I feel kinda bad reviewing shit when you haven't read it yet-- like I should've posted SPOILERS since I am, kinda, spoiling the book. Please remember that I am an annoyingly nitpicky dipshit that derives great pleasure from picking things apart.
It's been awhile since I've read Fun Home (sadly I don't own it; I checked it out of the library), so I don't recall if she actually referred to him bisexual there (I'm pretty sure she didn't, since the crux of why his life was so fucked up was the fact he was a closeted gay man), I stress that her bisexual classification was in Are You My Mother? (again, in fairness, her cartoon self is pondering it in a very stream-of-consciousness way, while sitting in traffic trying to think of what she'll tell her mother, one of those panels you can imagine her drawing up before sitting down and considering. I mean, it's not as if she referred to her father that way in the foreword or any more formal setting).
I caveat again that it's been awhile since I've read Fun Home and I could be talking entirely out my ass (WHO, ME?!), but I felt since the high school students (and babysitters/handymen) were portrayed as clearly fully grown men, it wasn't quite pedophilia (I'm aware that this is a shitty distinction to make). From what I've come to understand about pedophilia (books like this one (http://alivemagdolene.livejournal.com/396213.html), for example, have helped), pedophiles want children. They want their sexual partners to LOOK like children, act like children, et cetera. That's part of why I have a problem with people who say the monstrosity that is Toddlers and Tiaras is "promoting pedophilia". The show is a horrorfest, don't get me wrong, and god-awful on plenty of levels, but let's not misclassify as well as trivialize a serious fucking thing.
What we were talking about? Oh yeah. I cringed at the idea of Bechdel's father playing into the homophobe's fantasy about gay people preying on children (particularly when he had sex with his own students) in any way, but like I said, the fact they were (at least as depicted by Bechdel) as men rather than boys...? I get the feeling that in her mind, she wedded the scandal of homosexuality bywith consensual sex with adults (or near-adults) to pedophilia and even though she knows as an adult that there is a GIGANTIC difference, she didn't feel that way at the time so she didn't bother to make the distinction. Or something.
TL;DR: I probably agree with you on the lack of necessary separation.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2012-07-03 08:31 am (UTC)It's been awhile since I've read Fun Home (sadly I don't own it; I checked it out of the library), so I don't recall if she actually referred to him bisexual there (I'm pretty sure she didn't, since the crux of why his life was so fucked up was the fact he was a closeted gay man), I stress that her bisexual classification was in Are You My Mother? (again, in fairness, her cartoon self is pondering it in a very stream-of-consciousness way, while sitting in traffic trying to think of what she'll tell her mother, one of those panels you can imagine her drawing up before sitting down and considering. I mean, it's not as if she referred to her father that way in the foreword or any more formal setting).
I caveat again that it's been awhile since I've read Fun Home and I could be talking entirely out my ass (WHO, ME?!), but I felt since the high school students (and babysitters/handymen) were portrayed as clearly fully grown men, it wasn't quite pedophilia (I'm aware that this is a shitty distinction to make). From what I've come to understand about pedophilia (books like this one (http://alivemagdolene.livejournal.com/396213.html), for example, have helped), pedophiles want children. They want their sexual partners to LOOK like children, act like children, et cetera. That's part of why I have a problem with people who say the monstrosity that is Toddlers and Tiaras is "promoting pedophilia". The show is a horrorfest, don't get me wrong, and god-awful on plenty of levels, but let's not misclassify as well as trivialize a serious fucking thing.
What we were talking about? Oh yeah. I cringed at the idea of Bechdel's father playing into the homophobe's fantasy about gay people preying on children (particularly when he had sex with his own students) in any way, but like I said, the fact they were (at least as depicted by Bechdel) as men rather than boys...? I get the feeling that in her mind, she wedded the scandal of homosexuality bywith consensual sex with adults (or near-adults) to pedophilia and even though she knows as an adult that there is a GIGANTIC difference, she didn't feel that way at the time so she didn't bother to make the distinction. Or something.
TL;DR: I probably agree with you on the lack of necessary separation.