children  that aren't related directly to the child's experienced gender still don't make sense and are deeply rooted in sexism, though the change in terminology is a good one. WTF is "typical masculine/feminine clothing" for children? What's wrong with cross-gender roles during fantasy play? WTF are "toys, games, or activities typical of the other gender", and what's wrong with rejecting games considered "appropriate" for your own gender?
Also, the shift in focus when it comes to the basis of this diagnosis from Gender Incongruence in adults does not make any sense to me - if behaviour appropriate to a person's gender is irrelevant in adults, why enforce it in children to this degree?

Zucker's paper... where to start. I am not an expert and I'm probably missing many things that are noteworthy, but there is still enough that is really anoying. He fails gender 101 ("if there was a social reason for girls to want to be boys, the same reason would apply to boys wanting to be girls"), it's creepy how he has as test subjects of one study comprised 500 boys who were referred to his clinic and only 79 girls - which to me seems to speak volumes of the inherent sexism of the entire enterprise and the femmephobia it engenders - his insistence that GID is a condition that ought to be cured by changing the individuals gender expression because that will cause their problems to disappear because they won't be socially ostracised anymore... there is so much that's troublesome in that paper, but his insistence that if you fix yourself, your situation will be better because your peers will react more positively to you is probably one of the least sensible I have ever heard. Would he maintain that that's applicable to other condition that cause children to be ostracised by their peers, I wonder?

Gender policing is creepy and superfluous, and it doesn't get better if people start even earlier with this nonsense. I want more freedom to experiment, especially for boys, not less. Most of my childhood friends presented with at least for of these criteria, in girl's cases five. I want back what I had when I was younger. More androgynous clothes for children, more toys that were coded as androgynous rather than marketed towards a specific gender, more room for experimenting. When I was small, nearly all of the male friends I had in kindergarten played more with their dolls than I did - my best friend, a boy called Sebastian, had a dolly that he used to take along everywhere and that was usually integrated into our games, usually in the role of his baby. Most of the girls I was friends dressed in androgynous clothes that would be perceived as "boy clothes" today because they're not sexualised, they played with androgynous and toys coded as "for boys" today, many had more friends who were boys than friends who were girls, and we all wore trousers with tears on the knees. I haven't seen any of that during my internship in kindergarten, and it's a fucking shame.

Edit: another thing I'm wondering here is what the benefit of having those extra criteria at all. I can't imagine that there many people who say that they don't feel their assigned gender is correct for shits and giggles, so surely, that ought to be enough for the medical gatekeepers...?
I guess I ought to shut up about this. I'm a cis ex-psych minor and really not informed enough to join the discussion of these issues.

So. Paraphilias.

The paraphilia-related changes in many areas actually seemed to make things worse rather than improve them. They apparently want to make a distinction between paraphilias and paraphilaic disorders - one being merely ascertained for study purposes, the other being diagnosed.

Not sure what the benefits of ascertaining something in a medical context are, especially in a Diagnosis Manual for Disorders, but fine, if they must. Still, the change in the wording for this is failtastic: for masochism, for example, according to the revising people, the difference between "real, not simulated" harm and ... well, harm, simulated or not, is pointless enough to just drop it altogether. Which means that  a lot more people now ought to go see a therapist, because there is no difference between sexual games and reality any more, if I'm reading that correctly.

Also, we have "autogynephilia" (and the continuing absence of autoandrophilia as well as notes to whether ciswomen experience autogynephilia, which they do) rear its ugly head again under "transvestic fetishism". As far as I can see from Blanchard's paper there is no reason for the inclusion of this "condition" at all, really, apart from Blanchard's own fucking creepy obsession with studies on the sexual fantasies of trans women.

Also, asexual people need to get their heads checked, and so do people who don't enjoy being penetrated, or those people who just like their vanilla sex too much.

Who else needs chocolate cookies?

EDIT: and I'm still trying to get my head around the necessity to list the symptoms of healthy paraphilias in a diagnosis manual for disorders under the title of the disorder it's supposed to diagnose, and I'm still drawing a blank.

Can anyone help me out? I must be missing something here and I hate that.

So, I asked my family to sign this petition I keep harping on about and was told by my father that he doesn't really see the point because only so few people are taking part, so he doesn't see a reason to bother with it. Edit: but he did sign it in the end, yay! Leaves only my brother and my mother who are deterred by ... having to sign up?

That doesn't really sound all that logical to me, especially as a reason to not bother as well if it's something you even moderately care about, but it's true. It is doomed, really - to be seriously considered it needs to gather 50k signatures within a month - it has roughly 5k now, and it needs 45k more until March 3. Plus you need to - gasp- sign up to sign it and people are lazy and don't care whatever the fuck is in our constitution, so both the people who actually would be protected by this law and the majority can't really be bothered.

The third article of our basic law reads as follows:

The changed version looks like this:

According to our government, the term "sexual identity" covers bisexual, lesbian, gay, intersexed, transgendered and transsexual people because all components of the LGBTI acronym are the same to them. For once, this might be a really good thing and generally A Step In The Right Direction, regardless of the weirdness of having all those different things subsumed under the term "sexual identity".

Well, before, back in November, people in our government thought that the other parts of our Basic Law already nicely cover all relevant aspects and voted it down, it's now being brought back to attention by major parties, and there is also this petition. But, well, you need to sign up. D=

People like our more conservative and sillier folks thought back in November that would will mean paedophiles would be protected under the law and there would be a need to change the legislation to include something they refer to as "bisexual marriage", which turns out to be polygamy. No, I'm not making this up, these people really are that dense, and judging from the comment section of the petition, they're not alone.

Now I am not a legal expert, but I am pretty sure that there are ways to define what exactly they mean by "sexual identity". Having to define terms that sound incredibly vague is a bound to be a central feature of a legislation in which the first article of the Basic Law is "Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority". What is this "human dignity", exactly? And how can state authority protect it? Maybe I'm being naive here, but I can't help but have faith in our lawmakers to get down a definition that says pretty clearly what they mean by "sexual identity".

As for the petition and this matter in general, it seems that there are three basic possibilities to view this - not to give a damn, to be for it with or without knowledge of the legal implications, or to be against it with or without knowledge of the legal implications. So to my mind, you either don't give a damn and I dislike you, you're on the side of the "bisexual-marriage-is-group-marriage"-people or have a more sane legal reason I'd really like to know about, or your name is on that list already or bloody well should be.

This petition, even if it doesn't lead to momentous changes, at least seems to be pretty good a way of showing on which of the three sides people are in this matter. I signed it because I'm still hoping against all reason that this could go somewhere and because also I want to show my support for this publicly, even if this does turn out to be futile. Sometimes that seems to be all I can do, really.

I'd also be much a happier person if more people I know were not completely failing to give a damn or against it, especially my own family, bloody hell.

Ich bin mir zwar immer noch nicht ganz über die Sinnhaftigkeit offiziellen Onlinepetitionen unseres Bundestags im Klaren, aber hier ist sie trotzdem, hoffentlich bringt sie etwas.

Also, hier könnt ihr sie finden, und darum geht es: 

That's part of what you said. It is not that simple. Fiction exists in the real world, and influences real-world people. This is not an issue of "some people" not being able to distinguish between fiction and reality. Even if everybody were able to do so, this would still be an issue. Language influences people. Fiction influences people - and not just those mythical creatures who can't distinguish between fiction and non-fiction accounts - and a strong version of my claim here is that no one can.

Your claim seems to be that since because fiction is fiction, it is somehow less harmful, because it can't be taken as seriously and it is not reality. But how much of what you write is fiction? What you write is informed by your real-world experiences, too. Are houses fictional? No. Is it fictional that people have heads and arms? No. Is it fictional that gay people exist? No. What else is fictional, what mirrors your own experience with gay characters? There is no way to draw the line, even for people who are very well capable of distinguishing fiction from reality.

The narratives you come across organise your thinking, and if you come across one particular narrative over and over again, it is difficult or even impossible not to have that part of your narrative enter your brain and become the definitive narrative. This is my problem with a majority writing a minority. M/M, as I am told, is a genre by and for straight women - it influences their narrative of what gay men are like.

It is common knowledge that advertising is fiction, and still it is as commonly known or suspected that advertising can have a very direct negative effect on the self-esteem of women. Fictional stories in which women are presented as flat characters only there for the gratification of men, like porn movies, are questionable, because they present men and women alike with scripts of sexuality that are unrealistic, but still change the narrative of what sex is "supposed to" work like. This is not conscious, no one sits down and goes, "Oh, I'd like to watch a movie in which women are objectified right now!". That, in parts, is the problem, and if this were what people are doing, this would be less problematic.

Now, with the stories written by straight women and informed by their experience as straight women which are about gay men, the problem I see is that they start replacing the narratives of and by gay men about gay men for the women who read these stories (simple because there are so many straight women who write these kinds of stories - from my experience, though this might be wrong, even more than queer women). There are, as it is, many negative stereotypes of gay men permeating the media which are influencing people's narratives of what a gay man is. This is another one that cannot ever be accurate. So yes, I believe that all stories written my people who are not a member of a minority about a minority are appropriative to some degree, and I believe that romance stories which strongly focus on an idealised version is especially appropriative.

What I want?
I want more self-reflection, self-awareness and critical thinking skills for both readers and writers.
I want people to examine their own reasons for writing what they are writing, and
I want readers to examine for what reason they are reading it.
I want genres about minorities to be dominated by those minorities instead of majorities - I want more original slash fiction about gay men to be written by gay men than by straight women.
I want the story of the minority people write about to be the definitive story.

I want you, herongale, to ask yourself, "why am I writing slash? What does it do for me that other genres don't? Why do I find the tales of two men together more interesting than others? Why is it ok for me to appropriate another person's experience for my own ends?"
And I want your readers to do the same.

I'm genuinely curious what people say here, by the way. I know that there are reasons that are therapeutic writing-related, but I am curious what other reasons there are.

And I am not saying to anyone that they are not allowed to write whatever they want, because of course they are, but I don't want them to get away with it easily if it seems that they are writing about an other without reflection of why they feel it is appropriate to do so.

Ich sollte es eigentlich ja besser wissen, aber ich habe diesen Artikel gelesen:

Gleichgeschlechtliche Partnerschaften - Kinder brauchen keine Hetero-Eltern

Und dann hab ich noch einen Fehler gemacht - ich habe die Kommentare auch gelesen. Hier mal eine Auswahl, es ist zum Schreien:

"Ja, es muss ein tolles Gefühl sein wenn man in der Klasse oder auf dem Pausenplatz mitteilen darf das man eben nicht ein Mami und Papi zu Hause hat sondern zwei Mami oder zwei Papi... Den dem Hedonismus und Egoismus moderner Erwachsener dürfen keine Grenzen mehr gesetzt werden."

"In einem Punkt verlieren einige heterosexuelle Paare doch drastisch, wenn homosexuelle Paare bei der Adoption gleich gestellt werden: und zwar jene hetersexuellen Paare, die auf natürlichem Wege keine Kinder bekommen können. Denn um die gleiche Anzahl Kinder bewerben sich dann plötzlich viel mehr Paare. Und die Wahrscheinlichkeit, den Kinderwunsch erfüllt zu bekommen, sinkt für Mann-Frau-Paare, die biologisch nicht Eltern werden können, drastisch."

"Denn eines ist mal klar, die Anzahl der Kinder die freiwillig zur Adoption frei gegeben werden, ist verschwindend gering und die klassische Familie IST für Kinder der beste Ort um auf zu wachsen und nichts anderes."

"Nur, weil so manche bunte Erscheinungen des menschlichen Lebens immer hoffähiger werden und sich auch ein entsprechendes Lobbywesen dazu gesellt, ist hier noch längst nicht alles im Sinne der Natur."

"Ich hätte auch erwartet, dass Homo-Kinder öfter homo werden."

"Homosexualität ist natürlich- aber ob es natürlich ist, Kinder durch homosexuelle Paare großzuziehen? Homos haben gegenüber Heteros in der Gesellschaft keine Nachteile. Sie können es offen ausleben ebenso wie Heteros."

Was soll einem dazu noch einfallen...?

So, ich gehe mal wieder an die Arbeit hier.