It's Different Because They're *People*!

[neadods]

I joined metafandom because it posts interesting links to fannish happenings around LJ, and hey - if fanthropology is good, than more of the same must be better.

We'll see how long I last now that my first post has led me to Sprat's commentary on Real Person Slash: "I know this is a sensitive area in fandom, and I know there are a lot of people for whom this is, like, A Really Major Deal--not just a personal squick, but an actual ethical issue having to do with the right to privacy of the actors in question. And the thing is, I honestly do not understand why."

Because they're people, that's why!

I commented in the thread, and I tried to keep my tone reasonable, but I am one of those folk with "an actual ethical issue" about this, and it's very simple to explain why - whether the actors in question know it or not, whether they read it or not, whether they care or not, real person fiction demotes a human being to the same level as a fictional character.

There are levels of this, some not all that offensive. For instance, obligatory disclosure, I once wrote a real person fic. I put a fictional character on a Julia Childe cooking show, which necessitated having Julia Childe in the story. But I don't feel that I denigrated her because I showed her doing her doing her job. And I've read plenty of fanfics where the actor gets sucked into the character's world, or vice versa. When the real person is written in a situation dealing with their job, and written in a manner that fits their character as known, then - well, you can argue that a line is crossed, but it's harder to argue that a person has been damaged or insulted.

But when you start talking about private issues - love, sex, family - in a public fiction, then you start treating people not just as moderately fictional, but as dancing meatpuppets. Real person slash - particularly slash about het humans (I get the impression that Sprat is writing about Paul Gross, who is married) depersonalizes the subjects even farther into breathing sex toys. Sex toys that are getting their workout not in the confines of someone's skull, but right out there in public for the amusement of the masses.

How can you not see that as ethically creepy?

There appear to be two arguments in favor of RPS. First, that the actors are attractive and sell their sexuality in their work. But just because they're selling the sizzle, it doesn't mean they're signing away their rights to control the steak. Where is the ethical line between saying "if actors wanted privacy they wouldn't be actors" and "if women don't want to be raped, they shouldn't wear miniskirts"? Because from where I'm standing, I can't see that line at all. RPS may not be as violent or violating as an actual rape, but it springs from the same mindset - that anyone that attracts is responsible for slaking the sexual arousal - regardless of that person's opinion, interest, or even intent. The same can be said for stalking. It's a fine, fine line between just writing about fantasies with someone and making those fantasies real.

And y'know what? Even if you NEVER plan on making said fantasies real, if you publicly post something torrid about an actor and then go see them, what is it going to look like - to the actor, to the authorities, even to the rest of the fandom? Better pray nothing happens to that actor when you're around, because you've made yourself public suspect #1 without ever banging more than your keyboard.

Second, is the argument that "what they don't know won't hurt them." Well, yeah. The odds of someone finding a specific story about themselves are pretty low. BUT - that doesn't mean it won't happen, not with the global, lingering nature of the Internet. Plus, while the odds of a single person finding a single fic might be low, what about the widening pool of people associating with that person? Their spouse, their children, their friends, their parents - is it really safe to assume that none of these people will trip over the story? Equally important, is it safe to assume that because the story is not about them personally that they won't be hurt/shocked/upset/appalled? Do they deserve to be hurt just because you wanted to get your ya-yas off with a person instead of a character, and wanted to do so in a semi-public forum?

Not to mention that just because they don't say anything directly to you doesn't mean that they don't know. If you suspected someone of stalking you, would your first impulse be to talk to them, or to gather up your information and quietly talk to the authorities? Particularly if they might be going somewhere, say, a convention, where you might attend and they were worried about their safety? (I work conventions, I've been in fandom for decades. I am so not joking here. It only takes one stalker scare for a fan club to lose their star or for a previously wonderful guest to stop coming.)

Is it really all worth it just to be able to write a story about a real person? A person you don't know anyway? Trust me, no matter how friendly they are, how many interviews they give, you don't actually know them.

Think they're hot? Think they ought to be with someone of your choosing? For the love of sanity, write about their character and you can safely bang 'em like a gong. Fictional people doing fictional things is a victimless crime. But for heaven's sake, if you're attracted to an actual person then grant them the dignity of treating them like people!

And no, the golden rule doesn't apply if you wish people were writing torrid RPS about you. Get a sex life of your own!

Comments

Look at my mini, imagine me in it, but don't touch unless I ask you to.

[miriam-heddy.livejournal.com]

Just wanted to say, "thank you" for pointing out that fantasizing about someone is different from acting on a fantasy.

When the anti-RPS crusaders start advocating thought-police, we've all got a problem.

Re: Look at my mini, imagine me in it, but don't touch unless I ask you to.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

There are three separate issues being discussed here - personal fantasies, public fantasies, and acting out.

What goes on in your skull is your private domain. Once it goes out in public or semipublic, it is no longer a private fantasy, it is a shared story, and it becomes possible for said story to break beyond the original author's confines and be passed around where they didn't expect. It also becomes possible for the person being fantasized to discover, where it wasn't possible before the story was shared.

You're creating a straw man. I'm not telling you what to enjoy or to think. I am saying that I think there are limits on what should be published or said publicly. Yes, there is a difference.

Re: Look at my mini, imagine me in it, but don't touch unless I ask you to.

[miriam-heddy.livejournal.com]

You argued that accepting RPS equals believing "that anyone that attracts is responsible for slaking the sexual arousal," and you used rape as a (very) problematic analogy, because rape is an act. Had you said "rape fantasy," the analogy would not be so problematic, as you wouldn't have been conflated the sharing and discussion of a fantasy and an act of violence.

Certainly, you may well want to argue that all sexual speech is inherently violent, and that anytime we invoke someone else's name in speaking our desires, we're somehow acting on the person themselves. There are forms of speech that are considered "speech-acts," in that the words themselves clearly do something (as in "I now pronounce you man and wife"). But that example of the marriage announcement only is an act (and not simply words spoken to no effect) if the speaker has the power to make them so (and to use a Trek analogy, the Captain saying, "Make it so" has the power to give an order to act, whereas a Yeoman could say "Make it so" to no effect). In those terms, RPS writers are and will always be lowly Yeomans, as our words will never, ever actually make it so. RPS is a lie that identifies itself as such, and perhaps we might argue that lying is unethical, period (but we already do make that argument, and we have laws about libel and slander that any actor could try to use against RPS.)

Aside from the lie of the fiction, we might wonder whether any fan, in writing RPS (and in sharing that fantasy) has the power to turn their own words into acts rather than fantasies.

Perhaps part of the drive to write RPS is to pretend to power--to feel power over an actor (who, because we desire them, seems to have a certain power over us). But does writing and sharing RPS actually give us anything other than the illusion of power over our own desires?

Stalking, by contrast, gives us real power--the power of intimidation and harrassment--of actually entering into the physical space of another person, against their will.

Rape, by contrast, gives us real power--the power of violence--of actually entering into the body of another person, against their will.

Are you really willing to argue that the sharing of a fantasy, and the risk that our words will be read, is on the level with these other, very real, acts of violence?

Re: Look at my mini, imagine me in it, but don't touch unless I ask you to.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Are you really willing to argue that the sharing of a fantasy, and the risk that our words will be read, is on the level with these other, very real, acts of violence?

Can you deny that although not all people who write violent fantasies act them out, almost 100% of the people who do end up acting out violent fantasies first read and wrote about them? For the hundreds of kids who fantasize about shooting up their schools only a handful have... but all the ones who did, wrote about it, planned about it, and even talked to friends about it.

Now - tell me how to decide from the writing who is innocently fantasizing and who is an inherent danger to the community.

And this also doesn't address my original point - that by writing RPS, we are denying another person's liberty for our own pleasures. You yourself say part of the drive to write RPS is to pretend to power--to feel power over an actor.

"Power over"? Why do you need, why do you even want "power over" another human being? What ethical reason can whitewash the removal of another person's autonomy?

The more I hear "RPS isn't rape" the more I'm hearing language that comes right out of rape trial defenses. One human being is being subjugated for another's pleasure/release/power.

Re: Look at my mini, imagine me in it, but don't touch unless I ask you to.

[twistedchick]

And add to the power fantasy the objectification of the person involved as subject, to the point where the person is simply a toy for the user's pleasure. That whole thing just *feels* eew, and reminds me far too much of the arguments/excuses for the sexual use of human slaves, and the sexual use of women in societies where women are not considered fully human, are not considered equal to men and do not have the rights or power to change the situation.

Re: Look at my mini, imagine me in it, but don't touch unless I ask you to.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

and reminds me far too much of the arguments/excuses for the sexual use of human slaves, and the sexual use of women in societies where women are not considered fully human, are not considered equal to men and do not have the rights or power to change the situation.

This sums up my thoughts on the matter quite well. It is treating a class of people, based on their gender and profession, like objects who do not have to be treated in the same manner and do not have the same rights as any other people.

Re: Look at my mini, imagine me in it, but don't touch unless I ask you to.

[miriam-heddy.livejournal.com]

In order of your points:
although not all people who write violent fantasies act them out, almost 100% of the people who do end up acting out violent fantasies first read and wrote about them

However, you're ignoring the demographics of audience, just a bit. Women (and it is women who primarily write and read RPS) often have fantasies in which they are raped, yet those fantasies are not an indication that women desire to be raped in real life. Rape fantasies are a rather interesting aspect of human behaviour that point to the ways in which the relationship between fantasy and desire and reality is far more complicated than you're allowing for in your simple, causal equation. How much more complicated, then, is that relationship when the writer imagines, not meeting an actor, or raping him, but that the actor is in a sexual/romantic relationship with another actor?

You're now on the verge of advocating that RPS is unethical because a small subset of RPS readers/writers confuses fact and fiction and and so the presence of "bad readers" necessitates we ban the books (books which are already labeled "fiction").

by writing RPS, we are denying another person's liberty for our own pleasures..."Power over"? Why do you need, why do you even want "power over" another human being? What ethical reason can whitewash the removal of another person's autonomy?

You're misunderstanding me, I think. We may desire power over our own desires, which often seem to sweep us away, and writing a fantasy and sharing it give us some power back over those desires, so that we no longer feel quite so subject to their whims (and to the sexual attractiveness of actors).

Actors work the tease--the promise of "look at me" while they're always out of reach. Acting is an illusion of intimacy with the audience, and most of us (the sane actors and the sane audience members) recognize this, even during those moments outside the performance itself (such as when an actor gives autographs and shakes our hand, thus prolonging the tease by offering more of themselves but withholding any real intimacy). They further tease us--to maintain our interest in them--when they do interviews. Is that tease unethical, because it's a lie? Perhaps. But I'd argue it isn't, because actors do so assuming that the audience is saavy to the lie--that we know a fiction when we see it (and yes, a few psychos out there don't know it, but that hasn't shut down the workings of the celebrity industry, which has been teasing us, with our consent, since the first actor stepped onto a stage and spoke to us.)

So the tease isn't fulfilled, and we seek some release, and most of us, sane as we are, don't expect the actor to fulfill the promise of the tease.

But, although the story gives us some way of controlling our desire, it only gives us an illusion of controlling the actors themselves. We have that same illusion when Entertainment Tonight offers us a tour of an actor's home, or an interview that promises to give us an inside view into the actor's thoughts. Celebrity is something an actor cultivates, through a publicist and an industry dedicated to making the actors seem huge and important, and letting us feel important by letting us share in their lives, if only through the illusion that we "know" them.

Perhaps RPS does infringe, not on an actor's autonomy, but because it threatens to equalize some of the power of the tease, by giving the audience the ability to do the work of celebrity-worship at a not-for-profit level--one the actor and industry doesn't control or make any money off of.

Re: Look at my mini, imagine me in it, but don't touch unless I ask you to.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

You're now on the verge of advocating that RPS is unethical because a small subset of RPS readers/writers confuses fact and fiction

That's not *quite* what I said - what I'm asking is how the actor (or the convention security staff for that matter) knows the difference between the person just writing a harmless fic and someone who is well over the edge. There's no way of knowing, which is why I think that such fic should be kept tightly under covers and not publicly posted, lest it frighten off actors from their fandoms.

And unfortunately, I now have an example - one of the people on this thread got a threatening anonymous email because of her responses to this post. Someone out there is finding even dissent in a discussion about RPS a reason to lash out. Do I think everyone on the thread who disagrees with me a secret nutso? Absolutely not! It's been an occasionally frustrating and snappish but ultimately interesting conversation.

But... the nut in every bunch of people (my people, your people, their people, every group) has come out. And there is no way of knowing from the posts here in this thread, who that nut is.

So now imagine that we were all going to meet at a convention next week. Much like an Agatha Christie novel, we know someone is a little too tightly wrapped and we know what sets them off... but we don't know WHO it is or just how tightly they're wound. If the person who got the email was the headliner celebrity at the convention, what would you recommend? That they not come? That they not meet the fans directly just in case? That the convention double security? That everything proceed as normal and we all hope that the email writer will just stick with anonymous email?

So the whole group suffers because one person went over the line, anonymously.

The rest of your post - y'know, I hadn't entirely thought of it that way. I still don't agree, but the way you phrase it makes me stop and *think* without getting "ew, this still sounds depersonlizing" willies. So point to you. :>

Re: Look at my mini, imagine me in it, but don't touch unless I ask you to.

[miriam-heddy.livejournal.com]

The problem with crazy people is that they look just like us, right? There's definitely something to that--and it's in the vocabulary we use (fan being short for fanatical, and for some, that may well be true).

But... I've been trying to imagine the fan acting specifically on that RPS obsession, and what it might look like, to try to implement the desire for (say) Callum and Paul to sleep together. Would the psycho kidnap them and force them to have sex? (and yeah, as I think about this, it starts to sound like a sexy fannish joke, the language of slash disclaimers when we often jokingly offer thanks to the actors for providing us with their fine bods which we promise to return to them, unscathed. )

RPS, unlike most other forms of eroticized celebrity worship--and much like slash-- keeps the fan at a remove. It's a voyeuristic fantasy, and mediated by the idea of a romantic relationship that excludes the fan from anything but watching. In contrast, fans who've stalked and hurt celebrities believe that the actor has a private, intimate relationship with them. That delusion can and is fed by anything: RPS, slash, a signed autograph, an "ET" interview where an actor said they were looking for a blonde who liked dogs, a tabloid story that tells us that an actor's favorite color is blue, a fan's perception of a fleeting moment of possible eye contact at a convention as the actor surveyed the room and looked their way.

Do we get rid of everything that might trigger such delusions? And do actors really want us to if that threatens to cut into the profitability of their industry? Any security person at a convention therefore needs to consult with the actors themselves, who must weigh the risks and benefits of performing in a forum in which they're further blurring the distinction between their public and private personas. We might ask the same question about our own discussion. Do we choose not to debate issues because there are some fans out there who can't handle disagreement in a civil manner?

I'd say that probably the best thing we can do, as fans, isn't to curtail our fannish activity, but to do the other thing--to take what's secret and taboo and get it out there, theorize it, articulate the ways in which it's JUST A FANTASY as loudly and nicely as possible.

Maybe we should even question the term "Real Person Slash," rather than the thing itself, because the term suggests that the stories are about real peoplem, when we know (at least the non-psychos know) that it's about Actors--and that, however much we think we know about them, we don't know them at all, except as they've performed themselves before the public in their role of actor. RPS is really "Actor Slash," and if it seems to be objectifying the actors, dehumanizing them, that's actually (I would argue) a *good* thing. Let them be meatpuppets--toys--because if we think that RPS is about real people--if we're thinking too much about the "real people"--we're on the edge of participating in the delusion of fanaticism.

Psycho fans think they know the *real* people. The rest of us know we don't. And we're satisfied with that.

Likewise, I suspect that the desire on the part of many anti-RPS fans to "protect" the actors is potentially dangerous when the act of protecting them--of speaking for the actors and speaking of the actors' children (and knowing the actor *has* children)--is on the edge of participating in the delusion of fanaticism--of dissolving the barrier between celebrity and audience.

That is to say that most fans *aren't* (as you are) really working in the celebrity-protection industry, so when fans (anti-RPS fans) spend a lot of time worried about protecting "our" boys from RPS, a side effect of that protective urge (or maybe a motivator of it) is the illusion of power that comes from imaginary intimacy. The idea that we can or should protect an actor may well be as bad (and dangerous for the actor and the fan) as the idea that we can hurt them.

I'll pretty much always take the stand that more words, rather than less, are important. How else can we ever get each other to "stop and think" rather than acting rashly? That's points to all of us!

Re: Look at my mini, imagine me in it, but don't touch unless I ask you to.

[butterflykiki.livejournal.com]

Aside from the lie of the fiction, we might wonder whether any fan, in writing RPS (and in sharing that fantasy) has the power to turn their own words into acts rather than fantasies.

Perhaps part of the drive to write RPS is to pretend to power--to feel power over an actor (who, because we desire them, seems to have a certain power over us). But does writing and sharing RPS actually give us anything other than the illusion of power over our own desires?

You know, I think the analogy that's been used, of rape, doesn't work as well as the one for sexual harassment. The third part of the legal definition boils down to "making a workplace hostile with jokes, visuals, comments, or other actions." I know if I were an actor who was having RPS written about me, it would sure as hell make me self-conscious, at the very least. Confused, questioning where the hell people got that impression about me, intimidated... the list goes on.

Yeah, the power gained from RPS, if that's why people write it, is an illusion. But the consequences may not be. There's a huge divide between how it's meant, and how it *potentially* could be taken-- by the actor, by the audience for the fic, by the actor's family, friends, co-workers....

Are you really willing to argue that the sharing of a fantasy, and the risk that our words will be read, is on the level with these other, very real, acts of violence?

Rape, no, stalking, no. Harassment? Hell yes. How many actors *don't* go to cons, because the fans can't keep their hands to themselves, make verbal assaults, or simply invade the hell out of their personal space? This is less tactile, but it's still real. There's a story out there; the story puts the actor in an unrealistic light. Not his character, the one he's put such work into, but him (or her). If this actor is supremely confident or strong, they can blow it off with 'it's fiction. No one's going to connect it to me, it's all about the author. Who's probably a few toys short of a bath tub.'

But if they're not that strong, it's gonna be a knock to them. And actors live and die on their image, their confidence, their ability to concentrate.

I don't think it's a kind of stress that anyone needs to have put on them.