theory: as fandom size and activity grows, # of old things being brought back approaches infinity

[cimorene]

I honestly cannot believe that here in the year 2019 I can't go a single day without seeing an overly-intense post trying to bring back "who tops" wars.

It really has that 1990s originally-printed-in-a-zine-possibly whiff of International Male catalog to it.

(OTOH you'd think it had been long enough that the nostalgia would just be amusing, but the wounds of this whole Top and Bottom discourse are still too fresh, possibly because it is one of the most tiresome discourses to ever plague a lot of sex scenes.)

Comments

[yvannairie]

Yeah, I don't know what to make of it coming back all of a sudden, especially b/c there was, like, a whole contingent of younger fans for a while who didn't even realise top/bottom arguments were a thing in fandom.

Now, if I wanted to be cynical... there has definitely been some Memes(tm) going around, assigning people as "tops" or "bottoms" based on incidental personality traits/preferences, and people have been rightly pointing out that this seems to be a way for anti-kink/kinkphobic people to explore D/S dynamics while avoiding the mental dissonance that comes from doing a thing you know is "bad".

[cimorene]

I haven't seen that discussion, but I agree, it is probably driven by something like that.

There's a lot of conflation of active and passive behaviors with "top" and "bottom" with rigid roles in general (and with the psychology of various kinks for that matter, which, yikes... like, the fact that there's a psychological explanation that fits a group of people who share Kink Z does not mean that automatically everybody with Kink Z is there because of that explanation, let alone that anybody who vaguely has some characterstics in common with this explanation is an active card-carrying member of Kink Z in a safe sane and healthy community-member-of-Z-Kink-Community relationship).

[yvannairie]

Yeah ,top/bottom discussions was my Baby's First Social Issues Lesson in fandom, actually, and was my original gateway into sex positivity, where I also learned about kink and also generally just. About the ways people have sex and how there's no wrong way to have sex. The idea that you can't slap people into always being in a certain kind of behavioural category based on other behaviours was quite revealing.

As fandom gets more sex-negative, it feels only appropriate that we need to have these conversations again with a new generation. They weren't there, and while we were assuming everyone was on top of this, we forgot to really keep having the conversation.

[cimorene]

This is probably a valid point, but on the other hand, it's not just people mistakenly conceptualizing gayness as populated by Tops and Bottoms who are divided binarily and from Mars and Venus respectively.

No, it's the TYPE of discourse I've been seeing about the division that's just... it's not that it's rude, per se. It's more... you're THIS mad about the idea of someone else interpreting characterization differently from you, that you're like, completely willing to just get on the soapbox and shout about your disdain for their intelligence? Like you really can't imagine ANY other reason that someone might write a characterization different from your reading of canon than that they're ludicrously, a bit despicably Wrong??? And apparently it never even occurred to you that it could be legitimate for someone to write a characterization that perhaps they themselves considered at odds with canon either...? Just. Wow. I mean, I thought that *I* needed to chill out about canon, but this is some 'are you okay, do you maybe need to practice deep breathing techniques or something' shit.

[yvannairie]

...ha. hahahahaha WELL >_>) That. Sort of thing, I feel, is more in keeping with the general current trend of fandom trying to box itself in and apply "standards" to it. I'm not saying this to be hyperbolic, but as authoritarianism grows, even niche social environments are starting to see effects of it, and the highly aggressive rhetoric is usually where it starts.

My friends just came back from TF Nation and had some... unpleasant stories to share about similar behaviour where someone they'd legit been considering collabing with got out of nowhere incredibly snippy and started to spout aggressively anti-[ship] talking points, making the situation generally uncomfortable for my friends, even going as far as saying that they'd prefer my friends not talk about what they're writing as they'd "like to keep thinking of you as good people". We spent this morning unpacking how, like, all of us are people with Very Strong Opinions about canon, and a host of preferences and squicks that put us into the margins of the fandom... and yet we were all overwhelmingly like "who does that" at the whole Situación(tm).

Not to say that wank hasn't always existed. But a particular kind of "you've got brainrot/you're a bigot if you even think about exploring that character in such a way" is the ugly intersection of the appropriation of social justice language and politics of personal purity.

[cimorene]

Well, you make a good point about the ways that self-righteousness and binarism in personal expression and discourse in fandom are on the rise. But of course, fandom has definitely seen some similar levels of ship war participants and the like impugning the morality and intelligence of others. Top vs Bottom discourse probably has been less likely to produce that type of attack, I would guess, since I haven't seen it, but I'd never place money that someone in fandom HASN'T gone completely batshit on any given topic of wank fodder. Plus there have definitely been people claiming that 'wrong' Top/Bottom orientation was triggering and Discourse about terminology for it even in the past 10 years - there was a period that lasted way, way too long where you would find that information tagged as a "warning" in Teen Wolf headers, or even apologized for in author's notes, so I've gotta assume someone got heated somewhere.

[yvannairie]

There's definitely a dangerous, unpleasant mix of social justice language being used to justify and perpetuate bog-standard difference-in-opinion wank, and it's often impossible to tell how serious someone is when they say it's a big deal, how much they're just using big words to make themselves seem superior, and how much they just don't know what the big words they're using mean.

[hypertwink]

I used to have strong opinions when I was younger eons ago, and then I discovered 1) I loved bottoming, and 2) that you can top from the bottom, so now I don't care just as long as you do a great love/sex scene.

tbh I'd rather you do the fic version of panning to the left and dissolving when a sex scene starts, if you just do it badly. It throws me out of the story, and I can't stand the 2nd hand embarrassment lol

[cimorene]

I didn't have strong opinions until I read statistics that a majority of m/m sexual encounters aren't anally penetrative at all and that a majority of individuals who have them have done or do both, but after I learned these things it became even more annoying.

I know there are people who have strong preferences and only do one or the other, of course, so this is not an objection to pieces of fiction in which that's true. The problem is the "You people are so used to being wrong" discourse and, worse, the "Character X does A, B, and C, and yadda yadda, so OBVIOUSLY anybody who does those things IS SIMPLY a [top or bottom] and can't be anything but!" discourse.

[hypertwink]

Im not surprised because cleaning down there is a fucking chore. Literally. So if you dont go through the trouble, it’s oral or you”re in luck if he did lol In fic, I usually handwave that part because tbh, having a self-cleaning oven for a bottom is the dream lol

[cimorene]

LOLOL. Yeah, I gotta admit, that prep isn't very sexy or interesting in general. Though I've seen some trends in more recent years for fiction that actually does go into the cleaning, albeit not exactly in detail, more being scrupulously careful to acknowledge the necessity of it happening. Probably motivated by the increased fic awareness of condoms and lube, albeit less widespread. But reading about it still tends to throw off the flow of the story and be more "Haha, they included that" than anything else.

[tozka]

Yeesh, I remember seeing that argument in early 2000s fandom, too. Every ten years it just cycles back around again, I suppose???

[cimorene]

Probably it's been hiding out somewhere like an apparently-remissed infection but at least it wasn't all over my meta/dash/flist/headers of the fic I was reading.

UGH

[niqaeli]

I am so very glad my tumblr experience is as curated as it is because I've not seen this go-round come by yet. Which is good, because I might have to scream forever. It's not so much that I have wounds from it, I mostly missed being in the midst of any given iteration of it, but it is so fucking tiresome and boring and, just. Literally almost any other thing is more interesting to me to talk about in terms of characterisation.

Oh, fandom. *sigh*

[cimorene]

Yeah ok to be fair the wounds are more like memories of being REALLY FUCKING FED UP WITH IT and Tired. But I DEFINITELY don't want to experience that again!