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Hating the Haters
This is really just a rant but I keep seeing this and it really honks me off. There are two places in particular that this issue keeps popping up.
First, I am a happy member of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
merlin_finders. I love getting recs from other people's searches and I like being able to help out if I can find something for someone else. All in all, it's a great comm. However, I really, really hate when someone takes the time to emphatically specify, NO SLASH. Really? You have to just spew it out like that? Not, "I prefer gen fic" or "I'm looking for het pairings"?
I mean, I understand that slash isn't for everyone and you are certainly within your rights to read what you want to read but there really is something about the way that phrase reads that just screams homophobia to me.
I find it amazing the amount of intolerance you can cram into two small words. The disgust and disdain that pours off that simple statement is astonishing.
On FF.net, authors show their hate with the same phrase or the slight variant of Not Slash and they often take the time to put in bold, italics or ALL CAPS just to be sure you got the message. Slash is nasty and you won't find it in my pristine little fic!
This has been building in me for a while now. I used to just shrug and keep on going but the more I see it, the more it bothers me. I have to be honest, I don't care how good your story might be, if you label yourself as a homophobe at the very top of the damned thing, I sure as hell am not going to read any further. It's not that I'm exclusively looking to read slash either. I'll take well written het and gen fic any day. But I'll be double dipped in dog shit before I support the work of an intolerant prick!
Same thing goes for searches onmerlin_finders. If you say NO SLASH, you get NO FIC from me. I may have exactly what you are looking for in my hot little hands but you have just shown yourself unworthy of my help. Take your shriveled little hating heart and be on your way.
OK, that's it for now. Time for me to go fall on my nose and sleep for a few hours!
First, I am a happy member of
merlin_finders. I love getting recs from other people's searches and I like being able to help out if I can find something for someone else. All in all, it's a great comm. However, I really, really hate when someone takes the time to emphatically specify, NO SLASH. Really? You have to just spew it out like that? Not, "I prefer gen fic" or "I'm looking for het pairings"? I mean, I understand that slash isn't for everyone and you are certainly within your rights to read what you want to read but there really is something about the way that phrase reads that just screams homophobia to me.
I find it amazing the amount of intolerance you can cram into two small words. The disgust and disdain that pours off that simple statement is astonishing.
On FF.net, authors show their hate with the same phrase or the slight variant of Not Slash and they often take the time to put in bold, italics or ALL CAPS just to be sure you got the message. Slash is nasty and you won't find it in my pristine little fic!
This has been building in me for a while now. I used to just shrug and keep on going but the more I see it, the more it bothers me. I have to be honest, I don't care how good your story might be, if you label yourself as a homophobe at the very top of the damned thing, I sure as hell am not going to read any further. It's not that I'm exclusively looking to read slash either. I'll take well written het and gen fic any day. But I'll be double dipped in dog shit before I support the work of an intolerant prick!
Same thing goes for searches on
merlin_finders. If you say NO SLASH, you get NO FIC from me. I may have exactly what you are looking for in my hot little hands but you have just shown yourself unworthy of my help. Take your shriveled little hating heart and be on your way.OK, that's it for now. Time for me to go fall on my nose and sleep for a few hours!
no subject
But I clearly see your point. (I actually went onto my account on FF.net and double-checked to make sure nothing of mine was marked that way. It wasn't.)
It's uncool for people to be discriminatory; it's true. But there are people of all kinds in this world, who have been taught and/or believe loads of different things. Rather than rage at them, I prefer to feel sorry for them for their sadly narrow point of view. If I let them have my anger, then I've let them affect me and that's what people like that want.
It sucks that in a society this far removed from caves, people can be so judgemental and narrowminded.
All that being said, there are some Merthur fans who are really in-your-face about it also. I could also see authors marking their fics like that if they've had negative experiences in the past reading fic that was not marked as slash when it was.
no subject
Still, if there is one thing that irks me, it's intolerance. Yes, I see the irony of being intolerant of intolerance but there you have it.
I don't mark my fics as slash. Do het writers feel the need to mark a fic with warnings for heterosexuality? I state what my pairing is and if there is explicit content or anything triggery. If you can't extrapolate that you might run into gay sex when I say: Arthur/Merlin, NC-17 then oh well!
no subject
*hint* that what they've written is slash. I've run across a few myself. I could see that being disturbing if you had no idea what you were walking into and had no interest in that kind of story.
Still, people are way too juvenile and squicky about things that are NOT either of those things. I honestly don't understand all the hoopla over same sex anything. Lord, Americans are SUCH prudes...
no subject