Tolerance and Substitution

[peppermintyrose]

I promised you all 12 hours. But I slightly lied because I found out that transferring stuff from Google docs over to LJ html makes for some fucked up html. I had to clean that shit up otherwise this post would look like crap. Oh - and I forgot to mention yesterday - I watched a whole 10 minutes of True Blood Season 6 this year. By God, what I saw

Comments

rachw

[anonymous]

This is going to be a super-long comment (I might have to separate it), and I apologize for that. You know I love your writing here, and agree with so much of what you've said, I just disagree extremely strongly about this.

Let me put my disagreement in context by saying that they are rooted in my identity and experiences as a bisexual, mixed ethnicity person born and raised in the American southeast. Not that this makes me the final authority, but I want it understood that this is not an "I have gay friends" situation for me. It's one I felt viscerally, as predictable repetition of a lifetime of experiencing intolerance. It resonated, and not in a good way.

To begin, I should say that I don't attribute any of the stereotypes and prejudices I see in this series to Sookie as a character, I attribute them to Charlaine Harris. Perhaps wrongly, but where underlying biases are revealed in the text, the handling of them leads me only to conclude that a) CH intended to write Sookie - our thoughtful and gracious host for this fictional

Re: rachw - part the second

[anonymous]

And no, Sookie choosing a shifter doesn’t cut back on the diversity, but it happens in a context in which Weres are in Congress and pure shifters are unknown simply because they have been better at “passing” as human. CH made a choice to make Weres/shifters closer to human in being somewhat readable to Sookie as well. She made choices that showed us that shifters/Weres were a little less “abnormal” than the vamps. The idea that successful long-term “passing” as as close to human as possible is of benefit to the non-humans is an easily recognizable and abhorrent metaphor for how lgbt people are treated and expected to suppress their own identities - and CH never gives us the idea, via Sookie, that she is the least bit critical of this idea.

CH made a choice to make Tyrese’s love HIV positive and also predatory in giving him HIV - and if you cross this HIV stigma with the read of the books’ predatory vampires as a queer metaphor, things start to get really gross. CH made a choice to make vampires of color get lighter skinned over time

Re: rachw - part the second

[peppermintyrose]

I can definitely understand how someone who is actually part of a marginalised group would feel differently. I certainly don't think it's healthy to say that I think I get the final say on the whole dealio. I'm not sure if my reply will fit in all one box either, so here's hoping this doesn't get too messy. :D

Re: rachw - part the second

[peppermintyrose]

While I agree with you that Eric wore an absurd outfit for the orgy, that seems to have been a commentary not on what a gay man would wear, but rather on what the inhabitants expected that a gay man would present as. During the orgy, while Sookie's there, both Eggs and Tom Hardaway talk/think about having sex with Lafayette, and yet they don't consider themselves to be gay or bisexual - and they certainly aren't out to the community. Eggs spent all that time thinking about Eric's butt when to the world, he presents Tara as the face of the person he's into

[elbly]

I've logged in this time :D

You make interesting points. I'd never have thought of HP as being about WWII... Need to look into that.

As you know, I'm always frustrated by the lack of willingness to accept that Eric's sexuality is "fluid". But whether the books are a good representation of tolerance or not, they've certainly highlighted the impressive lack of it from women for women. As one of my friends at work says: Sad times!

[peppermintyrose]

Gud elby. That's just so you can get your reply to your inbox. I'm onto your laziness, as it is my own. :D

It's in the bits I linked. It was pretty deliberate by JKR - with the whole pureblood for Jews, and she talks about that in the interviews.

I know! I was searching for a link and I had to search for "eric is totally not gay", because I remember saying that to you. :D It's definitely sad times. But I could rant on that for forever and a day, so I'll stop now. :D

[elbly]

Oh busted! It's not QUITE laziness, more impatience. I love reading other's comments because you generally attract thinking reader (appart from that annoying one who kept going "HOT! More please!" - she's clearly not right in the head) so I like to open the page and read, but not having an alert means I'm constantly checking back like an obsessive going "has she replied yet? has she replied yet

[peppermintyrose]

Well, I see it as laziness, in that I would otherwise have to check the page itself with a bookmark, and would need to check it every time I remember - and much like you, I'm obsessive about it.

You're doing better than me (mea culpa five months) and with the articles being there for so long after book release, I'm sure they won't disappear any time soon. JKR did talk about it a fair bit, about the effect it had on British people. The bit that always struck me was the similarity between Voldemort and Hitler is that both of them were not themselves the ideal perfect German/wizard they had in mind for everyone else.

He could never like a man at all. He would totally not even *look* at a man if not for Sookie. He's doing it out of luuurve for Sookie, and is secretly disgusted.

Lol. I hate you. :D

[anonymous]

I read your post twice now (once w/ my AM coffee, and once w/ my afternoon tea), but I’m having a hard time responding to your main points because my brain keeps ending up on how glad I am that Sookie is not with Eric. In five months, it’s gotten more cemented that way. More later. I think. ;)

[peppermintyrose]

Well now we know what a happy little life she lead, which is nice. I'm more glad she didn't stick with Eric seeing what she did with her life.

[anonymous]

And it ended up well for Eric, too

[peppermintyrose]

It would have challenged her a lot. She would have, and did, change into someone who didn't cleave so greatly to the values she was raised with. From just after Bill saved her she started *wanting* to survive.

I think it would have weakened it as well if she became just suddenly able to accommodate a violent lifestyle.

[anonymous]

Oh I missed you PMR, you always give me the best kind of headaches :)

AoifeNZ

[peppermintyrose]

I love to give headaches. :D And yay! I thought maybe I wouldn't see you again. :D You've got a review coming sometime in the future. So many updates to read, but I see you're amongst them. :D

[anonymous]

Lol, don't feel that you need to be in a rush to review that one, I was slightly drunk and more than slightly sleep-deprived when I wrote it. Whoops :S

[peppermintyrose]

I'm sure it's better than you think. :)

Hiya

[anonymous]

Nice to hear from you. I was actually wondering if you had stepped away from the fandom entirely

Re: Hiya

[anonymous]

^^^All that up there, what chicpea said. -rachw

Re: Hiya

[peppermintyrose]

Hey

Re: Hiya

[anonymous]

Antoine was the Katrina refugee that was sent by the government to spy on Sam and Sookie. Anthony was the vampire-cook.

I'd written something much longer, but basically the only people who got happy endings were those who stuck to the surface-same. I include Sookie and Sam in this. Both are rare varieties of supes that do not embrace their supe-sides very much, and mostly desire to live human lives.

Pretty much everybody who tried to dabble in a 'mixed' relationship came out the worse for it.

Because of this, a lot of people perceived that the takeaway (or throwaway) message was that it's not who you are but *what* you are that ultimately matters.

I think the only message that CH was trying to convey is that couples need deep-seated commonalities to function effectively in the long term -- the problem is that this got in the way of the gay/minority metaphor, bigtime.