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prometheus-rewound · 13 days ago

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Uh oh you flew to close to my hyper fixation now I have to talk about it XD

(tldr: It’s really important to analyze queer mythic figures in their historical context. That being said, the fact that Dionysus has face this level of scrutiny regarding his gender and sexuality may suggest that the ways Dionysus was being depicted/worshipped could have been queer in the contemporary context.)

I think historical context when discussing figures like Dionysus is super important and really fun. You’re so right that there’s so much conflation of actual Dionysian/Orphic practices with later Christian writings that were meant to trivialize Dionysian myth. Even way older than that actually, the Athenian state did not like the cult of Dionysos bc it wasn’t registered with the government (and bc it empowered women but that’s a whole other story). I need to look into this epithet In particular though— I’ve not seen it a ton in actual sources older than the Byzantine period. I’d love for you to send me some sources to look at though.

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I’d actually argue though that you lay out some really solid evidence for Dionysus actually being a queer figure at the time of his worship.

I would agree in saying he’s not trans, or even gay. Those are modern terms created in a western, 19th/20th century context. However, queerness is an academic term that denotes expressions of gender and sexuality that break the norms of a specific culture. (I’ll reblog this with some good articles when I get the second)

A lot of the derogatory language, that actually references real practices surrounding Dionysus, I think actually is more evidence of him being queer in the context. As long as those derogatory statements can be traced back to contemporary portrayals obv.

It’s 100% true that being in mlm relationships was not inherently queer (also this depended on the time and area.). In Athens, it wasn’t queer to be in a sexual mentorship. Being in an equal mlm relationship than would be queer. This is where you usually see the whole ‘bottom is derogatory’ language. It’s a very Athenian thing lol. This though was different than Thebes, in which sexual relationships between men on equal standing was not queer if done in the context of warfare. (I’m making generalizations obv and these things are very Classical period specific).

But like you point out, male figures depicted as playing the younger, feminine, or more bluntly “bottom” role in the relationship were commonly mocked (especially in late-classical Athens in particular, and later).

This though is queer. Dionysus is performing a gender presentation that is out of the norm (because in this case sexuality does connote a separate gender presentation. The two are tied. A modern example would be like how Butch is a specific gender presentation that also implies the person’s sexuality). Even when this is depicted in comedy etc if it’s in a contemporary time all depictions are adding the to cultural idea of a queer Dionysus.

I would (and have lol) argued that there are a lot of Greek figures that actually are queer because in context they are breaking gender norms that we today don’t notice. Big examples are any man who swears off women and/or marriage. This often leads to their downfall due to them breaking these norms— and then implying that that specific presentation of masculinity is wrong and likely a queer presentation. Further more, a lot of older myths that depict queer relationships (that may not have been seen as queer at the time of their origin) often get reinterpreted as being deviant later on when norms have changed, or being reimagined to fit the new norms. This is all actually one of my favorite topics actually but I’ll hold back for now.

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I think though that part of your argument seems to be that there isn’t a ton of evidence of Dionysus having gender play as apart of his worship irregardless of the cultural acceptance (I may have interpreted you wrong, I can’t tell if you meant the epithet specifically or w/ Dionysos’ gender-queerness overall).

For one thing, almost every cult (OG Dionysian cult, Orphic practices, Eleusinian, etc) that worshipped him was super secretive so we as archeologists are particularly screwed regarding that. However, from what we do know, there is a decent amount of evidence for this being the case. Like not that Dionysus was “trans”— he wasn’t a person or even worshipped like he was a person with a specific identity (i.e hero cults). Like he’s a concept— greek gods were NOT treated as anthropomorphic deities like some other pagan pantheons despite how modern depictions describe them (this is also a way more complicated topic)

However, him having a some-what fluid gender is pretty well documented. I mean the Bacchae (Euripides) characterizes him as an effeminate and with a man (Pentheus) lusting after him. Pentheus id mocked for cross dressing though so make of that what you will. I’ve seen a decent amount of articles arguing that the Bacchae is based on actual rituals but you know Euripides is a silly guy XD. That play is definitely all about breaking gender roles but it’s hard to know if it wasn’t just Euripides commenting on stuff. He’s pretty much the oldest concrete depiction of Dionysus like that besides the Homeric Hymns which I’ll talk about.

It’s honestly really hard to find older sources about Dionysus at all ya know, mystery cults. The story that comes up the most is the one w/ Dionysus being disguised as an effeminate young man.

The earliest example of Dionysus being depicted as somewhat androgynous (I mean the adj not the epithet) is in Homeric Hymn 7. It could be older than the Bacchae actually but Euripides goes really in detail lol. Ovid (much later but still contemporary with Orphic worship) goes super into detail about how girlish Dionysos was in this story ha ha but that’s bc it’s a retelling of the Bacchae and gender is a big theme there like I mentioned.

There is also the story of Dionysos being raised as a girl. The earliest mention of that is from Apollodorus I think from the late Hellenistic period.

However, in art, there is a big swing after the Bacchae of Dionysus being depicted as androgynous and young. There seems to be some thought that Euripides was the cause of this but it’s kind of a chicken and egg scenario.

It’s very likely that the oral storytelling of these myths are obviously far older but it is true it’s hard to know how much it was influenced by that late Classical shift towards effeminate Dionysus. There is Archaic pottery of Dionysus turning pirates into dolphins, however he’s depicted as already revealing himself and at this point is depicted as a bearded man.

More generally, from what I’ve seen the more androgynous depiction of Dionysus really gets popular in the late classical period. I do think though even before this Dionysus is depicted as being primarily worshipped by or at least surrounded by women, which I think hints to a non-standard relationship to gender especially in a patriarchal society (though the extreme gender norms was really an Athenian thing specifically, so take that with a grain of salt).

Overall I think reconsidering how queerness applies to ancient culture is super fun! I’d love to know other people’s thoughts.

I have been seeing some posts for Dionysos Androgynos popping up lately with lovely prayers and offerings ! this is wonderful, but it makes me want to clarify something. His epithet Androgynos is not related to gender identity as we know it now nor was it used in worship denoting queerness. I have seen people talking about this epithet being worshiped but there isn't much tangible evidence for that (that I know of).

it generally means "man-woman" and it refers to the position a man takes during sex—"both taking and receiving penetration during sex". being a man who was in the woman's role during sex wasn't a flex back then, they were seen as naive and lesser than the older man on top. I've seen suggestions that this epithet (along with "chickpea Dionysos") may have been used more derogatorily.

Dionysos is a wonderfully queer deity in the modern age, but we have to remember Ancient Greece is an entirely different culture and ideas. we can't directly exchange values with a culture 2,000 years removed from us. It's totally fine to reclaim this epithet, but claiming it is historically a trans epithet is incorrect.

#Btw I think you are super super cool this isn’t meant in a mean way #I really like talking / debating ppl about this #none of this is meant as aggressive or mean I’m just autistic lol #this is no hate I’d love to know your thoughts #it’s so cool seeing someone else analyzing Dionysus like this 🫶#dionysos #dionysus #dionysos androgynos #greek mythology #I really can’t find anything reliable about androgynos as an epithet. I feel like it may not even be contemporary with him at all #also I do need to look into the dates regarding the epithets you’re referring to that’d add context #also do you have the sources for the epithets being derogatory?#Roman and Christian era Dionysus bashing is so fucking funny to read #It is really annoying though when people mix up actual Dionysian worship with sources that are mocking him #like there are so many Christian era sources that are trying to trivialize Orphic and Dionysian practices bc they were still kicking around #like you see a lot the parable of Dionysus promising to have sex with some king in exchange for a favor but the dude dies.#so Dionysus rides his corpse or grave or something. it’s totally a Christian joke not a real story #As far as I know Dionysus doesn’t have any relationships with him as the feminine role #but also like #that’s bc that whole dynamic was really Athenian specific and these myths are not from there #Side note but using this context of queerness I definitely think Athena was a queer figure in classical Athens #There are 100% writings of dudes trying to figure out how Athena and their fucked up Athenian standards could exist at the same time XD #That isn’t to say she was hated obv not but she was depicting a gender presentation that contradicted social norms #when it comes to discussing if certain pre-19th c. historical figures could be categorized as trans that’s a whole other topic that I think #I think genderqueer is a bit of a better umbrella but also I think the politics of identifying examples of people transitioning is the past #can obv be powerful so it’s case by case imo #queer #transgender #queer history

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caelum-in-the-avatarverse · 1 year ago

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Fandom can do a little gatekeeping. As a treat.

So I finally decided to archive-lock my fics on AO3 last night. I’ve been considering it since the AI scrape last year, but the tipping point was this whole lore.fm debacle, coupled with some thoughts I’ve been thinking regarding Fandom These Days in general and Fandom As A Community in particular. So I wanna explain why I waited so long, why I locked my stuff up now, and why I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m a-okay with making it harder for people to see my stories.

Lurkers really are great, tho

I’m a chronic lurker, and have been since I started hanging out on the internet as a teen in the 00s. These days it’s just cuz I don’t feel a need to socialize very often, but back then it was because I was shy and knew I was socially awkward. Even if I made an account, I’d spend months lurking on message boards or forums or Livejournals, watching other people interact and getting a feel for that particular community’s culture and etiquette before I finally started interacting myself. And y’know, that approach saved me a lot of embarrassment. Over the course of my lurking on any site, there was always some other person who’d clearly joined up five minutes after learning the place existed, barged in without a care for their behavior, and committed so many social faux pas that all the other users were immediately annoyed with them at best. I learned a lot observing those incidents. Lurk More is Rule 33 of the internet for very good reason.

Lurking isn’t bad or weird or creepy. It’s perfectly normal. I love lurking. It’s hard for me to not lurk - socializing takes a lot of energy out of me, even via text. (Heck it took 12 hours for me to write this post, I wish I was kidding--) Occasionally I’ll manage longer bouts of interaction - a few weeks posting here, almost a year chatting in a discord there - but I’m always gonna end up going radio silent for months at some point. I used to feel bad about it, but I’ve long since made peace with the fact that it’s just the way my brain works. I’m a chronic lurker, and in the long term nothing is going to change that.

The thing with being a chronic lurker is that you have to accept that you are not actually seen as part of the community you are lurking in. That’s not to say that lurkers are unimportant - lurkers actually are important, and they make up a large proportion of any online community - but it’s simple cause and effect. You may think of it as “your community”, but if you’ve never said a word, how is the community supposed to know you exist? If I lurked on someone’s LJ, and then that person suddenly friendslocked their blog, I knew that I had two choices: Either accept that I would never be able to read their posts again, or reach out to them and ask if I could be added to their friends list with the full understanding that I was a rando they might not decide to trust. I usually went with the first option, because my invisibility as a lurker was more important to me than talking to strangers on the internet.

Lurking is like sitting on a park bench, quietly people-watching and eavesdropping on the conversations other people are having around you. You’re in the park, but you’re not actively participating in anything happening there. You can see and hear things that you become very interested in! But if you don’t introduce yourself and become part of the conversation, you won’t be able to keep listening to it when those people walk away. When fandom migrated away from Livejournal, people moved to new platforms alongside their friends, but lurkers were often left behind. No one knew they existed, so they weren’t told where everyone else was going. To be seen as part of a fandom community, you need to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known, etc. etc.

There’s nothing wrong with lurking. There can actually be benefits to lurking, both for the lurkers and the communities they lurk in. It’s just another way to be in a fandom. But if that is how you exist in fandom--and remember, I say this as someone who often does exist that way in fandom--you need to remember that you’re on the outside looking in, and the curtains can always close.

I’ve always been super sympathetic to lurkers, because I am one. I know there’s a lot of people like me who just don’t socialize often. I know there’s plenty of reasons why someone might not make an account on the internet - maybe they’re nervous, maybe they’re young and their parents don’t allow them to, maybe they’re in a bad situation where someone is monitoring their activity, maybe they can only access the internet from public computer terminals. Heck, I’ve never even logged into AO3 on my phone--if I’m away from my computer I just read what’s publicly available.

I know I have people lurking on my fics. I know my fics probably mean a lot to someone I don’t even know exists. I know this because there are plenty of fics I love whose writers don’t know I exist.

I love my commenters personally; I love my lurkers as an abstract concept. I know they’re there and I wish them well, and if they ever de-lurk I love them all the more.

So up until last year I never considered archive-locking my fic, because I get it. The AI scraping was upsetting, but I still hesitated because I was thinking of lurkers and guests and remembering what it felt like to be 15 and wondering if it’d be worth letting a stranger on the internet know I existed and asking to be added to their friends list just so I could reread a funny post they made once.

But the internet has changed a lot since the 00s, and fandom has changed with it. I’ve read some things and been doing some thinking about fandom-as-community over the last few years, and reading through the lore.fm drama made me decide that it’s time for me to set some boundaries.

I still love my lurkers, and I feel bad about leaving any guest commenters behind, especially if they’re in a situation where they can’t make an account for some reason. But from here on out, even my lurkers are going to have to do the bare minimum to read my fics--make an AO3 account.

Should we gatekeep fandom?

I’ve seen a few people ask this question, usually rhetorically, sometimes as a joke, always with a bit of seriousness. And I think…yeah, maybe we should. Except wait, no, not like that--

A decade ago, when people talked about fandom gatekeeping and why it was bad to do, it intersected with a lot of other things, mainly feminism and classism. The prevalent image of fandom gatekeeping was, like, a man learning that a woman likes Star Wars and haughtily demanding, “Oh, yeah? Well if you’re REALLY a fan, name ten EU novels” to belittle and dismiss her, expecting that a “real fan” would have the money and time to be familiar with the EU, and ignoring the fact that male movie-only fans were still considered fans. The thing being gatekept was the very definition of “being a fan” and people’s right to describe themselves as one.

That’s not what I mean when I say maybe fandom should gatekeep more. Anyone can call themselves a fan if they like something, that’s fine. But when it comes to the ability to enjoy the fanworks produced by the fandom community…that might be something worth gatekeeping.

See, back in the 00s, it was perfectly common for people to just…not go on the internet. Surfing the web was a thing, but it was just, like, a fun pastime. Not everyone did it. It wasn’t until the rise of social media that going online became a thing everyone and their grandmother did every day. Back then, going on the internet was just…a hobby.

So one of the first gates online fandom ever had was the simple fact that the entire world wasn’t here yet.

The entire world is here now. That gate has been demolished.

And it’s a lot easier to find us now. Even scattered across platforms, fandom is so centralized these days. It isn’t a network of dedicated webshrines and forums that you can only find via webrings anymore, it’s right there on all the big social media sites. AO3 didn’t set out to be the main fanfic website, but that’s definitely what it’s become. It’s easy for people to find us--and that includes people who don’t care about the community, and just want “content.”

Transformative fandom doesn’t like it when people see our fanworks as “content”. “Content” is a pretty broad term, but when fandom uses it we’re usually referring to creative works that are churned out by content creators to be consumed by an audience as quickly as possible as often as possible so that the content creator can generate revenue. This not-so-new normal has caused a massive shift in how people who are new to fandom view fanworks--instead of seeing fic or art as something a fellow fan made and shared with you, they see fanworks as products to be consumed.

Transformative fandom has, in general, always been a gift economy. We put time and effort into creating fanworks that we share with our fellow fans for free. We do this so we don’t get sued, but fandom as a whole actually gets a lot out of the gift economy. Offer your community a story, and in return you can get comments, build friendships, or inspire other people to write things that you might want to read. Readers are given the gift of free stories to read and enjoy, and while lurking is fine, they have the choice to engage with the writer and other readers by leaving comments or making reclists to help build the community.

And look, don’t get me wrong. People have never engaged with fanfic as much as fan writers wish they would. There has always been “no one comments anymore” wank. There have always been people who only comment to say “MORE!” or otherwise demand or guilt trip writers into posting the next chapter. But fandom has always agreed that those commenters are rude and annoying, and as those commenters navigate fandom they have the chance to learn proper community etiquette.

However, now it seems that a lot of the people who are consuming fanworks aren’t actually in the community.

I won’t say “they aren’t real fans” because that’s silly; there’s lots of ways to be a fan. But there seem to be a lot of fans now who have no interest in fandom as a community, or in adhering to community etiquette, or in respecting the gift economy. They consume our fics, but they don’t appreciate fan labor. They want our “content”, but they don’t respect our control over our creations.

And even worse--they see us as a resource. We share our work for free, as a gift, but all they see is an open-source content farm waiting to be tapped into. We shared it for free, so clearly they can do whatever they want with it. Why should we care if they feed our work into AI training datasets, or copy/paste our unfinished stories into ChatGPT to get an ending, or charge people for an unnecessary third-party AO3 app, or sell fanbindings on etsy for a profit without the author’s permission, or turn our stories into poor imitations of podfics to be posted on other platforms without giving us credit or asking our consent, while also using it to lure in people they can datascrape for their Forbes 30 Under 30 company?

And sure, people have been doing shady things with other people’s fanworks since forever. Art theft and reposting has always been a big problem. Fanfic is harder to flat-out repost, but I’ve heard of unauthorized fic translations getting posted without crediting the original author. Once in…I think the 2010s? I read a post by a woman who had gone to some sort of local bookselling event, only to find that the man selling “his” novel had actually self-published her fanfic. (Wish I could find that one again, I don’t even remember where I read it.)

But aside from that third example, the thing is…as awful as fanart/writing theft is, back in the day, the main thing a thief would gain from it was clout. Clout that should rightfully go to the creators who gifted their work in the first place, yeah, but still. Just clout. People will do a lot of hurtful things for clout, but fandom clout means nothing outside of fandom. Fandom clout is not enough to incentivize the sort of wide-scale pillaging we’re seeing from community outsiders today.

Money, on the other hand… Well, fandom’s just a giant, untapped content farm, isn’t it? Think of how much revenue all that content could generate.

Lurkers are a normal and even beneficial part of any online community. Maybe one day they’ll de-lurk and easily slide into place beside their fellow fans because they already know the etiquette. Maybe they’re active in another community, and they can spread information from the community they lurk in to the community they’re active in. At the very least, they silently observe, and even if they’re not active community members, they understand the community.

Fans who see fanworks as “content” don’t belong in the same category as lurkers. They’re tourists.

While reading through the initial Reddit thread on the lore.fm situation, I found this comment:

[ID: Reddit User Cabbitowo says: ... So in anime fandoms we have a word called tourist and essentially it means a fan of a few anime and doesn't care about anime tropes and actively criticizes them. This is kind of how fandoms on tiktok feel. They're touring fanfics and fanart and actively criticizes tropes that have been in the fandom since the 60s. They want to be in a fandom but they don't want to engage in fandom

OP totallymandy responds: Just entered back into Reddit after a long day to see this most recent reply. And as a fellow anime fan this making me laugh so much since it’s true! But it sorta hurts too when the reality sets in. Modern fandom is so entitled and bratty and you’d think it’s the minors only but that’s not even true, my age-mates and older seem to be like that. They want to eat their cake and complain all whilst bringing nothing to the potluck… :/ END ID]

“Tourist” is an apt name for this sort of fan. They don’t want to be part of our community, and they don’t have to be in order to come into our spaces and consume our work. Even if they don’t steal our work themselves, they feel so entitled to it that they’re fine with ignoring our wishes and letting other people take it to make AI “podfics” for them to listen to (there are a lot of comments on lore.fm’s shutdown announcement video from people telling them to just ignore the writers and do it anyway). They’ll use AI to generate an ending to an unfinished fic because they don’t care about seeing “the ending this writer would have given to the story they were telling”, they just want “an ending”. For these tourist fans, the ends justify the means, and their end goal is content for them to consume, with no care for the community that created it for them in the first place.

I don’t think this is confined to a specific age group. This isn’t “13-year-olds on Wattpad” or “Zoomers on TikTok” or whatever pointless generation war we’re in now. This is coming from people who are new to fandom, whose main experience with creative works on the internet is this new content culture and who don’t understand fandom as a community. That description can be true of someone from any age group.

It’s so easy to find fandom these days. It is, in fact, too easy. Newcomers face no hurdles or challenges that would encourage them to lurk and observe a bit before engaging, and it’s easy for people who would otherwise move on and leave us alone to start making trouble. From tourist fans to content entrepreneurs to random people who just want to gawk, it’s so easy for people who don’t care about the fandom community to reap all of its fruits.

So when I say maybe fandom should start gatekeeping a bit, I’m referring to the fact that we barely even have a gate anymore. Everyone is on the internet now; the entire world can find us, and they don’t need to bother learning community etiquette when they do. Before, we were protected by the fact that fandom was considered weird and most people didn’t look at it twice. Now, fandom is pretty mainstream. People who never would’ve bothered with it before are now comfortable strolling in like they own the place. They have no regard for the fandom community, they don’t understand it, and they don’t want to. They want to treat it just like the rest of the content they consume online.

And then they’re surprised when those of us who understand fandom culture get upset. Fanworks have existed far longer than the algorithmic internet’s content. Fanworks existed long before the internet. We’ve lived like this for ages and we like it.

So if someone can’t be bothered to respect fandom as a community, I don’t see why I should give them easy access to my fics.

Think of it like a garden gate

When I interact with commenters on my fic, I have this sense of hospitality.

The comment section is my front porch. The fic is my garden. I created my garden because I really wanted to, and I’m proud of it, and I’m happy to share it with other people.

Lots of people enjoy looking at my garden. Many walk through without saying anything. Some stop to leave kudos. Some recommend my garden to their friends. And some people take the time to stop by my front porch and let me know what a beautiful garden it is and how much they’ve enjoyed it.

Any fic writer can tell you that getting comments is an incredible feeling. I always try to answer all my comments. I don’t always manage it, but my fics’ comment sections are the one place that I manage to consistently socialize in fandom. When I respond to a comment, it feels like I’m pouring out a glass of lemonade to share with this lovely commenter on my front porch, a thank you for their thank you. We take a moment to admire my garden together, and then I see them out. The next time they drop by, I recognize them and am happy to pour another glass of lemonade.

My garden has always been open and easy to access. No fences, no walls. You just have to know where to find it. Fandom in general was once protected by its own obscurity, an out-of-the-way town that showed up on maps but was usually ignored.

But now there’s a highway that makes it easy to get to, and we have all these out-of-towner tourists coming in to gawk and steal our lawn ornaments and wonder if they can use the place to make themselves some money.

I don’t care to have those types trampling over my garden and eating all my vegetables and digging up my flowers to repot and sell, so I’ve put up a wall. It has a gate that visitors can get through if they just take the time to open it.

Admittedly, it’s a small obstacle. But when I share my fics, I share them as a gift with my fellow fans, the ones who understand that fandom is a community, even if they’re lurkers. As for tourist fans and entrepreneurs who see fic as content, who have no qualms ignoring the writer’s wishes, who refuse to respect or understand the fandom community…well, they’re not the people I mean to share my fic with, so I have no issues locking them out. If they want access to my stories, they’ll have to do the bare minimum to become a community member and join the AO3 invite queue.

And y’know, I’ve said a lot about fandom and community here, and I just want to say, I hope it’s not intimidating. When I was younger, talk about The Fandom Community made me feel insecure, and I didn’t think I’d ever manage to be active enough in fandom spaces to be counted as A Member Of The Community. But you don’t have to be a social butterfly to participate in fandom. I’ll always and forever be a chronic lurker, I reblog more than I post, I rarely manage to comment on fic, and I go radio silent for months at a time--but I write and post fanfiction. That’s my contribution.

Do you write, draw, vid, gif, or otherwise create? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you leave comments? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you curate reclists? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you maintain a fandom blog or fuckyeah blog? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you provide a space for other fans to convene in? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you regularly send asks (off anon so people know who you are)? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you have fandom friends who you interact with? Congrats, you're a community member.

There’s lots of ways to be a fan. Just make sure to respect and appreciate your fellow fans and the work they put in for you to enjoy and the gift economy fandom culture that keeps this community going.

#ao3 #lore.fm #fanfiction #fandom history #gift economy #caelum rambles

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