Ward has some fascinating discussions of Craigslist ads for men seeking men for “not gay” encounters. [...]The ads indicate men’s desires to sit back, relax, watch heterosexual porn together, and get each other off—as a form of male bonding, not gayness. These scenarios are often highly detailed, with “numerous hetero-authenticating details,” and homophobic disavowals of gayness [...] It’s “a means of getting the kind of sex that [the ads implicitly posit] all straight men want from women, but can get only from men—uncomplicated, emotionless, and guaranteed.”
I cherry-picked the above because it forcibly reminded me of a podfic I did a while ago, of RemainNameless's No Homo. It was a Teen Wolf Derek/Stiles story in which they were frat bros who did exactly the above, and it really made an impression on me at the time, sort of opened my mind to a lot of things that—despite all the time I've spent reading slash and thinking about sexual identity/fluidity, both personally and as a cultural norm—I hadn't considered, and really explores throughout the story what the characters think is gay and what isn't, how they both identify and why, and where that leads them. It's really kind of a farce, and very funny, but digs surprisingly deeply into some really sticky issues and I found myself thinking about it long after the story was finished. I'm not entirely sure what I'm trying to say, other than, I suppose, that it proves once again that the reading and writing of fanfiction is about a lot more than Mary Sue self insertion and titillation.
Thanks for this thoughtful and thought-provoking review.
no subject
Ward has some fascinating discussions of Craigslist ads for men seeking men for “not gay” encounters. [...]The ads indicate men’s desires to sit back, relax, watch heterosexual porn together, and get each other off—as a form of male bonding, not gayness. These scenarios are often highly detailed, with “numerous hetero-authenticating details,” and homophobic disavowals of gayness [...] It’s “a means of getting the kind of sex that [the ads implicitly posit] all straight men want from women, but can get only from men—uncomplicated, emotionless, and guaranteed.”
I cherry-picked the above because it forcibly reminded me of a podfic I did a while ago, of RemainNameless's No Homo. It was a Teen Wolf Derek/Stiles story in which they were frat bros who did exactly the above, and it really made an impression on me at the time, sort of opened my mind to a lot of things that—despite all the time I've spent reading slash and thinking about sexual identity/fluidity, both personally and as a cultural norm—I hadn't considered, and really explores throughout the story what the characters think is gay and what isn't, how they both identify and why, and where that leads them. It's really kind of a farce, and very funny, but digs surprisingly deeply into some really sticky issues and I found myself thinking about it long after the story was finished. I'm not entirely sure what I'm trying to say, other than, I suppose, that it proves once again that the reading and writing of fanfiction is about a lot more than Mary Sue self insertion and titillation.
Thanks for this thoughtful and thought-provoking review.