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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I am little surprised that more is not made of the perpetuation of sex-role stereotypes in some slash.

There have been articles written on that subject, basically suggesting that one of the male partners is a mary-sue in disguise.

Most m/m authors don't take to that idea any better than most J/E authors have taken to the idea of possible self-insertion through the Elizabeth character.

And besides, 99+% of the people involved are writing for themselves (and/or a small group of like-minded friends) and don't want to hear the psychoanalysis - so it does tend to be outsiders, like this "dissenter," who are pointing at possible problems, without taking the time to involve the interested authors or readers. (The result being that the "research" goes nowhere.)

Well, I've read [i.e., mocked] some rps slash in which one partner not only takes the stereotypical female role but does a passable imitaation of Mary Tyler Moore in the Van Dyke Show(? = 60s show) while doing so.

Oh, I don't doubt it. And I'd say, back when J/W was going strong after CotBP but before the sequels were announced, that the vast majority of what I read fell into the wet!bitch!Will category. And much like the teenage!pwincess!Lizzie we began seeing a lot of after DMC, I like to think that most of those authors were young AND/OR not taking the canon material very seriously. I suspect they were all self-insertions. (But I'm too damn ~~lazy~~ busy to take a serious look at it.)

Really, honestly good fic - in any category (slash, het, etc) - tends to be rare. That's why so many activists (like "dissenter") and so many academics (that I'm surrounded by at the college) refuse to give it any credence. They will invariably point at that one measly little Mary Tyler Moore Characterization... :-p

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.

But, when you're in an "academic" creative writing course, one of the things they ask you to do is copy other writers as a way to learn.

And it's not like "meta fiction" never gets published - books like Wide Sargasso Sea or Foe or the collections of short stories by horror authors set in H. P. Lovecraft's world. I'm sure all those authors were writing the equivalent of fan fiction before their meta stories were actually published.

The larger problem, I think, is that everyone knows about fan fiction, thanks to the internet, and can access it easily (these days). That sort of thing is supposed to remain hidden - at least until it does become acceptable for publication (and is given permission via legal and monetary settlement).

(I remember reading an article that separated the fan fiction and meta fiction along male-female lines. iow: When women play in someone else's world, it's fan fiction, and should be ridiculed. But, when men play in someone else's world, it's meta fiction, and should be published. But I can't find the damn thing. I'm thinking it might not have had a solid argument (Wide Sargasso Sea?), or I would have mentioned it before.)

Basically, I'm saying it's not like academia doesn't, at times, advocate doing exactly what fan fiction does. I suppose they just like to feel they have control of it. And, with the internet, there's still the unnerving lack of it (from some viewpoints ;-) ). It also tends to involve one of the "lesser genres" (fantasy, scifi, porn, cop shows :-p)...

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).

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. :-)

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.

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*

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The spammage continues

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Enough to make a cat sick

no subject

no subject