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kaigou[It's a tangled web, so I'll just plunge right in and see how far I can get before other projects require my attention.]
First, we'll need to accept that every exception has its rule; naming exceptions is a fast track to derailment via distractions. It's the overall trends I'm trying to grasp, and that means making some broad generalizations at points. Unless I wanted to turn this into a major dissertation (and surprise, I don't), then trying to absorb the basic trends is about the limit. We can get into specifics in comments-discussions. If it seems like I'm painting with a pretty big brush, well, at times I suspect I'll have to be if I don't want to be at this all night.
A week or so ago, I noodled around about orientalist fiction, riffing off (and on) "orientalizing": a prevalent or predominant culture's Other-ing of a subordinate culture. Yes, usually this is just called the 'dominant' culture, but 'dominant' is such an accepted term that it's hard to keep a question in our heads as to whether it's the right term. So instead let's say a 'norm' consists of the Prevalent or Prevailing Values, PV for short: it's the 'norm', the 'standard', of this western world against which all else is measured: male, white, western/anglo-european, cis-sex, cis-gender, heterosexual, christian.
That combination of adjectives may not be a universal truth on this entire planet (because it's far far beyond my scope or knowledge to get into the sticky-wicket clash of privileged westerners in an Asian setting), but it is the prevailing 'norm' by which anything else is a deviation of one or more degrees. While 'prevalent' has connotations of being (or is assumed to be) the most wide-spread, 'prevailing' also implies 'coming out on top' with its attendant implications of 'over something else'.
Also, in general terms we'd say the western world is the prevailing culture, except that a) culture is not monolithic (and it can get fuzzy if we try to treat it as so), and that b) the use of V for 'values' may help to underline the fact that what's being transmitted is an understanding/expectation of what's valuable — that is, "that which moves farther away from the prevailing values is by definition less valuable."
For those of you unfamiliar, 'cis' is a prefix that generally means "on the same side [as]" or "on this side [of]". A cis-sex person is someone whose sex (physical sexual identification, that is, how many legs the person's got) is the same as what they were born with; eg, a post-operative transsexual would not be cissexual. Another way of putting it is that cissexuals are "people ... who have only ever experienced their subconscious and physical sexes as being aligned" (Julia Serano).
More frequently you'll see cisgender used to mean cissexual as well, but I differentiate the two myself (perhaps as a result of too much exposure to identity politics philosophy). Sex is the physical state of being, while gender is a culturally-imposed set of behaviors and expectations (and often roles) that are applied based on one's sex. One's sex is not 'cultural'; the average woman in Indo-china is born with all the same body parts as a woman born in South America.
In contrast, the experience of gender —- roles, behaviors, expectations, allowances, and restrictions — is not universal, not at all. A woman from Japan and a woman from Sweden may have similar body-parts, but the woman from Japan isn't going to balk at the expectation that her job in the office is to serve tea for men's meetings, while a woman in Sweden would laugh you out of the business place at the very notion. The state of being male-gender in one society may mean it's expected to cry over beautiful poetry and be moved by a gorgeous sunset, while the state of being male-gender in another culture may require being ignorant of poetry and thinking sunsets are for girls to sigh over, not manly-men.
Thus, we must remember that to define someone/thing as cisgendered requires a) a context for that gendering, because inculturation** is a massive part of how we define 'gender' and thereby define whether or not we're cis/on-this-side-of that gender, and b) that this gender can operate independent of one's actual physical sex-definition. I could dig deeper, but we'll leave that for another day. In the meantime, just keep in mind that I break the two apart into the physical state and a state of aligning to behavioral/cultural mores.
Note: acculturation is a process in which one learns and adopt the beliefs and behaviors of a different group, while inculturation is the process by which a member learns and internalizes the beliefs and behaviors of one's own group. You run into the former with immigrants adjusting to a new country; you experience the latter as a natural part of growing up and absorbing the culture/society around you.
The opposite (or subset) of PV is DV: Divergent or Deviating Values. I'm using it loosely, here, so it applies to any of a number of instances, above and beyond formal 'cultures'. It can be a single divergence from otherwise matching the PV (eg xtian het males who are PoC) or a formal language'd culture (eg Brazilian vs Anglo-European) or an actual subculture inside the PV-norms (eg gamers or bikers or what-have-you).
In the everyday world, yes, non-norm values are considered inferior or less valuable, but since I do believe that words lend power, I'll go with 'divergent' instead of 'subordinate'. There may be elements in common (such as language, or basic morals, or what-have-you) with the culture-at-large, but there are enough elements not-shared that the sub-group can be considered distinct.
The question Kristin raised (replying to my LLF-fail post) was if there are any groups that fetishize another group, and the answer is undoubtedly yes, but with a major point that I think knocks women writing m/m for women out of the comparison. I write enough already and even I can get tired of retyping so let's just use MM for male/male fiction, that is, stories with romantic plots/sub-plots in which two men have a romance.
I put it that way to make it distinct from gay romance, in which the romantic plot/sub-plot involves two homosexuals — and which, more often than not, is marketed to a gay audience (independent of author gender). MM, on the other hand, is more likely to be marketed to women; it's more likely to have a female author, but can include male authors tailoring their writing to match women-reader expectations. The audiences also crossover; some non-gay readers do read and enjoy gay fiction, just as some gay readers' idea of a good story may dovetail with MM.
Every example I can find of cultural fixation — most often expressed as romanticization — operates on a dynamic of the prevalent values/culture doing it to a subordinate group/culture. The American North, having won, did it to the American South; anglo-based culture, with the upperhand, has been doing it to Native American cultures for several centuries now. And, of course, there's the sexualized version, in which men have been objectifying women — maxed out in the "two lesbians getting it on for the man's benefit" schtick — for a good while, as well. These are all instances of the PV having the power/ability to appropriate, subjugate, and interpret an DV to fit PV preferences or perspectives.
Given that, I cast about for any example of the reverse, and the householdgrad student Leo brought to my attention that Taiwan's had a recent flood of heavily-romanticized-Japan showing up in its fiction and media. Except that Taiwan is not under Japanese colonialism any longer, and with China's interference in the interim, the Japanese colonial rule may be far enough in the past as to begin safely romanticizing Japanese cultural facets.
Makes me wonder if there's native-grown Indian fiction that romanticizes and/or smooths the edges off the Raj period of British colonialism, or Vietnamese fiction in which French citizens play the role of foreigner with positive, admirable attributes. I don't know of either, but within English-language literature, the only instances I can think of can be broken into two basic power dynamics:
1. If written from the PV-perspective, the PV is currently dominant over the DV.
2. If written from the DV-perspective, the subordination is historical (no longer existant) fact.
In both cases, the perspective is romanticizing an Other that has no power over the author/group's perspective. I think in pragmatic terms, when a group is being actively subordinated, its popular fiction is just that much less likely to render the PV-perspective as a positive and beneficial thing. If you're suffering under colonialism, for instance, you're less likely to consider stories who posit "great white man saves ignorant savages from themselves" as popcorn-worthy entertainment.
The other important detail about this romanticization dynamic is that it does not turn its eye inward. In the discussion after that earlier post,habibti commented that this dynamic "tells you so much more about the side doing the mythologizing than the mythologized." This is undoubtedly true, but the distinction here is that the by-product of self-revelation is not intentional. When PV-authors use the Magical Negro, the white-author is more often than not shocked by any scrutiny turned back on the author, seeing itself as invisible (and that in turn is a by-product of being the 'default' or 'prevalent' point-of-view, that one can almost 'disappear' in the lens of a story).
I've only been able to come up with a single genre (outside of satire) in which a dominant group purposefully views any kind of subordinate group through an intentional lens of its own perspective: the childhood memoir, from To Kill a Mockingbird to A River Runs Through It to Runs with Scissors. You've probably seen reviews that criticize the adult-written-child-perspective story as having a protagonist who "doesn't think or talk like a child" or "is aware of far more than average child" and so on.
The conceit of that genre is to return to the views of childhood, but with an adult's intelligence behind the gaze. Whether fiction or loosely-based fiction or total nonfiction, the story never forgets that the narrator, and the reader, are adults; some of the genre may even remind you mid-story. "I didn't know it then, but only years later did I understand" and so on. This is not YA fiction nor children's fiction; it is fiction about being a child but written by and for adults.
You could say it's a dominant paradigm (adulthood) casting its interpretation on a subordinate paradigm (childhood), but I think it's more accurate to say it's the author casting his/her own gaze upon a kind of golem created from the author's perspective. In other words, there is not -- and yet is -- an Other. The fetishization is in quasi-othering one's self/perspective to the degree of treating it as a distinct, romanticized Other, and the story pivots on the reader's ability to relate to the author's maneuver in seeing what's revealed in the self via this quasi-Other.
ETA: see vcmw's comment, below for an expert's take on childhood-memoirs and the dynamics, saying it better than I have here (even revised!).
In contrast, MM balances between two different divergent groups: gay men and women authors. It's not uncommon to read gay men lambasting MM for its retro gender roles superimposed over man-to-man romantic interactions, or for containing characters more caricature than real; the complaint is nearly always summed up, implicitly or explicitly, as a protest against (presumably straight) women co-opting the gay man's experiences, if not outright charging that women who write m/m are exerting cultural privilege. The only adult-child complaints similar that I can think of are the mumbled complaints from adolescents who don't think "adults get it," a la Holden, after reading/seeing a dissatisfying film or book.
It's a particularly sticky wicket, really, and not a direct analogue. First is the question of whether women authors can be seen as Othering themselves as they adopt/take-on the male parts in the story. More to the privilege issue, though, is that both parties (gay men, or female authors) lack that automatic top-of-the-heap PV power. You can't exert privilege you don't have.
Can you?
A side note. I think I should get this out of the way, just to make clear: every single one of us has a culture. Let there be no one here who thinks to claim that there "is no white culture".
Even if you are raised a white, xtian, American, football-loving, heterosexual, movie-watching, college-going, middle class kid, you still have a culture. There is no freaking such thing as "well, we don't have a culture, not like ____". That's bullshit. You can turn on any movie or television show, crack open any of a vast plethora of fiction and nonfiction, and see your culture reflected back at you. This overwhelming prevalence of your cultural mores and means does not make your culture non-existent nor invisible; it makes your culture the freaking default.
It's no surprise I find the "no-white-culture" attitude incredibly annoying; the act of taking a default for granted, unquestioned, is a huge part of what deconstructionism attempts to undo and I've never seen reason to stop at the book jacket; I try to apply it to everything, best I can. But also reminds me of a t-shirt I used to have that said, Dog Logic, and underneath that: "All cats have four legs; I have four legs; therefore I am a cat."
The argument's obviously a fallacy, and humorously so (really, that's Beagle Logic if I've ever seen it) but the lesson works true regardless of argument content: if you let assumptions lie unquestioned, any conclusion will be equally faulty.
I think a lot of folks assume (hah) that there is 'no white culture' because it's become such white noise (pun not actually intended) compared to the pops and hisses of divergent cultures. White culture is very much a vibrant and complex place, as much as any other culture, but because white people so damn inculturated, being white means never seeing this culture from the outside.
This is one reason I'd be a strong proponent of making every fricking American high school grad do a mandatory two-year stint in the Peace Corp — or similar, since the Peace Corps has a college-degree requirement. There is no better way to learn your own language, or your own culture — or to realize your innate cultural assumptions — than to be kicked in the teeth with the experience of acculturating to someone else's way of life.
Let's talk about intersectionality. I came across this handy glossary for a course in Cultural Safety provided by the University of Victoria's Continuing Studies program.
That got me thinking, and you in the back who's muttering everything gets you thinking, I HEARD THAT. (Also, sadly, it's true. But anyway.)
We don't really view the various divergences from center as equal — in terms of how they impact our reactions — because, quite simply, we can't always see the divergence right off the bat. Our first impressions are formed by what we can see, physically, captured in a still-life moment like a mental snapshot. That's the exterior, and it's why one's skin tone, sex, and dress are such massive obstacles, if one is divergent from the norm. After that, mannerisms, speech, attitudes and so on become apparent, and beyond that are the innermost/private/interior aspects that, if revealed, would demonstrate yet another layer of divergence.
Naturally, this calls for a picture, or we'll be here all day with me trying to explain this to make sure there's no misunderstandings.
ETA: this is far from comprehensive, just so we're clear. What's here is here because either a) it connects to a later point I'll be making or b) it's a simpler/flatter concept and thus easier to qualify or quantify. Thus, as always, YMMV, and if I were a real socio/anthropologist, this would probably look a lot different. And have more footnotes.
Think of meeting someone as that first snapshot. The two details that are going to be immediately obvious are whether the person falls into the PV-status of being White and Male, and is an Adult. I included 'adult' after considering the section above, that is, an adult writer speaking of a child's experiences are a type of PV-to-DV paradigm. In practical matters, as well, if we have two people who are PV-matching in all ways except one is an adult and one is a child, the adult will have privilege. (Yes, this does raise questions of whether a white male child has more or less privilege than a non-white male adult, or a white non-male adult, but I leave that for another time.)
I also set 'Male' above 'white' because while the majority of cultures on this planet do seem to have adopted the notion that 'paler = better', it's not always true — but the vast majority of cultures have held, even prior to Western-influence, that 'male = better'. There are exceptions to every rule, of course, but in general it seems pretty safe to say that wherever you go, you're going to have more privilege as a man than as a woman, when everything else is equal.
The term 'Western/ized' falls on the boundary, because sometimes you can determine this from the silent image — the person's dress or hairstyle, for instance — but there are other aspects of being Western/ized that only come through in speech and mannerisms, such as having a strong accent that reveals the person to be a non-native English speaker. I say 'Western/ized' because not everyone who is Western (which in the norm is really North-European, which is also partially covered by being White) is truly 'western'; one can be raised in a foreign country and undergo acculturation to match a Western precept — essentially self-westernizing.
But we can't underestimate the importance of behavior as it intersects with appearance. An absolutely succinct and wonderfully perceptive assessment from Rich Benjamin, in his book, Searching for Whitopia:
Masculine is something we associate with sex, true, but the behaviors we (speaking of the Western audience, here) expect aren't automatically obvious in a still image. A man who looks like the Marlboro Cowboy — we can say white, male, and western (literally!), but if he breaks into tears when we stub our toe... well, that's not quite what Western culture identifies as 'masculine'. To get a sense of whether someone fits the gender-norm, we have to see the person in context and in action. That requires a bit more than just a glance at a photograph.
I put heterosexual at the border between the two, rather than christian, for two reasons. The first is that closets do exist, and those closets have been successful means of hiding/coping for men and women for pretty much the entirety of our species. If someone weren't able to cloak or hide one's sexuality, we wouldn't be debating whether or not Alexander the Great was 'really' homosexual; we'd freaking know already. That closeting-mask is done via careful application of cultural gender roles, which is why 'masculine' sits above 'heterosexual': because if someone's determined to fake out their sexuality, you might be able to tell if you're paying very close attention to the person's behavior or terms or language, but you still might not be entirely certain unless and until the person brings the innermost/private up in conversation and tells you one way or another.
After all — especially in the public spheres of work, school, or among casual acquaintances — even those non-heterosexual people who are out among a small circle of friends may live and work and learn just fine without ever letting on to a wider sphere of any digression from the norm. The person just doesn't bring it up, gets really good at evasion or prevarication, and as long as the preceding elements — skin color, sex, gender, culture — are satisfied as matching the PV, most bystanders would simply assume that the remaining issues are equally matches for the norm. That's how you end up with people just "assuming" that someone is heterosexual: because everything else that can be seen, shy of looking into the person's head or heart, matches the norms, so we don't expect a digression now that we've gotten this far.
The farther you go down/into, the easier it is for a person to mask any digression, many times because it's not a topic that necessarily comes up in random conversation (or, if it does, is easy enough to equivocate or in some way). The deeper you get, though, the more likely the person's awareness of that digression is likely — IME/O — to be a source of greater discomfort precisely because there's a sense that digressing puts one in an totally outnumbered minority, especially when the majority is anything but silent and not always moral. In the west, Christianity as a cultural expectation is incredibly vast and pervasive.
Even those who fill all the prerequisites may still get, "wait, you're Jewish?" from a bystander-visitor who finds a mezuzah by the front door: it's not a bizarre shock, it's a type of cultural betrayal. People get defensive because their own surprise reveals their own (incorrect) assumptions. That the average joe must be xtian is taken for granted more than any other element in the diagram.
Again, this is a cultural thing; to be Christian in some societies is not quite as paramount as in other societies, but in the West, generally, the norm-presumption is of Christianity. It's a minor deviation (but deviation all the same) to be from a non-majority xtian sect (Jehovah's Witness, Mormon, xtian Scientist) or a non-xtian Abrahamic religion (Moslem, Jewish); it's a few more steps for religions with growing familiarity/play in the culture like Buddhism, Wicca, or Hinduism, and the greatest deviation of all, IME/O, is to lack any religion at all. Those who do are feared and hated, above and beyond, what any believer, of any type, experience.
However, at this depth, a digressive belief (or non-belief) is one that, like sexuality, can potentially be hidden, if the person is willing to make the effort. (This includes diversionary tactics, where one 'just never discusses' one's partner or what one does on Sunday mornings, both of which are age-old ways of keeping a closet intact without precisely lying about it... so much as just not answering.)
The final quality is autochthonous, which means "formed or originating in the place where found". I tossed out using 'indigenous', because it has very specific political connotations that don't work in this context; I also tossed out 'native' for the same reason, because it may have broader uses but it remains ambiguous. Lacking any better terms, you get a SAT word. It runs parallel to Western/ized, but operates at a deeper level. You can meet a guy who wears jeans, drinks beer, hangs out with the guys and likes action movies, has a girlfriend, doesn't cry except when his father dies, and attends church every week — and as far as any bystander can see from appearance and behavior, the guy is just another red-blooded all-around decent American Man... but if he's not autochthonous, there may be a quiet but important digression buried in him that, to him, exists to set him apart — in his view of himself — from truly matching that PV-definition all the way down the line.
Maybe his grandmother was an Italian immigrant and lived with him as a child, and he grew up in a household that spoke both English and Italian. Maybe he grew up overseas, and his earliest cultural memories are ones that don't align — to small or great measure — with the cultural details taken for granted in the western world. Maybe he grew up under the shadow of apartheid, and is acutely aware of skin-based discrimination, even as he knows he benefits as a white man.
The real point here is that you can find non-autochthonous traits in every single person: because there really isn't a true template for this mythical white, male, western adult who's a heterosexual church-going fellow. That guy doesn't really exist, and it diminishes us to assume that "generic white male adult" satisfies as a standard. However, the state of being autochthonous exists way down at the innermost level, because it's something easily cloaked or easily dismissed if all the other elements are checked off the list — but it's still something that defines our existence per "who belongs here".
There's the old crack of "we don't like your type 'round here," or, "you're not from around here, are you"? Those questions imply a perception — overt or subvert — on the part of the speaker that s/he is dealing with someone non-autochthonous.
It works in all directions, too, because we all have a sense, at times, that we aren't natives, that we don't belong, that we're strangers in a strange land. I don't think it's just those whose childhoods exposed them to cultures not-the-prevailing. I think it can be, might be, more than just that. It's those who were formed by some belief or act or experience out of line with the prevailing values, and this influence marks them as not entirely, not totally, from-around-here. The born-again xtian raised by atheists; the black woman whose adoptive parents are white; the man who knew from early childhood that on the inside, he's female; the young woman whose mother committed suicide. Any and every experience that shows us in startling clarity an aspect of our culture of which we stand apart is an aspect that defines us as non-autochthonous.
None of us are from around here, not perfectly, not exactly, and we may never speak of it, for a variety of reasons — ashamed of it, uncomfortable about it, or quite comfortable and not seeing how it's anyone's business — but deep down, not a single one of us defines ourselves as a perfect match to that prevailing template.
Not. A. Single. One.
I'll finish up in a post late tonight or tomorrow morning, but first I need to get off my unmotivated duff and build a lampshade. Yes, really, and no, alcohol will not be involved — that's for lampshade deconstruction.
Meanwhile, if you're new to my ramblings: have some fair warning about my style. As always, you may disagree on an emotional level, but I value a rebuttal most when it notes where my logic went wrong, or identifies unspoken assumptions I'd let past. If you question those assumptions and draw a different conclusion, I am especially welcoming, but if you're only interested in getting on my case because you doesn't like this post's conclusion, I can be abruptly dismissive. Just so you know.
First, we'll need to accept that every exception has its rule; naming exceptions is a fast track to derailment via distractions. It's the overall trends I'm trying to grasp, and that means making some broad generalizations at points. Unless I wanted to turn this into a major dissertation (and surprise, I don't), then trying to absorb the basic trends is about the limit. We can get into specifics in comments-discussions. If it seems like I'm painting with a pretty big brush, well, at times I suspect I'll have to be if I don't want to be at this all night.
A week or so ago, I noodled around about orientalist fiction, riffing off (and on) "orientalizing": a prevalent or predominant culture's Other-ing of a subordinate culture. Yes, usually this is just called the 'dominant' culture, but 'dominant' is such an accepted term that it's hard to keep a question in our heads as to whether it's the right term. So instead let's say a 'norm' consists of the Prevalent or Prevailing Values, PV for short: it's the 'norm', the 'standard', of this western world against which all else is measured: male, white, western/anglo-european, cis-sex, cis-gender, heterosexual, christian.
That combination of adjectives may not be a universal truth on this entire planet (because it's far far beyond my scope or knowledge to get into the sticky-wicket clash of privileged westerners in an Asian setting), but it is the prevailing 'norm' by which anything else is a deviation of one or more degrees. While 'prevalent' has connotations of being (or is assumed to be) the most wide-spread, 'prevailing' also implies 'coming out on top' with its attendant implications of 'over something else'.
Also, in general terms we'd say the western world is the prevailing culture, except that a) culture is not monolithic (and it can get fuzzy if we try to treat it as so), and that b) the use of V for 'values' may help to underline the fact that what's being transmitted is an understanding/expectation of what's valuable — that is, "that which moves farther away from the prevailing values is by definition less valuable."
For those of you unfamiliar, 'cis' is a prefix that generally means "on the same side [as]" or "on this side [of]". A cis-sex person is someone whose sex (physical sexual identification, that is, how many legs the person's got) is the same as what they were born with; eg, a post-operative transsexual would not be cissexual. Another way of putting it is that cissexuals are "people ... who have only ever experienced their subconscious and physical sexes as being aligned" (Julia Serano).
More frequently you'll see cisgender used to mean cissexual as well, but I differentiate the two myself (perhaps as a result of too much exposure to identity politics philosophy). Sex is the physical state of being, while gender is a culturally-imposed set of behaviors and expectations (and often roles) that are applied based on one's sex. One's sex is not 'cultural'; the average woman in Indo-china is born with all the same body parts as a woman born in South America.
In contrast, the experience of gender —- roles, behaviors, expectations, allowances, and restrictions — is not universal, not at all. A woman from Japan and a woman from Sweden may have similar body-parts, but the woman from Japan isn't going to balk at the expectation that her job in the office is to serve tea for men's meetings, while a woman in Sweden would laugh you out of the business place at the very notion. The state of being male-gender in one society may mean it's expected to cry over beautiful poetry and be moved by a gorgeous sunset, while the state of being male-gender in another culture may require being ignorant of poetry and thinking sunsets are for girls to sigh over, not manly-men.
Thus, we must remember that to define someone/thing as cisgendered requires a) a context for that gendering, because inculturation** is a massive part of how we define 'gender' and thereby define whether or not we're cis/on-this-side-of that gender, and b) that this gender can operate independent of one's actual physical sex-definition. I could dig deeper, but we'll leave that for another day. In the meantime, just keep in mind that I break the two apart into the physical state and a state of aligning to behavioral/cultural mores.
Note: acculturation is a process in which one learns and adopt the beliefs and behaviors of a different group, while inculturation is the process by which a member learns and internalizes the beliefs and behaviors of one's own group. You run into the former with immigrants adjusting to a new country; you experience the latter as a natural part of growing up and absorbing the culture/society around you.
The opposite (or subset) of PV is DV: Divergent or Deviating Values. I'm using it loosely, here, so it applies to any of a number of instances, above and beyond formal 'cultures'. It can be a single divergence from otherwise matching the PV (eg xtian het males who are PoC) or a formal language'd culture (eg Brazilian vs Anglo-European) or an actual subculture inside the PV-norms (eg gamers or bikers or what-have-you).
In the everyday world, yes, non-norm values are considered inferior or less valuable, but since I do believe that words lend power, I'll go with 'divergent' instead of 'subordinate'. There may be elements in common (such as language, or basic morals, or what-have-you) with the culture-at-large, but there are enough elements not-shared that the sub-group can be considered distinct.
The question Kristin raised (replying to my LLF-fail post) was if there are any groups that fetishize another group, and the answer is undoubtedly yes, but with a major point that I think knocks women writing m/m for women out of the comparison. I write enough already and even I can get tired of retyping so let's just use MM for male/male fiction, that is, stories with romantic plots/sub-plots in which two men have a romance.
I put it that way to make it distinct from gay romance, in which the romantic plot/sub-plot involves two homosexuals — and which, more often than not, is marketed to a gay audience (independent of author gender). MM, on the other hand, is more likely to be marketed to women; it's more likely to have a female author, but can include male authors tailoring their writing to match women-reader expectations. The audiences also crossover; some non-gay readers do read and enjoy gay fiction, just as some gay readers' idea of a good story may dovetail with MM.
Every example I can find of cultural fixation — most often expressed as romanticization — operates on a dynamic of the prevalent values/culture doing it to a subordinate group/culture. The American North, having won, did it to the American South; anglo-based culture, with the upperhand, has been doing it to Native American cultures for several centuries now. And, of course, there's the sexualized version, in which men have been objectifying women — maxed out in the "two lesbians getting it on for the man's benefit" schtick — for a good while, as well. These are all instances of the PV having the power/ability to appropriate, subjugate, and interpret an DV to fit PV preferences or perspectives.
Given that, I cast about for any example of the reverse, and the household
Makes me wonder if there's native-grown Indian fiction that romanticizes and/or smooths the edges off the Raj period of British colonialism, or Vietnamese fiction in which French citizens play the role of foreigner with positive, admirable attributes. I don't know of either, but within English-language literature, the only instances I can think of can be broken into two basic power dynamics:
1. If written from the PV-perspective, the PV is currently dominant over the DV.
2. If written from the DV-perspective, the subordination is historical (no longer existant) fact.
In both cases, the perspective is romanticizing an Other that has no power over the author/group's perspective. I think in pragmatic terms, when a group is being actively subordinated, its popular fiction is just that much less likely to render the PV-perspective as a positive and beneficial thing. If you're suffering under colonialism, for instance, you're less likely to consider stories who posit "great white man saves ignorant savages from themselves" as popcorn-worthy entertainment.
The other important detail about this romanticization dynamic is that it does not turn its eye inward. In the discussion after that earlier post,
habibti commented that this dynamic "tells you so much more about the side doing the mythologizing than the mythologized." This is undoubtedly true, but the distinction here is that the by-product of self-revelation is not intentional. When PV-authors use the Magical Negro, the white-author is more often than not shocked by any scrutiny turned back on the author, seeing itself as invisible (and that in turn is a by-product of being the 'default' or 'prevalent' point-of-view, that one can almost 'disappear' in the lens of a story). I've only been able to come up with a single genre (outside of satire) in which a dominant group purposefully views any kind of subordinate group through an intentional lens of its own perspective: the childhood memoir, from To Kill a Mockingbird to A River Runs Through It to Runs with Scissors. You've probably seen reviews that criticize the adult-written-child-perspective story as having a protagonist who "doesn't think or talk like a child" or "is aware of far more than average child" and so on.
The conceit of that genre is to return to the views of childhood, but with an adult's intelligence behind the gaze. Whether fiction or loosely-based fiction or total nonfiction, the story never forgets that the narrator, and the reader, are adults; some of the genre may even remind you mid-story. "I didn't know it then, but only years later did I understand" and so on. This is not YA fiction nor children's fiction; it is fiction about being a child but written by and for adults.
You could say it's a dominant paradigm (adulthood) casting its interpretation on a subordinate paradigm (childhood), but I think it's more accurate to say it's the author casting his/her own gaze upon a kind of golem created from the author's perspective. In other words, there is not -- and yet is -- an Other. The fetishization is in quasi-othering one's self/perspective to the degree of treating it as a distinct, romanticized Other, and the story pivots on the reader's ability to relate to the author's maneuver in seeing what's revealed in the self via this quasi-Other.
ETA: see vcmw's comment, below for an expert's take on childhood-memoirs and the dynamics, saying it better than I have here (even revised!).
In contrast, MM balances between two different divergent groups: gay men and women authors. It's not uncommon to read gay men lambasting MM for its retro gender roles superimposed over man-to-man romantic interactions, or for containing characters more caricature than real; the complaint is nearly always summed up, implicitly or explicitly, as a protest against (presumably straight) women co-opting the gay man's experiences, if not outright charging that women who write m/m are exerting cultural privilege. The only adult-child complaints similar that I can think of are the mumbled complaints from adolescents who don't think "adults get it," a la Holden, after reading/seeing a dissatisfying film or book.
It's a particularly sticky wicket, really, and not a direct analogue. First is the question of whether women authors can be seen as Othering themselves as they adopt/take-on the male parts in the story. More to the privilege issue, though, is that both parties (gay men, or female authors) lack that automatic top-of-the-heap PV power. You can't exert privilege you don't have.
Can you?
A side note. I think I should get this out of the way, just to make clear: every single one of us has a culture. Let there be no one here who thinks to claim that there "is no white culture".
Even if you are raised a white, xtian, American, football-loving, heterosexual, movie-watching, college-going, middle class kid, you still have a culture. There is no freaking such thing as "well, we don't have a culture, not like ____". That's bullshit. You can turn on any movie or television show, crack open any of a vast plethora of fiction and nonfiction, and see your culture reflected back at you. This overwhelming prevalence of your cultural mores and means does not make your culture non-existent nor invisible; it makes your culture the freaking default.
It's no surprise I find the "no-white-culture" attitude incredibly annoying; the act of taking a default for granted, unquestioned, is a huge part of what deconstructionism attempts to undo and I've never seen reason to stop at the book jacket; I try to apply it to everything, best I can. But also reminds me of a t-shirt I used to have that said, Dog Logic, and underneath that: "All cats have four legs; I have four legs; therefore I am a cat."
The argument's obviously a fallacy, and humorously so (really, that's Beagle Logic if I've ever seen it) but the lesson works true regardless of argument content: if you let assumptions lie unquestioned, any conclusion will be equally faulty.
I think a lot of folks assume (hah) that there is 'no white culture' because it's become such white noise (pun not actually intended) compared to the pops and hisses of divergent cultures. White culture is very much a vibrant and complex place, as much as any other culture, but because white people so damn inculturated, being white means never seeing this culture from the outside.
This is one reason I'd be a strong proponent of making every fricking American high school grad do a mandatory two-year stint in the Peace Corp — or similar, since the Peace Corps has a college-degree requirement. There is no better way to learn your own language, or your own culture — or to realize your innate cultural assumptions — than to be kicked in the teeth with the experience of acculturating to someone else's way of life.
Let's talk about intersectionality. I came across this handy glossary for a course in Cultural Safety provided by the University of Victoria's Continuing Studies program.
The intersection of ethnicity, race, class, gender, age, ability, sexual/affectional orientation, physical size, etc., in the lived experience of individuals, which is influenced by the simultaneity in time and/or place of these factors. In other words, it is "people's exposure to the multiple, simultaneous and interactive effects of different types of social organization or oppression in which they are located" — a person's social location. (Source: Joan Gillie, 2004; quote T. Rennie Warburton, 7 October 2002).
... Carol McDonald referred to intersectionality as the "distance from centre" (centre being the place of privilege), while Colleen Varcoe has referred to it as "multiple difference" that can intensify experiences of discrimination.
That got me thinking, and you in the back who's muttering everything gets you thinking, I HEARD THAT. (Also, sadly, it's true. But anyway.)
We don't really view the various divergences from center as equal — in terms of how they impact our reactions — because, quite simply, we can't always see the divergence right off the bat. Our first impressions are formed by what we can see, physically, captured in a still-life moment like a mental snapshot. That's the exterior, and it's why one's skin tone, sex, and dress are such massive obstacles, if one is divergent from the norm. After that, mannerisms, speech, attitudes and so on become apparent, and beyond that are the innermost/private/interior aspects that, if revealed, would demonstrate yet another layer of divergence.
Naturally, this calls for a picture, or we'll be here all day with me trying to explain this to make sure there's no misunderstandings.
ETA: this is far from comprehensive, just so we're clear. What's here is here because either a) it connects to a later point I'll be making or b) it's a simpler/flatter concept and thus easier to qualify or quantify. Thus, as always, YMMV, and if I were a real socio/anthropologist, this would probably look a lot different. And have more footnotes.
Think of meeting someone as that first snapshot. The two details that are going to be immediately obvious are whether the person falls into the PV-status of being White and Male, and is an Adult. I included 'adult' after considering the section above, that is, an adult writer speaking of a child's experiences are a type of PV-to-DV paradigm. In practical matters, as well, if we have two people who are PV-matching in all ways except one is an adult and one is a child, the adult will have privilege. (Yes, this does raise questions of whether a white male child has more or less privilege than a non-white male adult, or a white non-male adult, but I leave that for another time.)
I also set 'Male' above 'white' because while the majority of cultures on this planet do seem to have adopted the notion that 'paler = better', it's not always true — but the vast majority of cultures have held, even prior to Western-influence, that 'male = better'. There are exceptions to every rule, of course, but in general it seems pretty safe to say that wherever you go, you're going to have more privilege as a man than as a woman, when everything else is equal.
The term 'Western/ized' falls on the boundary, because sometimes you can determine this from the silent image — the person's dress or hairstyle, for instance — but there are other aspects of being Western/ized that only come through in speech and mannerisms, such as having a strong accent that reveals the person to be a non-native English speaker. I say 'Western/ized' because not everyone who is Western (which in the norm is really North-European, which is also partially covered by being White) is truly 'western'; one can be raised in a foreign country and undergo acculturation to match a Western precept — essentially self-westernizing.
But we can't underestimate the importance of behavior as it intersects with appearance. An absolutely succinct and wonderfully perceptive assessment from Rich Benjamin, in his book, Searching for Whitopia:
The problem is, race never comes "by itself." It comes with a voice, an appearance, a social manner, a profession, a marital status, a family background, a financial portfolio, and on. A "blemish" in any such category can then magnify a minority's skin color, transforming his race from innocuous to ominous. This neighborhood's liberal self-image notwithstanding, racial minorities are sized up by how closely we assimilate to the dominant white ethos; those whose speech, dress, or demeanor don't conform to its discriminating taste are subject to negative assumptions.
Masculine is something we associate with sex, true, but the behaviors we (speaking of the Western audience, here) expect aren't automatically obvious in a still image. A man who looks like the Marlboro Cowboy — we can say white, male, and western (literally!), but if he breaks into tears when we stub our toe... well, that's not quite what Western culture identifies as 'masculine'. To get a sense of whether someone fits the gender-norm, we have to see the person in context and in action. That requires a bit more than just a glance at a photograph.
I put heterosexual at the border between the two, rather than christian, for two reasons. The first is that closets do exist, and those closets have been successful means of hiding/coping for men and women for pretty much the entirety of our species. If someone weren't able to cloak or hide one's sexuality, we wouldn't be debating whether or not Alexander the Great was 'really' homosexual; we'd freaking know already. That closeting-mask is done via careful application of cultural gender roles, which is why 'masculine' sits above 'heterosexual': because if someone's determined to fake out their sexuality, you might be able to tell if you're paying very close attention to the person's behavior or terms or language, but you still might not be entirely certain unless and until the person brings the innermost/private up in conversation and tells you one way or another.
After all — especially in the public spheres of work, school, or among casual acquaintances — even those non-heterosexual people who are out among a small circle of friends may live and work and learn just fine without ever letting on to a wider sphere of any digression from the norm. The person just doesn't bring it up, gets really good at evasion or prevarication, and as long as the preceding elements — skin color, sex, gender, culture — are satisfied as matching the PV, most bystanders would simply assume that the remaining issues are equally matches for the norm. That's how you end up with people just "assuming" that someone is heterosexual: because everything else that can be seen, shy of looking into the person's head or heart, matches the norms, so we don't expect a digression now that we've gotten this far.
The farther you go down/into, the easier it is for a person to mask any digression, many times because it's not a topic that necessarily comes up in random conversation (or, if it does, is easy enough to equivocate or in some way). The deeper you get, though, the more likely the person's awareness of that digression is likely — IME/O — to be a source of greater discomfort precisely because there's a sense that digressing puts one in an totally outnumbered minority, especially when the majority is anything but silent and not always moral. In the west, Christianity as a cultural expectation is incredibly vast and pervasive.
Even those who fill all the prerequisites may still get, "wait, you're Jewish?" from a bystander-visitor who finds a mezuzah by the front door: it's not a bizarre shock, it's a type of cultural betrayal. People get defensive because their own surprise reveals their own (incorrect) assumptions. That the average joe must be xtian is taken for granted more than any other element in the diagram.
Again, this is a cultural thing; to be Christian in some societies is not quite as paramount as in other societies, but in the West, generally, the norm-presumption is of Christianity. It's a minor deviation (but deviation all the same) to be from a non-majority xtian sect (Jehovah's Witness, Mormon, xtian Scientist) or a non-xtian Abrahamic religion (Moslem, Jewish); it's a few more steps for religions with growing familiarity/play in the culture like Buddhism, Wicca, or Hinduism, and the greatest deviation of all, IME/O, is to lack any religion at all. Those who do are feared and hated, above and beyond, what any believer, of any type, experience.
However, at this depth, a digressive belief (or non-belief) is one that, like sexuality, can potentially be hidden, if the person is willing to make the effort. (This includes diversionary tactics, where one 'just never discusses' one's partner or what one does on Sunday mornings, both of which are age-old ways of keeping a closet intact without precisely lying about it... so much as just not answering.)
The final quality is autochthonous, which means "formed or originating in the place where found". I tossed out using 'indigenous', because it has very specific political connotations that don't work in this context; I also tossed out 'native' for the same reason, because it may have broader uses but it remains ambiguous. Lacking any better terms, you get a SAT word. It runs parallel to Western/ized, but operates at a deeper level. You can meet a guy who wears jeans, drinks beer, hangs out with the guys and likes action movies, has a girlfriend, doesn't cry except when his father dies, and attends church every week — and as far as any bystander can see from appearance and behavior, the guy is just another red-blooded all-around decent American Man... but if he's not autochthonous, there may be a quiet but important digression buried in him that, to him, exists to set him apart — in his view of himself — from truly matching that PV-definition all the way down the line.
Maybe his grandmother was an Italian immigrant and lived with him as a child, and he grew up in a household that spoke both English and Italian. Maybe he grew up overseas, and his earliest cultural memories are ones that don't align — to small or great measure — with the cultural details taken for granted in the western world. Maybe he grew up under the shadow of apartheid, and is acutely aware of skin-based discrimination, even as he knows he benefits as a white man.
The real point here is that you can find non-autochthonous traits in every single person: because there really isn't a true template for this mythical white, male, western adult who's a heterosexual church-going fellow. That guy doesn't really exist, and it diminishes us to assume that "generic white male adult" satisfies as a standard. However, the state of being autochthonous exists way down at the innermost level, because it's something easily cloaked or easily dismissed if all the other elements are checked off the list — but it's still something that defines our existence per "who belongs here".
There's the old crack of "we don't like your type 'round here," or, "you're not from around here, are you"? Those questions imply a perception — overt or subvert — on the part of the speaker that s/he is dealing with someone non-autochthonous.
It works in all directions, too, because we all have a sense, at times, that we aren't natives, that we don't belong, that we're strangers in a strange land. I don't think it's just those whose childhoods exposed them to cultures not-the-prevailing. I think it can be, might be, more than just that. It's those who were formed by some belief or act or experience out of line with the prevailing values, and this influence marks them as not entirely, not totally, from-around-here. The born-again xtian raised by atheists; the black woman whose adoptive parents are white; the man who knew from early childhood that on the inside, he's female; the young woman whose mother committed suicide. Any and every experience that shows us in startling clarity an aspect of our culture of which we stand apart is an aspect that defines us as non-autochthonous.
None of us are from around here, not perfectly, not exactly, and we may never speak of it, for a variety of reasons — ashamed of it, uncomfortable about it, or quite comfortable and not seeing how it's anyone's business — but deep down, not a single one of us defines ourselves as a perfect match to that prevailing template.
Not. A. Single. One.
I'll finish up in a post late tonight or tomorrow morning, but first I need to get off my unmotivated duff and build a lampshade. Yes, really, and no, alcohol will not be involved — that's for lampshade deconstruction.
Meanwhile, if you're new to my ramblings: have some fair warning about my style. As always, you may disagree on an emotional level, but I value a rebuttal most when it notes where my logic went wrong, or identifies unspoken assumptions I'd let past. If you question those assumptions and draw a different conclusion, I am especially welcoming, but if you're only interested in getting on my case because you doesn't like this post's conclusion, I can be abruptly dismissive. Just so you know.
no subject
Date: 12 Dec 2009 05:04 am (UTC)That's true in the US, it is not true everywhere in the West. And honestly, even in the US, I think it's a bit more contextual than that ("above and beyond any believers"? that's hyperbolic)
Along with lack of White-ness and Male-ness, some physical disabilities are also noted right away (some are not which causes other problems).
You don't mention 'class' at all, which may be a lack, although it is sort of addressed through the Westernsized aspect, in terms of ways of dressing, talking etc. of course. But there are other aspects of classes that don't perfectly run into that, I think, especially outside of the West.
The only adult-child complaints similar that I can think of
I think there are a bit more than that, although it's variable in time and it comes much more teenagers and young adults than children, of course, although children suffer more directly (but seldom have the means to express it or anyone willing to listen). There's a reason there's some specifically generational counter culture movements in History, although these day they get co opted very easily in order to be sold back emptied of all meaning.
In any case, brilliant essay.
no subject
Date: 12 Dec 2009 05:22 am (UTC)Ya, being able-bodied should be on there, probably above 'adult'. I didn't mention class specifically because it's such a wide thing, and has nuances in nearly every aspect. I mean, it's hiding in the way you dress (the outermost level), and in your table manners (behavior) and possibly also in your perceptions of religion and possibly even the religion you practice. It's going to show up in how you treat other people, whether they're female or disabled or elderly; it's going to show up in the language you use and the amount of education you have. It's such a freaking multi-headed beast that I just don't have enough words in a single essay to get into that mess o' greens -- and the object wasn't really to explore every possible aspect of every possible type of discrimination. The object really was to get a general idea of how our reactions to others differs from where we, personally, would put ourselves -- that is, that a black man would say, "the issue is that I'm black," while a white woman might respond, "oh, but you're still a man" -- so I was fiddling around with some kind of mental diagram that might explain how both could be right and yet still miss each other completely.
it's variable in time and it comes much more teenagers and young adults
...which would be why I categorized those complaining as adolescents -- they're more likely to (possibly) be exposed to adult-oriented fiction about kids, old enough to grasp the majority of the story while still young enough to miss the value that such fiction holds for adults. Frex, I don't think we should have seventh-graders reading Huckleberry Finn -- it's a book that requires a bit more maturity to really grasp its complexities, even if it is about a young boy. Seems to me 10th grade (US) is getting closer to a decent age for starting to see the nuances ... then again, most US classes who read Catcher in the Rye do so at about the same age as Holden Caulfield is in the book, IIRC, and that book, methinks, should be tossed summarily. Though that could just be me, because I couldn't get past the third page before throwing that book against the wall, and ended up talking the teacher into letting me read The Red and the Black instead. Among other things.
Although perhaps the best example is Lord of the Flies -- there's a book not really suited for reading by the very age group it purports to represent. Hooo, boy, kids that age don't need any literary encouragement towards being any more beastly.
no subject
Date: 12 Dec 2009 04:05 pm (UTC)Errr? So what?
. However, in the West, there remains a slight distrust of stated non-believers all the way up to outright distrust of non-believers in the US itself.
I wasn't denying the existence of distrust against Atheists in many places of the West, I'm denying the fact it is greater than the prejudices against people of AV religions like Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, various kinds of Paganism & Animism face.
I'm a French Jews, I have many friends who are Atheist (of a white ancestors were Christian background). Not only is there no way they suffer as much grip for their atheism as I do for my Judaism, but they have used their privilege against him, feeling entitled to demand answers of me or question & mock the way I practice Judaism (or have made a lot of prejudiced comments about religions in general which only showed their ignorance and privilege.)
That's about Judaism, one of the most relatively "accepted" religion for Christianity; now think how it can be Muslims (about which they are a lot of negative stereotyping) or some non European pagan religions?
Obviously, it parallels a lot with Autochtonous and Race dynamics, so it can't really be isolated; but from the point of view of exotification possible in fiction, I think other religions than Christianity are a very frequently targets in a way Atheist simply don't suffer. Think of the way Voodoo is treated in fiction, for only one example!
...which would be why I categorized those complaining as adolescents -
Yes, I was agreeing with that part, except thinking of larger movements, except I had totally forgotten about the context of orientalist fiction... what can I say, I commented at 6am.
no subject
Date: 12 Dec 2009 05:38 pm (UTC)As always, your mileage may vary, but if it does, it's not my responsibility to affirm anyone's suffering nor is it within this post's (or any post's) scope to address every possible permutation and exception. If at times I am so generous, it's probably not to any reply that begins with an offhand and outright dismissal. Tends to get taken rather the wrong way, y'know.
Lastly, it strikes me as ironic in a vaguely amusing way to have this exchange, considering I'm of Huguenot heritage.
no subject
Date: 13 Dec 2009 05:22 pm (UTC)