Torchwood, The New York Times, and me
Jun. 23rd, 2008 03:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rmOkay, here's the proper post about the fact that The New York Times published my letter to them about their recent article on Russel T Davies.
I've always been queer and I've always had poor impulse control, so in a lot of ways, I never had the coming out experience. Sure, I didn't tell my parents I queer for ages, but everyone else knew, and the thing with my parents is only beause it was complicated: we're all nuts and back in my freshman year of college my mother said randomly while cooking dinner one night "It's all right if you're a lesbian, just don't be bisexual. Then you're just a slut."
While I've been what could probably be termed a slut back in my wild and wicked youth, I'd like to state for the record I've never been just a slut. I've never been just anything. Which is amazing and exhausting and isolating and funny and full of wonder, even if I'm the person who always gets "how did you know?" or "what's it like?" or "what does it all mean?" when someone gets drunk at a party.
You have two arms. How does that feel? When did you notice? I don't find the questions rude -- they're just bigger than the people asking them realize they are a lot of the time. And then there's the people that hesitantly ask if I've had a bad experience with a man. Sure. And with women. It's called getting your heart broken. It happens. This life of mine isn't a reaction to suffering. Sure ther's an endurance in the face of adversity thing going on, but that's a seperate issue.
There's this great moment towards the beginning of Velvet Goldmine when Christian Bale's character sees bisexual rock god Brian Slade on TV while watching with his parents. He fantasizes about jumping up and shouting, "That's me, mum, that's me!" And I thought of it, accent and all, when I wound up watching Torchwood at my parents house and had to fill my mom in on the whole Jack/John/Ianto dramafest. She actually took it pretty well, because she said it was like her soap operas. Go mom.
I've spent years in fandom cosplaying Severus Snape. It's one of those things I can practically phone in, what with my hair and being spindly and thinking most people are morons and always, always carrying the physical recollection of what it was to be the ugly and dirty child. And as batshit as fandom can be and as eccentric as my own experience of it often was, I never felt ashamed. This was a reflection of myself that was easy to translate. My worst nature, my most common fears, fabulous in our weird little alternate universe. People liked me because I had once been filth. It was a very curious thing.
Being in Torchwood fandom is incredibly different; I mean, for fuck's sake, I identify with Jack! And I feel unsettled and ridiculous identifying with someone so conventionally good looking. Like I don't have the right somehow, eventhough he's no saint of a character. Hell, Jack isn't even very functional when it comes to doing life. I mean, he has his excuses. Don't we all? even if ours are more mundane, but still at the end of the day, he's a prick and he's broken and he wears ridiculous clothes and he's lonely and he's scared and he's having a great time anyway. Even if nobody else gets the joke.
And that's so me. I take everything dead seriously but I'm also laughing at myself all the time and people miss it and think I'm a total asshole most of the time because I've got swagger and big hand gestures and sometimes a mouth that won't stop running. And maybe I am an asshole. But I try. I want to do right by people even if a lot of the responsibilities I thrust on myself are bullshit and unncessary. I've got honor and violence and gender bullshit all wrapped up in me, and I watch this fucking cracktastic show and I can't help but see myself and my friends in it, not just because we're queer, not just because our personal histories are complicated and interwoven in ways that were and are often ill-advised, but because dammit we're going to have a grand time with who we are, even if life is kinda often shit.
Believe me, I know Torchwood is inconsistent and often trashy. And for those who aren't members of the choir it will probably only reinforce lots of negative assumptions about bisexuals and their/our (I really am funny about that label) capacity to have functional relationships. But on the other hand it helps my mom get that Patty's hung the moon and the stars as far as I'm concerned not becuse of any supposed bleak history, but because she's just great. And if I'm really lucky, it helps some of the people who tend to miseread me understand why I don't really give a damn if no one else gets the joke, because I'm having a grand time anyway. And they should too!
I write serious letters to the New York Times all the time. But that the one they finally decided to publish was about Torchwood? That's the sweetest shit in the world to me. Torchwood doesn't tell me anything I don't already know about myself, at least not yet. But what it tells everybody else? That's ace.
I've always been queer and I've always had poor impulse control, so in a lot of ways, I never had the coming out experience. Sure, I didn't tell my parents I queer for ages, but everyone else knew, and the thing with my parents is only beause it was complicated: we're all nuts and back in my freshman year of college my mother said randomly while cooking dinner one night "It's all right if you're a lesbian, just don't be bisexual. Then you're just a slut."
While I've been what could probably be termed a slut back in my wild and wicked youth, I'd like to state for the record I've never been just a slut. I've never been just anything. Which is amazing and exhausting and isolating and funny and full of wonder, even if I'm the person who always gets "how did you know?" or "what's it like?" or "what does it all mean?" when someone gets drunk at a party.
You have two arms. How does that feel? When did you notice? I don't find the questions rude -- they're just bigger than the people asking them realize they are a lot of the time. And then there's the people that hesitantly ask if I've had a bad experience with a man. Sure. And with women. It's called getting your heart broken. It happens. This life of mine isn't a reaction to suffering. Sure ther's an endurance in the face of adversity thing going on, but that's a seperate issue.
There's this great moment towards the beginning of Velvet Goldmine when Christian Bale's character sees bisexual rock god Brian Slade on TV while watching with his parents. He fantasizes about jumping up and shouting, "That's me, mum, that's me!" And I thought of it, accent and all, when I wound up watching Torchwood at my parents house and had to fill my mom in on the whole Jack/John/Ianto dramafest. She actually took it pretty well, because she said it was like her soap operas. Go mom.
I've spent years in fandom cosplaying Severus Snape. It's one of those things I can practically phone in, what with my hair and being spindly and thinking most people are morons and always, always carrying the physical recollection of what it was to be the ugly and dirty child. And as batshit as fandom can be and as eccentric as my own experience of it often was, I never felt ashamed. This was a reflection of myself that was easy to translate. My worst nature, my most common fears, fabulous in our weird little alternate universe. People liked me because I had once been filth. It was a very curious thing.
Being in Torchwood fandom is incredibly different; I mean, for fuck's sake, I identify with Jack! And I feel unsettled and ridiculous identifying with someone so conventionally good looking. Like I don't have the right somehow, eventhough he's no saint of a character. Hell, Jack isn't even very functional when it comes to doing life. I mean, he has his excuses. Don't we all? even if ours are more mundane, but still at the end of the day, he's a prick and he's broken and he wears ridiculous clothes and he's lonely and he's scared and he's having a great time anyway. Even if nobody else gets the joke.
And that's so me. I take everything dead seriously but I'm also laughing at myself all the time and people miss it and think I'm a total asshole most of the time because I've got swagger and big hand gestures and sometimes a mouth that won't stop running. And maybe I am an asshole. But I try. I want to do right by people even if a lot of the responsibilities I thrust on myself are bullshit and unncessary. I've got honor and violence and gender bullshit all wrapped up in me, and I watch this fucking cracktastic show and I can't help but see myself and my friends in it, not just because we're queer, not just because our personal histories are complicated and interwoven in ways that were and are often ill-advised, but because dammit we're going to have a grand time with who we are, even if life is kinda often shit.
Believe me, I know Torchwood is inconsistent and often trashy. And for those who aren't members of the choir it will probably only reinforce lots of negative assumptions about bisexuals and their/our (I really am funny about that label) capacity to have functional relationships. But on the other hand it helps my mom get that Patty's hung the moon and the stars as far as I'm concerned not becuse of any supposed bleak history, but because she's just great. And if I'm really lucky, it helps some of the people who tend to miseread me understand why I don't really give a damn if no one else gets the joke, because I'm having a grand time anyway. And they should too!
I write serious letters to the New York Times all the time. But that the one they finally decided to publish was about Torchwood? That's the sweetest shit in the world to me. Torchwood doesn't tell me anything I don't already know about myself, at least not yet. But what it tells everybody else? That's ace.
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no subject
Date: 2008-06-23 01:25 pm (UTC)I don't know if people get more consevative. I do think the world gets more liberal
If you stand perfectly still, and maintain exactly the same attitudes and opinions over the course of a life time, you will become more conservative relative to the world around you.