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

[louiseroho.livejournal.com]

"Come to my side, not to my rescue" is my new message of the day.

I throw love in your general direction for that.

[rednwhiterose.livejournal.com]

#5: When you put it like that, I can't help but LOL more so then I already am. You're right, Ianto is having a "Very Bad Homosexual Day", unfortunately, the whole is having an even bigger bad day, which negates Ianto's bad day, much to his chagrin I'm sure.

[rednwhiterose.livejournal.com]

"whole world". I hate my laptop, I really do.

[firinel.livejournal.com]

exactly this. it is a beautiful turn of phrase.

[ophymirage.livejournal.com]

Are you not loving the running joke about Ianto Jones's Very Bad Homosexual Day?

aagh... Alexander and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad.. plot bunny.. aagh! *headdesks* *stomps off to find her copy*

[jkpolk.livejournal.com]

Also another point is just...the Clem character is arrested at chidhood in his trauma and insanity. It makes SENSE for a kid to be so socially uncouth and adds more resonance to his overall stuntedeness. These people are his saviors and he's still teasing in a bratty stupid way. Kids are idiots that way. It felt true to me.

[marcmagus]

3. Seriously? That kind of thinking is prevalent? There are days I'm glad I don't read much wank.

4. Given #3, perhaps the audience is stupid. Or they're projecting their own stupidity onto the rest of the audience. Also, wtf? Granted, he does appear to have some sort of magical sense of smell, but seriously? I kind of wonder if he didn't say "I can smell it" just to fuck with the people who believe he can smell weird things...or some sort of complicated mental thing where he notices something in a normal way and thinks he's "smelling" it.

7. Well put.

[frakkin-addict.livejournal.com]

I totally agree. My brother is trans-male and has stated he prefers to just be called queer. He just got so sick of people trying to define him and his wife. I loved Ianto's reaction in that scene. Oi!

[rednwhiterose.livejournal.com]

I loved that book as a kid.

[thessalian.livejournal.com]

Preach it, sistah!

In related news, I note that there wasn't half the wank I'm hearing about that particular line when Ianto's brother-in-law called him an arse-bandit.

[rednwhiterose.livejournal.com]

That's how I took it to mean--Clem is very much out of touch with reality, he's still a kid mentally, and he's scared and confused which results in him lashing out at people.

[thessalian.livejournal.com]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/torchwood/

Go there, click on 'Episode Guide'. You'll see the episodes that have aired so far; you should be able to watch on iPlayer provided you're not running a Mac. (Irony, given the name, but hey.)

[demotu.livejournal.com]

Everything you said. It's like the racist joke Gwen made - (a) please stop saying that makes the writers racist, (b) stop thinking the audience is dumb and can't see it for what it is - a real-life bias that exists and isn't going to go away for pretending it doesn't and (c) that they show this in the show makes it better, more adult, and more realistic.

Re: 7, yeah. There's outrage that is good because it helps us talk about things that are avoided, and then there's outrage that's bad because it prevents us from talking about things that aren't black and white.

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

People! Are you not loving the running joke about Ianto Jones's Very Bad Homosexual Day?

I love it so much I'm writing a children's book.

[marcmagus]

Message sent with an option for non-UK persons.

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

I'm sighing with the loveliness of the writing while appreciating your point (although, alas, I have no TV and therefore no Torchwood in my life).

Also, "When the waiter called me sir last night at the Algonquin, I practically puffed up with joy" made my day. Aww! My own attempts to cross-dress are pretty much just for certain swing dances and I doubt anyone would ever take me for male, but I experienced a thrill of excitement at the thought, and your reality, of it nonetheless. Thanks.

[alba17.livejournal.com]

Word.

My general impression was #5 and that's how I took Clem's remark. Plus, I found it funny that he can smell EVERYTHING, and Ianto's effrontery was amusing.

I haven't really read anyone's comments about this, so don't know what people are saying about this.

I have really short hair and sometimes I'm called sir or Mr. and it just amuses me - I don't otherwise look like a man in any way, shape or form - I think these people must be blind.

[afterthree.livejournal.com]

Re: #2:

I like the way Torchwood has been addressing this issue -- not in one big episode like most other shows do, you know The One About Homophobia And Then May We Never Speak Of It Again -- but rather in the small, constant ways it comes up in real life. Like you said above, about the background noise as opposed to the major plot point.

[exbentley]

5. As the head said to the Doctor, you are not alone!

also: this post. this, this this.

[tenacious-snail.livejournal.com]

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?

Yes. That.

Hardly. We're not even all like each other. Get it?

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Wow, dude, it's like we were all completely different people or sumthin.

Completely unrelated side note: country mouse me is a little overawed that you had drinks at the Algonquin last night. Because that's like, the Algonquin. Dude!

[mamadar.livejournal.com]

I don't watch TW, so I didn't hear the questionable line in context. But doesn't "queer" in British usage still mean "strange, unusual, out of the ordinary, funny" in a broad sense, and not specifically a sexual/gender identity sense? I occasionally use it that way myself, and I'm not British, just a closet Anglophile.

[rm.livejournal.com]

It was very explicitly used as a gay slur, but it was totally fine that it was.

[threewalls]

This sketch about 'words we can't use anymore' from A Bit of Fry and Laurie seems relevant.

Can we please stop thinking that writers share the views of[the characters]they write?

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

No, we can't. Apparently. I had this lesson driven into my brain with a spike hammer in grade school, around about the time you were born. But no. People think that. Any statement by anyone anywhere is identical to the opinion of the author.

Accept it thus. Heinlein thought that homosexuals smelled funny, Twain thought black people were inferior, and Shakespeare wanted to abolish the Monarchy because he had someone kill the king.