Sexism and Men's Issues

When did the crazies become worth catering to?

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

When they became the loudest.

Dopants: He meant what he said and he said what he meant, a Ninety is faithful 100%.

The main issue being that many of them believe in fairly strict monogamy. As in, if you show a character's bisexual in the way described, you're already turning them away from empathizing with that character, since they dislike the concept of flirting or oogling when you're already in a relationship. (This is part of where Depraved Bisexual comes from, as an gross exaggeration of that standard.)

Which is what puts writers in a bind. Either they write it "naturally" and turn off the people who are already the least accepting of bisexuals, or they shoehorn it in some other way, which is harder to do and can easily get labelled as bad writing. Lose-lose situation, all around.

edited 19th Aug '15 7:36:28 AM by TotemicHero

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

Why listen to prudish megaphone-wielding idiots? In three years, their objections will be meaningless as they will have moved on to rant at something else.

Fuck.the.crazies.

Make quality work, get published or self publish, move on.

There is a myriad of options out there so there isn't any reason to compromise your work.

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

Is there something anyone could ever write that would end up with someone not complaining about something, sexual or not? I mean. There are still people who believe sex should be between two 40+ year old adults under the supervision of a council of elders, with a sheet between them with a hole poked between it for the sole purpose of procreation.

I know I am not saying anything new but seriously if your aim is to please everybody, not even becoming a cheap hooker would achieve that.

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes

To everyone saying "fuck the crazies", here's the problem—a lot of the time I don't think that the producers of a show or writers of a game, or what have you, realize which fans are the crazies. If you aren't part of a fandom, then identifying the sane members of it isn't easy. You're highly likely to assume that the opinion you see the most or hear shouted the loudest is the opinion of a majority of the fans. I remember when one game I liked ended up getting completely overhauled, with many of the features I enjoyed removed. Why? Because a couple of hardcore gamers in the game's official forum whined loudly enough that it was "too easy". Since casual players like myself didn't appear in the forum to refute them, the designers thought they were being true to the wishes of the fanbase as a whole when they removed the features that made it more forgiving.

In this instance, the "prudish megaphone wielding idiots" (who probably can't distinguish between gay and bi anyway) aren't the problem. The problem is a small, but rabid group of so-called gay rights supporters who deny that bisexuality is a thing, and will scream blue murder—and lobby accusations of homophobia—if a character who has, at any point, shown an interest in same-sex relationships, later shows an interest in the opposite gender. As far as they are concerned having a bi character is the same thing as endorsing the idea that sexuality is a choice, and to people who aren't particularly educated on the subject their opinion can, after years of being told "sexuality is not a choice" sound reasonable (even though, it goes without saying, it is not). Worse still, those people tend to be disproportionately represented in fandoms (think about the more psychotic of the yayoi fangirls, or the whole Het Is Ew crowd).

Then on the other end of things you've got the people who will insist that if we don't actually see the character engaging in sexual relationships with both genders then, despite any other evidence to the contrary, they can't be bi, and you're just trying to exploit/"bait" people of a non-standard orientation. Meaning that even if you decide to ignore the religious right and the crazed yayoi fan both, you're still getting criticism and—at least as far as you know—from supporters of the very people you were trying to represent.

That's without getting into the culture-wide, and unfortunately still prevalent notions that "bi is just what people say they are so they can cheat" or that "bi people are just confused". I've had shouting matches with my normally very liberal pro-gay rights mother about both of those ideas—particularly after she felt the need to voice them in front of my bi (and very loyal, needless to say) girlfriend.

To summarize both this post and the ones I've made before, bi characters are harder to write well, and attract more negative fandom attention than both straight and gay characters. You can get accused of homophobia, you can get accused of exploiting a minority, and you aren't likely to get a lot of praise—or at least not a lot of easy to find praise—for doing it well.

---

Now before anybody tries to correct me on any of the above, I will remind you all that I think everything I just wrote up there is staggeringly stupid. I think negative stereotypes need to be exorcised from the fandom, and that writers, directors, and other producers of media should avoid the opinions of fans like those as if they were a disease. Sadly I don't expect them to start doing that any time soon, and so I expect that for bisexuals—and bi men in particular—gaining quality representation is going to continue to be an uphill struggle as writers take the easy way out by continuing to ignore their existence.

edited 19th Aug '15 11:01:53 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Thing is you are assuming that the devs and ocmpanies have no way to measure the "success" of their games and products other than online forums. It would be, yes, incredibly silly to ignore what your customers have to say about your product, but this does not mean that they are inherently the only source they have to know how their product is doing.

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes

I'm not assuming anything, actually. Of course there are lots of other ways to check on the popularity of a product. Unfortunately the Internet is one of the easiest ways to do it, and can really skew results.

Not to mention that "fan" outrage over things often leaves the Internet and enters your life in other ways. Sticking with the example of the under-representation of bisexual men in fiction, if you've already received death threats from people who fetishize gay relationships because you had the audacity to keep your straight characters straight, how willing are you going to be to experiment with the notion of having a character who has, in the past, shown interest in other men, show an interest in women?

This.

Marketing, approvals, and testing doesn't work like that.

You also just went with one medium to mass media at large. That doesn't make sense.

It is a very big world with many options. But no, no reputable marketing or publicist firm cares a damn about internet noise. They hire designers like me and psychologists like Aszur to take care of that for them.

edited 19th Aug '15 11:18:57 AM by Gabrael

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

Or Booth Babes.

Or me as a psychologist booth babe. "Hey baby. Is it just me, or did it suddenly get Freudian in here, Daddy?" "Hey sweetums. Wanna be my Sugar Momma?"

Also, yeah the internet is the easiest way but it is also not the most accurate, and examples of death threats over that seems to be extremely anecdotal and extremely...extreme examples to be something worth considering as a guideline to follow all the time, really.

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes

When you say no one should use the Internet as a guideline, I one hundred percent agree with you. I just don't know that enough companies or individual writers do ignore it—especially once the death threat letters start arriving at their homes.

I'll also note that you don't have to be deliberately catering to the crazy in order for it to influence you. Interact with it often enough, or hear the complaints leveled at someone else's work frequently enough, and it may well influence your decisions about what you write, without said influence being official policy.

When death threats come in they call the FBI.

Big companies give no fucks.

Any who, we need to move this to another thread to stay on topic

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

See, I don't think that "calling the FBI" and "being influenced by the hate that pours in" are mutually exclusive. I also think that, fandoms being what they are, it's individual writers and actors who are likely to be on the receiving end of much of the crazy, rather than the corporation itself.

That said, you're right about this getting off topic. I'll reiterate my original point—that I think fears of being unable to please the Unpleasable Fanbase, coupled with being unsure how to portray the character in general, likely do play a role in the dearth of bi men in fiction—and ask if anybody else has anything else they'd like to talk about.

George Lucas and Stephen Moffot (so?) Would already be dead if that was true.

And to roll around, John Barrowman as the bisexual wonder Captain Jack is delightful.

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

Not all death threats are 'real' in the sense that the person actually intends to try and kill you. Hell I believe most threats technically don't count as death threats due to being of a "I hope you get run over by a truck" nature rather than a "I'm coming to kill you" nature.

Also you'll note that Moff at least has withdrawn from the Internet a lot due to the abuse he receives.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

But that is irrelevant to his career. Man is making millions on a myriad of projects he has full creative control over.

Again, priorities.

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

Someone might not have meant the death threat literally but it's still a death threat. People need to realize that.

If you tell someone in person, "I am going to come to your house and rape you and then cut off your head," they are going to call the police, and you are going to jail. You can tell the court you totally didn't mean it like that, but f*ck that nonsense, you were making death threats.

If you tell someone on our forum the same thing, you are going to receive the banhammer with extreme prejudice because, as our rules state,

Because death threats are death threats. That so many on the internet do not understand this concept premised in basic human decency is just another shimmering example of the GIFT.

edited 20th Aug '15 9:22:13 AM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

In other words, there are appropriate punishments for things. If you make a death threat, you get the cops on you. if you punch someone, you go to jail. if you embezzle someone, you pay and go to jail. If you skip a red light, you pay a fine.

If you make a death threat this is the consequence: police. If you receive a death threat you call the police: you don't reward the death threathening behavior by changing the content of your work to cater to the person who will then learn they can get change by making death threats.

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes

Well, at least legally, there's a difference between "I will kill you" and "I wish you'd die" and "kill yourself".

Dopants: He meant what he said and he said what he meant, a Ninety is faithful 100%.

Wanted to speak on some of my own thoughts on the presentation of bisexual characters. While needless to say, I find death threats and the like horrible and unjustified, I kind of understand

One example in my own reading is with The Vorkosigan Saga (semi-spoilers ahead).

One of the major characters (the father of the protagonist/a protagonist in prequel stories) Aral Vorkosian is a bisexual who seems to have more interest in men than in women. However, he ends up falling in love with and marrying a soldier (sort of) from the opposing side, Cordelia Naismith, who comes from a free love utopia.

Now what makes things a bit problematic (to use a Tumblrism) is that Aral's male lover pre-Cordelia was a completely terrible person, debauched and sadistic (and Aral had a troubled relationship with him), and that guy was also the lover of another villain who was even worse.

So basically Aral's homosexual relationships were dysfunctional whereas his marriage to a woman ends up being very happy. There's also some iffy comments from Cordelia- that Aral “was bisexual, now he’s monogamous" and that she figured out that his primary attraction is to soldiers (of either gender) and it's just that he was previously only interacting with male soldiers.

And there's another character who is a hermaphrodite, who after several books of seeming almost exclusively interested in men, ends up marrying a woman.

Basically, my point (besides a peeve with the series) is that sometimes the implications of the homosexual relationship being unhealthy and/or abusive and the heterosexual one curative are not a matter of people reading too much into things.

Edit- I mean I guess the same kind of thing can show up with bisexual characters choosing someone of the same sex (i.e. the jokes about Mako in Legend of Korra in light of the fact that his two exes hooked up with each other), but it's treated more for humor, whereas (as seen in the above example) the tendency is to present the homosexual ex-lover as a Depraved Homosexual or Psycho Lesbian.

edited 20th Aug '15 11:22:44 AM by Hodor2

X4 While I agree with you completely what I've seen said by internet celebrates indicates that the authorities are not interested in threats unless they are very specific (as in "you live at house number X on Y street in Z town and I'm coming to kill you). Hell that's assuming that one is in an area where threats are illegal (I remember a thing about a women in Canada being told by the police that the threats are legal until they are acted upon) and that the threats are of the "I'm coming to kill you" nature instead of the "I hope/want you/your family to die/get murdered/get raped/die from your cancer", which I believe are horrifyingly legal.

Here is a good example of a civilised part of the internet, you get banned and actually lose something when you act out of line, however much of the internet (especially Twitter, Facebook, youtube, Reddit, Tumblr and similar) is not civilised. Such threats may well get removed but even if the author does lose their account they can instantly make a new one in such places.

edited 20th Aug '15 1:21:23 PM by Silasw

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

It doesn't help when you're in Canada but receiving threats from a kid in Australia.

The internet also doesn't respect borders and national laws.

Inter arma enim silent leges

A student at Northwestern University has filed suit claiming the administration ignored his claims of being sexually harassed because he's a guy.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

There was a discussion going on the Women's Issues thread about female clothing, and I was going to post on it when I realized my post probably had nothing to do with Women's Issues by itself, so I think I might as well as post it here and see if it sparks any discussion about male issues with clothing. Here it is:

I usually I prefer wearing jeans boardshorts (according to wikipedia, it seems that's how they are called) because they have more pockets than normal jeans. Well, kind of. I don't like back pockets, so I don't use them. I'm also used to at least three pockets because of my school uniform (shirt pocket). It's also too hot in here to wear jackets or more layers of clothes for most of the year.

Currently it's not much of a problem, but I wouldn't mind having a purse around to carry some stuff. Since I'm a man I'd probably have to do with some kind of bag. I don't understand what's the difference from the kind of bag I use to carry my stuff to school to a purse, but it's probably that kind of bag I'll be using. It hoards almost as much as an average backpack, I think. I'd probably have that kind of bag for when I go out, and a backpack for when I go to college or work or whatever (and possibly take the other bag too, if the need arises). I think what's stopping me from starting that anytime soon is the fact I don't have that much stuff I need/want to take around often, possibly because I'm still 17 years old and I don't work nor buy them. I'm talking about things that might come in hand every once in a while: an umbrella, band-aids, spare clothes, a coat, a towel, some kinds of medicine, etc.

I dunno about skirts, I've never worn one.