About the thing said to Ianto in CoE, Day 3 that is causing controversy

[rm]

I learnt the word queer when I was about eight, reading something or other. I didn't learn that it meant gay, just that it meant weird, and I thought it was a lovely word and I used it all the time.

One day, at camp, when I was twelve, I used it to describe a novel I was reading, and another little twelve-year-old looked at me wide eyed and asked in what manner it was homosexual, as they had not heard that it was. I did not understand, but by the end of the day, I learned I could never use the word queer again, not because it was offensive, but because it looked bad to talk about homosexual things.

When I went to university, it was a time of Riot Grrls and being confrontational. People wrote slut on themselves in lipstick, not to be cute and clever and get laid (which does seem to be a trend now), but to be angry and repellent. And people like me? Well, we were queer.

But queer was never an angry word for me, it was just mouth pleasure to say, and less clinical or multisyllabic than my other options (gay woman, bisexual, homosexual, lesbian, gender variant, etc.) and I liked it in the sort of ridiculous way a slight girl who happens to look like Oscar Wilde must. So it's been my word, for-like-EVER, not to make people uncomfortable, but because it's easiest for me. I like it.

Now sure, I've had queer used as an insult to me, and you know, insults are all about tone. When the waiter called me sir last night at the Algonquin, I practically puffed up with joy. When the idiot that works at my bank does it, when I'm wearing a dress, as some code for "ugly woman I don't want to deal with right now" I could punch someone. So sometimes queer is an insult and sometimes it's not.

One of the rules of thumb I've noticed about this is adjectives are more likely to be okay than nouns. If you're describing me as queer without vitriol, we're good. If you're describing me as "a queer" even without vitriol, we might have a problem. It's the same thing with being Jewish or describe as "a Jew." I've had people scream at me on the street "You Jew!" because of disputes over taxis and stuff. Nouns with implied (no matter how irrational) negative associations can be really scary.

And that's, of course, how Clem used "the queer" in talking about Ianto.

Now I've seen a lot of meta about whether Clem could really smell his orientation, or if it was about the scent of recent intimacy with Jack (when? in the backseat of the car at the end of Ep 2?) and whether saying things like this on TV is dangerous because it leads people to think queer people really are different and not just like everyone else, and oh, god, you can tell!

Man, I have so many more problems with all this meta than I do with what Clem said, even as, yeah, I would have hollered too.

1. As a queer person, I am different. And you can tell. This is not true of all queer people, but it's worth noting that I'm somewhat sick of people advocating that we're all just like everyone else. Hardly. We're not even all like each other. Get it?

2. The world has homophobia in it. Why shouldn't it be on TV not as a major plot point but as the real live background noise we deal with in the world -- even when fighting aliens apparently?

3. Can we please stop thinking that writers share the views of, and advocate the behaviors contained in, the material they write? I think Jack/Ianto in IHNIIHBT are codependent loons, although I also think they are beautiful. And have you fucking read Descensus -- an epic examination of the very high and ugly price of trying to preserve traditions no matter how ugly they become -- do you really think I think those characters are good just because I'm capable of justifying in their own heads for narrative sake where they are coming from? Because if you think I think those characters are right, as opposed to justified from their perspectives, I'm not even sure why you're still talking to me.

4. Can we please stop thinking the audience is stupid? Did anyone watch a mentally challenged guy with a history of alien abduction call Ianto a queer and say he smells different and then decide that this somehow implies true facts about gay people? REALLY? Are you actually afraid this is happening out there?

5. People! Are you not loving the running joke about Ianto Jones's Very Bad Homosexual Day? Come on, this is the funniest shit ever. This thing that's only ever been a vague niggling issue for him because he's got no time and he's in the Torchwood bubble, and christ, it's Jack, has suddenly become the stupid topic people won't drop even while the world is ending. It's really funny, and if your life has even half of the weird serendipity mine has, you know that this sort of absurdity tends to cluster. It's hilarious, and it's RTD winking and nodding at us. Seriously, am I the only person who has had my own version of this? No way! NO WAY!

6. I stand by what I said yesterday about the read GDL gives Ianto's reaction line. Outrage and personal processing: it's gracefully done and elevates the writing. Once again, Euros Lyn is a genius of a director. Torchwood doesn't always know why it's doing things, but it usually knows what it's doing. Trust.

7. As a queer person, I love my allies, but come to my side, not to my rescue.

Comments

[therealycats.livejournal.com]

I'm not gay nor am I in a same-sex relationship, so my perspective is in all likelihood different from those who are. Publicly I identify as straight for simplicity's sake; privately I prefer not to identify at all because I believe sexuality is fluid, and who you're usually attracted to isn't necessarily who you fall in love with (call me crooked if you must call me anything). But anyway, when Clem called Ianto "the queer," I didn't really read it as disgust or disapproval on his part. Like you said, he's an old man, and not only that, he experienced a trauma that has left him practically incapable of normal interaction. Kind of like I read Jack's "They were a gift" line, I read Clem's more as matter of fact. And I didn't interpret it as him saying that gays are any different (in terms of human, biological makeup) than straights either, just that he smells everything. He smelled Gwen's pregnancy. He smelled Jack. I think everyone has a unique smell anyway, and I think it's logical that men and women smell different from one another as well. So I just saw it as his smelling two distinct male scents on Ianto's body, whereas with Gwen he probably smelled hers and Rhys's, and vice versa.

I know that media portrayals of ANYTHING, be it gender, sexuality, religion, race--anything that marks people as different from other groups of society--are all subject to critiques of "OMG that's so -ist/phobic!" If a black man gets killed on CSI, say, that doesn't mean that the producers of CSI are racist and trying to kill off all people of African descent. I think there are valid criticisms in some instances, but I also think this world as a whole has gotten so touchy and so eager to hide behind the veil of political correctness lest they face the ugly truth that maybe, just maybe, they are a little bit prejudiced in one way or another. But overall I think that people just need to lighten the fuck up and stop viewing every waking moment as someone having a vendetta against them.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

Cough, cough. Clem is not "an old man". He was about 10 in 1965 which makes him in his mid fifties, depending on when CoE is supposed to be happening. I agree with the point about about his development being arrested at that age (we see it happening, in that he's still on the kids wavelength) and, of course, homosexuality was still illegal in 1965 and, given he's spent most of his life institutionalised, I'm not quite sure where he's supposed to have grasped gay lib, anyway.

Incidentally, it's always possible that he doesn't have a heightened sense of smell in fact, but ESP which manifests itself as smell.

[therealycats.livejournal.com]

Sorry, didn't mean to cause offense. Also I wasn't really thinking about the timeline, but if I saw him on the street, I would think, hey, that poor old man is clearly out of is mind (also Paul Copley was born in 1944, but it's not like it's unusual for ages to be miscast :p). My parents are 55 now and he looks at least 10 years older than they do (but that can be chalked up to the trauma if we must). And I assume this series is taking place in 2010, if we're still going on the assumption that the Whoniverse's "present" is taking place a year ahead of us based on the Doctor's screw up regarding returning Rose.

No offence taken - just a bit of bogglement

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

Wasn't actually offended but he'd be slightly younger than my elder sister and only about five years older than me, and I'd just been mildly traumatised in the warnings debate by someone who assured people she warned for "Old People Sex" - if one of the parties was 55 or more!

Incidentally, with Alice I think there may be a minor cinematic in-joke going about actresses and ages - it's a reversal of the normal situation in which an actress close to in age or even younger than the male lead is commonly cast as his mother.

Re: No offence taken - just a bit of bogglement

[therealycats.livejournal.com]

I'd just been mildly traumatised in the warnings debate by someone who assured people she warned for "Old People Sex"

Wait, what? You've lost me, sorry. Oh, wait, I misread that. I thought you were saying that I had warned for old people sex and was really, really confused.

Re: Alice:
Have you seen Sense and Sensibility (1995)? In the commentary, Emma Thompson says that at one point Ang Lee directed her to "stop looking so old," I think in relation to Hugh Grant, who is just a year and a half her junior. Speaking of, that just reminded me of Last Chance Harvey, wherein she plays Dustin Hoffman's love interest, and he's a good twenty years older than she is, I think, although I'm sure age isn't even an issue in the movie (haven't seen it; can't say for certain...but I did see As Good As It Gets and never once did the idea that Jack Nicholson is probably older than the actress playing Helen Hunt's mother come up). Anyway, yes, Hollywood/the film industry at large is silly regarding actresses and their ages in relation to the men they play opposite, and frankly I find the whole "cougar" thing pretty offensive--if it's an older man and a younger woman, it's May/December, but if it's the reverse she's a predatory beast and he's a helpless little tadpole?

Re: No offence taken - just a bit of bogglement

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

And, of course, in the book Brandon is 35 and Marianne is 17. Kate Winslet would have been 20 at the date of the film but Alan Rickman was 49. Interestingly, I've met more people being morally panicked about the book age gap than how they showed it on screen.

Re: No offence taken - just a bit of bogglement

[therealycats.livejournal.com]

Ah, yeah, but that age gap is addressed in both media, if I recall. I mean that's partly why Willoughby's there, isn't it? To hold up a philandering youth as a contrast to the steadiness of the maturity of middle age? (Also this Sense and Sensibility talk reminds me of this awesome idea I had for a story that I was going to write in response to all of the Jane Austen fanfiction that gets published. It was going to be about Eliza, and I was going to call it Colonel Brandon's Whore. Then one day I was walking in B&N and lo and behold saw a book called Eliza's Daughter on the shelf. I was pretty furious, because my book would have been silly and full of anachronisms and most likely complete disregard for S&S and un-Austenlike sex talk and drug use.)

Incidentally, I'm 26 and am personally of the belief that I have been old since I was 19.

Re: No offence taken - just a bit of bogglement

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

Ah, 26. I recall. Long past being Marianne or (heaven forbid) Lydia Bennet, and just starting to wonder about what it might be to be Anne Elliot (who, now I'm twenty years older than she was then, strikes me as the best of them all, and has since I was nineteen).

[robling-t.livejournal.com]

And I assume this series is taking place in 2010, if we're still going on the assumption that the Whoniverse's "present" is taking place a year ahead of us based on the Doctor's screw up regarding returning Rose

There have been a number of explicit references to CoE taking place in 2009 (newspapers, dialogue etc) so I think they've screwed up and forgotten that they screwed up... but what else is new around here? ;)

[therealycats.livejournal.com]

Haha, never even noticed. I'm annoyed by their American News Network or whatever it's called though. It's so obviously not CNN. Wolf or Anderson should be there or something. I don't know anything right now; I just finished watching tonight's episode and I'm pretty much heartbroken. :(