Honestly, one of the possibilities I’m most dreading about Dragon Age Inquisition is the likelihood that they’ll return to having at least one or two exclusively straight romances, at which point all the…

I’m not going to insert my own opinion on the issue because I don’t need the stress, but It’s probably pretty likely that there will be LI options in DAI with gender-conditional romance criteria.

I hate to bring up previous shitstorms, but David Gaider commented on a DA Confession with his stance on the issue:

Not that Gaider doesn't annoy me with his continual dismissal of bisexuality, but that actual quotation seems to encourage the bisexual LI perspective to me?  Because he says they'd only 'go back' to having gender specific romances if they had more options, thus not removing the possibility of choice for all players.

And, tbqh, I agree that not everyone should be interested in the PC. Aveline and Samara in ME2 were wonderful.  I think the PC should always have the option to express an interest, but I'm fine with the NPCs turning said PC down ...  I just don't want one of the criteria to be gender.

Personality tracking of some sort?  A point of no return on a personal quest? No blood magic in the bedroom? Sure fine.  Arbitrary gender and sexuality flags seems like a step backwards though.  

I have read some other blurbs that seemed to imply they might be doing that for DAI, but I've read other ones that implied the other way, so clearly this is not something we're going to get a straight answer on for quite awhile.

— Shout-outs to counterstorytelling (aka Mushroom Rage) for this thoughtful, wonderful op-ed that spoke so many truths on so many levels. This article is probably the one where topics of feminism, gender, construct, colonialism, culture, and sexuality all intertwine— not just systemically, but personally as well.  (via thephantomcatalyst)

I have to reblog because for once I find a concise summary of why I experienced a resounding squicked reaction to the giant “JUST SAY YES” - sex and kink positivity push once found upon Livejournal fanfiction communities and now seeming colonising (oho, that lovely word) AO3 and associated fanfiction platforms.  Sex positivity as the promoted default way for sex to be articulated in fandom horrifies me.  The whole push towards positivity as the default “right way” to write an experience of sex does not in any way, shape or form acknowledge my lived experiences of sexuality or even anything I am interested in reading, sharing.  Sex positivity for me is not liberating, it is terrifyingly alien, unrealistic, and in the context of my post colonial hybrid state, it is physically endangering to me if I were to act in such a way, blithe and idiotic as if I am not a subject to a greater context.

And yet persists this increasingly constant insistence that I am writing it wrong, to explore sex, sexuality, even sexual-social roles in ways which are not positive, and which are not empowering.

The persistent media exposure to the concept of sex positivity makes me feel (yet another) divide between the person I am in my head and this enculturated, encoded body I must inhabit.

Not forgetting, of course, that the sheer quantity of shame or silencing that fandoms will (accidentally, unconsciously) heap on those writers who do have different ways of exploring sexuality through kink or sex or relationships which are not necessarily positive.  In my case, the specific exploration occurs mostly through particularly classist and colonial constructs of relationships, and you are joking if you think I’m going to write that a happy beginning, middle or ending.  Read “abusive”, read “realistic”, read “actually happens in real life so why on earth this shaming, this silencing of the story?”

Sex positivity has somehow become equivalent in meaning to “ignoring, simplifying, reducing, eradicating all the problems which might get in the way of writing an enthusiastically positive encounter”.  The consequence to me, personally, me, of spotlighting this sex positivity in my chosen form of media is that it is eroding and constantly undermining my perception and experiences of my reality.   What that does to me as a person is to further alienate, to develop in me an increasingly internalised unpositive hatred for this sallow meatsack I have to endure, every single day — along with enduring the incredibly “positive” and “favourable” responses of a certain specifically fetish afflicted collection of the population around me who tell me I should embrace who I am, be positive, and live the life my highly sexualised body obviously wants me to live.

So take away this shaming of my pitiful little squeezed out in the fractions of minutes I have between my real work method of fannish critical escape, exploration, desire to deconstruct and reconstruct the complexities of reality without hiding behind this gross simplification that positivity has become, away, take it far, far away, to that promised fandom land where only a certain group of people live, where colour certainly, most positively exists and should be acknowledged or you are a Bad Writer! but the consequences of colour doesn’t impact anything in the story except the length of your List of Politically Appropriate Skin Colour Adjectives.doc.

Reblogging the original quote again but now with pendency’s addendum because it saves me typing similar words as explanation to all of the potentially confused fans over the past seven years, regarding why my fills have a tendency to fuck with fandom’s kink prompts … or why I just say “fuck it” and not bother posting half-finished stories that don’t reflect my reality or why I shelve fully finished stories that will horrify the OP when their idea of erotic has been pushed through the reality filter of my pen.

Fandom is more than welcome to write all of the sex positive fiction where all of the characters are on the same sociocultural-economic page (despite canon), consent is unquestionably consent because those characters live in a space where the word yes could only mean one thing,  and everyone feels liberated to do whatever it is that they want to do because everyone is magically privileged to do so … and I’ll just keep on writing horror erotica, and uncomfortable situations, and weird sex, and fail sex, and sex for economic exchange, and arranged marriages, and the underbelly of improper sexual advances when professionalism is instead expected, and vast socio-political situations laser blasting into the bedroom and people fetishizing other people because of their ethnicity. Especially those last two. Which means my so-called OTPs are going to be many people’s NOTPs. 

And this is why. This is how, for seven years, I have spoken back at the foreign notion of sex positivism.

I, personally, tend to write things that would fall under the umbrella of sex positivism.  I like fluff, I like sex in my fiction that is generally a good thing for the relationship(s) in which it happens, because I would like to imagine a world wherein that is, if not always a reality, at least slightly more possible.

/my media consumption is generally escapism

That said,  the tendency to romanticize so many potentially complex relationships occasionally makes me wish I was better at writing the kinds of things pendency and viaralynn tend to write, because there needs to be more and better ways to interact with the text of romance and sex in our media, and the insistence that sex = good pushes a lot of people out the door away from said media (or fandom) before they've had a chance to do more than look in the window.

What is of course particularly frustrating, is the fact that people will simultaneously romanticize sex and demonize romance, as if desiring a romantic partner is something to be ashamed of?  As if the second without the first is a waste of time?  As if life without sex is a waste of time, because clearly the entirely human race is allosexual and has never had a bad experience and might never want to abstain for any of a myriad perfectly valid personal reasons.

Which gets us into romance being both the most popular and the most disparaged genre of fiction, pretty much always.

Which is mostly off the topic of colonialism/racism/sexuality that the original piece is about, sorry, I've been doing that a lot today, and I was just going to reblog this originally for the excellent commentary by other people ... so yeah, go read the original article if you haven't already?

Can’t we just accept that most people in Thedas are probably bisexual and it’s Alistair, Morrigan and Sebastian who are strange for being straight?

No? We’re still gonna argue about it?

Okay then

Yes. In Thedas, bisexual is the ‘default’. It’s so easy. I love it.

I do not accept that Alistair, Morrigan, and Sebastian are strange. They're bi too.

The Well of Loneliness

All of these arguments going around centered around sexuality and pairing preference seemed focused on sex. Being comfortable with queer women having sex or women having sex or a lack thereof. I could understand that, except that isn’t the entire problem.

I don’t see gen writing for female characters. I don’t see E through T rated stories for queer female couples.

I see a fraction of the art, explicit or otherwise.

I don’t see the shipping meta, even for canon couples. I don’t see two female characters who share a smile or a compliment getting gifsets like two male characters do. There doesn’t even have to be sex, and yet there’s a dearth of a following.

I see fandom attaching like magnets to shows with a male-majority cast and ignoring shows with actual queer and sex-balanced casts. This also applies to novels, movies, and everything else.

If you are personally uncomfortable with your own body, I am never going to tell you not to be, but queer fiction for women (and I mean for women) is still suffocated. Historically, queer women’s sexuality has been dismantled as ‘not enough’ to count. They’re just friends. Boston marriages. Priests in the church saying they can’t actually comprehend about how two women have sex.

Queer historians have trouble even finding proof of queer female relationships in history. There’s Sappho and then occasionally they find a Dark Ages arrest warrant and once we finally reach the 1900s, there’s more to scrape up and display. Whereas a certain kind of queer male sexuality has been celebrated in many, many culture’s histories (Japan and ancient Greece immediately come to mind), the same cannot be said for women. Women have been wives and slaves and tools, not independent sexual beings. I can break out the books if people really want me to.

I even run a blog on the topic. Every piece on queer female sexuality on there represents hours of research and money out of my pocket. Whenever I post something dedicated to queer male sexuality, I just run a Google search. I get plenty of results, citations and all. It’s not hidden.

In the same era that Sappho was being ‘straightened out’ by playwrights and translators changed pronouns in her poetry from ‘she’ to ‘he’ so it was fit for public consumption centuries later, Walt Whitman was publishing Leaves of Grass.

It is only recently that it’s become - in the circle of mainstream pornography and media, which we already know is a pile of garbage - a male gaze showoff. And rather than it being reclaimed, it’s been abandoned. I’ve been in fandom for a decade now and with the exception of one fandom off the top of my head - Xena, since every male character of significance is killed at some point - femslash is the smallest slice of the pie. And not twenty percent or ten percent, but maybe, just maybe five percent.

Then you have to sort through the normal writing slog of half of what you find is going to be terrible and a fair amount is going to be something you don’t ship. We’ve gotten used to clawing for some crumbs because even other queer women aren’t comfortable writing what should be an instrument of their own sexuality.

Male sexuality, historically and presently, has always been celebrated more than female sexuality, straight or otherwise. Women are not supposed to be sexual, and plenty of queer women have been brand as manhaters for not joining in on the male celebration. They’re frigid, they’re dykes, and they need to be ‘corrected’. I don’t want to risk triggering people by explaining all the ways that has happened, but you don’t have far to look if you want to find out.

This is not a recent problem or a fandom problem. It is a historical problem. If you want a recent reference read this article and the comments beneath from published erotic fiction authors. There isn’t just a lack of interest in writing about queer women together, there is an active disgust, even when it is written by women for the enjoyment of other women. That is a hell of a problem. I’ll be honest, even the thought makes my blood boil a bit.

There is a void left for the male gaze, because guess what, unless two women are fucking in full display? We’re told it doesn’t count. It isn’t a relationship. It’s not really sex. Go back to the above Xena fandom and you’ll find people insisting that a pair of women kissing, calling each other soul mates, calling each other girlfriends, sleeping in the same bed, several seasons of constant innuendo, and being married in a future life does not imply homosexuality at all. They’re just friends. Even though the producers were forced to edit the opening credits of the show on numerous occasions because they said certain cuts implied that Xena was interested in women.

I see female characters in general torn to pieces. Their motivations and their needs. It’s no wonder fandom doesn’t ship them because they seem to only exist as fodder for meta and argument. And when there is celebration, they’re all alone because the men around them have been shipped off with each other.

I am not saying anyone has an obligation to ship or not ship certain sexualities, pairings, or couples. But when there is a severe, blatant imbalance erasing female sexuality and relationships, attention should be paid to as to why. Doing nothing or passing the buck doesn’t help anyone.

As a given disclaimer, most men shipped by fandom are also white and cis. This applies to the fandom spectrum as a whole and continues to add to the rampant lack of representation.