To Portray Without Fetishizing?
Feb. 21st, 2010 10:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
browngirlI was thinking about this off and on lately, and something I read threw it into high relief for me. So, to start this post melodramatically, I almost deleted 'Blue Eyes Shine' last night, as well as the 'Untitled Wheelchair Sex Story'. Someone sensible whose judgement I really respect wrote about how much they hate disability fetish stories, and mentioned the "Pike wheelchair sex" prompts over at the Kink Meme. Since I directly filled one, and what I wrote gave me ideas I used in "Blue Eyes Shine," I realized I might well be contributing to the problem she described.
It was a shock. In both stories I never... I honestly never would have thought, and didn't approach it as, the wheelchair being a fetish. I thought the request was about a location and a particular time period, analogous to 'shower sex during the Academy' or 'sex in the Captain's chair.' I wrote two stories (counting 'Blue Eyes Shine' set when Pike was canonically using a wheelchair, around the time of the Medal Ceremony that's the penultimate scene of Star Trek XI. When I was challenged in comments to the Untitled Wheelchair Sex Story I carefully explained that the 'kink' was just from the term 'kink meme' and I was writing a story set in a particular place and time that attempted to take all the salient features into account.
Now I wonder if I was being hopelessly naiive or worse. I wonder if the commentator went away from our interaction with the same feeling I've had where I've tried to explain to someone why, for example, a SGA AU where Teyla Emmagan is a maid and Ronon a servant and all the White canon characters had jobs comparable in status to their canon status could be problematic, and they carefully told me why there was no racism involved in that casting decision at all, and I sighed and gave up.
And yet... I really want to write about Pike directly after the main events of the movie, including writing slash and het about him then. (One of these days I'm going to write that Pike/Kirk/McCoy set the night before the last scene in the movie.) It would be a worse than inappropriate elision to pretend his persistent injuries don't exist. So how do I accurately depict him in that time period without producing fetish fuel?
I think about this for other issues, too. Frex, I think about skin color in fan productions, both as a reader and a writer. I kind of cringe when I see Star Trek fanart that portrays Uhura with pink skin; it's important to who she is, and to my conception of her, that she's a Black woman. It's important to who David Sinclair is, and to my interest in his character, that he's a Black man. Plus, there is visual drama in tone contrast, and visual drama is useful to evoke when writing. Maybe it's just that... another person who writes wise and useful meta said that people of color don't think about our skin colors, but for me that's not true. The shapes of my life being what they are, I think about my race and how it affects my interactions with people quite a bit, which includes considering my skin color. (It's hard not to think about one's skin color when one lives with a small person who delightedly reminds one that one is brown and he is pink.) And yet, by saying that, have I provided support to the next writer who'll write about Uhura thinking about her 'chocolatey skin' as if it's a weird strange deviation from 'normal', which will result in a cringeworthy and inaccurate tale?
This entry made more sense in my head before I wrote part of it while conversing with a four year old. Anyway. I think about these things a lot -- in the recent discussion over slash fic and its potential to harm gay men I thought and read a lot, though I didn't post publicly -- in part because I absolutely cannot dismiss mentions of these problems as "people choosing to be offended". I hate it when that comment is thrown at me and people like me for, for instance, pointing out problematic depictions of people of color, so I can't throw it at anyone else. I have to think about these issues and figure out how to do my best by everyone I might impact with my stories.
Now, how to do that?
It was a shock. In both stories I never... I honestly never would have thought, and didn't approach it as, the wheelchair being a fetish. I thought the request was about a location and a particular time period, analogous to 'shower sex during the Academy' or 'sex in the Captain's chair.' I wrote two stories (counting 'Blue Eyes Shine' set when Pike was canonically using a wheelchair, around the time of the Medal Ceremony that's the penultimate scene of Star Trek XI. When I was challenged in comments to the Untitled Wheelchair Sex Story I carefully explained that the 'kink' was just from the term 'kink meme' and I was writing a story set in a particular place and time that attempted to take all the salient features into account.
Now I wonder if I was being hopelessly naiive or worse. I wonder if the commentator went away from our interaction with the same feeling I've had where I've tried to explain to someone why, for example, a SGA AU where Teyla Emmagan is a maid and Ronon a servant and all the White canon characters had jobs comparable in status to their canon status could be problematic, and they carefully told me why there was no racism involved in that casting decision at all, and I sighed and gave up.
And yet... I really want to write about Pike directly after the main events of the movie, including writing slash and het about him then. (One of these days I'm going to write that Pike/Kirk/McCoy set the night before the last scene in the movie.) It would be a worse than inappropriate elision to pretend his persistent injuries don't exist. So how do I accurately depict him in that time period without producing fetish fuel?
I think about this for other issues, too. Frex, I think about skin color in fan productions, both as a reader and a writer. I kind of cringe when I see Star Trek fanart that portrays Uhura with pink skin; it's important to who she is, and to my conception of her, that she's a Black woman. It's important to who David Sinclair is, and to my interest in his character, that he's a Black man. Plus, there is visual drama in tone contrast, and visual drama is useful to evoke when writing. Maybe it's just that... another person who writes wise and useful meta said that people of color don't think about our skin colors, but for me that's not true. The shapes of my life being what they are, I think about my race and how it affects my interactions with people quite a bit, which includes considering my skin color. (It's hard not to think about one's skin color when one lives with a small person who delightedly reminds one that one is brown and he is pink.) And yet, by saying that, have I provided support to the next writer who'll write about Uhura thinking about her 'chocolatey skin' as if it's a weird strange deviation from 'normal', which will result in a cringeworthy and inaccurate tale?
This entry made more sense in my head before I wrote part of it while conversing with a four year old. Anyway. I think about these things a lot -- in the recent discussion over slash fic and its potential to harm gay men I thought and read a lot, though I didn't post publicly -- in part because I absolutely cannot dismiss mentions of these problems as "people choosing to be offended". I hate it when that comment is thrown at me and people like me for, for instance, pointing out problematic depictions of people of color, so I can't throw it at anyone else. I have to think about these issues and figure out how to do my best by everyone I might impact with my stories.
Now, how to do that?
no subject
Date: 2010-02-22 09:01 am (UTC)More academically, I know there's been sociology work done on this because I've had both professors and health care professionals mention it in the course of discussions, but I can't think of any specific sources offhand (except one was in context of Trigeminal Neuralgia, so that might be a clue). Googling something related to hospital social work might also work. The thing is, it's a different set of circumstances than patients who are terminally ill because the patients have a normal expected lifespan and the illness doesn't stop.
Also, instead of "terrifyingly", I should have said "disappointingly", probably. But there's not much scarier than being abandoned by your partner when you have nothing, no means of supporting yourself, no local family, etc. /issues :P
no subject
Date: 2010-02-22 06:54 pm (UTC)Respectfully, while I don't deny the existence of research that indicates the kind of problems you mention here, you might consider in the future that a) disabilities and their affects on relationships vary widely and b) chronic pain is a single subset of disability experience.
The way your original comment was phrased seemed fairly negative toward pwd to me, I think because it was so general.
:D