On labels & what they refer to

[breathedout]

greywash posted a couple of articulately rage-filled bisexual rants earlier today (here are the before brunch and after brunch installments, which take The Magicians as their jumping-off point but are very much applicable more generally), and I wanted to both signal-boost the conversation, and also archive a comment I left, for future finding-and-referring-back-to-later purposes:

The discrepancy between "labels as descriptors of observable behavior" and "labels as signifiers of internal lived reality"—and ESPECIALLY the trend toward the latter to the exclusion of the former—really gets me because I feel like a lot of the time it invites exactly this kind of is-he-or-isn't-he debate even when the evidence is not at all unclear. Or worse yet, competitive vying for a person to put their stakes down in one's particular camp via a self-disclosure that that person, as you say, really doesn't owe. And then there's all the intra-queer rhetoric around "It's only your internalized [bi-, lesbo-, x-] phobia that's preventing you from identifying this way," when actually... there are any number of reasons one might choose not to discuss the murkiest facets of one's lived reality at any given time, and shouldn't be pressured to do so.

When a real person does self-disclose a certain way, obviously that should be listened to and not argued with. But in the absence of that, and particularly when discussing fictional characters, if we're going to the extreme of "observable behavior means nothing, and ONLY someone's own words can be taken as evidence of their orientation," then not only do you run up against a whole host of issues with characters who are lacking in self-awareness or actively lying (to themselves or others; for whatever reason), but you create a double-standard about what words... are for... which is in large part to describe the world's reality as we observe it.

And of course there are infinite shades of experience. Of course many gay men have been married to, and fathered children with, women. Of course there are many bisexual people who only ever acted on their opposite-sex attractions (or, especially more recently, who felt pressure from the gay community to only act on their same-sex attractions). Of course there are sex-repulsed asexual people who have a lot of sex because they're using it to fulfill other needs or wants. Of course there's this whole culture of men who self-ID as straight but who frequent truck stops for same-sex hookups. And on and on. And a lot of this is stuff I'm interested in exploring in fiction, because (AS YOU KNOW, DOCTOR) I personally embody a disconnect between my observable behavior (lived long-term first with a man, then a woman) and my internal lived reality (have always been almost, but not quite, totally uninterested in men both sexually and romantically). So, you know, I feel that tension: I don't really feel like "bisexual" is a very accurate descriptor of my inner lived reality, and even though I also feel "lesbian" is inaccurate, I would still be more likely to bridle at a potential biographer using my 12-year relationship with Ex as a way to inaccurately over-represent my investment in men, than I would if they cast that relationship as a nod to compulsive heterosexuality or something. (Again... not super accurate, I don't think, but possibly less inaccurate.) So that liminal space where labels are really messy, is somewhere I feel drawn to & where I feel at home, and I certainly don't want to erase it entirely from the discourse.

But to get to a point where we're divorcing orientation labels from behavior so radically that no amount of observed behavior can be taken as establishing or even strongly indicating someone's orientation, is just bizarre. And goes from "bizarre" to "oppressive" because of course no person, fictional or real, is ever required to self-identify as straight in order to be taken as such.

And, in response to a comment from achray:

Yes, a lot of my thoughts about it are coming from a historical perspective as well, and there are so many other issues that I left out of that comment for the sake of relative brevity, such as shifting cultural constructions of queerness over time and space such that the application of modern labels can be reductive and inaccurate; gaps in the archive; families and literary executors who destroyed evidence; the impossibility of fully comprehending the nature of any specific relationship if you're not inside that relationship and sometimes not even then (see, as example A of many of these, the surviving Hawthorne/Melville correspondence).

But it does still seem quite silly to be able to, say, look at a Byron or a Colette, folks who clearly had and enjoyed sexual/romantic liaisons with people of multiple genders, and say: these people were hetero because they never explicitly offered up a label they preferred. I mean. Really.

Comments

[greywash]

👍 👍 👍

[clarasteam]

these are good posts and good comments. ♥

I have a lot of complicated feelings about this stuff and not enough brain for the subject tonight, but I'm glad the conversation is happening.

[juushika]

Glad you linked to parent thread & reposted your replies here. It's such a complicated issue to articulate, and the value is in that complication, in the vast gray areas of identification and behavior and the fact that the complications themselves have value, have meaning. Seeing people put words to & therefore validate that is ... gratifying. Also productive! But, for my own complicated feelings, mostly gratifying.

[chestnut_pod]

A wonderful string of conversation over at greywash's, and I'm glad you posted these independently as well.

"And goes from "bizarre" to "oppressive" because of course no person, fictional or real, is ever required to self-identify as straight in order to be taken as such." - This, THIS.

[anarfea]

I definitely feel these feels. In my case, I identify as bisexual but I'm married to a man. Though my previous LTR was with a woman (well, nonbinary person I suppose but they identified as female at the time we were together) and I was in that relationship for 7 years and it was tremendously important to me. I never identified as a lesbian; I always knew that I was attracted to men, but my attraction to women was very important to me, I identified as queer, and I assumed that I would be spending the rest of my life with a woman. Ending up with a man came as a surprise to me and threatened my identity in a lot of ways.

And then tumblr constantly bombards me with these biphobic messages, says I'm "bihet," that I'm oppressing lesbians, that my opinions on lgbtq issues don't count, that I shouldn't be at Pride, that I shouldn't call myself a femme, etc. etc. etc. Interestingly, I do not encounter these prejudices IRL. I went to Pride with my husband and no one said boo to me about it.

Where I most feel this tension you're describing about preferring the "internal" labels over the observed behaviors is mostly coming from fandom spaces, particularly the fandom tendency to erase the different gender relationships of bisexual characters. I feel like it is perfectly acceptable in fandom spaces to headcanon characters that are in m/f relationships but don't explicitly identify as straight as bi, but that if any character is shown in a same-gender relationship suddenly if you headcanon them as bi you're homophobic.

I see this a lot in Black Sails fandom where people insist that James Flint and Anne Bonny are a gay man and a lesbian woman, respectively. They insist that Flint's relationship with Miranda and Anne's relationship with Jack are the products of compulsory heteronormativity. This really bugs me as a bi/poly person who was super excited to see what to me appeared to be obvious canon bi/poly representation. Flint, Miranda and Thomas I think are a poly triad, and Max, Anne and Jack a poly V. For some reason Eleanor is allowed to be bisexual. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because she's shown with two men and only one woman? Maybe it's because she ends up with a man? Maybe it's because she's "problematic"? But she gets to be bisexual whereas Thomas, Flint, and Anne are all gay. Also Max, but I have no problem acknowledging Max as a lesbian because it seems pretty clear that while she has sex with men for work that she is only interested in women for love and pleasure.

On the other hand, in Killing Eve fandom, I do see that most people acknowledge Villanelle as bisexual even though pretty much all her romantic attachments seem to be with women. Which I think is great. Because not all bisexuals are attracted to all genders equally, and there's a difference between having sexual interest in men and being willing to be in relationships with men, and it seems pretty clear that while Villanelle is totally willing to jump on a dude's dick that she forms these really intense emotional attachments with women, whereas the one relationship we see her in with a dude is basically her just stringing this guy along because she's bored. And I appreciated them showing a bi woman who has really intense passionate feelings for other women, as kind of a proof that bi women don't love any less strongly than lesbians.

Anyway, sorry, I feel like I'm just incoherently flailing at you. But yes, this post has hit a lot of buttons for me.

[breathedout]

Yeah, I have a similar reaction to yours about folks somehow removing Miranda as an important erotic & emotional point in the James/Thomas/Miranda triad. Did they watch the same show I did?? That's definitely not what I saw.

I identify so strongly with the Anne/Jack relationship that I end up reading Anne as like me, i.e. near-exclusively female-attracted on the basis of gender alone, but with an extremely formative and generative (and avocational, though in Anne's case the avocation is murder & mayhem whereas in my case it was art-making, LUCKILY FOR ME) relationship with a man that involves the sexual because it involves everything in her life & in herself. Whether to label that "bisexual" or "lesbian" is, for me, sort of beside the point, especially in a fandom set before those words had assumed their current meanings, but I certainly don't read her relationship with Jack as compulsory or as less important or self-defining than her relationship with Max. (As a side-note, also possibly due to over-identifying the Anne/Jack relationship with my previous LTR, I actually kind of headcanon Jack as what we'd now call asexual? I don't think we ever see him actually enjoying or pursuing sex. Which I can imagine would have been a boon to the very young Anne recently removed from a sexually traumatic/abusive situation.)

I really need to get into Killing Eve. Greywash & I were super broke for a while there & were only watching things we didn't have to pay for. But now that's not as true so we should get on it. Maybe after we get through The Magicians & finish Halt & Catch Fire (another show with at least one very enjoyable and morally grey bisexual character).

[anarfea]

I just feel like there's a general tendency in fandom to erase the female characters perceived as "in the way" of slash ships. Usually it's the straight love interest. In this case it's unfortunately the third leg of the triad, which means erasing another form of rarely represented queer relationship.

I find your take on Anne Bonny really interesting and it makes a lot of sense. I think I also read Anne as like me. I think she is sexually attracted to Jack, because it is always she who seems to initiate their sexual encounters. But I also think she chaffed under gender roles and the assumptions that went along with her and Jack being in a relationship. The "I can't be your wife, Jack" is one of those lines that I think is really telling, and a lot of people trot it out as evidence that she's a lesbian, but for me, it really spoke to how I feel as a bisexual woman married to a man who would sometimes really rather not be? It's not that I don't love my husband or want to be with him, but I hate the "wife" label and the assumptions about what that's supposed to mean about our relationship.

There seems to be this stereotype about bi women that we're somehow all gender conforming whereas lesbians are all gender rebels, and I think it's more complicated than that. I've never identified as trans, but I have issues with my gender and being in a relationship with a cishet man definitely exacerbates them in a way I don't always welcome even if I do love my partner.

I find your reading of Jack as asexual really interesting. It's not one I considered but I do see as being possible. It's usually Billy who the fandom headcanons as Ace, because he doesn't visit brothels, doesn't want the Fuck Tent, etc. etc. I do think that whatever else Jack Rackham is, he's definitely an example of non-toxic masculinity, and I can see why he'd be "safe" for Anne after her sexual trauma.

Killing Eve is amazing and I think you and Greywash would love it. Not sure how you feel about these things but it is available online for free if you are still really broke.

[donut_donut]

it is perfectly acceptable in fandom spaces to headcanon characters that are in m/f relationships but don't explicitly identify as straight as bi, but that if any character is shown in a same-gender relationship suddenly if you headcanon them as bi you're homophobic.

thisthisthis

or, in Sherlock fandom, even Sherlock, who has never self-identified either way or been in a real relationship with ANYONE, is somehow very strongly assumed to be gaygaysupergay, and people who read him as bi or asexual or anything else get shit for it.

[breathedout]

LOL I was literally JUST leaving a comment, on Anarfea's most recent entry, about the person who got 20 chapters and 150,000 words into my novel in which every major character had already been shown in sexual situations with all gender configurations, and then left a comment to the effect that showing Sherlock with a woman (which had already happened back in Ch8, but whatever) was "gross and unnecessary." SOME PEOPLE!!

[donut_donut]

and the worst!!! is the "proof" they use as justification for this position. I have literally seen people make the argument that "Sherlock canonically knows the difference between purple and lilac, ergo he is GAY GAY GAY." Or other similarly stereotypical signifiers worthy of junior high school bigots.

Which like... okay. Full disclosure: yes, among close (queer) friends, in a JOKING/IRONIC way, I have been known to be like, "you said lilac? dude, that's super gay." But to see people doing that SERIOUSLY, as if you can actually suss out people's sexuality (even fictional people) on the basis of the fact that he doesn't 100% conform to every facet of beefy lumberjack heterosexuality...

*throws up hands*

(not that beefy lumberjacks aren't themselves a queer trope, hahaha, but idk, what do straight people even look like? I can't remember.)

[anarfea]

The thing that bothers me about that most is the idea that bisexualality is somehow a less acceptable form of queer representation than gayness. Like, if we have a character with a canon straight love interest we'll round them up to bi if we have to, but if they don't have a canon straight interest then they're gaygaygay keep your half-straight cooties off my baby.

[donut_donut]

if they don't have a canon straight interest then they're gaygaygay keep your half-straight cooties off my baby.

*barfs everywhere*