what do we mean by queerbaiting?

(notes: both kyra and megan use queer as an umbrella term. this discussion includes minor spoilers for skins (uk) and for supernatural (season 8), as well as non-spoilery references to bbc sherlock, elementary, community, and the big bang theory.)

megan

okay, queerbaiting!

the way i’ve seen queerbaiting used and defined is: a situation where there is implication and/or subtext implying a character is queer, but that character’s queerness is denied within the canon and/or by the creators of that character. i believe the idea is that a queer audience is led to identify with that character but denied actual representation. i think i first saw the term here although i have some minor disagreements with the original post that the quote is drawn from.

i’ve also heard it used to the practice of attracting a fanbase of straight women through homoerotic subtext between men. i’ve also heard it being leveled at fans who ship slash. since it seems to be a tumblr-centric term, there seem to be some overlapping and/or contradictory definitions.

in my mind, making queerness the butt of a joke (see raj and howard in the big bang theory) is not queer baiting, because i never think those characters are queer (still makes me rageful and is incredibly shitty writing and equally shitty being-a-person).

i also don’t really think shippers are the issue here (although the ethics of shipping are a whole other topic) EXCEPT when shippers claim that a queer ship is canon when it is not (as i saw a small subset of destiel shippers claim after the dean-cas hug in purgatory, and which made me really worried about their ideas about queer representation and also whether they understood what hugging was).

i also don’t really have a problem with relationships like troy and abed’s in community, because i have never heard any of the characters or any one involved in the show going around being all “NO HOMO”, but it might have happened and i missed it.

where i do have problems with are characters like john “i’m not gay” watson and oswin “it was just a phase” oswald, because you have to ask why these parts are being written the way they are. why write two characters who are constantly mistaken for a couple (which usually denotes sexual/romantic tension)? why mention oswin’s sexuality at all, especially if she’s just going to dismiss it a minute later? these kinds of characters seem to be gendered too-the (Too) Close Male Friends and the Highly Ambiguously Bisexual Woman-and they can’t exist without being implied as queer, and they are also not allowed to actually be queer.

supernatural is the other show that seems to get cited a lot it seems, but i’m not sure how i feel about that. despite the amount of slash shipping that goes on, the only character i’ve ever actually read as potentially queer is dean (i could write books about dean winchester and gender and sexuality). and i don’t think that that will ever be canonical and there is probably queerbaiting going on in the show, but i’ve never found that aspect of supernatural as upsetting as other instances that i would qualify as queerbaiting (not sure why. i’ll think about it.)

that’s my understanding anyway. kind of makes me feel like we need a better vocab for talking about queer repesentation.

Kyra

Well like I told you earlier, I hadn’t actually heard the term queerbaiting until you brought it to my attention.

 

From what I’ve seen since you introduced the term to me and how I personally understand it, I would define queerbaiting as such: when writers intentionally create a character with either explicit or implicit non-heteronormative aspects (such as Oswin Oswald) but then deny that deviation from the heterosexual norm (“I was going through a phase”). I think I am also going to include same-sex friends who are consistently mistaken for a couple in this category, as in heterosexual friendships this does, as you point out, usually foreshadow a future romantic engagement with the other person (for example, Booth and Brennan in Bones, Castle and Bennet in Castle) whereas this is never the case for same-sex friendships (*valiantly attempts to resist bring up Sam and Dean Winchester as an example of this*).

 

It is entirely possible to have close same-sex friendships without having this problematic aspect. In fact, I think there should be more portrayals of close same-sex relationships, especially between women (though that’s touching on a whole other problem in terms of female representation in film and television). Though there has been an upsurge of the bromance lately. However, it is equally important that non-hetero relationships are also portrayed and allowed to exist. And if a same-sex friendship was allowed to develop into an outright relationship, it makes me very very happy (hello Emily and Naomi from Skins, you are awesome).

 

I think I’ve never found the aspects of supernatural which might be read as queerbaiting less upsetting because it is much less flagrant than in other shows. Mostly it seems to exhibit itself in highly ambiguous moments of male-male interaction which could be read as sexually charged or could not be – in other words, it is less a blatant dismissal of queer people and queer experiences, and more a subtle bit of fan service (which is a whole other problematic can of worms). When Dean says he is not gay, it is not a loud shout, but a casual, respectful repudiation (in Live Free or TwiHard). There is no one yelling NO HOMO NO HOMO every time Dean and Cas stand a bit too close together. Much like Abed and Troy’s relationship on Community, there is no aggressive dismissal of queerness associated with the implication of queerness.

 

Characters in television can have interactions which can be read as having homoerotic subtext without that subtext ever being developed (especially since I have to admit that my little shipper heart can find homoerotic subtext in pretty much everything). That is something I can deal with. While this might have some problematic queerbaiting aspects, it doesn’t set my blood boiling (especially since as I mentioned, it might totally not be the writers fault – people have an amazing ability to read into situations what they want to read into them, whether or not the creator intended that reading). It becomes extremely frustrating, and the epitome of queerbaiting, however, when that homoerotic subtext is first acknowledged, perhaps reinforced with reference to previous queer experiences, then dismissed or denied.

 

Sidenote: I definitely think we should have a conversation about shipping at some point, btw (also, I am dying over “whether they understood what hugging was”).

megan

i think you’re right that the thing that’s trying to be called out with “queerbaiting” is that kind of have-your cake-and-eat-it-too dismissal.

the fact that close (hetero) friendships so often develop into relationships also kind of bothers me (although obviously for different reasons)(see number 389 why i’m in love with elementary), but it bothers me much more that close same-sex relationships are often treated as a site for jokes about queerness that are, again, never realized (and usually not even addressed in a respectful way).

still not sure about why supernatural bothers me less, although you’re probably right about the tone of the whole affair. probably also because of my plethora of headcanons about dean’s sexuality.

i don’t even know what my life would look like without homoerotic subtext, and i really like ambiguous characters as well. but if someone feels they have to deny subtext (and deny actual text, as in the case of oswin) it’s not just lazy and unoriginal, but, you know, pretty textbook homophobia right there.

does dumbledore count as queer representation?

(note: kyra and megan both use queer as a blanket term for LGBT+; maybe we’ll discuss this in a post sometime)

megan

(i was going to do something more hefty than this but again i took too long getting myself together, so…next time).

i’ve been thinking about this the last few days since it came up in our class, and then i saw this post (the gif of jk is almost laughable to me) and i was…confused. i mean i think you and i have talked about this before, but my take on dumbledore has always been that he is never portrayed in any kind of romantic relationship (i mean you can talk about grindelwald, but a. canonically it’s represented as a friendship, b. it happened when he was very young and then as far as we know he was never involved with or interested in anyone ever again. and c. grindelwald was kind of not a great person, so, you know, that’s troubling). so while dumbledore might be a gay character, he’s certainly not representation, and when rowling divulged that particular nugget of information, i felt more angry than anything else.

Kyra

I am still angry about that whole thing. For one, it really does just reek of JK trying, after the fact, to include some diversity in her world. If she was looking to include queer characters, she had an entire school full of children who, at any point, she could have made gossip about so-and-so being in a gay relationship with so-and-so, or casually mention that girl A and girl B were walking down the stairs holding hands or any other minutia of subtly and easily including a diverse range of gender identities and sexualities. It would have been so. Fucking. Easy for her to include queer characters in other, subtle, canonical ways, if that was her intention in revealing Dumbledore as a gay character (after all, the demographic she would have lost from having queer characters already wasn’t reading the books because of the witchcraft).

As that post points out, the teacher’s love lives are not discussed, and it would have seemed very awkward for Dumbledore at any point to stand up and say, “Sup. Homo, right here”. As you say, for the Grindelwald thing, it is canonically a friendship, and even I, with my magical ability to find the gay in absolutely every fictional work ever, did not read it as anything other than that. However, the fact that he doesn’t act like a flaming stereotype does not discount the fact that he might be quietly gay, or that JK could have always thought of him as gay. And if she had revealed his homosexuality through a Q&A (fan: I’ve always read Dumbledore as being gay. How do you see him? JK: Yes, I’ve always thought of Dumbledore is gay) I would have been like, cool, and moved on with my life. But the fact that she made a big announcement of it makes it seem like a contrived effort to place some diversity in an otherwise very hetero world. Honestly, if she said that to me, I might very well have wanted to slap her. If the queerness is not canonical to the books, I’m sorry JK, but it quite frankly isn’t good enough.

Dumbledore is gay. Fine. Great. Whatever. However, that is not canon to the books, is not mentioned or indicated in the books, and thus he does not function as queer representation because, quite frankly, if his queerness is so incidental to his character that the majority of readers didn’t even know about it, he might as well be straight or an blob of anti-sexuality like the majority of elderly people are portrayed.

megan

okay, i thought i remembered it being in response to a fan question, so i went looking and apparently it partially was. this article says that it was after she was asked whether or not dumbledore found “true love”, and jk herself mentions grindelwald. (pretty much every quote by rowling in that article makes me wince though).

the weird thing is, i wasn’t really upset when it seemed that there were no queer characters in the books. it’s something i kind of expect, sadly. but once dumbledore is gay, and there was (supposedly) some thought put into including queer characters, it’s a different question.

first, as you point out, there are so many other characters in harry potter (there’s about 150 listed on wikipedia). things like the yule ball would have been great opportunities to include some queer characters. but all the boys (dutifully wearing their dress robes) go with girls (dutifully wearing their dresses), and vice versa. (i feel like it could have lost her additional readers, although i’m not sure, don’t really understand people).

then there’s the fact that dumbledore is a powerful old white dude, and has one known romantic relationship that turns into his Big Dark Secret. i’m not saying that you have to slather on the diversity just for the sake of diversity, or that queer characters have to be perfect people, but when it’s your only queer character, and his only queer relationship is basically portrayed as a mistake? questionable.

finally, i totally buy that there is no reason to bring up dumbledore’s sexuality in the context of hogwarts. but even when all the dirt about dumbledore’s past is being brought up so harry can go through his crisis of faith, no one brings up that dumbledore is gay, or that he was something other than friends with grindelwald. and if you’re a wizarding writer and you’re trying to cause a furor by revealing that dumbledore was friends with grindelwald, you’d think you’d just go the whole nine yards and paint them as boyfriends. unless, of course, dumbledore is so closeted that no one makes the connection(again, nothing wrong with that for a queer character-but if it’s your only queer character, and you want to claim that it’s representation?) and/or, homosexuality is so taboo in the wizarding world that it would never be directly spoken of, which. you know.

i mean i guess what really bothers me is rowling or fans thinking rowling has Done Something, when really she’s just slipped us a queer character consolation prize on the side.

Kyra

EXACTLY. Bam.

Queer consolation prize. Thats all he is.

And I wasn’t upset when I first read the books that there weren’t any gay characters, nor did I really think about it, but as soon as she put it out there that Dumbledore was gay it became glaringly obvious that that was the only character that she put in, and even then never explicitly stated his gayness.

I don’t really have anything else to add, because I basically just read what you wrote shouting YES, yes, this. What she said.

It does really bother me when authors or their fans are giving themselves huge props for what is basically an after-thought of a representation, that doesn’t really do anything for anyone, isn’t  operating as a representation of that community, and is so far in the closet that the majority of the fandom would never have guessed the queerness was canonically intended by the author. Whenever an author reveals something like this after the fact it reeks of self-promotion (look at me! so inclusive! so diverse! go me!) not to mention condescendingly giving a last-second, half-assed consolation prize to a group which is largely ignored and marginalized, especially in  fantasy.

Forever side-eyeing JK because of this.

megan

(and then there’s all the other problematic stuff in harry potter, but that’s another story…)