In which LOGO doesn't care about women

[x_los]

...and I get a bunk in the morgue next to Iago in the wing for people who've suffered heart attacks and died from Not Surprised.

Now, I know LOGO's raison d'etre is gay and bi men, but if I were going to make a list of ten important, memorable bi and gay characters of sci-fi, here's what I wouldn't do:

1) contend that, in addition to being AWESOME, "Zorro: the Gay Blade" (a tale of Zorro's out and proud twin brother* donning the Mask and kicking ass/going shopping therein) was science fiction,
2) include Andrew from Buffy as my no. 10,
3) have no women or other-gendered characters of -any- kind (LeGuin's coming over to smack you with the Pimp Hand of Darkness, y'all),
4) make smegging Jack Harkness my no. 1,
5) pretend sci-fi is a genre entirely without books. I love my graphic novels, don't get me wrong, but your top ten? Should admit the *existence* of the interesting gender and sexuality dialogue that's taken place in non-graphic speculative fiction.

I think my f-list could come up with a better list standing on their heads while forced to hear disquieting production rumors about what M. Night Shama-llama doing to the Avatar film, personally.

Have Neil Gaimen reading you Blueberry Girl: that's more female-positive, right?

*Incidentally, I love the possibilities of taking the hyper-machismo of Zorro and just... making him gay. Chincano? Chica-yes.** I am not even sorry. Even if it's just played for cheap camp, look at the institutional example of textual reclamation! Official!slash!

**So earlier today I was watching a Four-era Doctor Who episode (you too can have a bed in the Not Surprised wing!!) and there was a singularly beautiful line from T. Baker, who'd just escaped from a yoke by thrusting it at the guards who'd captured him:

Four: I suppose you could say "the yoke's on him", if you were the sort of person who said that sort of thing, which fortunately I'm not.

Reader: I loved this deeply.***

*** Also today, I was thinking that if I were polyamorous, Aishwarya Rai could totally be the Mistress of my Spices, and congratulated myself on getting in both a movie title joke AND a polyamory-community slang joke in one pun. Any day where this is accomplished is automatically a fantastic one. 

Comments

[nacilmeiel.livejournal.com]

The list aside, you know I love the bookses.

i don't find everyone's bi to be a bit sensationalist at all. This is absolutely true in a large subcommunity that I live in (although use the word 'bisexual' and fear lynching), but I would definitely argue that this is even true of 95% of everyone who was at college. I also don't believe that this is college thing, because this seems to keep up among the people I graduate with.

I really believe that this is a foretelling of what society would be like in the future*, people will just loosen up and become less horribly repressed in society.

*the future = educated parts of the world, but appropriate enough for the mainsteam tv

[x-los.livejournal.com]

Fair enough, but I think they way they do it is a bit shocking!sex appeal!gimmicky. There's no reference to the fact that it might be slightly difficult or impact a character's life to be gay or bi in modern Wales because these aren't gay and bi characters, they're gay as long as one needs a steamy, provocative 'omg boy kissez!!' scene. Ianto and Jack don't have a relationship--not even a casual or a complex one. They have a series of stagey kisses. I'm not arguing that we're not headed towards a shinier, more pan-sexual future, and I'm FASCINATED by sci-fi's potential to question gender/orientation norms and posit alternatives and extrapolations, I'm just questioning whether Torchwood's (and I quite LIKE S2, even!) exploration and rather played-up treatment of sex/relationships really deserves to be enshrined as providing the most compelling examples in all sci fi. Twice.