This is a birthday post for

azdaja_dafema

 on the treatment of Andrew in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season Seven especially.

Now I have a shiny new issue of the so far very mixed Season Eight in front of me, and this may remedy the problems I raise in this article, as it has Andrew on the cover.

There are many issues with sexual politics, especially treatment of queer issues, in Buffy. I’m going to shy away from the big one (end of season six, particularly with Willow and Tara) for the moment. First, I’d like to talk about the series a little.

Buffy was hugely important to me in secondary school. The first friend I made I made because I watched Buffy (we later fell out). The lovely

azdaja_dafema

 I talked to more because of it. My mother thought that I thought I was gay because Willow was. Now the slightly more embarrassing admissions: my diary aged 11-14/15 was addressed to Willow. I used to make up conversations with Andrew in my head to let myself go to sleep during season seven (when I was 15).

One thing you might notice is that Willow and Andrew are both queer. Another thing you might notice is that Andrew, possibly the only clearly queer male character in the show, is not a serious character. His sexuality is heavily implied but not stated and is clearly linked to his “camp” persona, which could be fine. Only it’s not, really.

I identified with Andrew. It helped that both the girl in whom I was interested and my family very clearly identified me with him. I identified with the camp squee over comics, the pedantry over Stephen King adaptations, even, earlier in the series, the desire to be a supervillain. That could be fine apart from moments when the character is taken seriously, and the plot around the murder of Jonathan. It was possible to do really good things, like the treatment of Faith after she killed someone, with the character. Instead, with Andrew, it seems to be treated as a) he’s a joke but b) he’s also evil and did really bad things, which are inextricably linked to his queerness.

Cast your mind back now to me, at 15, watching Buffy. The Willow/Tara storyline and treatment of that, showing a functional queer relationship, had been important to me as a positive queer role model. That’s one of the problems I have with season six. Now they get to showing a gay man, and it’s not that he’s shown as being in love/infatuated with/attracted to someone who is evil, because there are amazing things that could be done with that. It’s not even that he’s shown as in awe of Warren, and completely uncritical. It’s when we get to season seven, and even the episode where he’s central (Storyteller) treats him both as a joke and as someone whose point of view is invalid, and reminds us that he’s a murderer. I think there are ways that the writers could have handled it better, while essentially doing the same things. I think they could have treated his sexuality as real, for one thing. After all the Buffy/Angel angst, and Tara being written out before Willow went evil, in the Dead/Evil lesbian trope, I think they could have taken a male queer character seriously. I have straight male friends who complain that Xander is treated as a joke after the wedding episode. I’m not sure I agree.

Because, as I said before, Andrew is the only queer male character in Buffy, and his campness, his sexuality and his crimes are all bundled together, and mainly in the form of comic relief. So I really wonder, considering Buffy’s fling in season eight, whether lesbianism is okay because it’s cute or attractive to male audience members, but male homosexuality is at worst a threat, at best not to be taken seriously. Given Buffy is the show that gave me Willow and Tara when I was thirteen, delayed their first onscreen kiss until a point where it was unsurprising, and emotional, and not the most important thing going on, this really makes me sad.

Probably ridiculous spec fic by numbers, and mostly me wanting to write the happy place, and because I thought I should do Outer Alliance's other suggestion

 

“Is it just assuming a role?” she asks

Why yes, but for heaven’s sake

Not just gender but all identity’s performative

And I’m sick of being forced

Into being faux (or assumed) heternormative

Normative at all in fact, I don’t want

Unbroken skin, brown hair, or not

To have my mother in a whirl

Because you say it’s a role,

But all of me is, is many

And always will be, my own silent soliloquy,

For when there are no words,

When a fuck you, or an identity, gives me

Hope, or purpose or just something to be

Something to feel I am, for others

So that I can be there, to be loved

Or hated, or ignored, but without that

All the lies and rumours and hostility

Is true, and not in the way that I want

So this, all this, the style, the actions, the loves

Are all just me, roles, but what I want

And should, and need to be, complete

Imperfect, changing, and essential

I have depression.

I know that’s unclear. I know I can state in various ways to make you think that perhaps it is more than just getting upset, or giving up on things. I have a depressive disorder. I’ve been hospitalised with depression three times. I take anti depressants, and anti psychotics. Excusing myself from certain things because I have issues. I have attempted suicide more than once..

I can tell you, or if you know me you might see, how it affects my life. If you are unlucky enough to be close to me during a bad period, you will see me be both debilitated and frightened and in some ways frightening, and unable to cope with the world. In other environments you will see me cry over things that are completely unimportant, or get irrationally upset, or excuse myself and go quiet. You might hear me talk about self harm, or anxiety attacks, or suicidal thoughts. I’ll probably tone it down, or talk about other things, or even mention it in a conversational manner, because I do want to do other things, and think about other things, and in the hope if I mention it.

So you’ve gathered now that I have issues?

If I make every effort to talk about my issues, my disability, openly and sensibly, is it my problem that you don’t understand it, or that it’s frightening to watch, or just confuses you? Yes and no. It will almost certainly effect me adversely, that you don’t understand, but it is a problem I have, not a problem with me. The problem is you not understanding, or not even trying to understand. I accept that you don’t get it. That’s fine. But get that you don’t get it, and that that is a problem with you.

I would also make it quite clear that I have spent a fair bit of time thinking about my disability and my problems, and how to fix them, and what fixing them means. I also know what they are, what a warning sign is, and what I feel like when depressed. Every way I can feel when depressed. And they are not the ways you feel. They are not the ways you feel whether you are someone who has stubbed their toe at the end of a bad day, someone who’s about to start a course of a talking therapy for anxiety issues or moderate depression, or someone who’s been on exactly the same meds as me for the same amount of time. Our thoughts and feelings are unique, the distorted things that can happen to them are also unique. So I won’t tell you I know what you feel, and what you should do.