You’ve heard of competing access needs. Now consider:
Competing representation needs.
But no, seriously. This is one of the biggest things that pits people against each other in fandom spaces.
You’ve got people who need stories where men get to have completely platonic deep friendships with other men, need stories where men can be affectionate and support each other emotionally without it having to be romance. You’ve also got people who need stories about men being romantic with men. Both of these are valid. Whether either is canon doesn’t really matter because transformative works are allowed to be transformative and transformative works are works in their own right. It’s right there in the name.
But because there can only be One True Fanon, instead of acknowledging that different people have different needs and taking a live-and-let-live approach, you usually end up with both groups fighting to throw the other one under the bus first for trying to “steal” their representation.
Please no Oppression Olympics clowning on this post. Everyone needs stories. It’s an immutable part of the human condition.
the only thing I disagree with in this post is “you’ve heard of competing access needs”, because in my experience, approximately nobody has, and most of the people who have are themselves disabled
(so nobody leaves this post without knowing what competing access needs are: the thing where movie subtitles are important for people with hearing loss or auditory processing issues, useless to people with vision loss, and can easily distract other people from the action. the thing where movie descriptive audio is important for people with vision loss, useless to people with hearing loss or auditory processing issues, and can easily distract other people from the action. et cetera and so forth.)
the other thing that worries me about both groups you describe is, zero of these people seem able to enjoy stories that aren’t entirely for them, which is sad, and zero of these people seem to know where to find the back button should they happen upon a fic that turns out to be really not for them, which is aggravating to everyone else and can’t be much fun for them either
and the crowd that first goes “if you want stories with [thing they don’t like], write your own”, then turns up when their addressees do in fact write their own just to say “ew, why is this so [thing they don’t like]”, can fuck altogether the fuck off
akfah;gadj;lkfd you got me there
Competing access needs are also why it’s important to have a bunch of different kinds of things. Like, a building that only has stairs is going to be inaccessible to a lot of people. But if it has stairs, a ramp, escalators, and an elevator (depending on the size of the building), so many more people will have access. I’ve always had a major fear of elevators, and I often find myself using the stairs even when my body can’t take it, so an escalator would give me better access. However, someone in a wheelchair would likely take the elevator instead of the escalator because it fits their chair better. The more options there are available, the more people are going to be able to access something: our competing needs shouldn’t mean that only one of us gets to exist. It should mean we expand the possibilities so we all get to be in the building, even if we take different paths to move through it.
Why shouldn’t we expect that in media? The answer to “we need representation” shouldn’t be “only perfect representation [which is very subjective, with everyone having a different definition of what that would even be] is allowed. Everything else is offensive.” It should instead be “more representation means more aspects of our experiences are shown.”
The “oh no I definitely can’t be gay, it’s time for some self-loathing” story is real for a lot of people, and can be very important to see represented. But I don’t want it to be all the stories I see. The “I’ve always known I was gay and I’ve never had a problem with it” story is real for a lot of people, and can be very important to see represented. But I don’t want it to be all the stories I see.
The more kinds of stories we let people tell, the more we will be able to find ourselves represented
