This is stuff I think a lot about too... You actually
I was nodding along with most of this, so much so that I feel compelled to comment but don't have much to actually say. I especially agree with this:
I am less disturbed by fantasies of people who I know are on the same political scale as me, even if those fantasies are politically disagreeable to me.
For me... I absolutely believe that we shouldn't police our fantasies. We can't stop things from turning is on; it would be futile to try. But it's also so imperative, to me, that we think about what they mean, and that's where politics inevitably comes into it for me; where the level of self-analysis I can assume to be going on makes a difference. We don't exist in a vacuum, our fantasies have causes and effects, and those can be transformative and amazing as well as oppressive and disgusting and we need to acknowledge both. Fandom makes a big deal out of the former (with good cause, I really think, a lot of the time; I've definitely benefitted from that aspect of fandom) and tends to skip lightly over the latter, and that's a problem...
I don't know what to do with the fantasies that aren't clear-cut politically awful or happy and harmless; that's where a lot of chanslash comes in, for me (I'm neither turned on nor horribly squicked by most of it). I think that demonizing desire is dangerous (whee, alliteration!) and I absolutely think that it's a good thing to have a space where that stuff can be owned and articulated; but I don't quite know how to approach it ethically and politically.
And now I have deviated from your post into an obscure land of psuedointellectualism, and I need to go to bed, so I will stop. But excellent post.
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2007-08-24 05:47 am (UTC)I was nodding along with most of this, so much so that I feel compelled to comment but don't have much to actually say. I especially agree with this:
I am less disturbed by fantasies of people who I know are on the same political scale as me, even if those fantasies are politically disagreeable to me.
For me... I absolutely believe that we shouldn't police our fantasies. We can't stop things from turning is on; it would be futile to try. But it's also so imperative, to me, that we think about what they mean, and that's where politics inevitably comes into it for me; where the level of self-analysis I can assume to be going on makes a difference. We don't exist in a vacuum, our fantasies have causes and effects, and those can be transformative and amazing as well as oppressive and disgusting and we need to acknowledge both. Fandom makes a big deal out of the former (with good cause, I really think, a lot of the time; I've definitely benefitted from that aspect of fandom) and tends to skip lightly over the latter, and that's a problem...
I don't know what to do with the fantasies that aren't clear-cut politically awful or happy and harmless; that's where a lot of chanslash comes in, for me (I'm neither turned on nor horribly squicked by most of it). I think that demonizing desire is dangerous (whee, alliteration!) and I absolutely think that it's a good thing to have a space where that stuff can be owned and articulated; but I don't quite know how to approach it ethically and politically.
And now I have deviated from your post into an obscure land of psuedointellectualism, and I need to go to bed, so I will stop. But excellent post.