meme_of_bilitis | I have doubts that [a femslash meme] would be very long-lived

FFA had some pretty nice discussions of Sense8 as it was airing, IIRC, and then after the series finale recently there was at least one huge wanky discussion that felt really off. Lots of talk about how people felt EXPECTED to like it and if they didn't they would get hassled and they would DAMN WELL hate it if they wanted to and it shouldn't say anything about their whatever. Which, okay, I get not wanting to be pushed into things, but the creators apparently said something like, as the clusters got closer together everyone would pretty much be pan, and people went off on that. I know FFA is typically all about the wank, but it just felt....ugly.

I haven't even watched most of S2 yet, but the Wachowski sisters definitely did get up their own asses a bit about how pansexual orgies were The Answer. I felt all kinds of weird about all the pressuring Kala to have sex she didn't feel comfortable with (and, in particular, the assumption that she, as a newlywed wife, has to put out with the PIV like right now, rather than that, as a shy virgin, she might feel better exploring makeouts and groping and moving into heavy petting to get comfortable enough with her and her partner's body to see where things go? And that PIV isn't The Only Sex anyway, and if she wants to have sex with her husband but not PIV, that's her fucking prerogative?) and the incredible weirdness when Lito faced homophobia in Mexico and the support he got came in the form of, "Why can't these homophobic idiots see that two men together is mondo hot? Like why can't they just fap to it?" Or the constant pressuring of characters in same-gender relationships to Try The Het Too.

I mean, I didn't ragequit or anything, I mostly just fell off it because the pace was slow and my attention span is short these days, but I liked a lot of things about the show, I loved how Aggressively Queer it was, I loved the Nominita, and the scifi telepathy conspiracy plot was good too! I also really liked the general concept of being able to help friends who are far away by having special skills, including social skills, like that really felt like a story for us isolated and alienated 21st century humans trying to show love to our internet friends. I don't mind sexuality/orientation bleedover as part of the cluster as a concept, it actually kind of makes sense, when you're sharing so much that it would all blend to pan. (For that matter, would it muddle their gender identities? How do the Wachowski sisters feel about that--about a trans woman getting confusing male identity crap that isn't hers through the cluster connection? I mean maybe that touches on the kind of "it makes plot sense but you get why people feel uncomfortable" I'm getting at here.) Maybe they would all end up pansexual and nonbinary, and I like the idea of exploring the cluster as both beautiful in its connection and terrifying in its assimilation of identity. What it means to be human--are we most human in our commonalities, or our differences?

I remember there was some tumblr wank about Lana Wachowski being anti-black racist, and there are some comments of hers, while not like, damningly racist, you can kind of see how you might want to take her aside and explain why people would be sensitive to that remark. A friend of mine said she's basically "mom racist," which apologies to all of you with non-racist moms, but I immediately got what she meant. She strikes me as someone who's basically a good person and means well, but sometimes gets in weird echo chambers or is just a bit out of touch on something, and as a result you get sex-mandatory sex positivity (if you're uncomfortable you're a conservative stick in the mud, get woke and naked now!), and weirdly gay/lesbian exclusive pansexuality-is-the-enlightened-orientation polyvangelism. It's very old-fashioned in a way, this is 1960s optimism that missed a few pertinent points about human diversity and historical context.

So in summary, yeah I do think the Wachowskis are pushy and cringey with the The Future is Pansexual agenda, and yet, I still kind of like them? I think a lot of what they do manages to be both entertaining and groundbreaking in spite of that, and future generations will see them as "a product of their time." I hope they learn and grow even more, but even if they don't I'll probably keep watching their stuff.

I do wish we could be like, "Yeah, the Wachowski Sisters are kinda Like That with this title, and it may not be for you if it's a dealbreaker," without getting into the frothing rage like Lana Wachowski personally backed over my dog in her Mercedes Benz.

Maybe they would all end up pansexual and nonbinary, and I like the idea of exploring the cluster as both beautiful in its connection and terrifying in its assimilation of identity. What it means to be human--are we most human in our commonalities, or our differences?

Anon below you: yeah, that was what I was trying to get at with the snfal idea of gestalt. I think it's fairly common, or at least has been done a bunch of times, in book SF, but media SF not so much.

A friend of mine said she's basically "mom racist," which apologies to all of you with non-racist moms, but I immediately got what she meant.

I really winced at that. That's pretty misogynist.

The Wachowskis were born in 65 and 67 apparently, so they're a little late for the sixties thing. They debuted with Bound in 1996 and got world-famous with Matrix in 1999. They're more right at the start of Gen Ex.

ayrt

If it had been about a man, we would have said "Dad racist." I guess the point was more to evoke the frustration many of us have had with well-meaning but kind of clueless parents, rather than malice. My point there was more along the lines of, "her heart is in the right place but sometimes she does not come across in a good way." It would be the same if a man had done the same things. Sorry if that in itself came off as offensive! There are definitely some generational shifts in what's talked about/how certain wording comes off. One of the examples was when Lana talked about how in the past, the civil rights movement had to fight for the right to use the bathroom, and now black voters are telling her she can't pee. I think she meant that as a call to solidarity, but it ended up making it sound as though black voters were more responsible for transphobia than other voters. It would have been better to have positioned decent people as opposed to both these injustices, instead of implying black people went "fuck you got mine" as soon as racism was "over." Or that they're all cis, for that matter. Some people on my tumblr dash were angry about that, but I more felt that was really unfortunate wording on her part but something I sort of hoped that, in an imaginary scenario where we're pals with Lana Wachowski and can just go ask her what she meant and explain why we hope she didn't mean it like that, it'd be cleared up in five minutes.

And I know they're not that old, I just meant that the ideas themselves were big in that era. People can rediscover older ideas through media from that time or friends who were there, and go, "Wow, this blew my mind!" 30 or 40 years later. To some extent this is a good thing! There's a lot of merit both in understanding history and in the ideas themselves. Sometimes there was a lot of great stuff going on that should have caught on but didn't. But the risk of that is missing how something can be absolutely revolutionary for its time in its challenge of the status quo, but have flaws that fail people within the movement that become apparent over time. "Free love" as an idea was about liberating women from the expectation that their deed of ownership passed from father to husband, and that dalliances with men deserved to be punished with unwanted pregnancy and either forced adoption or forced marriage. You had a whole variety of themes converging: women's ownership of their own bodies, the Pill, the fight for abortion access, interracial marriage, destigmatization of single mothers, the possibility of divorce, and non-standard relationships of all types: swingers, casual hookups, orgies. You had the idea of sex for pleasure and women's bodies not existing for reproduction and love mattering, all of which was meaningful to the nascent gay movement as well. But somewhere in that, all this radical yes and reclaiming pleasure, sometimes it was lost that not everyone wants to have sex all the time, even if it's super radical to do so, and you did have people pressuring others to have sex or be sexual in ways they weren't comfortable with, and told they just had social hangups or brainwashing if they refused. This was something later movements addressed--not that the later movements were perfect either, but I think that response was important! Consent needs the ability to say no, and that no shouldn't be interrogated or wheedled or pressured.

Kind of relatedly, but I have friends who have parents who subscribe to that era's ideology, and sometimes those parents have issues with boundaries, things like telling their (adult, by this time) kids they have hang-ups and body issues if they don't feel like being nude, or not understanding that their kids want some distance between theirs and their parents' sex lives--that there are certain things they don't want to hear about or talk about. These parents aren't otherwise abusive, they just believe there's a political value in being totally open about one's body and one's sexuality, which, there can be, if everyone there is freely consenting to be, and if you don't take a no as "you're brainwashed, so I'll ask you again."

The way Kala's consent was handled in the storyline, and like how Sun basically told her sex is awesome so get over yourself and fuck, instead of listening to the fact that Kala felt uncomfortable and that matters, did make me think of that 1960s sexual liberation, and an era of sf/f in general with the concept, "If everyone just lost their individualism and became this ideal thing, humanity would be Perfect!" But humans aren't like that, we aren't one-size-fits-all. I'm very for sexual free-for-alls, but I get tense when even the tamest "I'm inexperienced and nervous and not sure I want this" is met with "Sex is awesome, deprogram your mind!" And assuming that PIV was obviously the first and most required sex act also felt bizarrely heteronormative on such a non-heteronormative show. If Kala was my nervous virgin bride, I wouldn't assume she's gotta get over herself and learn to be fisted on the first night!

It's pretty fucking sexist to anyone on meme who is a mom, not just to any of us with non-racist moms, but thanks for that vague non-pology and attributing it to "a friend."

Sense8 was one of those Popular On Tumblr shows, and meme has a real bee in its bonnet about Tumblr and that often extends to media that is popular on Tumblr for what meme thinks are the "wrong" reasons, like being into a show for brownie points because of checkboxes.

as the clusters got closer together everyone would pretty much be pan

But isn't that just the sf trope of what a gestalt is? These eight people combining into a whole is literally the point of the show. It's obviously about sexuality, yes, but also identity and empathy. I saw the main idea as an sfnal metaphor about empathy.

nayrt

I think it depends on how you treat it. The possibility of gay people being unhappy that their sexuality is being changed by forces outside their control, for instance.

NA

Yeah, that's how I saw it too--the blending and sharing mentally/emotionally is a huge part of the trope.

On the other hand, they're not the Borg. They can and do *at specific times* share some really intimate experiences with each other & from each other's point of view--languages, physical sensations including biochemical/psychosomatic ones like crying or horniness or PMS, learned skills like gun knowledge or chemistry or hacking, really personal memories. But they are all also individual consciousnesses, and I don't see any indication that they're going to end up losing themselves and becoming one big eight-bodied 32-limbed group mind.

So I think characters of different sexualities in the same cluster will have specific experiences of knowing what it feels like to have another sexuality, but that doesn't mean they're all going to end up pan all the time. (This is based on what I got from the show, not whatever word of god.) So the gay characters will get what it's like to be attracted to the opposite gender and the straight characters will get what it's like to be attracted to their own gender, and the bi/pan characters will have experiences where temporarily they feel not-attracted to one gender or another. I suppose if some of them were ace and some were not, those feelings would be shared as well. (If Riley spends a lot of time in the heads of her lesbian and straight male cluster-mates, does she feel less into men for a while? I wonder.) But at the end of the day they're still themselves. The same way Capheus can't invoke the spirit of Van Damme if Sun is busy doing something else--he's not suddenly a martial arts expert on his own. He just knows what it feels like.

But they're not the Sexuality Borg. The point of a functional cluster I think is to have all those other viewpoints and experiences *available* but not have them take you over like some kind of psychic virus. (Being able to tune into and out of that kind of connection so we don't all have to listen to Kala and Wolfgang banging all the time or whatever is also a trope in sci fi about telepathic connections, too.)

tl;dr Being in someone else's mind to the point where you grok what it's like to be them isn't the same thing as no longer being yourself, or it doesn't have to be. I think that tension is a huge part of the story (though in the two seasons + movie we got, there wasn't time to explore it all), but it's not at all a foregone conclusion that something an individual finds really central to their identity the way sexuality often is (esp for gay people who have had to defend it so strongly) will simply merge into the whole or be overwritten. I'm not even slightly convinced that it would.

(And the sexuality crossover that I noticed most was straight boy Will getting a boner over m/m and being flustered but kind of rolling with it. I actually don't remember any pressure (via the cluster, as opposed to homophobic society generally) on Nomi or Lito to be into het, much less constantly, but I could have missed stuff.)

By "pressure" I mostly just mean like them being present for sex involving someone of another gender/someone of another gender being present for their sex life (including, uh, in person?) and mixed gender kisses of characters in same-gender relationships in the orgy scenes. (Including one of a man sharing with Nomi while she kisses Amanita, which Amanita is bi, but surprise!sharing is still uncomfortable.) On its own--yeah, it's temporary, it's experimentation, it's empathy--I like everything you just said! But the "everyone in the cluster will end up pansexual" thing is word of god, and that makes it sort of uncomfortable? There's a couple of monologues about how Sex is Life, I think, and sex is portrayed extremely positively, which can be euphoric to watch, I admit! But then there's this fridge logic about how no one's really allowed to say no to it and when non-cluster partners are around it's voyeuristic. It works out fine because everyone's okay with it and loves it in the end, at least the stuff they know about!

I was pretty okay with Will's bicuriosity, especially since it's not uncommon for "straight" people to have never questioned their orientation, whereas gay people are pretty much guaranteed to have asked themselves, "could I be bi?" at some point.

But also, honestly, if you don't fuss too much about word of god comments and just take what's there on the screen, better and kinder interpretations are certainly possible.

AYRT

Yeah, I think I'm finding myself pretty thoroughly ignoring word of god on this issue because I do find a much more positive reading going by what's actually on screen. I can do "we all get to experience different aspects of humanity that we normally wouldn't," but "everyone becomes pansexual" seems both wrong as in "inaccurate re: what's shown on screen" and as in "no, what, that has homophobic implications."

Not that you're wrong about some scenes being uncomfortable--a lot of it is YMMV and can wander across the line of unfortunate implications depending on a number of factors. So would definitely not say that someone who's not comfortable with some scenes is wrong or hypersensitive to feel that way. Nor that the show is perfectly enlightened in all regards (I have complicated feelings about the Daniela situation, for example, which mostly boil down to loving her as a character and loving the platonic side of her relationship with Lito/Hernando, but feeling a bit squiffy about the sexual aspects, and I'll stop my slide into m/m discussion here).

With the orgy scenes I always feel like I'm playing catchup when people say who kissed who when, because it all seemed to go by really fast for me in the parts where they were all together or kissing people who weren't their usual partners. I'm like...I would need to rewind and watch that scene over to even notice who kissed Amanita or whatever! But that's probably a me thing. Maybe everyone else does rewatch the orgy scenes, or is better at spotting things that go by fast.

Agree re: bicuriosity, and tbh, if anyone's going to have the edges of their sexuality pushed a little bit I can't say I'm too bothered when it's the straight guy. :P

Anyway I guess I do tend to push back a bit on the "Sense8 makes its gay characters pan" thing because I don't actually think that's what's going on. Though if it were or if someone feels that it did, I'd totally get that being a dealbreaker.

ayrt

Agreed on Daniela, I really liked her a lot, even if there were some scenes I had very mixed feelings about! I've seen a lot of hate for her and I'm just like nope can't relate.

And agreed in general that what was on screen works better than trying to make it fit with the word of god stuff. To be honest I try to interpret it as generously as possible when I watch (because I want to have fun!) but then sometimes I see crit based on stuff like that and I'm like, "you know, I get that too, that's actually right"--but it doesn't make the generous interpretation less right either, Death of the Author and all. I'm not dealbroken with Sense8, I'm just stalled over the pace alternating between really slow slice of life stuff and involved plot that's hard to jump into after a long break. I enjoy it when I watch it, honestly I cried so hard over Riley's backstory in s1 (and I like to be made to cry! It isn't easy!) I just...haven't gotten around to the rest of it yet. But it wasn't over these quibbles, for me personally--though if it's a dealbreaker for someone else, it is what it is and I don't have a problem with it.

In general I like the Wachowskis' work, I loved the first Matrix movie to bits from when I saw it in theaters, wasn't as keen on the second two though I wanted to like them a lot, and loved Jupiter Ascending in spite of the haters. Bound has been on my to-watch list for ages, but I was too young for it to be on my radar when it came out and I just haven't gotten my hands on it and set aside the time. I will probably just skip Speed Racer.

I remember being sad Sense8 was canceled even though I was Part of the Problem in not having watched s2 yet.

DA as the clusters got closer together everyone would pretty much be pan

But isn't that just the sf trope of what a gestalt is?

That... doesn't actually make the idea any less uncomfortable for me as a gay person. And I've gotta say, the amount of times I've encountered "but it's justified because x, y and z!" in response to people saying it's why they're not watching the show is deeply uncomfortable. OK, it doesn't bother you, that's fine and I'm really not judging you; but it bothers me and no amount of "but it's a trope! it's how the clusters work! it's about empathy!" is gonna get me to watch the show.

That said, unless I'm misremembering badly, the clusters making everyone pan thing was only a subthread of the FFA Sense8 wank thread, which was mainly about a sparkly dildo or something? It was a weird wank.

da

Yeah, the sparkly dildo wank was...something. I can't even be arsed to remember exactly what was going on there (it confused me at the time tbh and was ridiculous on the face of it) but it was just weird generally!

Especially since (like the subthread OP said) there had just been some really enthusiastic, fun Sense8 threads on meme. I think it must have just been a different set of people commenting (anon meme, how could you even tell? :P) because it was one of those classic "I made this same comment a week ago and meme loved it, and now meme is jumping down my throat, what the actual fuck?" deals.

Weird.

Yeah, that was....something that sure was a thing, all right. It got so OTT I couldn't tell whether it was trolling or fun trolling or what.

https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/319672.html?thread=1831987896#cmt1831987896

This was the original HUGE wank which is....bad.

https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/319403.html?thread=1830358955#cmt1830358955

na I was looking at flatview and I almost hoped you were talking about the abc family show HUGE having wank, because then at least someone would have been talking about it lmao

another NA

I realize this is completely unrelated to the rest of this thread, but: anon! I love Huge! I was just thinking the other day about breaking out my DVDs for a rewatch. Someone nominated a couple of Huge ships for femslashex, I'm hoping they request them so I can treat.

Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-11 16:24 (UTC) - Expand

Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:05 (UTC) - Expand

Just because a thing happens also doesn't mean it's necessarily suitable to be used as a grand symbol of something great. Trying to celebrate and portray the various forms of sexuality is a worthy cause, but imo picking a used sex toy with bodily fluids on it to symbolise love and unity is in very poor taste. As if it all centers around not love, but sex, and kinky sex toy sex specifically. It makes the carnality and the act of fucking itself the centerpoint, instead of the emotion and the love. In my opinion.

Probable asexy says what?

Not sure where the line on sexuality wank is in the wank containment area, but ^

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 00:48 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 01:33 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 02:15 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 02:29 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 02:35 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 02:45 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:15 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 02:47 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 02:52 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 02:55 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 03:31 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 03:39 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:15 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 03:27 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 03:33 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 03:33 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 03:59 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:17 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:08 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:14 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:25 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:29 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:43 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 03:58 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:32 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:39 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:42 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:43 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:42 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:48 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:51 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:03 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:12 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area - MODS

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 01:38 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area: MODS

tardigradetreasurer - 2018-08-14 02:17 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area: MODS

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:44 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area: MODS

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:45 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area: MODS

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:45 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area: MODS

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:46 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area: MODS

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:46 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area: MODS

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:46 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area: MODS

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:48 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area: MODS

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:49 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area: MODS

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:47 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area: MODS

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:46 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area: MODS

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:48 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area: MODS

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:49 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area: MODS

frogfriend - 2018-08-14 04:51 (UTC) - Expand

i wish it wasn't so taboo to talk about sex these days

it really feels like the pendulum has swung again towards conservative, anti-sex rhetoric and i feel that's unfortunate especially since sex ed hasn't gotten that much better in recent years

i hope we don't have a near future of sexually repressed young adults too terrified of exploring their sexuality to even talk about sex, especially if it's framed as something as "problematic" to talk about

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-13 22:59 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-13 23:56 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:07 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:13 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:20 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:20 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:22 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:22 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:25 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:29 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:31 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:38 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:49 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:31 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:36 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:27 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 04:37 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-13 23:32 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-13 23:35 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-13 23:52 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-13 23:56 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area - MODS

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 01:59 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area - MODS

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 03:57 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 01:23 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 02:23 (UTC) - Expand

(frozen comment) Re: wank containment area

(Anonymous) - 2018-08-14 02:29 (UTC) - Expand

That... doesn't actually make the idea any less uncomfortable for me as a gay person. And I've gotta say, the amount of times I've encountered "but it's justified because x, y and z!" in response to people saying it's why they're not watching the show is deeply uncomfortable.

Argh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that you should be less uncomfortable about it, and definitely not that you should watch the show because other people aren't uncomfortable. I totally get why people would hate that Word of God is that everyone would be moving closer to pan, not remaining bi or gay. Probably ignoring Word of God and going for what's onscreen is the best thing, since that also supports the idea of gestalt in some examples like Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness or Sturgeon's More Than Human where the gestalt isn't necessarily sexual but the individuals remain separate for the most part. Anyway I do apologize.

AYRT Thanks, nonny, I honestly appreciate that.

It's been years since I read LHoD - what was the gestalt in that? Do you mean the heat-type thing (which I can't remember the name of), or was there something else I've forgotten? I don't remember the heat thing involving anything other than sexual/physical stuff, but it has been a while.

NA

I'm not sure what anyone here means by "gestalt," but in LHoD, people go into kemmer once a month and adopt either male or female sexual characteristics, usually dependent on the current sex of the person they have close physical contact first. So like, if a person going into kemmer gets a big hug from someone currently male, that person will become female for that kemmer. If the person gets pregnant during kemmer, then they'll remain female until the child is born. When not in kemmer, people lose their sexual characteristics. So most people are, IDK, agender most of the time.

Most of this comes out of a short story published separately, "Coming of Age in Karhide."

da

For context on this, in the original book, it's mentioned that being near a male or female person can sway their kemmer, for example, Estraven kemmered as a woman because of Genly (a regular cis dude) being in the tent with him. At the time, that was a bit of worldbuilding to basically make it reproductively viable, since kemmer was a biological function for reproduction, and it would be unfortunate if a couple who wanted to reproduce just couldn't manage to kemmer into reproductive compatibility. But Le Guin was unhappy with the implication that it meant no one on Gethen was gay or bi! All this gender-transgressive worldbuilding, to create a world where only "het" sex can exist? (Insomuch as it could be considered het, since that's only physical sex--still, it implies those are the anatomical configurations forced on people.) Coming of Age in Karhide was an attempt to address that, saying that yes, kemmers are influenced by the sex of who's around you, but once you've kemmered as male or female, you're free to choose partners of any configuration that suits you, and follows a character who kemmers as female, tries male-kemmered and female-kemmered partners, and decides she likes f/f sex the best.

As for gender identities, while their bodies are physically neuter while out of kemmer, I don't think it follows that they're agender. A lot of what she seemed to be getting at in Left Hand was that they're both, rather than neither, so I would assume most Gethenians fall somewhere on the bigender spectrum. People who were permanently physically male or female were disdained and pitied and called "half-deads," implying that they were seen as having less gender/sex than the average Gethenian, not more, because they lacked the potential to become one sex. (They were also, however, called "perverts," for the implication that they're horny all the time. Gender in this worldbuilding is complex!)

The character in Coming of Age in Karhide, despite having a normal kemmer cycle, identifies as more female than male, and says that runs in her family. So it doesn't seem unheard of for Gethenians to lean more towards one gender or the other, but I think few ever lose that duality completely. So some might be 50/50 bigender, but some might be more like 90/10. I think one of the things Le Guin was going for with that is that the average person could not divorce themselves entirely from half of humanity, that there would always be some degree of empathy and shared experience. It's textual in Left Hand that Gethenians were created by the Hainish through genetic modification (the Hainish being aliens and the first humanoids, a high-tech society that existed at godlike tech levels lifetimes of stars ago and spread humanoids through the universe because they were lonely, with modifications here and there for funsies)as an experiment to see if sex-based oppression could be ended by making everyone both male and female. It was published in 1969, and I think exploratory fiction on ideas of gender and sex that were arising in feminist circles then. As exploratory fiction, she doesn't quite answer her own questions. The Gethenians have no war, but she attributes this to their inhospitable climate giving them a thin margin of survival as it is, not to their genital configuration. The book more just raises the question, meditates on it, and neither endorses nor condemns the possibility.

AYRT No problem, at all.

Sorry, I was unclear -- I meant the Foretellers in the chapter about Faxe and how they form a unit and Faxe says "I am the filament," when Genly gets his question about whether Gethen will be a part of the Ekumen. Not the kemmer part. Although when I reread it just now there's a weird bit about the "Pervert" (single-gender man) and someone going into kemmer and the immense power of frustrated sex, so possibly it doesn't apply at all anyway.