If SBS is only good for one thing, it’s triggering my brain and making me thing about shit. As well as my awesome LJ friends. Love your work, guys.

What started my thoughts was a friend writing about her sexuality, and mentioning that she thinks she’d be better suited as a gay male. Amongst the comments were a couple of other people airing the same view. This combined with my own gender issues got me thinking about why it is that I hear more and more females expressing this view that they’d rather be gay men.

I’m not offering anything but my opinions and musings here on something I keep seeing all over the net. I’m sure others have attempted to explain this phenomenon in much better ways than I plan to, but that’s not what this is about.

I know of the phenomenon in yaoi fandoms, where yaoi fangirls express their desire to be (gay) men. As someone not involved in yaoi at all, I don’t know of this firsthand, so I may be getting biased information. I have heard scorn heaped upon them, that they’re only wanting to be (gay) men because they’re obsessed with their lust objects, or some other delusional idea. I don’t know. Yaoi is out of my league. Anyone saying that fandom helped them realise their gender and or sexuality is usually ridiculed.

But I keep seeing it. Females saying they’d be better off as gay males. Why?

Have they such a warped view of femininity and femaleness that what would normally be seen as merely variance in female expression is seen as not female enough and therefore they must be more male, and that gay males are seen as femme and male, in some form of warped androgyne?

I know this may seem ironic coming from a female bodied human who would like to look more male, so in a sense you could call me biased. But I like thinking about these things, and I’ve spent a long time thinking about what exactly is male and female and why they are problematic for young people today.

I see both a wide scope and an incredibly narrow definition of what femininity is. In amongst the feminist mindset that female can be anything they want to be is a narrow definition that wishes girls to emphasise their femininity to the extreme, to be proud of being girls, and what role models are there in the media to show girls what they can be?

Beautiful women, obsessed with fashion, make up, boys, and all that jazz. So girls feel the need to follow suit for lack of any other image to base their femininity on. I see it emphasised in girls’ magazines, girls’ toys, everything geared for girls is designed with that same image in mind. No wonder girls are confused.

If they recognise they don’t fit that uber-female model, they are potentially not female enough. There’s no one to tell them that the uber-feminine is NOT the only expression of femininity, and that they’re actually quite normal human females.

Now, I realise this won’t be the case for some. For some, they are trans* and their reasons for feeling like a gay man will be completely different. Some will even ID as straight men. Some will ID as something else completely, like me.

But back to gay men. I’m not sure there’s one cause for this, but there is the stereotype of gay men as being effeminate and camp, even if this is not the case for many of them. It’s part of the taunting of gay men, that they’re not masculine enough. In high school, boys who aren’t seen as masculine enough are perceived as gay. Conversely, girls who are seen as strong and not interested in beauty are taunted as lesbians.

So there’s this use of perceived sexuality as a comment on gender. So in this way, the two concepts are linked because society sees gay men and lesbians as expressing a different version of masculinity and femininity than the heteronormative community.

It’s funny to see them interweaved like this. We like to see gender and sexuality as separate expressions, but they are linked together. Until we are more accepting of variants in gender, we’re going to have a hard time accepting gays, lesbians and others outside the heteronormative community.

I hate most Chaser fangirls on principle, I hate them on sight if they use even the smallest amounts of netspeak, but the ones on Bebo take the cake for being the worst kinds of Chaser fangirls in existence.

Heh, and you thought myspace was bad? You haven’t descended into the pit of Hell that is Bebo.com. *shudders*

There is netspeak so prolific and so incoherent, it may as well have been written by monkeys bashing at typewriters. Hell, even Yoda is more coherent than these morons.Here’s a wonderful gem from one of the Chaser stalkerfanpages:
find out which chaser you are!
http://www.quizilla.com/users/limean…
Me sarah got craig reucassel! yay his sexy!
tell us who u got!!

Well, you’re clearly not brain dead, since you know your name is Sarah. Yay his sexy what? His sexy hair? His sexy chest? WTF are you on about?

You can spell almost every word correctly and out in full but need to abbreviate one you to ‘u’? And your grammar’s shit.

Although you get one point for managing to not fuck up the spelling of Craig’s name.

And this charming little thing:
i lovE thE chasErs war on EvErythig
OX.
brookE.

Hooray for random capital E’s? o.O

Is that an indication of her drug of choice there, hmm?

And this poor little thing is so distressed:
the chasers arent cumin back til the middle of next year *cries* NOO

So they won’t be cumin until June? Right. How does one go about becoming cumin in the first place? They clearly didn’t like it as they clearly aren’t cumin right now. And why would you want to even turn yourself into some spice anyway? Clearly all that means is you’re going to be eaten in some sort of hot meal.

I don’t know if this girl is serious or taking the piss:
andrew hansun
omg i luvvvv andrew!!! hes like, da hotust thing evaaarrrr
omg
i hope wen i c him this year @ da stage sho he propozes 2 me lol
omg that wud b so cool lol

-ALLiE

…I’m terribly afraid she’s serious. Her page is full of rainbows and stupid netspeak, just like that. I think she mentions how much she loves Andrew in almost every sentence.

*reads it again*

I’m not even sure she’s even writing in English. *blinks*

But that’s enough of me solely bashing them for their netspeak, typos and bad grammar. I could do that for hours, but it would just make my brain hurt, so enough of that for now. Moving onto other things.

The sheer stupidity on that place is appalling. Typical teenagers thinking they know everything and can rape and pillage the internet and take whatever they want without consequences. I shudder to think how many will turn up at the stage shows and drive me crazy.

They have no concept of what:
a) copyright means
What first drew me to hate them was that they’d stolen and posted some icons and banners void_stuff, who’s a friend of mine, made. They’d also stolen one of my banners, though they clearly have no idea what slash is, or if they do know, they don’t find it offensive, because they didn’t bother using that against me as I argued with them.

You can’t just go taking any image you find online and claim it as your own. The internet does not exist purely so you can rape and pillage anything and everything you want.

It. Is. Stealing.

Copyright needs to be respected, or people will come bashing down your door, getting you in trouble. Of that I was not bluffing about when I was arguing with them.

b) that copyright law exists online
By posting pictures you don’t own the copyright for, you’re actually breaking the Bebo Terms of Service. Though if that was enforced, the whole site would be shut down, I fear.

Call me a hypocrite, but I was never actually going to claim copyright on that banner. I know I stole the photo from The Australian magazine as I scanned it in. But it scared them enough when I threatened to bring The Australian into things, as they had a similar image uploaded, though not the one I scanned.

I’ve slapped Creative Commons licences on my graphics now, just need to get around to fixing it to the graphics I can rightfully copyright, like my fanart. They’re binding in Australia now, which is nice to know.

That they’re so naïve to be so unaware that copyright law exists online really quite disturbs me, though it’s a myth that a lot of people believe.

c) that you can’t just go posting photos of Craig and his family without permission because it’s an invasion of privacy and makes you look really quite stalkery and creepily obsessive.
But seriously, the main issue I have with the Bebo girls is that three days ago, one darling little braindead rat posted a photo to her Chaser groups photo albums that had Craig and his wife and their three children (which were all named). It was clearly something personal and private and not meant for stupid fanbrats like her to steal and slut around without thought to what they’re doing.

One of the first rules of fandoms involving real people is leave their families the fuck out of it. It’s an invisible line that you DO NOT cross under any circumstances. It’s just out of respect, you know? Their families aren’t in the spotlight, so give them their privacy. You don’t go showing and naming their children either. I know Ollie’s been in The War, but he’s Craig’s kid, not a member of The Chaser, so don’t try and justify it to me like that. It’s bullshit.

I spent three hours yesterday arguing with her friend in a bid to convince her that posting it was wrong and that she should have it taken down. There were emails fired off to Bebo and to ABC Legal about the photo as well, because we felt it shouldn’t have ever been posted.

Only two thirds of the conversation remains as the photo of Craig’s family was indeed deleted this morning, which meant our comment war went with it, but I do have the other two threads. I’m The Vanguard, Sarah Sarahson is the stupid fanbrat, Tegan C and Desiredeffect are on my side, and Underrated is another of the Bebo girls.

The argument began here, which is the banner they stole from me. Like it isn’t obvious where they nicked it from.

It then moved to the photo of Craig’s family, which is now deleted, but there was some stupid arguments there put forth by the girl I was arguing with as to why posting that photo was perfectly fine.

It finally made its way here, which is an icon my friend made.

I’m amused at how she kept bleating to me about “it’s just a picture there are more important things in life LIKE WORLD HUNGER.”

Bleating that 80 times a minute does not make you a) correct, b) more right, or c) more mature. It makes you look like a brain dead sheeple.

I won’t post the entire threads for you as this is long enough already, but I finally beat her into submission and got this as a concession of defeat:
den y did u say all dis shit? u should of just left it im tryin 2 but u guys just keepin rite back wit sayin i did this n that n im breakin da law lik serouisly ill talk 2 my friend n we’ll decide which piks will go n she’ll probaly get rid of the craig pik 4 ur sake ok?

Ugh. Talk about illegible. She’s basically saying I scared her shitless but I’ve made such a bother about it that she’ll talk to her friend and try and get the photo taken down, just as long as I leave her alone.

Is it just me, or does Sarah look like she’s stolen Corey Delaney’s famous glasses? XD

Following back to the profiles of two of the members of that group gave me some more lulz, but I won’t bother taking up any more time bitching about them, although the comments on both their pages make for amusing reading, and their conversations are mostly coherent English for a change.

Underrated and Chaser Fan.

Although I would like to give them the Trophy For Stating The Obvious:
anyway, in cnnn everyone looks younger yah random

No, really, they looked younger than they do now in a show they made 5 years ago? The mind boggles. >.< Garbage Man there, which is awesome. I was so annoyed when it disappeared off youtube.

And there endeth my rant about Bebo. I’ll be keeping an eye on them in case they cross that line again, and if they do, I’ll hound them again, just like I did this time. If I keep at it long enough, I might get them to take down mine and void_stuff’s graphics.

The Vanguard is watching and ready to attack.

Author’s Note@26/6/09: Oh, there was no way I wasn’t posting this again. It’s completely and utterly epic and needs to exist. So there.

Chaser fans are curious, wonderful, infuriating creatures. I both love them and hate them.

The success of The War has brought a whole new contingent of fans to the fore, some of whom deserve to be shot more than anything. Some also deserve my undying love, but that’s another story.

My observations of said Chaser fans spans from livejournal to myspace to facebook to the Chaser site and other smaller assorted places. They tend to fall into distinct categories, despite their protestations otherwise. Any references to ‘the forum’ relate solely to the Chaser forum found at their website.

The Elitists
First, we have The Elitists.

Now, the Elitists are a bunch of up-themselves snobs who think they’re better fans/the only true fans/the only legitimate fans because:
a) they’re not fangirls
b) they loved them before they were on TV/knew them at uni/stalked them at uni/stalked Andrew’s band/stalked them at some point/knew their parents/knew them when they were foetuses, as if somehow the longer you’ve known them, the more legitimate your claim is to being a True Chaser Fan™; and
c) they don’t fancy the boys at all, because, ew, so not a fangirl. *sighs* They only love them for their intelligence and how brilliant they are at what they do. Go figure.

These fans are particularly annoying in that they carry that smug, superior air about them and generally like attacking anyone who shows even the tiniest hints of fangirlism, because the natural enemy of the Elitist is the Fangirl, an eternal battle that shall go on for eternity, or until The Chaser disappear, never to be seen again. They’re a bit like Chris Taylor, in that they thrive on pissing contests to see who’s more pretentious than the others.

The Bandwagoners
Then you have the “bandwagoners”, which is a term I hate using, but it will suffice.

These are the fans who only liked them once they started The War. Usually teenagers, usually annoying, usually but not always have a thing about Andrew’s hair/Chris Taylor/crazy Chas. Craig and Jules tend to be neglected somewhat. Will probably be oblivious to Charles and Dom’s existence, or even that The Chaser originated as a satirical newspaper. May or may not have watched CNNNN or The Election Chaser or The Chaser Decides, since they were only ickle babies at the time and/or had no idea the shows actually existed. May not even be aware The Chaser are satirical. Prone to bouts of exclamations as to how much they love Clive or the Crazy Warehouse Guy, or any other character Andrew’s done for The War. Usually speak in high-pitched squeals and are infuriating to be around. Will result in you wanting to smack them round the head with something solid.

“Bandwagoners” are generally disliked and abused and never tolerated, and more often than not, can be found on myspace/bebo/facebook, typing in incoherent English in a manner that makes it seem like they’re having a seizure. May not even be aware the boys have their own website either. Often found after tapings or at any event the boys happen to be at (ABC’s 75th birthday parties, I’m looking at you) begging their favourite Chaser if they can have their babies or clambering all over Andrew, trying to touch his hair. Trufax. *nods*

“Bandwagoners”, it must be said, are generally ignorant of other Chaser fans from the other groups, preferring to stay with their kind and multiply in an avalanche of netspeak, squealing and horrible, horrible fan pages.

The Moderately Sane Fans
Then you’ve got the moderate fans, who aren’t all that crazy, may fancy one or two of them to some degree, Julian more often than not, probably liked them for several years, may or may not have bought the paper, and seem to be the sanest amongst the whole lot. Not huge in number, usually older than fangirls and “bandwagoners” and seem the most likely to act like children on the Chaser forum when bored out of their minds. Most often the source of forum drama, whereby someone is picked on constantly and eventually leaves the forum, or someone is banned, or both. Seem to think they’re superior because they’re older. May or may not be grammar nazis/teachers/mothers on the forum. Okay, so that spilled over from fandom to the forum, whatever.

Will bitch about the boys being “mainstream”, because they remember when the boys were hardly known at all and they were their little cult group to love and adore and impress people with their love of something so obscure and political. Will also bitch about the boys not doing so much political satire anymore. May also wistfully wish for the CNNNN days to be back.

Younger fangirls wanting to legitimise their place on the forum mimic their spelling/grammar nazi act in a bid to be accepted and try to act like the saner older females of the forum in a bid to save themselves from abuse.

On the forum, there’s a subset of mostly male politically inclined arseholes who generally make for intelligent conversation and berate newbies and fangirls with fervour. Can be harsh bastards, but are generally entertaining and are the ones most inclined to argue with you.

The Fangirls
The fangirls come next. I mention these separately from the “bandwagoners” as these girls claim they aren’t bandwagoners or fangirls and want us all to believe they’re super-intelligent and mature, even when they’re only 14 and really, they so love The Chaser for the political satire and not because OMG those bois r lyk so hawt!!12!. *nods*

Generally try-hards who are in denial of their fangirl status and often do so when introducing themselves on the forum. Can often infuriate other members of the forum with their incessant habit of using the forum like an MSN conversation when they should be using the chatroom instead. Can be identified by their Chaser avatars, as anyone on the forum who isn’t a fangirl does not feel the need to have a Chaser avatar. Cats, bunnies, politicians, world leaders, dictators, Dylan Moran, Dr Cox or cartoon characters generally suffice.

Will spend most of their time squeeing over the boys in spite of their fangirl denials. Their lives revolve around tapings, the boys, and how hot they are. But never let it be said that they’re fangirls. No way. Totally not fangirls. *insert high pitched squeal about how hot Andrew is here*

Will also bitch about the boys being “mainstream”, even if they’ve only been watching since mid-2006. May try to legitimise their claim by saying that ‘everyone at their school watches it now, but they don’t get the political stuff, not like I do’, as if it somehow makes them better.

The Slashers
The last and final group is probably the smallest and least visible, and a lot of fans are in denial of its existence, or are unaware it even exists at all.

In some regards considered lower than the “bandwagoners”, Chaser slashers are generally frowned upon in most circles despite the homoeroticism being so blatant that subtext is irrelevant. XD Slashers enjoy pointing out the hypocrisy of those fans that dare to point out how evil they are when nonslashers are quite happy to discuss Chris/Craig kisses, or Chas/Andrew kisses, or whatever blatant flirting they noticed that week, and admit it might be a little bit hot, but apparently, that’s as far as you can take it, because actually writing Chaser smutfics is an unforgivable offence, subject to flaming, arguing and abuse from all corners and particular abuse coming from Elitists, who see slashers as perverting their precious Chaser boys.

Chaser slashers are generally not too self-promoting, since admitting to slashing the guys generally does not elicit a positive response unless around other slashers. Like “bandwagoners”, they generally keep to themselves, and hide their activities in a bid to avoid drama.

Generally speaking, Chaser slashers are mid-long term fans, although there’s some newer fans than that. They often secretly wish they could proclaim their love of slashing the boys without fear of being ridiculed, while also wishing they could convince the rest of the fandom that the boys are indeed slashy and seeing the subtext isn’t that hard to do since it’s blatantly obvious, even back to CNNNN.

Often ignored and invisible, the slashers have grown considerably in numbers over the last two years. Not that anyone outside the slashers knows or realises this. Can also have fangirly tendencies, but not about how much they want to have Andrew’s babies, but more about how they want Chris to have Andrew’s babies. Popular pairings include the classic and original Chris/Craig, Chris/Andrew, Andrew/Craig, and Andrew/Chas. Yes, there’s a theme. XD Julian/Chas is also popular, although not as much as the others. Will scrutinise The War every week for anything remotely slashy. Can border on the obsessive.

These are the main groups I’ve observed over the last few years. The general bitchiness between the groups lends the fandom as a whole a general air of disconnectedness. The groups are quite separate from each other, and only interact in the form of conflict more often than not.

That is not to say some areas of some groups can overlap and get along, but it’s a rare occurrence. Older fans usually resent the flood of young teenage fans who don’t appreciate the boys in the same way they do.

And so endeth the lesson.