Julia wrote:
No I'm not. Ask Dana Shilling. I have a great deal of respect for Tavia, Dana, and several others who put out some well-crafted stuff. This
doesn't
stop me from objecting to other aspects of slash (artwork, gay lifestyle issues, etc.)
Yes, your later posts are a bit clearer in that regard. But you *are* coming over, to some members of the list, in the way I described.
Well, I feel I've been keeping to the same line throughout. Slash in general: not my thing. Well-written, political slash: I can respect it if not agree with it. PWP: can't see the point. Adult art: under the circumstances, totally unjustifiable. I've said it with varying degrees of intensity; it depends on who I'm talking to. And I don't expect to convince anyone or stop anyone else expressing their own opinion; I'm just expressing my own.
Please understand that I'm not trying to shut you up, quite the contrary. You have things to say that I personally think are well worth listening to, even if I disagree with you about some of it. However, for me it's tending to get drowned out in the general tide of "all slash is worthless exploitative trash"
(which, I feel I should say in my own defence, I've never said)
that seems to me to be the theme of many of your posts at the moment.
Which isn't the case, but oh well. Frankly, my tone depends on who I'm talking to. If I'm talking to somebody like yourself, or any of the other people who are debating slash in a rational way, then I'll make my points in a reasoned manner. If I'm talking to somebody who is making extreme statements about other people being sick or telling me to just shut up and live with it if I don't like it, then I find it a little difficult to keep a civil tone. Reading back over my last few posts (narcissism) I've noticed that the ones where I get the most sharp tend to be when I'm dealing with people who are being offensive (for instance post #45493-- I'm sorry, but when somebody says they don't care how their activities hurt other people, fans and actors, I'm not going to be polite). And a couple of the people I've been posting to these past couple of days aren't exactly coming across as tolerant themselves-- though I think they're just looking to start a fight and distract us from the main debate.
But if I'd really wanted to object totally to slash, I would have just come on and said "all slash is rubbish, end of discussion." Which is why I'm not saying that.
As a writer whose slash output has a large
proportion of the political polemic variety, I'm finding it annoying on a personal level as well as on the "why the hell don't you go and find out a bit more about the subject you're talking about" level.
Well, firstly, if that's the style you write, then you can pretty much consider yourself exempt from most of the criticism I've been making-- again, I thought I'd made it clear that I respect slash with a message, and so my complaints were directed against other sorts. Secondly, though, I'm not a slash virgin :-). I did read those five zines that were in the auction lot I bought; didn't think much of them but whatever. I also have friends (all female) who read slash with varying degrees of interest; one of them forwarded me some political slash offlist recently which I thought was reasonable (though to be totally honest it wasn't my idea of fun). Finally, I would ask you to send me some of yours-- but this sort of thing's all very subjective, and I'm not sure if I'd be the right person to give a reasoned critique.
Or to put it in my more usual posting style: look mate, you say a lot of interesting, thought-provoking things, I'd rather you cut the confrontational bollocks because the S/N ratio is getting a bit low for my tastes and I'd rather not killfile you.
I think you've just demonstrated my point. What you say in your last paragraph is a lot more confrontational than what you say in your first-- but _the message is the same_.
On the killfile thing though-- I've never been totally comfortable with the concept, I have to say. I'm not asking people to read my posts if they don't want to-- but if you killfile somebody cause you don't like what they're saying on one thread, you might miss out on what they say on other, more interesting threads. Or, if a person comes up with a post on the subject of B7 FEATURE FILM NOW IN PREPRODUCTION or KILLER PENGUINS DESCENDING ON LONDON, then you'll never know, will you? The slash thread will end eventually, and I'm hopeful that the people who've been offending _me_ with their posting styles will turn out to have intellingent things to say elsewhere.
Shane
"I seldom comment on other people's ethics." --Avon
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