Jezebel 
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New York, 6:55 PM
Fri Nov 27
15 posts in the last 24 hours
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10/14/09
I think what Anne Rice made a point of in her books is that vampires by their nature are usually meant to be sexual. Her vampires aren't gay, they're sexual to male and female alike. The idea behind it was that they see everything and everyone as beautiful and sexual. They're highly sexual books, yes, but there is almost never sex in them.
The same goes for Dracula. It's Victorian literature, of course there was no overt sex in it. Everything the vampires did in it, however, had a strong sexual undertone to it. And what about his three brides? I think it's a not-so-subtle nod to lesbianism.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that vampires are almost always sexual. Sometimes they can have sex, sometimes they can't. Somethings they're heterosexual, sometimes homosexual, sometimes they have no preference. But one thing they almost always possess is the promise of pleasure in some way.
I think categorizing all vampires into one distinct idea like this is ridiculous. This guy needs to read a lot more vampire fiction before he can make that assumption, if you ask me. I've been reading/watching anything I can about vampires for 20 years now, and I can honestly say there's a lot of diversity as far as sexuality goes.
10/14/09
One of the reasons I loved Anne Rice's works before she went batshit insane and Lestat turned into an insufferable Mary Sue is because a good number of her vampires were bisexual long before they were ever turned. Lestat and Armand both were. Lestat lost his virginity to a woman (an Italian traveling player) and ran off to Paris with his boyfriend. Armand was basically in a polyamorous triad with Marius and the courtesan Bianca. Rice also did a great deal of interesting commentary on gender in those books also. Lestat's mother Gabrielle was a sort of feminist poster child, in spite of her flaws (her rich Italian family married her off to a hick French Marquis, where her gender dictated all she was good for was popping out babies, many of which died as infants). Her life didn't arguably start until she became Lestat's first fledgling.
The problem with these contemporary "vampire" stories is that to a one, they're all following the Anne Rice template--and FAILING. It's not simply that the vampire is an urbane, beautiful sophisticate. It's that beneath all of that, they're monsters. They're sexy because they're dangerous, and not "kinda sorta" dangerous. The "vampires" nowadays are basically defanged. Without that element of danger, it's meaningless.
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
Thanks for this timely post; it's made me smile today even as it's made me a bit sad. I would always forward these sorts of stories (like that women love gay porn fiction) from Jez to my friend, and we would get a good chuckle and conversation from them. We met at a vampire LARP about 10 years ago, so this post would have been super awesome to send to him. Yesterday was his funeral but I want to forward this to him and still wish we could chat and laugh about it...
10/14/09
In a world with more equality on a socioeconomic level, supernatural heroes are a *great* way to play that angle without having to make the heroine poor or powerless. Really not counting Twilight, since that's YA, and she's not poor or powerless compared to other teenagers. Sookie Stackhouse is poor and powerless (except for superpowers) but so is her entire community. In your *standard* paranormal romance, though, you've got a lot of female detectives and intelligence operatives, I can think of at least one auto mechanic, there's a variety of things going on on the career front, and they tend to be 30ish. That's another power differential that used to be built in - the heroine would be a teenager, the hero would be 35 - that has to be gotten around because of modern sensibilities. There has to somehow be a power struggle, that's what romance is about.
10/14/09
10/14/09
Teenage girls aren't the only ones who are uncomfortable with teen female sexuality... everyone else is, too, but within that subset of the slash community, there's a baseline acknowledgment of it existing naturally and for the enjoyment of teen girls themselves that there just isn't in mainstream society -- it was kind of a sisterhood of anonymous Internet horndogs that I remember fondly. If we were young boys, it wouldn't be considered bizarre at all.
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
There is nothing "bizarre" about slash's popularity unless you believe the popular culture's attitudes that women are not sexual beings. One man is hot, two men together is hotter, it really is not rocket science. Also, a great number of slashers are queer women, self included, who also write f/f fiction and het.
Also, keep in mind Sturgeon's Law. 90% of everything is absolute crap, and fanfiction is no different. Some of the best writers I know are slashers, including some ficcers who've gone on to professional writing careers.
10/14/09
10/14/09
Sorry, but I do find something a bit bizzare about 1000's of pages worth of text devoted to Mighty Morphine Power Rangers giving reach arounds to cast members from CSI Miami.
10/13/09
"Erm, Eddie, can you stop crushing my windpipe. Dude? Urrrgh." *thud*
"Sorry, what you were saying? There's glitter under my thumbnail."
Oh, about the article? Oh look, there's a gay vampire in my window. Sorry, gay vampire, I'm a lesbian, but come back with your gay vampire friend so I can watch you fang each other. Thanks.
What?
10/13/09
Uh, I've heard.
10/13/09
Also, ick.
10/13/09
Does this statement remind anyone else of Mad Libs? It is so odd and arbitrary.
10/13/09
1. That since vampires are generally portrayed as more sensitive, detail-orientated, poetic, caring individuals, and since those traits are not "typical" of straight males, that somehow makes them gay.
2. That gay men, by their preference for male partners, somehow immediately understand woman with a preference for a male partners (because lord knows liking the same set of genitals is the basis of a great friendship)
3. And thus, gay men are the perfect partners for straight woman, yet they are sexually incompatible, so turning them into "vampires" allows straight woman to fantasize about fucking gay men.
I always thought that vampires represent a longing not for gay men, but for that tortured, eternal soul, a man who is allowed to deviate from "manliness" because he is supernatural. His theory actually is the opposite of what vampire culture seems to represent, which is a desire for less strict gender roles (or at least, less strict but still acceptable to the right-wing traditional woman) and the sexual fantasy of being with someone who is not the norm, and can’t be categorized into things like "straight,"
"gay" or "bro."
10/14/09
vampires = other
gay men = other
vampires = gay men!
Which also seems to fail a sixth grade rule of logic, actually.
10/15/09
10/13/09
As to vampires, well, if it flies in through the window and rapes you with its mouth I'm going to guess it's gay. And Twinkles The Magic Disappearing Glitterstick Boyfriend up there is gayer than a purple unicorn singing Garland's greatest hits to an audience composed exclusively of Aubrey Beardsley drawings.
10/13/09
10/13/09
10/13/09