This is something I'm always arguing with myself about: to what extent do I need fiction to validate my own existence?
My immediate response is that I don't, of course not, how very pathetic.
But then I think about being a kid in suburbia, and seeing no options outside the college -> marriage -> kids -> death route, and hating it, and feeling utterly out of place, and wanting to die because life had no point and why bother? And how it meant the world to me to find role models who offered other options--how I honestly wouldn't have known there were other options if I hadn't seen them (coming to NYC and hanging out with musicians and going to college and taking gender studies classes and seeing people successfully living outside the norm).
So role models are important, right? I mean, that's how we form understandings about pretty much everything, from the time we're born; we model our understanding of the world on what we observe. And fiction is really important--think of all the stuff we learn through narrative!
And it's like, in a weird way, something can't exist to you if you aren't aware of it, if you can't imagine it. I mean, if you can't imagine, can't picture a single example, of a woman living happily alone and single for her entire life, you're going to assume that every woman wants marriage and babies, right? Because that's all you've EVER seen. (I had this issue, with a friend of mine. I said "I don't want to get married and I don't want to have kids." She said "Yeah, you really do." And no matter how often I said I didn't, she refused to believe me, would even try to trip me up in conversation and get me to admit that I really wanted a man. And I don't. It was pointless, and part of what killed our friendship. [And I think she wanted me to "admit it" out of her own desperate need for validation, but that's another story.])
I think this is one thing QaF deserves credit for, actually, because until it aired, gay people on television were tragic AIDS sob stories or style consultants for straight people. It's important that QaF shows a diversity of gay people living for themselves, not for straight people, and not dying for it. But yeah, it doesn't go nearly far enough.
I had a professor for a gender studies class who was always pushing her theory that the focus of the current culture wars is shifting from a gay/straight dichotomy to a family/not family dichotomy. The idea being that it doesn't matter if you're gay or straight as long as you're married and monogamous and living in suburbia (*cough*Mel&Lindsay*cough*). And that by focusing the gay rights struggle on gay marriage, the mainstream gay rights movement is buying into this paradigm of what counts as a legitimate way of living. Trying to fit themselves into the existing paradigm, "prove" that they can be just as mainstream as the mainstream.
It would be a much bigger struggle to say, y'know, we're Brian Kinney, we don't buy into monogamy and marriage and suburbia, we live our own lives the way we choose, and that's just as valid. That there's not One True Way of Living. (I could go into this whole other rant about black and white thinking, inability to see ambiguity or multiple options....)(And also which is not to say that it's WRONG for gay people to want to get married and live in suburbia--if you want it, you should be allowed to go for it--but that it's not the ONLY legitimate way to live, or the MOST legitimate way to live, or whatever, it's just one of many options.)
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This is something I'm always arguing with myself about: to what extent do I need fiction to validate my own existence?
My immediate response is that I don't, of course not, how very pathetic.
But then I think about being a kid in suburbia, and seeing no options outside the college -> marriage -> kids -> death route, and hating it, and feeling utterly out of place, and wanting to die because life had no point and why bother? And how it meant the world to me to find role models who offered other options--how I honestly wouldn't have known there were other options if I hadn't seen them (coming to NYC and hanging out with musicians and going to college and taking gender studies classes and seeing people successfully living outside the norm).
So role models are important, right? I mean, that's how we form understandings about pretty much everything, from the time we're born; we model our understanding of the world on what we observe. And fiction is really important--think of all the stuff we learn through narrative!
And it's like, in a weird way, something can't exist to you if you aren't aware of it, if you can't imagine it. I mean, if you can't imagine, can't picture a single example, of a woman living happily alone and single for her entire life, you're going to assume that every woman wants marriage and babies, right? Because that's all you've EVER seen. (I had this issue, with a friend of mine. I said "I don't want to get married and I don't want to have kids." She said "Yeah, you really do." And no matter how often I said I didn't, she refused to believe me, would even try to trip me up in conversation and get me to admit that I really wanted a man. And I don't. It was pointless, and part of what killed our friendship. [And I think she wanted me to "admit it" out of her own desperate need for validation, but that's another story.])
I think this is one thing QaF deserves credit for, actually, because until it aired, gay people on television were tragic AIDS sob stories or style consultants for straight people. It's important that QaF shows a diversity of gay people living for themselves, not for straight people, and not dying for it. But yeah, it doesn't go nearly far enough.
I had a professor for a gender studies class who was always pushing her theory that the focus of the current culture wars is shifting from a gay/straight dichotomy to a family/not family dichotomy. The idea being that it doesn't matter if you're gay or straight as long as you're married and monogamous and living in suburbia (*cough*Mel&Lindsay*cough*). And that by focusing the gay rights struggle on gay marriage, the mainstream gay rights movement is buying into this paradigm of what counts as a legitimate way of living. Trying to fit themselves into the existing paradigm, "prove" that they can be just as mainstream as the mainstream.
It would be a much bigger struggle to say, y'know, we're Brian Kinney, we don't buy into monogamy and marriage and suburbia, we live our own lives the way we choose, and that's just as valid. That there's not One True Way of Living. (I could go into this whole other rant about black and white thinking, inability to see ambiguity or multiple options....)(And also which is not to say that it's WRONG for gay people to want to get married and live in suburbia--if you want it, you should be allowed to go for it--but that it's not the ONLY legitimate way to live, or the MOST legitimate way to live, or whatever, it's just one of many options.)