Louise wrote:

Shane wrote:

...

But if they're presenting two characters in a gay relationship, then they _are_ writing about my lifestyle. I'm a gay man in a gay relationship.

Hence

...

my concern. If somebody, say, wrote a story about a Muslim character

which

...

totally misrepresented Islam, would you say to Muslims who objected: "Oh, they weren't writing about _your_ religion"?

Sorry, Shane, but I just can't see this one. Islam is a specific religion with a large set of specific written regulations which it's followers adhere to, and therefore there is a very definite 'right' and 'wrong' as far as writing about that religion goes. I just can't agree that sexual orientation falls into the same category; there are no written guidelines that all homosexuals must follow.

But there are Muslims and Muslims, too. Some Muslims interpret the Koran in a very strict and literalistic way; some don't. Bosnian Muslims live a much different lifestyle to Afghan Muslims and Saudi Arabians, and all of these live much different lifestyles to Cat Stevens. But none of them are any less Muslims, and if any one of these objected to the portrayal of their religion, you can't just say "Oh, but the others aren't objecting, so it's OK."

While I don't deny that there is a

definite gay lifestyle for some young gay men, I doubt it bears much resemblance to the lifestyle of gay men in their mid-to-late thirties, which is the age of the characters in most slash. I _don't_ believe that there's a specific lifestyle for gay men approaching middle age any more than I believe in a specific lifestyle for heterosexuals of the same age. Once people get past their twenties, they tend to do their own thing more than doing the trendy thing.

Well, yes and no. I wasn't so much thinking of the rainbow-Lycra-and-quiff crowd when I was talking about lifestyle, though I can see how you might have interpreted it that way. What I meant is that it's a very different thing to share your house and life with a man than with a woman, and some of these differences are really very subtle. Often what I see in slash is just a kind of "Darby and Joan, only it's Darby and John" portrayal-- a straight couple, but the woman has a penis. Or else, as I said, in the case of the "...Kirk's not gay, he just..." stories, there's a total denial of gay culture, which affects gay people whether or not they're in the mainstream of it or not.

Shane

"Spare me the amateur psychology" --Avon

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