April 26, 2006

"A lot of filing, giving things names"

You've likely seen it already, but Making Light set off another round of the neverending fanfic debate yesterday, with this heretical apologia:

Good fiction gets under our skin. It can change the way we see the world. But whatever its effect, it’s a significant experience. It would be a bizarre thing—unnatural, even—for writers to not engage with that experience. ... In a purely literary sense, fanfic doesn’t exist. There is only fiction. Fanfic is a legal category created by the modern system of trademarks and copyrights. Putting that label on a work of fiction says nothing about its quality, its creativity, or the intent of the writer who created it.


Regrettably, if predictably, lots of people showed up to make a lot of generally unconvincing arguments that no, actually, fanfic is just Bad, because it's lazy, or it's creatively bankrupt, or it's just creepy, or it detracts from original works in some way that no one's really able to define; all of which mostly serves to show that people with a squick-reaction to something process their experiences very selectively, including debate on the subject of the squick in question.

I get a bit prickly about this sort of thing, I think in part because a lot of the reactions I see sound distressingly like the way folks who squick-react to homosexuality talk about it, even in the face of long and patient and thoughtfully-presented argument. (Indeed, the more I think about it, the more the parallels are startling: No matter how much you reasonably point out that, look, this is a phenomenon that's been around for as long as we've had history, at least, and it's actually incredibly diverse in its manifestations, has often been actually sanctified, and, really, the closer you look at things, the more you can see it come up in all kinds of notable contexts - there will always be someone who can't stop talking about omg the indecency, and the immaturity, and how dangerous it would be to break down those walls, and if we legitimize it it'll just erode the Real Thing, and please won't someone think of the children? and look, it's just icky, okay? and besides, it was different for the Greeks.) One commenter a ways down the thread objected to the use of the word "provincial" to characterize anti-fanfic attitudes, that that word implies small-mindedness - to which I thought, Yes, it absolutely does, and rightly so. It's a kind of thinking that says This Sort of Thing is Good, but This Sort of Thing is Bad in very broad terms, and comes up with myopic reasons to justify it; I don't like that philosophy aimed at people, and I don't much like it aimed at Art either.

What I find particularly interesting, though, is that almost none of the objectors have really engaged with the examples that have been brought up that, if not for issues of copyright, all kinds of works of acclaimed and established literature - from the Iliad to King Lear to Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead to Grendel to Wicked - would unquestionably be categorized as "fanfic" by modern standards. The few reactions have generally been to assert or imply that those don't count, but without giving a convincing argument for why they don't. The only reasons given seem to me to be very weak, and ignore or sidestep the opening thesis entirely.

All of which has made me think that maybe there's some other phenomenon at work here. I've been sitting for a while on a half-assed and crackpot theory that one of the psychological axes that people show up on is whether they're wired to be connectors or categorizers. A connector instinctively draws parallels and sees the common qualities of things; a categorizer instinctively makes distinctions and understands how things may be separated. Obviously, they're both important ways of engaging the world (note how I'm doing both in this post!), and they yield up different ways of understanding and processing knowledge. But I think that realizing that many people are inclined strongly one way or the other might serve to illuminate why it can be so difficult to come to agreement on certain things.

I don't really want to privelege one over the other, despite being a connector myself (and I married a diehard categorizer, so there you go), but I do wonder if some of the brouhaha over in the fanfic discussion has its roots in a hardcore categorizer mindset that has a hard time seeing boundaries blur and needs the world to be tidier and better-organized than it actually is. I know there are people who get very upset with ambiguities and edge-cases, even in things like genre classifications (and especially in things like sexuality). I wonder if addressing this idea directly would lead to any interesting social breakthroughs; we do live in a culture that is, in many ways, in love with categorization, and resistant to the notion that "they're more what you'd call guidelines."

Has anyone heard of serious thought given to this or a similar idea? I'm certainly not up on my psychological science, so I don't know if this has all been said better long since. Though it is, of course, already on its way to being an old joke: "There are two kinds of people in the world - those who divide everything into categories, and those who don't."

(Cross-posted on the LJ, which I'm reviving after long silence.)

April 23, 2006

Someday I'll Grow Up to be a Beautiful Girl

I missed out on Blog Against Heteronormativity Day Saturday, more's the pity; but a post on my new favorite feminist blog says everything I'd have wanted to anyway:

But I do think that until such time as it's genuinely not seen as shameful to be "girlie," we're not gonna make much more progress. Not in feminism, not in the gay rights movement, not on a number of fronts, in fact, that on the surface might seem to have little to do with gender.

Because the dirty little secret, which has become a bit more open these past few years, perhaps, is that at the end of the day, "girlie man" isn't just an insult to actual girlies (that is, people with girl bits), or implicitly homophobic, or transphobic, although it's certainly those things as well. It is a very effective club to keep men--ALL men--in line. Just how much violence is committed in the name of proving one's non-sissyhood? How much wasted energy and misdirected passion? I am thinking: quite a lot.


She also gives a well-deserved tip of the hat to Joss Whedon, girlie-man par excellence. RTWT.

April 22, 2006

A Bottomless Cup

For the benefit of anyone who might be dropping by here after recently acquiring one of my CDs, I declare this Open Thread I.

Welcome! Please feel free to leave a comment, introduce yourself, and join in the general conversation here. The same goes for anyone who's been lurking and just needs an excuse.

As for youse regulars: if you haven't already, check out our new baby.

April 20, 2006

Alternate Tunic

Submitted to the wisdom of the collected readership: Would I be guilty of presumptuous cultural misappropriation if I started wearing a kurta? Because, damn, I'm really starting to want one.

April 13, 2006

Keep Them Mowing Blades Sharp

Posted without comment: two examples of position descriptions from a government website I came across this morning while researching labor categories:

Functional Responsibility: Follows a number of specific procedures in completing several repetitive clerical steps performed in a prescribed or slightly varied sequence

and

Functional Responsibility: Uses some subject matter knowledge and judgment to complete assignments consisting of numerous steps that vary in nature and sequence

Blink. Blink. *facepalm*

April 04, 2006

Warning: You must be this cool to participate in this conversation

Q: Why can't you listen to prog today?

A: Because it's 4/4.

- Feel free, obviously, to replace "cool" with "irredeemably dorky," as per your own preferences.

(Hi, everyone! I sure had a fun March. More on that soon. Meanwhile, if you haven't already, have an eyeful of this.)