#Also Victorian lesbians were less noticed than men

[tokyogirl07]

Two lesbian moms and their son in Granada’s The Return of Sherlock Holmes, the third season of 1984’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (AKA The Slashiest Adaptation). They hold on these three for, like, 4 seconds before returning to Holmes and Watson. The neighbourhood they’re in is an expensive one, home to a politician, and these ladies look to be fairly well to do. That might explain it.

Seriously though, mid-80’s. No one caught this until the past decade?!

[alex51324]

Hello! I figured you were the person to ask, so: do you know where I could find more info on Edwardian gender segregation laws? Like, the maids aren't allowed on the men's corridor, but what if you are a young maid who wants to visit the chauffeur's cottage because you want to ask the chauffeur's sweetheart about being gay because you are a small lesbian? Is Peter leaving the door open good enough? Would they have to find a bench somewhere on the estate gardens? Asking for spin-off fic purposes. (Also, I am sending you good vibes and will pray for you at shul.)

Hey! So, I'm not sure about sources, because a lot of this stuff wasn't written down at the time, but I'd say you're probably fine with having her visit the cottage. (I think I've had Anna visit them there, haven't I?)

First, visiting a whole separate dwelling with plenty of Stuff That Isn't Bedrooms would be generally less suspicious than going into the Corridor That Consists Entirely of Men's Bedrooms.

A key thing to remember about Victorian-to-Edwardian mores was that it was a lot more about the appearance of impropriety than what would actually, logically, give two people an opportunity to have illicit sex. Bedrooms and darkness were to be avoided at all costs, even in a house stuffed full of people; a parlor in broad daylight has an air of innocence even if the house is otherwise empty.

Second, if it's a spinoff, it's after the war, and The War Changed Things. In terms of the upper classes, chaperonage basically disappeared, and a woman calling on a man in his home during the day isn't necessarily something you would absolutely need to make sure that there's another woman present in order to do. (Although if you made a habit of it, that would be Noticed.)

For the working classes, things were even more relaxed; at this point, thanks to changes in mores and increased employment opportunities, you get people in the employers-of-servants classes complaining about how you pretty much have to allow your maids to have "followers" (boyfriends) these days, if you don't want them quitting the job after a few weeks.

Third, it is pretty much an open secret that Thomas and Peter are Like That, so that's probably going to slide them into the same category as, say, visiting the vicar or a man old enough to be your father--it doesn't really count as Visiting A Man, in the capital-letters sense.

So yeah, if they're in the front room with the curtains open, that should be fine--although if the maid makes the mistake of trying to avoid being seen going into the cottage, that would contribute to an appearance of impropriety.

There's some wiggle room to adjust it up or down depending on what you're going for--if you want it to be totally on the up-and-up, have her invent/volunteer for some errand, in the middle of the day; if you want an air of scandal, have her do a bit of lurking in the darkness (like that time canon!Thomas did outside of Anna and Bates's place).

[cassandraclare]

Malecparty, Red Scrolls, and women writing for money.

havisha1212 said: Hi, I just want to say that i've been seeing a lot of discourse online. [There are those] trying to boycott RSOM because apparently they know that your intentions with the book are to get money, even though you were offered more money to write Clace. I just want to say that you have thousands, if not in the millions of people who understand that you write what you want to write. WE LOVE YOU and we appreciate you.

I appreciate the love, truly. Of course I’m also distressed to hear about a boycott of The Eldest Curses, since it will be a book with a main interracial gay couple and a secondary interracial lesbian love story. A vendetta specifically targeting a book like that won’t be seen by the outside world of publishing as an act of support for something else. It would be seen as exactly what they expect — a lackluster interest in books about LGBT+ characters.

I guess there are a few things to talk about here: one is the realistic situation of LGBT+ kids’ publishing and one is about women’s writing. In terms of the first, it’s very strange to suggest I wrote these books for money when I did, as you say, take a pay cut to write them. I was paid a third of what I was paid for the Dark Artifices to write them though they are the same number of books. I was paid less than what I was paid for my adult Sword Catcher series which features a world and characters no one has any familiarity with at all — a completely unknown brand. Many of my international publishers still won’t publish TEC. One bought it and has as of now cancelled the deal, though they have bought different books from me since. There are a thousand things I could have written or done that would have made me more money. That’s the stark reality of the “cash cow” the boycotters are discussing. 

Someone in Hollywood once described Alec’s being gay to me as “a strike against the character’s likeability.” So far in publishing I have experienced publishing TEC as “a strike against its marketability.” As you all know, it was pushed back: that was because my publisher wanted Queen of Air and Darkness to come out first and set a record of strong sales — while they support the books completely, they want to be as pro-active as possible about getting diverse books front of as many people as possible.

I’m in a lucky position; I’m a bestselling author and if these books don’t sell at all, my career can take the hit. That’s partly why I’m writing them now, when I finally can: I think it’s important to make sure books like this are placed front and center in bookstores as expected bestsellers, but if these books blow up on me, I’ll survive it. Other writers who are writing books with LGBT+ content wouldn’t be so lucky, and the message of boycotting a “big” book with a gay main couple isn’t “We don’t like this author” (because my other books are doing just fine) — it’s “We don’t like this subject matter.” (It is also a strange punishment for Wes Chu, my cowriter, often forgotten in these debates — a man of color writing about another man of color.)

I am of course not saying anyone who doesn’t want to read these books should buy them. We should consume the entertainment we think should entertain us; that’s what it’s for. But the idea of punishing female writers for their moral failings is an old and unfortunate one. It’s always been acceptable for men to write for money, or for attention; “she wanted attention” is one of the worst things you can say about a woman, but an inoffensive thing to say about a man. Similarly I’ve often been told online that I don’t deserve to be paid for what I write, or that my creative work should be taken away from me and given to men. It has always been expected since the Victorian era that writing about complex people and complex stories is a man’s job, and women should write simple moralistic tales in which the good are rewarded and the bad are punished. When a good character in a man’s book does something wrong, he is congratulated for his complexity; I get told at great length how morally terrible I am personally, since female writers are not generally assumed to have the emotional distance from their characters that with men, is a given.

The roots of taking away women’s ability to profit from their work goes back centuries into the idea that it’s evil for women to own intellectual property at all. One of my favorite writers, Colette, died in poverty because her husband owned the copyright to her bestselling books. There is a deep discomfort with the idea of a woman being paid what she’s worth at all. Writers are entertainers and they don’t work for free any more than singers or actors or TV showrunners. I am the sole breadwinner of my family and I support my parents and others with the income I derive from working on the intellectual property I create. A man would be congratulated on his success. I am called a money-grubbing bitch. A man would be credited for his work. I get people spitting at me that Red Scrolls is “fanfic”, as if these were not characters I created myself, so intense is the need to shame women for the act of creation and the desire to take it away from them.

One of the reasons we self-published Ghosts of the Shadow Market was because I wanted to write a novella about a genderqueer lesbian and I wanted it to get the same attention as the other stories in small invisible ways sometimes readers don’t even notice — the same time spent on the cover, the same hiring of a great audio reader, the same time being edited, the same advertising. When EET came out we all sat around wringing our hands and hoping it would at least sell half as much as the others: it sold just as well, and we were thrilled. We can hang onto those numbers. We can prove important points in future to the publishing world about the viability of non-binary LGBT+ characters. Sales do matter. The Red Scrolls of Magic is a book, and sales expectations are higher for books than short stories, so I know I will be in the same state of fear and hope when it comes out.

But the fact Every Exquisite Thing did well means something else, too: I believed there was an audience for it, and every person who bought it proved me right. The outpouring of love during the contest for an early Red Scrolls of Magic copy was amazing, and I scrolled through the #malec and #malecparty tags (thank you so much you guys! Winners will be notified!) with tears in my eyes, overwhelmed by readers’ stories of coming out and having their eyes opened to new ideas, and most of all by their love. Before I ever had attention or money, I had the joy of creation. One of the most amazing feelings when writing is to make up people, and to have real people invest in your inventions. I created Magnus and Alec, building them into characters I could love block by block, and yesterday I got to see other people love them too. I have been awed by and grateful for the support of every reader who has embraced the diverse world I have tried to create, and the increasing diversity I try for as I keep on writing and am allowed to have more freedom in what I write than when I first began and was turned down by publishers because I wouldn’t remove Alec from my books. I am hoping to help change attitudes and create, along with many writers and readers who believe that diverse media makes a difference, a world in which a book with a main LGBTQ pairing will be judged purely on its literary merits. We’re not there yet! I wish we were. But the increasing call for and support for diverse literature makes me hope we are getting there. I trust in my readers. I have to believe that anybody calling for a boycott of The Red Scrolls of Magic is in a small hateful minority who has lost sight of how their actions would be perceived by the world, and the effect their actions would have on the world. I have to believe that there are far more people who are open to loving and supporting diverse stories.

Money and attention are great. But in the end, I write because I do believe words have the power to change people, and change the world. Ultimately, I have to do what I think is the right thing, and trust that other people will too. My readers haven’t let me down yet.  

[I decided to remove the part about the television show from the original ask. Unfortunately the asker has been forced to delete their tumblr because of responses to this post, and so I cannot ask them for clarification. I hope they are all right.

This answer is in response to this ask and others like it — it was not the only one — about people having decided to boycott Red Scrolls because they believed it was “an attempt to make money”. Their alliances aren’t important and I’m getting the sense this may have been an attempt to drag me into a fight I’m not interested in having and which I have deliberately avoided knowing or saying anything about since the show was cancelled. I’m interested in talking about keeping diverse lit front and center, and I’m interested in talking about how female creators are treated, online and off. I am irritated — and partially with myself — for having been dragged into internecine warfare between fans of different things. It’s not my place to opine on those things or on the fighting itself. I also removed the word “stan” from the original ask as I think it’s an insult. Fans are fans, whatever they like.]

[werevulvi]

"It IS the transition that makes trans people men and women. And now you have to do it again. That sucks! I know you've already paid your dues with dysphoria, and having to do it from the other side has to be hell. You did in fact transition into a man, and now you have to transition into a woman. It's going to be hard work to live as a woman, even though you are a natal female. I know you're a woman, but there are people out there who are going to clock you as a trans woman, and some of those people are going to think of you as lesser for it.

I've met and interacted with a lot of people like you, Laura. Detransitioned, lesbian women. And several ID'd as lesbians while calling themselves men. They became distraught, because they were not interested in the straight women who were now interested in them, they were interested in gay women. Because they were gay women."

I don't know how to reply to that. So I did try to start a conversation about sexual attraction going to sex not gender in a transmed group few days ago and well... I did get replies eventually. I got this (chopped from a much longer reply) from a friend of mine, and although I know he means well, and althout I know it was I who brought up my detrans struggles in terms of my (and others) sexuality and I should suit my stupid self for digging into such a sensitive topic... but fuck this hit me so hard. Even so to the point I cried myself to sleep.

Cause I do struggle really hard to believe that I'm still somehow a woman despite my transition to male, so those words of his dug into an especially delicate wound.

I don't know exactly what his words did, but they upset me really deeply. I felt like crying, screaming, destroying things, it was as if my soul was shaking and rattling within my body. I wasn't able to put words into what I was feeling, but I felt upset both about my detransition situation and about being a lesbian.

His previous message dug into my internalised homophobia and how much I still struggle to accept myself and not hate myself for being a lesbian. And I said "Whatever 'lesbian pride' I wave around here [in that fb group] is about as shallow as my makeup. I don't want to be a lesbian, I'm just trying to accept that I simply am one."

It's tearing at me. How ruined my entire life feels. As I tried to fall asleep in my early morning cries, I felt like I've ruined my whole life so bad. Like beyond redemption, almost. Or I don't know if it is redeemable. What can I do, except from just keep trying? I fucked up my body and traumatised myself sexually for a decade cause of the traumas before that, and I lived lies upon lies in desperate attempts to escape from myself, but now it has all caught up with me. Everything.

And it felt like a mountain hitting me in my face. And I still can't get up from the impact. I can't. I'm just lying here. Defeated.

I've been a little better for the past couple of months, although still dysfunctional enough to not manage doing anything productive, but then yesterday it was like I fell down into a pit of despair again. Same pit as before. I hate my life. Just look at it?! It's a full on tragedy. And it breaks my ravaged heart.

Is it too late to try to love my body and connect with it? Or is it beyond saving? Is it too late to start over with my dating/sex life in a way that won't traumatise me and that only includes other women? Or am I too hopelessly traumatised and unlovable forever? Is it too late? Will this pain kill me?

I keep wondering. No I'm not suicidal and have no such intentions what so ever, but fuck yeah I do wish I was dead and it's possible I could end up dying out of sheer negligence. Unintentionally starve to death cause of my ever decreasing appetite and I just forgot to eat, or care to eat. Cause I don't know how to push through this, and I'm so, so despondent. I don't have motivation for anything, not even breathing.

Truth is I feel horrible about the way I look. I hate that I look so bad when not "dolled up" cause I'm no fucking doll! And I feel like I'm putting on a mask of more femininity than I want to, in order to "look like a woman" and the trans community's harmful views on manhood and womanhood being purchasable lifestyle choices dig wounds into me and make me wanna scream. Am I buying womanhood in makeup, razors, dresses and a new female name? Fuck no, it doesn't work like that! And nor will me getting permanent hair removal and boob surgery be like me buying womanhood either. Being a woman is my birth right as much as it is my birth curse. It's something I fought my entire life to stop fighting... but I have a feeling that fight will never truly end. That I will always have to fight society on that point, if not also myself.

And truth is calling myself a lesbian feels like a joke cause I'm not even a "real" woman anymore. I'm not anything. I shredded my femaleness for a fake maleness. Ripped off my skin for a plastic suit. I'm a hackjob. A failed experiment. A broken girl who never got to truly become a woman. I'm stunted in my growth. It feels like it's too late now. I know I love women, that my love is exclusively for women, that that's what I want and it feels so good to even just imagine it considering how lonely I am... but just how much of a lesbian am I really when I still disconnect so hard from other women and from seeing myself as somehow one of them? So to the point that I feel like I'm a drag queen, a kind of man toying around with femininity making a mockery out of being a woman with caked on makeup and padded bras... but I'm just sad. Trying to recreate what I've forsaken.

To some degree I can connect better to other lesbians, though. And that's a big reason I hold on so tightly to the lesbian community already despite being so new in it and not quite getting the in's and out's of it yet. The struggles I share with them, and that there is some mutual understanding in that feeling of being alienated from other women in general. And on that point, I think I even relate noticably better to butch lesbians than I do to feminine straight women. That gay struggle runs deeper than what we look like. Also, before, I used to think being gay and bi was like a similar struggle or even pretty much the same. But oh boy, was I wrong.

Back when I still thought I was bisexual and thought I had "internalised biphobia", I thought to myself that it would be better if I was a lesbian instead... I take back that stupid wish now! I wanna whack myself in the head over it! But I think, that I actually got so far in accepting my attraction to women back then, that I even started thinking it would be fine if I was actually a lesbian, was one of the reasons that deeply suppressed/repressed truth in me started finally surfacing.

So no, I really don't think I in any way "wished myself gay" but rather that the desperate wish made my actual homosexuality start to show itself to me, cause I had let down my guard and inner defenses enough to open that door slightly. But then bunch of months later of course the thought hits me that "that was a really dumb wish" as if it was somehow the cause although I know it wasn't and it doesn't work like that. I guess that's just my internalised homophobia beating me with its stick again. Laughing in my face singing "nana-na-naaaana you got what you wished for, have fun in hell!" cause it echoes truth in everything that's ever randomly happened to me in my life, or in the random ways I was born.

I know I keep questioning myself when I really should be questioning society and its questionable ways of treating people like me. But it’s easier to beat myself up cause I’m closer and more accessible.

When I thought I was bisexual I thought I had at least some shred of heterosexuality about myself that I could hold onto, which made my attraction to women... not less scary but more like... something I didn't "have to" accept about myself (I know that sounds bad, but as a coping mechanism). But since knowing I'm actually a lesbian, that slight sense of security got pulled away from under my feet and I'm suddenly left to rely on and only having my attraction to women, which makes it even more scary and daunting. Like I really have to accept this now or else I'll have nothing.

And I'm just floating around somewhere scary and unstable with no ground to put my feet on. Cause I walked on a glass floor and it broke.

But the image of myself and what I try to recreate becomes skewed and disturbed like a false immitation. Like a scary victorian doll meant to resemble a child. I can never truly become myself again, or the woman I was supposed to become. I'm stuck as a living doll, reeking of decay.

It makes me think of a horrifying case of necrophilia I once saw a documentary about. A man who picked up the remains of a former patient of his cause he was "in love" (obsessed) with her. She had died of tuberculosis and he was her doctor who tried to cure her (I think this was back in the 30's or something before a cure existed, and yeah, actually happened). He propped her up like a doll in his home, trying all sorts of techniques to keep her looks from fading as she decayed over time. The photos of what he had of made her body, 7 years after her death, still haunt me a little. Poor girl. (And yeah, there was more horror to the story considering it's said to be the worst case of necrophilia in history so far... but let's leave out those details, okay. Not relevant to my feelings.)

But why, oh why, do I connect that horrifying image to my own body?! Cause she had essentially been turned into a doll, made of her own human remains, plastic and paint. And very tragically sexualised, which erh... yeah is relatable on a highly metaphorical level. I felt really dead when I was traumatised sexually over and over, and I felt really a lot like I was just a sex doll for men's pleasure. Completely mindlessly so. And also... she too never became a woman. She was only 15-16 years old when she died. I often relate to tragedies, in general.

And I fear that kind of image. Of becoming something like a false immitation of my former self that will haunt me. It reminds me of my childhood nightmares and horror movies I've seen. It reminds me of my phobia of distortion and fearing my own mirror reflection for weeks cause what if it will look distorted and unnatural? What am I detransitioning into, a monster? It makes me dissociate again. My body doesn’t feel like my own. I'm not here. The number you have reached is out of service.

I don't wanna go through this pain. It's far too much and it suffocates me. I wanna escape this horrible hell in my mind. I want a time machine. Go back to my teens. Start over again. I really want to start over. Life went horribly wrong and there's no way back.