veronica_rich | The spammage continues

The spammage continues

(I feel like this should become "Vacation: Day Five-01" or something)

Surely everybody and their pet iguana has likely seen the link to the blog entry by now from the woman who claims that writing and reading m/m slash is perpetuating male heirarchy and expectations, rather than being the subversive, non-mainstream thing we all thought it was when many of us got into it several years ago - before the mainstream actually had ever heard of "slash" or "fanfiction."

My take on slash is that I enjoy it as a form of romance in a way that I don't any longer enjoy the vast majority of "typical" m/f romance novels, by and large. When I buy a book, I buy something about science or history, or suspense and sci-fi, but rarely do I buy a categorical romance, though I did when I was much younger. I understand this sounds like a rather shallow reason for enjoying something that takes up several hours of my life each week, but it would be disingenuous for me to pretend otherwise.

And as much as I love reading and occasionally contributing my own meta on my preferred slash pairings, the fact is that I rarely give it the kind of internal examination we were required in college to give Chaucer, or the reasons behind the 19th century labor movement. I am capable of that level of dissertation - I just don't want to, with slash, or even fanfic, all that much. Perhaps this is why I grew so impatient with all the POTC meta-chatter following DMC - are we not allowed to have something we just enjoy, without having to defend why, so long as we're nice to our fellow fen and don't try to step on their toes? I mean, I asked someone at another post earlier to define radical feminism and explain its appeal over what he called "liberal/status quo feminism." And while he gave me a pretty good explanation, and it's something I would gladly see parts of applied to real-world changes ... the fact is, when you try to apply it to something you do alone in your off-hours to unwind, it just comes across as so much overblown horseshit. Am I alone? Or just exceedingly shallow, that I don't see "something" political in EVERYTHING that comes across my field of vision on a daily basis?

EDIT: Unless lesbian fanfic is being written with an eye toward reality (e.g., women who don't have Barbie-figures and long, flowing hair, who don't want a man in their bed or between them and their girlfriend, or WATCHING), how is it any different from what I have to put up with out of many men on a regular basis? The only difference between their lesbian fantasies and my m/m ones is that they can discuss theirs out in public and it's accepted as being part and parcel of being a hetero man ... but if I try to discuss the fact that I like to watch two hot men get it on for my benefit, I'm perverted and weird. So ... I'd love for this FEMINIST to tell me why I should spend MY time and effort perpetuating a MAN'S fantasy in written form.

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Hmph...everything I was going to declare as my opinion has already been said throughout the thread here before I got the chance :D

My guess is, seriously now, that she doesn't have the faintest idea what she is talking about. I don't believe anyone who likes to read slash can relate to just about anything she's proclaimed as a result of wide results.
I sincerely hope that she is going to do an academic dissertation of that, would be a damn shame to do all that work for years and get laughed at by the very people the study is about.

Some, sure. Most? I don't know.

Does it matter? Nope. It's what I do for entertainment, and if I'm not libeling anybody or taking their profits, I don't lose sleep at night. :-)

I would love to know the ratio of male writers/readers of RPS as compared to the male audience/creators of FPS. I suspect it's higher, and I suspect some may be like Gib (who is NOBODY'S idea of a manly-man, no matter what his orientation).

I think what I dislike about radical feminism is the idea that we need to rebuild all of society either in some elusively-described (or most of the time, not at all) female-dominant system, or have a separate system for men and women. I mean, really ... these people talk like men and women are dogs and cats. They're not; they're members of the same exact species. Men and women don't think as differently as many of these radical feminists (and some male chauvinists - because that's exactly what a radical feminist IS to me, in reverse) like to put on.

Actually, I've seen the argument used that if you're a woman and you're not using your writing time toward femmeslash or some other female-centric pairing, you're a waste of space. (I distinctly remember one Elizabeth-J/E fan sniffing at some POTC fans' preference for writing Navy slash, when the Navy guys weren't onscreen NEARLY as much as the vaunted Lizzie. That's the sort of separatism I want to slap.)

My beef is less about her examining it than about her poorly-drawn and stated "conclusions." Where's the research material? Where's her interviews and statistics and sources? Because her descriptions don't fit the slash *I* regularly read; in fact, a rather small percentage of it (and some I've never seen in all my years of reading - like a gay character "turned straight" - where?). What serious scholar/academic would accept THIS as depth research?

Exactly. I would be interested in a well-developed essay on the topic of fan fiction (and/or slash writing), but this isn't one. I think she's trying to pass off poorly expressed opinions under the guise of scholarly writing, and it just comes across as a bad presentation that verges on being offensive. To be honest, I don't read slash writing, but I'd love to hear some opinions from the people who do. Statistics will be tough to find or even compile, simply because this is (from what I understand) a web-only phenomenon, but it would be a valuable contribution to the literary community. A couple of months back I read an article (dating from the early 90s, I think) from a woman who did a wide-scale study on the popularity of Harlequin romances, which have traditionally been ignored among scholars. Her findings were fascinating and indicated just how important it is to consider the wide variety of reading that people really do. I think fan fiction makes for a good comparison. I've only heard of one professor at the university level offering a study of this, but I'd like to see it discussed more. It's completely not my field (I lean toward the medieval stuff), but I'd be willing to take a class in it.

As for the gay characters turning straight, that one throws me for a loop. I can't imagine anyone offering a serious slash fic only to have it end with the men (or women) walking off into the sunset with someone of the opposite sex. That would pretty much undermine the entire thing, wouldn't it?

Thank you. I have no wish to separate myself. I just want to be able to walk into a job and be given the chance to do it as well as a man. That doesn't sound too radical to me. I don't think gender should be mentioned at all, unless absolutely necessary. Radical feminist ideology is the result of taking a good idea (rights for women) and pushing it to an illogical conclusion. I don't even think radical feminists can exist anywhere but in academia, because the theories simply aren't realistic. Too bad. They started with something legitimate and made it pretty much useless in practice.

I read that yesterday and it was 'interesting'. It’s hard to give it any credence since apparently she read three stories and made a bunch of generalizations. There seems to be a whole lot of subscribing to mythology that is no where near as prevalent as she suggests.

Not all slash has the chicks-with-dicks, ‘somebody has to be the woman!’, uke/seme dynamic. The fandoms I read in, it is a very small fraction of what is written, thankfully.

The stuff about the relationships ending and everyone returning hetero at the end, WTF. I only saw anything like this once, and it was some twit who underwent some sort of intervention from her church group, which apparently made reading and writing slash and explicit mansex okay, as long as they eventually 'got right' and lived HEA with the perfect woman. (She wrote a pairing I didn't care for but it was a bit of a wank since she kept asking for recs of her new preferences and commenting on others fic in a similar vein.)

And the no lesbians thing, I actually thought lesbians were a bit of a slash trope, make the girlfriend/female lead a lesbian and everyone is happy and getting some, even if it's not explicitly.

I was really responding sarcastically to the blog author's suggestion that writing male slash makes me lesbophobic.

slash fanfiction is a conservative genre written by women who conform to patriarchal ways of thinking, and which is characterized by lesbophobia, homophobia, woman-hatred and severe phallocentricity

Apparently, writing slash makes me homophobic, too. *scratches head*

Yes, exactly. Radical feminism seems to insist upon the ghettoisation of genders, dividing them into separate camps, and never the twain shall meet. Funny, I always thought feminism was about breaking down barriers, not building great big walls between women and the rest of the world.

Well, when I say I "wonder why more is not made of" I meant in various essays around the net, not specifically here in this discussion.

Apparently, writing slash makes me homophobic, too

Well, I'm not sure where said bloggers experiences lie, but my first introduction to LOTR online fanfic was to a group of slashers who believed that their slash was real. In pursuit of disseminating this theory - I mean: True Version of Reality - quite a lot of "facts" about homosexuality in general were pulled out of the asses of those who were neither male nor, strictly speaking, gay. Some of the stuff used as "proof" that a particular slash pairing was real was so stereotypical to the point where people did call it slightly homophobic.

Yes. I agree with you. I've read a lot of slash fiction and published gay fiction, and I still can't understand why so much of it falls back on the device of one character in the relationship being sub/weak. Even harder for me to understand is how this is percieved as making it into a heterosexual relationship in disguise - that one of the characters must fall into the role of the 'woman'. How disturbing is that, that het relatioships are percieved as needing to comprise a dom/sub dynamic?! Imagine if m/f characters in a relationship were written in the same way as this in regular fiction, and that women were characterised as being weak and clingy and emotionally unstable. There would quite rightly be an outcry - so why should it be any different for gay fiction? Why is it somehow acceptable, or if not acceptable, fairly commonplace?

If this blogger had actually adressed this issue that you have raised, then she would indeed have had a valid and interesting point to make *g*

Possibly there's no perceived inequality on the part of the writer or consumers of those stories, because the partners are physically and mentally equal ... or maybe they just have enough imagination to give one charactera personality and not the other? *G*

I've an older friend I love dearly, but the one thing we do NOT agree on is "gay" - she's anti and I'm pro. And I really can't understand why, because she's pretty liberal on every other issue. I believe it has to do with her limited experiences around gay people. For example, she's had one experience with lesbians and told me the story - apparently she was at a hotel pool with her grandson and there were two women there who were lesbians (frankly, I'm not sure how she knew, if they were kissing or cuddling at some point or what). And apparently one of them kept calling the other names and dunking her head and pinching her and doing all manner of mean-spirited, non-teasing things to "dominate" her. And then she tells me she's known several gay men, sons and grandsons of acquaintances, and they're all gay because they didn't have positive male role models growing up or they couldn't make friends with the boys at a young age, so when they got old enough they sought attention from older gay men and did whatever they demanded, just to be accepted.

Now I can't speak to her experience, because SHE experienced it; I didn't. But I suppose if your only exposure to "teh gay" is dysfunction and unhappiness, you might not think there's anything "normal" or positive about such relationships either? *shrug*

Ugh, don't remind me of the wetbitch!Will stories. That was the single best thing that came out of DMC, was the dramatic drop in those (of course, he was immediately replaced by oppressor!Will, but at least the guy has a backbone).

I think fanfic is not given academic credence - no matter what orientation it is - because it's taking other people's characters without permission and doing things with them, and that's a big literary no-no ... sort of how I get worked up with RPS because it takes people's identities for the same reason. Which ... honestly, I don't care, because as much as I like some of the stuff I've written (yeah, I'm immodest), if LJ crashed tomorrow and I lost it, it wouldn't hurt me the way losing an original story has, due to HD crashes.

To be quite blunt, if you're a heterosexual female and you've dated, at some point you're probably going to be with a guy who thinks lesbians are awesome (this is, of course, the airbrushed, porn-movie view of lesbianism - two hot babes willing to get it on with each other slowly and precisely for a man's pleasure, and then happy to have him in the middle, as well). It's not a big secret that it's culturally OK for men to wax poetic about lesbians, but it's not for women to talk about their voyeuristic m/m fantasies.

Now, flash forward to most of the women doing the slash fanfic writing; my guess is old enough to have dated and known a few men, heterosexual, some even married. Tell me WHY they would waste their precious private alone time writing their husbands'/boyfriends' lesbian fantasies, which I'm sure they've had to hear about from more than one man in their lives, and not their own - which they're probably discouraged from discussing openly very much, if at all?

Writing and reading two women together doesn't interest me. Add to that the fact that as far as lesbian fantasy goes, I've had to hear/see enough about it from the men I've known, thank you, and I do not wish to spend MY private horny time dwelling on what gets THEM off. Especially when their voyeurism is culturally acceptable to talk about, televise, and generally be "out there" and my m/m jones is not.

Speaking of gay fiction, or at least gay historical fiction, and stereotypical characters, you might wish to check out The Price of Temptation, which appears to be a typical (albeit gay) cliche Barbara Cartland, as acknowledged by one reviewer - although another was less kind.

Why does one of the Discreet Young Gentlemen look like Wolverine, and the other have an otter in his pants, too?

If I'd written either of those books and that was the cover my publisher chose, I'd kill myself.

Read this review of the cover:
Sarah: There are so many things going wrong here, it’s like a breathtaking trainwreck of awful. I think this cover has moved me to tears - tears of horror. The facial hair. The absurd necks. The bizarre musculature. The groping efforts to do open heart surgery. And wow. Check out that weapon of mass destruction.
Note: One of my cats is sitting next to me. He took a look at the screen, got up, and turned his back to the computer. There you have it. Cat snark: That sucks.

Also, for the cover of The Price of Temptation review which mentions homeland security being concerned about the guys pants.

*chortles mightily*

I have, in fact, read this book, and laughed very hard at all the cliches present in it. It was a bit like going through a checklist. 'Gay Barbara Cartland' is the only way of describing it, yes. There was absolutely nothing subversive about it whatsoever.

No, you're a misogynist of the "worst kind." You not only hate yourself but all women because you don't like to look at womanly parts. There's no pleasing this type of person because she just wants to be right, no matter what. And if you would manage to find a way to use her own words against her, she would respond that you didn't understand what she meant.

I've read some very good lesbian porn that was quite arousing. That said, it was not written by Hugh Hefner, Larry Flynt or the average frat-boy. Then again, I learned at a young age to be discriminating in my porn consumption when I found Dad's stash of Penthouse magazines when I was 14. It sounds weird but when my Mom found out I was reading them, she told me that if I had any questions, to ask her and she'd try to answer them for me. The fact that I prefer to write about gay/bi men is simply my preference and not a product of any social norms or bias thrust upon me. (Sorry, no pun intended.)

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The spammage continues

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Lesbianism in fic

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Enough to make a cat sick

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