I think the stuff in parentheses right after what you quoted here basically answers your question, doesn't it? I'll take another stab at it, though. It's not "making them gay" that's a problem--as you say, that's the nature of slash-type fanwork (especially if the characters are suggested to be straight in canon) across the board--but wider fandom-specific attitudes that it's unacceptable to ever suggest that, hey, bisexuality is also a queer identity worth exploring, and bi people are still queer when they're single or in a binary-opposite-gender relationship. Trends swinging toward fandom writing the characters of Hypothetical F/F Ship A as self-IDed lesbians: Awesome, trends happen, fandom gonna fandom. In that scenario, people who prefer a different approach can put their oars in or hope the pendulum starts to swing both ways (couldn't resist, sorry), but they aren't automatically treated as enemies to the ship. Fandom policers going after anybody who depicts the same characters as bi: Not awesome. I don't like that attitude applied to characters of any gender (we need to make Your Sexuality Headcanon Is Not My Sexuality Headcanon, and That's Not 'Phobic Unless Somebody Is Actively Being 'Phobic About It a thing, but somehow I don't think it'll catch on like kinktomato), but it's gotten practically memetic for the female characters in my particular fandom contexts.
So how that translates in my fanwork is my female characters are bi 99.9% of the time, and I don't ever plan to write the only significant F/F ship of the fandom (or if I did, they'd be bi and have that come through clearly in the text, which is how I already write them when they're single or in M/F[/M, in one case,] relationships). That said, per my comment lower in this thread, I am interested in writing for a rarepair in the same fandom because I think it has less of that policing attached to it... probably because it'll get me my scarlet letter for age gap reasons instead, even though they're both 30+. Spite life! *peace sign*
Maybe you've lucked out and haven't spent time in the fandoms that push this attitude the hardest; I've seen it most in animation, especially fandoms of the last five-ish years that have sizable anti-shipper contingents who manage to worm their talking points into the general fandom populace. I think those cases also often have the old "They're gay so they can't be sexually attracted to the characters in my m/m ship" motives in play, which is its own set of issues. As I hope is coming through in my comments, my fandom history is also a bit weird compared to what I think many people view as "normal," because I've got twenty years mostly limited to deep dives into one or two fandoms at a time for years on end, and I wasn't in a lot (any?) of the Fandoms That Ate Fandom after Harry Potter. My perspective on fandom experience is going to be really different from someone who went for breadth or watched, say, Supernatural. Does Supernatural even have much in the way of f/f options? All I know is all the women die, apparently.
Did that help? Based on your comment, you seemed to be seeing the female characters held to higher standards, while my issue is with specific fandom cultures exerting social pressure to hold the (usually female) fanwork creators to strict standards of Acceptable F/F, wherein those standards are limited to conflict-free Kinsey 6s. Again, I'm also not down with people pushing those kinds of purity tests on characters and ships of other genders; it just tends to be most prevalent and focused these days--in my experiences, which may not match yours--in f/f ships.
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Date: 2018-12-12 08:23 am (UTC)So how that translates in my fanwork is my female characters are bi 99.9% of the time, and I don't ever plan to write the only significant F/F ship of the fandom (or if I did, they'd be bi and have that come through clearly in the text, which is how I already write them when they're single or in M/F[/M, in one case,] relationships). That said, per my comment lower in this thread, I am interested in writing for a rarepair in the same fandom because I think it has less of that policing attached to it... probably because it'll get me my scarlet letter for age gap reasons instead, even though they're both 30+. Spite life! *peace sign*
Maybe you've lucked out and haven't spent time in the fandoms that push this attitude the hardest; I've seen it most in animation, especially fandoms of the last five-ish years that have sizable anti-shipper contingents who manage to worm their talking points into the general fandom populace. I think those cases also often have the old "They're gay so they can't be sexually attracted to the characters in my m/m ship" motives in play, which is its own set of issues. As I hope is coming through in my comments, my fandom history is also a bit weird compared to what I think many people view as "normal," because I've got twenty years mostly limited to deep dives into one or two fandoms at a time for years on end, and I wasn't in a lot (any?) of the Fandoms That Ate Fandom after Harry Potter. My perspective on fandom experience is going to be really different from someone who went for breadth or watched, say, Supernatural. Does Supernatural even have much in the way of f/f options? All I know is all the women die, apparently.
Did that help? Based on your comment, you seemed to be seeing the female characters held to higher standards, while my issue is with specific fandom cultures exerting social pressure to hold the (usually female) fanwork creators to strict standards of Acceptable F/F, wherein those standards are limited to conflict-free Kinsey 6s. Again, I'm also not down with people pushing those kinds of purity tests on characters and ships of other genders; it just tends to be most prevalent and focused these days--in my experiences, which may not match yours--in f/f ships.