'Folded Arms' and Open Minds

Fanfiction
Title:	'Folded Arms' and Open Minds
Author(s):	Shoshanna
Date(s):	1991
Length:
Genre(s):	slash?
Fandom(s):	The Professionals
Relationship(s):
External Links:	online here / AO3
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'Folded Arms' and Open Minds is a Professionals circuit story by Shoshanna.

The author's dedication: "for Jane Carnall because of 'touched'."

The story generated MUCH discussion, most of it focusing on We're Not Gay, We Just Love Each Other, and how this trope plays out in The Professionals fandom. Some comments are below; for others, see CI5hq, ^{Archived version}

Summaries

"Murphy tails a suspect into a gay bar and is surprised to see Bodie and Doyle at a table in the back. He joins them to see if they're on a case and is surprised to find out that they are both bisexual. When he asks the obvious question, they find the idea that they are a couple laughable."

"Murphy is tailing a suspect in the gay pub "Folded Arms", and he sees B&D there. He tries to tell them that he doesn't mind if they are lovers, but B&D laugh and explain that "We're not in love with each other. We're just gay."

Author's Comments: 1996

About the suspiciously low number of slash stories involving black men. The only story I know of in which Jax gets laid is explicitly about race prejudice (prejudice among its readers, that is, as my "Folded Arms and Open Minds" is about homophobia among its readers.

Author's Comments: 2015

What was incredibly fascinating to me was that, this was a one-off joke story, really, where the hinge of the whole story is that, it's a Professionals story where Murphy, who is a peripheral character in the Professionals, is on an undercover job. He has to trail a guy into a gay bar. Shock horror. And while he's in there, he sees Bodie and Doyle, like, off-duty, sharing drinks. And has this, “My god, my co-workers are faggots, what will I do,” but gets his head around that. And when they see him at work the next day, and he's like, “Were you there on a job?” Because in his mind, he like, wants to give them an excuse. Maybe they had a good reason for being there. And they say, “No, we were just there,” and he sort of screws to his version of a sticking point and says, “Well, you know, it's not for me, but if it gives ya – I'm glad you guys found each other. And I can understand. I'm there for ya. And my sister's gay -” really, you know, I pulled out the stops for this sort of thing. And Bodie and Doyle fall off their chairs laughing at him. And they're like, “You thought I would go for him? Are you insane?” And say to him, “You've got it all wrong. We're not in love with each other; we're just gay.” And that's the end of the story. Well, the thing is, when I wrote it, “We're not gay, we just love each other,” was an absolute set phrase. And I was deliberately subverting that paradigm. And twenty years later, when these people are discussing it on the Internet, several of the commenters specifically said, you know, “This story doesn't make sense unless, at the time it was written, there must have been some pre-existing phrase about 'we're not gay, we just love each other', so that the last line makes sense as an inversion of that.” I mean, some of them may have been, but a couple of people were explicitly saying this. And thirty years ago we could not have imagined a world in which that line wasn't known to slash fans.

Reactions and Reviews

1992

A nice touch and so refreshing.

1997

Jane is mildly notorious for getting in the "we're not gay" bit. Didn't someone write a story with the punchline "We're not in love - we're gay" just as a reply?

I ran across that one while browsing in the online lib the other day - it's "'Folded Arms' and Open Minds" by [Shoshanna], and carries the note "for Jane Carnall, because of 'touched'". I thought it was hilarious.

2012

The plot is fairly brief. Murphy is trailing someone. The guy in question heads to a gay hang-out. So Murphy squared his shoulders, muttered dire threats to Cowley under his breath should he not emerge unscathed, and followed him in.

Whereupon he observes not only the drop he had come to watch, but also Bodie and Doyle, not there on an op: clearly theirs must be a partnership off the job too.

Murphy tries to maintain a casual man-of-the-world attitude while bringing the subject up with them the following day, and finds it harder than he expects. "He fumbled for the breezy, liberal attitude he'd always prided himself on". Having assured them that he doesn't have a problem with them being a couple, he learns that his assumption is wrong, leading to the punchline of "We're not in love with each other, we're just gay". Boom, boom. Silly Murphy!

And that's apparently it: a story which neatly reverses expectations in a surprise last line, which only really works the first time you read it. Or is it?

I don't think it is.

The above is how I felt the first time I read it, very early on in my discovery of Pros fandom. I did have the nagging feeling that perhaps it was a reversal of some catchphrase that I just didn't recognise, and I had already read a few stories that went down the "how weird, I fancy my partner, I must eye up other men, hmm, no, don't fancy them, obviously I am not that gay, it is just him" route. So I guessed at the catchphrase. But I had no idea that "We're not gay, we just love each other" was shorthand for a particular idea in slash (that idea being summed up in the name). I just moved onto the next story in my attempt to read thirty years' worth of Pros fiction in about thirty weeks.

And as I kept reading, I came across more of these "previously-straight, suddenly fancies partner, but is definitely not gay (or bi) at all, nooo, this is special" stories. Some of them were great, and showed ways the main characters might think, feel or otherwise maintain that. And some of them were... well, bizarre. One or two of them were more than a little offensive. There were some where it seemed that it wasn't that the characters didn't want to be gay. It was as if the authors didn't want them to be gay.

And time passed. And I read lots of stories, and lots about stories. And eventually I came across 'Folded Arms' again. And different things stood out about the story this time....

[much snipped]

This story is not even 1300 words. To pack all of this (and a few more) into such a short piece takes some effort. It's not accidental.

I was by now interested enough to email Shoshanna directly and ask her about the story. Not in detail. Just, was it in response to this "We're not gay, we just love each other" trend? And she confirmed* that yes, indeed it was.

Even without knowing the context, and without having heard the "We're not gay, we just love each other" thing spelt out, this story had stuck in my mind. So I didn't need to know all that to enjoy it. But I did think there was something I was missing. Knowing the context added an extra element to the story. Or at least, it did for me. What about you?

There are things that don't work for me. I can see the extrapolating from 'Builders Arms', 'Chatham Arms' and the like in British pub naming to 'Folded Arms', for example, but it didn't come off for me.

And I suspect that there may be some debate on whether this really qualifies as a "third party viewpoint" for the purposes of the reading room: it is an outsider seeing Bodie and Doyle, and the outsider's views on the relationship he sees between Bodie and Doyle, but the outsider himself gets it all wrong. We learn more about Murphy than about what's really going on between Bodie and Doyle.

WOW, this is full of promises. I just read the story and was a bit dissapointed, but then I usually have to reread most stories to really UNDERSTAND. (Looks like my brain needs more time to just start thinking.) I am very surprised by the things you uncovered, and I will reread the story and get back here ASAP.

Honestly, this story will never reach even my least favourite list, but this recce just made me realise what I would´ve missed without it. (Read as: I would´ve never thought about the deeper meaning, because I don´t like the end and I would´ve just skipped happily to the next story.)

The point is, I love the lads as lovers. The stories I like best are the ones without any mentioning of the "Gay problem", where they fight and banter and love each other. I don´t mind the WNGWJLEO stories, they´re just so unbelievable. I adore that "Folded Arms" is a parody to that. And without you I would have never realised what it is.

I although very much like the way you make the excuses from Murphy sound so pathetic. No, sorry, have to rephrase that, you made me see how pathetic his excuses are!

Actually you have given me a new appreciation for the story - I had previously read it, smiled at the punchline and moved on thinking it was pretty much just an exercise in setting up our expectations only to flip them at the end. I've always disliked the not-gay-just-in-love-with-each-other trope - actually, make that loathed it - and have tended to skip stories that rely on it (or read them with eyes shut at that part of the text, if the rest of the story has a lot going for it). Come to think of it, in my first attempt at writing B/D ("Picture This") I placed a lot of emphasis on the fact that Bodie has in fact always been attracted to men though he's in denial about it (at least, that's what I was aiming for; whether I managed it or not is another question). So I suppose I always tended to ignore the not-gay trope and avoid stories with it in, which pretty much wipes out the context that gives this story its significance. I was thinking of Murphy's thoughts and reactions as typical for the period of the show itself, rather than typical of a certain amount of fic of that period too - which of course it is; the not-gay fics are themselves shading towards homophobia. Which is a long-winded way of saying, I think your take on the story nails it; on the one hand I don't really want to read anything where they're not in love with each other *g* but on the other this story does offer a very necessary and useful commentary on what was a major trope at the time - and one which absolutely deserved puncturing, dismantling and repudiating. So, yes, new appreciation for it - though I would think of it as interesting more than my-cup-of-tea enjoyable *g*

On the one hand I think that WNGWLJEO is bad because it is a symptom of that cultural tendency to want to stick labels on people, when the obvious fact is that people are more complicated than most of us dream of.

On the other hand I do like the element of “true soul mates”, especially when the idea is that the guys are stuck on appearing straight, and just getting to the point of breaking through the barriers and admitting their feelings to each other is an extremely big deal! I think WNGWJLEO can be written about conflicted characters, or characters who define themselves strongly in some particular way that isn’t the way they’re starting to move/act. So self-identifying straight MSM (men who have sex with men) might say “it’s just you”, or it’s just an itch occasionally, or experimentation or whatever. Although I think that we wouldn’t see those first guarded expressions of feelings as a particularly good place to stop the story these days.

This is it or isn’t it homophobic question – where it comes across as the writer’s uncomfortability with the idea rather than the characters’ self-exploration, then I think it is. Not that the writer themselves is a homophobe, necessarily, and the historical context of this sort of writing being what it is and not what we’d like to make it is very important, but if the writing says that being gay or bisexual means being something other than fully human#, then that is what it says and for a gay or bisexual person reading that, context doesn’t mean much, specifically the sort of writing that Jane Carnall critiqued in “Two Up Truly Queered”, that is riddled with inferences about gay [equals] Not OK, notgay & in love [equals] OK, in which homosexuality is put under the writer’s lens and found to be an inadequate state of being for her heroes.

...the whole soulmate thing! *g* Can't remember what I was watching (oh, Angel actually, so probably not relevant!) but it suddenly occurred to me that alot of what's being said about WNGWJILWEO goes against the standard I-will-find-my-prince-some-day belief - and like you, I have a fondness for the idea of soulmates... *g* I don't think that any of the writers mentioned so far have written stories that treat the WNGWJLEO thing as interestingly as it might be possible to write it, mind - can you think of anyone who has? I wonder if that was at the heart of what people were thinking when they wrote, and whether it's effectively been misinterpreted by modern commentators? Interesting, isn't it! Hey - do you think that we're taking conflict out of fanfic? I don't mean your standard B/D vs the villains, or in-trouble h/c, but proper conflict, of either the mind or the world? Kate Maclean's Redemption is the only story I can think of involving such serious conflict (psychological), and there seem to be very polarised reactions to it. Same with M.Fae Glasgow's work, which is often based around serious conflict of some kind...

I agree that it can be written about conflicted characters - those tend to be the ones I like. Shoshanna, of course, also wrote Never Let Me Down, with Bodie starting off very definitely Not Gay and reacting very badly because someone has made a move on him. And there's an M Fae Glasgow one (there's probably about eight, actually) ah, Rough Trade with a similar premise - and she did A Summer Outing... actually, these are all Bodie having trouble dealing with it; are there others where it's Doyle? ...but those are the sort I think are great, not the ones I originally described as bizarre.

I've always disliked the not-gay-just-in-love-with-each-other trope - actually, make that loathed it Personally I love it, especially if the characters are themselves more or less homophobic, tormented, self-deprecating, highly sexually repressed, deeply attached to the most traditional values rooted in Victorian moral principles, and unable to resolve their inner contradictions. That makes for an interesting story! If they are just "gay" (or becoming aware they are "gay" and accepting it), well, there is nothing more to say: they didn't know what they were; now they know... end of the story. I wish them full success in their "pursuit of happiness" but don't want to know how.

When you first read it, did you recognise the reference at the end? I did go ahh, very clever when I read the last line, because I had come across the whole WNGWJLEO fandom trope thing before - and probably via Jane Carnall, to whom the story's dedicated, because I understood she'd been very offended by Jane (of Australia)'s Two Up as we see in her sequel Two-up Truly Queered. I suspect I'd come across an LoC in a zine, or a rant on Carnall's website, or (actually most likely, now I think of it) a discussion about it all somewhere like Pros-Lit, that gave me the background to the whole thing.

It was as if the authors didn't want them to be gay. But are you thinking of this as a point that the author is trying to make? And Jane's WNGWJLEO stories, and all the other ones that follow a similar path? Because I'm not sure... I find it difficult to believe that Pros slash writers object to the idea of the lads being gay - if they really did, then they wouldn't be slashing them, surely? What I do think I see over the many years of Pros writing are some authors, Jane of Australia one of them, working out their own presumably relatively new feelings about things through their fic... I suspect that if we had a definite chronology for a single author's stories, we could often see the progression of their own thoughts and beliefs - and those of society too. So we get a growing awareness that it's okay to be gay (as patronising at that sounds to us now, that's cos we've been brought up with it, or because we've grown up to it ourselves), that it's not actually uncommon to be gay, that gay people don't stand out from anyone else... etc etc. It's not the only thing I think we can see reflected in fic either - I've said often enough (and probably to you, too *g*) that I reckon we could trace the growth and development of women's attitudes to rape through fic - I think it's pretty telling that it's very rarely mentioned in a story these days unless it's "warned" for. We rarely see it mentioned in the news either - although it's cropped up very nastily just recently, twice (the UniLads website and the judge who forced a woman to stand up in court and confront her attackers - and then jailed her when she couldn't do it). I thought we'd got past that sort of thing being considered okay - but then maybe women have been so quiet about it, and scared of the thought of it, that some blokes seem to think it's fair game again... Wait, am I sliding off-topic, here? *g* Anyway - I'd swear we can see female views of society change and develop, as reflected in fic, and I generally assume that's what's going on. With Jane, especially, you can actually read her reasoning it all out and coming to the conclusion that it's okay to be gay... *g*

"It was as if the authors didn't want them to be gay."

But are you thinking of this as a point that the author is trying to make?

Which author? Shoshanna, or the authors of the earlier stories? I think a lot of the stuff that irritated me in the earlier ones was born of ignorance, really. If you didn't have a gay friend willing to tell you about bits of his life you weren't otherwise going to see, I presume you got your ideas of it from the media. Or slash :)

And they weren't uniform. Some annoyed me by presenting stereotypes and thus, Bodie and Doyle can't be gay because they're not Like That. Others annoyed me by apparently seeing one distinction: you're either gay or straight. What about bisexuality? Then again, I managed to get quite peeved at the way bisexuality was presented in several where it was acknowledged, so really, I am not being constructive here. It was the overall suggestion that I got from a whole bunch: that the authors weren't entirely comfortable with making Bodie and Doyle gay, based on their ideas of what being gay was.

I just thought it was a fresh, unusual ending - they're gay but not together. Well, that's different, and a new take on the gay bar setting. *g* Worried me a bit - surely the attraction of Pros slash fic is Bodie/Doyle (or other pairing, she says quickly), not that Bodie and Doyle are two gay CI5 agents who don't even fancy each other. So I am glad that Shoshanna wrote it that way with a particular end in mind.... As to point of view, I don't know how it would be described technically, but I agree there is more about Murphy than about Bodie and Doyle. We are told just what Murphy sees, and something of his attitudes to homosexuality. He doesn't do a lot of thinking about his relationship with Bodie and Doyle, or what he knows of their relationship with each other (e.g. no reinterpretation of their past conduct in the light of this discovery). Hence I would agree that his PoV here is that of the average bloke of the time. Much of it is the speculation anyone would have on seeing two men he knew together in a gay bar. Should he jump to the conclusion they're gay, or a couple? What alternative explanations are there? (Murphy reasons through them). One possibility, which wasn't explored although I thought it was coming at the end, was that they weren't gay but just liked to drink there. Bodie's 'Don't have to keep up a front' (as I read it) did not only have to mean 'keep up the front of pretending to be straight'.

I read this ages ago, and was quite pleased to meet it again today.

I think Murphy's attitude is very much that of a straight bloke of his time - blimey, it should be okay that they're gay, but please don't hit on me!

I agree about the things that didn't work: bitters; an American phrase etc.

However, for me, the last line - the joke - didn't ring true at all. I think B&D are playing with Murphy. I think they are secure enough in themselves and their relationship that they can tease him about it by saying 'we're just gay'. Why do I think this? Because the way they are described in the rest of the story, the way they are just enjoying a comfortable night out in the pub, the way they don't need to talk or touch in the VIP lounge.

Ha - or is this just because I prefer to think of them loving each other? I don't like WNGWJLEO anyway, so perhaps I have rationalised this whole fic to make me feel better, and sod what the author wanted *g*