Girls who are boys who like boys to be girls...

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Title: Girls who are boys who like boys to be girls...
Creator: FayJay (pandarus)
Date(s): October 18, 2010
Medium: Dreamwidth post
Fandom:
Topic:
External Links: page 1, Archived version; page 2, Archived version
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Girls who are boys who like boys to be girls... is a post by FayJay (pandarus). It has the subtitle: "My Thoughts About Yaoi Slash."

There are 92 comments to the post.

Some Topics Discussed

Excerpts

So: slash. Every few years I have these little moments of self awareness, where I say to myself: "Self, what's up with this slash thing, really? What's that about?" I seem to have to write these things periodically, and this post has been brewing for a while. Probably ever since I remember reading someone (and for the life of me I can't think whom) writing a mildly excoriating post dismissing slashers as straight women wallowing in their heterosexual privilege and appropriating the experience of less privileged gay men. I wish I could remember who made the post - not that this is a new assertion, but the poster was somebody I respect, and it gave me pause. I feel some sympathy for (some) gay men's discomfort with the idea of slash, and I agree that lots of (badfic) slash is not at all representative of actual gay men. I don't go trawling for fic because I really don't want to read spork-your-eyes-out lousy badfic - but I know there's plenty of it out there, and that when it comes to slash badfic, that's frequently tied in with embarrassingly poor attempts to write men and/or gayness. But I still don't think it's that simple or reductive.

I slash. I am a slasher. I read and write the stuff. Not exclusively - I do write gen too, and sometimes femmeslash or het, and I'll happily read anything that's well written and in-character - but when I engage with texts, I have my slash goggles on, and whilst I may enjoy the canonical relationships depicted, I also notice the potential for others where there's sparkage, whether it's between a guy and a girl, or two guys, or two girls. (Or other permutations, for that matter - threesomes et al.) I'm far more liable to read and write stories with noncanonical relationships than with canon relationships (even when I enjoy the canonical relationships) because I best like fanfic to be transformative in some way.

Funny, how one tends not to question whether other people are reading things and enjoying them for the same reason you do yourself. I once wrote a story based on somebody's crack/kink prompt for a Supernatural story based on the movie Secretary; the prompt caught my attention because I could see ways of using the idea of punishment and penitence and control to illuminate characters at this particular point in canon, and because the candy coloured fantasy of corporate drone-dom in the episode 'It's A Terrible Life' had enough resonance with the setting of the movie for it to be workable. It functioned on a number of levels, building on Dean's buried past as a victim and torturer in hell, building on Castiel's sense of guilt towards Dean for his experiences at Heaven's hands, and for his current situation, building on Castiel's own lack of freedom - I mean, for all that it was an outrageously cracky concept, I could still see it being believable the way that I'd set it out. Yes, it was hot - but also sad, and purposeful, and nuanced, and very much focused on character. In spite of the hilariously crackalicious premise, it still had integrity - that was kind of the point. And you tend to assume that people who like something you've written like it for those reasons; it's a bit of a lowering realisation when you twig that actually, they just showed up for the hot guys bumping uglies. (Had I not been on my period, I think I would have been less crushing to the girl whose prompt it was, when she decided that I was now her go-to writing person any time she thought of a cracky kink prompt. But I had a Diana Gabaldon moment felt almost physically ill at the realisation that she saw no difference between the story I'd written and her proposal for a story based on 'Goldilocks and The Three Bears', in which Castiel was Goldilocks & fucked John, Sam and Dean, before concluding that Dean was "just right". Do not want.)

I maintain that slash isn't simply a matter of privileged straight women co-opting the gay male experience. Not least because many (most?) slashers of my acquaintance aren't straight. They're bi, or gay, or asexual. This leads me to posit that slash IS a wee bit more complex in nature and function than the ersatz lesbian porn so popular with straight guys, even if a large part of its popularity is down to the same simple voyeuristic impulse. To be clear: I don't think slash (or original m/m fic penned by straight women) is about empowering teh gayz. I don't think slashers deserve a cookie for doing something positive for teh gay blokes; I don't think that most slashers of my acquaintance would claim that they're doing any such thing, but it's a notion I occasionally see bandied about, and it seems to be fairly far off the point. Yes, as a side-effect of stumbling across slash & liking it, people with previously unexamined homophobic attitudes may find those attitudes ameliorated, sure. But there are plenty of slashers who are wildly misogynistic in their writing too, and busy creating heteronormative scenarios with double the oglable manflesh for the price of one, and I just have a hard time seeing that stripe of storytelling as being in any way about actual gay people, or indeed actual men. In fact, honestly, I can't understand "hetsquick" in terms that don't include some measure of homophobia. (If you are squicked by depictions of heterosexual pairings, perhaps you could help me wrap my head around this one? Because I'm pretty much parsing it as "Ew! Girl parts!" which implies a revulsion of self and/or the possibility of finding girls attractive.)

One of the things people outside of fandom seem to latch onto when they write articles about slash (well, okay, mostly people are all "OMG BUTTSEX", but other than that) is that slash is women writing from the POV of men. As if this is somehow inherently transgressive and unaccountable. As if surely normal women would just be writing about, and empathising with, other women. As if we all want to be Meg Ryan characters, and watch 'Sex In The City', and should be bored by 'Inception' or 'Star Wars' - or at least, should simply fantasise about being saved by Luke Skywalker, or by Harry Potter, rather than having our own light sabres, our own magic wands. (Heh. Thank you, Mr Freud.) But women readers and women viewers are perfectly accustomed to engaging with a narrative through a male gateway character. That's how we experience most of our texts in the first place. Little girls will read Harry Potter without a second's thought, and identify with Harry just as much as with Hermione; little boys are less likely to have read 'The Worst Witch' or 'Twilight'. Really, it shouldn't be so surprising, I think, that women are writing from the pov of the male heroes of the texts they love, rather than limiting themselves to the perspective of the (often marginalised) female characters. Why shouldn't we?

Do I think it's okay to fetishise and objectify groups of people to which you don't belong? Yeah - not so much. Ick. Men are not, I think, accustomed to being on the receiving end of this kind of attention - and I can understand why they would find it distasteful and distressing. Having somebody you don't desire objectifying you, or people like you, is not particularly pleasant. As I think pretty much every woman who ever lived could attest. Because - well, hello there, entire history of Western art. (And probably everywhere else art, for that matter, but I'll stick to what I know.) And, okay, back in the day the male form was objectified at least as much if not more - but that was Quite Some Time Ago, my friends. There is nothing that any slashy kink meme can come up with that hasn't already been written or painted by men, as happening to women. Generally with the stamp of official approval, as part of a nation's religions or myths.

So, yes, I 'ship some guys with other guys, and some girls with other girls, and some girls with some guys, and some girls with some guys AND girls, and some guys with some girls AND some guys...really, the key thing for me is that two characters interact in an interesting, sparky way. I'm not taking heterosexuality as an unquestioned default setting. (But, you know, I don't rule it out either.) This is a big strand of slash fandom too, I think: writing a pairing simply because those two people have great chemistry in the source text, and because there's no reason not to. Not because they're both guys or both girls, or one of each - just because those two people have great chemistry. I've talked a lot about slash being significant in various ways, but it would be a damn shame to lose sight of the fact that in a lot of fanfic, the main motivation in reading and writing is because those particular people have great chemistry. And especially for the nonheterosexual ficwriters and ficreaders, that's reason enough; we don't necessarily assume that someone is straight in RL or in fictional worlds, even if we've seen them in relationships with/flirting with the opposite sex. We know it's more complicated than that.

Actually, though, I think that at least as large a circle in this elaborate Venn diagram is that of performativity: the action of women writing slash pings me as being much more akin to gay guys performing a pastiche of femininity through drag. And like drag, although it IS arguably appropriating the experience of another group, and in some ways fairly shittily so (since the ones doing the appropriating are privileged in ways that the group being imitated are not), it's not really so much about trying to represent that group. It's performative, and it's actually commenting upon one's own experience and value system, and subverting some of the cultural expectations of one's own group. Drag can be misogynistic, just as slash can be homophobic - but it isn't fundamentally so. Instead, both slash and drag (is it only me calling to mind "sturm und drang" and "smash and grab" with this phrase?) borrow the surfaces and symbols of another group in order to take advantage of particular freedoms and privileges not enjoyed by one's own group. (Which is more than can be said for blackface and minstrel shows. Neither slash nor drag is primarily about belittling the group being imitated, even if it may not be an accurate representation of them - and even if individual iterations of slash or drag may in fact be offensively inaccurate and reveal deep seated bigotry.)

Some Comments at the Post

[akadougal]:

Every time I kept coming up with a "but" point, you addressed it. One of the things I'd say I'm still thinking about is the role of communities and other people in influencing taste, particularly in pairings. Whilst I do watch (and read) all sorts of things with slash goggles (differential decoding, right?), I'm still 99% of the time with the preferential reading of the text until later. The manner in which I transform texts through fic (of all genres) remains oddly separate from the text itself. And the way I interact with texts depends on the other people who also interact with it, to some extent. Very few people I knew wrote BSG fic yet I discussed that text very thoroughly (and wrote academically about it) in much the same way as I interacted with B5. These shows have a larger male audience than a female one.Supernatural (and Buffy) are more predominantly female (and have MUCH larger organised fandoms). I read your Dean/Cas before even seeing an episode of Supernatural and it was therefore almost as original fic that I experienced it. Building a story from a character rather than from plot or porn is just good storytelling and any text that relies on lazy stereotyping is not likely to engage my interest. I'm not sure about the slash and drag parallel but that could mainly be because I know very little about drag. I must admit that I'm fonder of the idea that straight women use slash to participate in a denied sphere rather than as a way to objectify men (they did it to us, so it's okay).

[pandarus]:

I must admit that I'm fonder of the idea that straight women use slash to participate in a denied sphere rather than as a way to objectify men (they did it to us, so it's okay). I can't say I'm particularly comfortable with it either - and yet it would feel disingenous to deny that A HUGE AMOUNT of what goes on with slash communities is about fetishising and objectifying the living crap out of characters and the actors who play them. I mean - the picspams, the squee, the manips...it's not just an intellectual exercise in transgression or taking power. It's also Beatlemania, y'know?

[haraht]:

Beatlemania is an interesting example. Was there Beatles slash? Back in the day?

If there was such a thing it seems to have left little or no trace. (Obviously this would have been back in the dawn of media fandom, even before the Star Trek slashers had got going. So perhaps that's not too surprising.) There is, however, plenty of Beatles slash now. Strangely, or maybe not strangely, it's the non-canonical pairings that get almost all the attention... though at the same time plenty of the people who write them would claim that they're not non-canonical.

Anyway. The Beatles are an interesting example because they made movies that are basically about fictionalized versions of themselves. So sometimes when you read the fic, it's clear that it's actually about Hard Day's Night and not about the real people at all.... Nothing I've read about the history of fannish slash takes it back beyond Star Trek (or Man from UNCLE) either. If you're willing to take a broad definition and look at romances about gay men written by women, then you have Mary Renault's novels which were written from the 50s onwards, but even so that's not much earlier. Feminism and sexual liberation might have something to do with that. So might the gay rights movement, if you think about it. Actually I'd want to give the gay rights movement pride of place. It seems rather unfair not to.

As for constructed personas, I'm always a bit wary of this discussion when it comes to RPF because not everyone who writes RPF *is* actually writing about constructed personas. Anyway, I would argue that the Beatles had more in the way of media management than you might think. Their media image may have had more similarities to their movie characters than it did to their real personalities, but this could be said about modern pop stars just as easily.

[akadougal]:

... I wonder if the massive access to the internet (and to slash) has also transformed its consumption and production. BUT access in a private sphere is still limited to those with privilege. Also there's a thought as to whether I would introduce to pupils under my care.

[qwenbasil]:

Stepping in here also - Beatlemania kind of kicked off the arguments about fandom that continue to this day - that is there are SERIOUS (men) critics and EMOTIONAL (aka undiscerning, aka uneducated, aka uncritical aka female) fans or groupies, and I think THAT is the form in which it 'predates' fic/creative fandom. I think to some extent the "slash is for ladies to objectify (gay) men" argument is ...not spread around or propagated with an agenda, but definitely more readily accepted because it lets slashers fall into the easy category of 'new groupies' reacting with libidos and not with SRS TEXTUAL CRITICISM BRAINS (LIKE "REAL"(DUDE) FANS DO.)

[luce]:

Wow! Oh, wow!

I do this kind of therapy into my motivations for reading slash every so often and you put into words (extremely articulate, imo) stuff that I know/feel but can't always put my finger on.

It's a tough subject to verbalise, I guess...

[executrix]:

Thanks, great essay!

I know it's standard Media Theory, but I keep stubbing my toe against the concept that to look at something is to attack and injure it. I think that writing about *anything* is merely a statement that that thing is interesting--not necessarily that it's an accurate reflection of you, or of an entire group of people, or that the thing is admirable, just interesting.

And I think an important function of creating--or experiencing--art is precisely thinking about people who are different from us, by imaginative engagement with their situation.

Also, I think that sexual arousal is a GOOD thing (as long as it's not obtained at the expense of an unwilling Person Who Actually Exists), so I don't see anything wrong with somebody liking to look at scantily-clad or unclad persons that ze considers attractive.

But that doesn't mean that actions that are acceptable vis a vis a fictional character are acceptable in real life--i.e., if you're an engineer, then workplace meetings should be about solving the problems on the No. 704 production line, not about how hot you look in that top, and "Let's not hire him as a CPA! He's a muscular black male so he'd be much hotter as a pizza delivery boy!" is RIGHT out....

I'm still slashing, after all these years, because I think that producing or consuming slash shows a belief that same-sex relationships are interesting and worth writing and reading about. Sometimes the writers and readers are queer themselves, sometimes they're interested in what it's like being different than they are, some of them are curious. And if the institution of heterosexual marriage can survive Harlequin romances, I daresay that same-sex relationships can survive equally silly and simplistic slash stories. Not everything ever written about love is a Harlequin romance--and that's true no matter who loves whom in the story.

[fulselden]:

Oh, wow, this is awesome.

Not least because it made me realise just how often I myself wear the slash goggles - not that I've written slash (I've hardly written fic, and what little I have tends to the g.e.n.) - but because, yes, of course I tend to pick up on couples (or triples, or what have you), who just have chemistry, regardless of gender. But I guess fandom's tendency to label and parcel up everything into discrete genre packages was making me think of slash in much too monolithic a way.

But, anyway, this is just a goldmine of stuff which I'll have to think over: I think my very favourite bit was your comparison of slash to drag. Of course! That makes so much sense (at least, I think, for explaining some of the ways slash works - as you say, it's a broad church), and I'd never formulated it to myself before. And, actually, it makes the rather rule-bound, stylised atmosphere of [SOME OF] fandom make a lot more sense to me - I'm talking about the codifying of kinks and tropes (in the TV tropes usage), the need to signpost and warn for content and intent and genre. Which is of course largely a (very necessary) matter of common-or-garden politeness ... but which can also come across, to a newbie at least, as somewhat arch, or at least conscious of its own performativity in a way that's familiar from drag?

And the point that women are entirely accustomed, oh so very very accustomed, to approaching a narrative through a male pov is something which isn't pointed out nearly often enough in what little I've read about slash. The ookiness people seem to feel about women writing men in fic actually reminds me of the flurry of interest over Pat Barker's WWI trilogy - I remember that when Regeneration won the Booker (back in 1995, apparently, omg), critics made a bit of a fuss over the fact that here was a woman writing gay men, getting inside their heads and even writing teh buttsex, how very very! Which apparently annoyed me enough that I still remember it, despite being barely a teenager at the time and not exactly steeped in Judith Butler.

And, actually, since you mention Shakespeare writing Juliet and Lady Macbeth, it occurs to me that there's maybe something here that's as much its own thing, as distinct from the way modern mainstream western culture tends to construct and play with gender roles, as, say, early modern theatre - since Shakespeare was of course writing those roles for boys, in a cultural context which is often strikingly strange, to modern eyes, in how it approaches sex and gender. But, um, I think I need to read some more fic to even begin to figure out what I'm trying to get at here. Which is probably something as simple as casual queerness, which really really shouldn't seem so unfamiliar.

Your characterisation of writing beyond or outside or against canonical relationships as having a kind of UST-ish excitement is interesting, as well - and also pings something which could I think characterise fic as a whole, not simply slash, and helps explain the importance of having a canon to bounce off.

[pandarus]:

...I do use labels, because it's what we do in fandom, and because at the end of the day my distaste for the process doesn't trump my reluctance to trigger someone thoughtlessly if they have had some kind of traumatic experience and consider fanfic a safe environment precisely BECAUSE of its labelling conventions. I just hate them. Books do not come with these neat and reductive little labels, and I am very glad of it.

[absynthedrinker]:

Any gay man who feels uncomfortable with slash/fanfic needs to get over himself at once. Everyone is entitled to his/her own thing. Don't like it! Don't read it! Don't write it! Take it from a gay man darling, if they object, they just have more issues than the Library of Congress and are to be avoided at all costs.

[mresundance]:

I don't have a lot to add here, because you covered most of it. I would like very much to make out with your brain, though! :D

I wrote a paper once on slash and women slashers and voyeurism and undermining power dynamics, tropes, etc. I might have it posted somewhere in my journal. If I can find it I will link you.

One thing slash has been for me, on a purely personal level - is an exploration of identity. When I was 18-20, it was about me exploring my sexuality in a safe environment. I would read things and write things and it helped me explain to myself what my sexuality was. From 20ish onwards it's been a lot about gender and exploring my gender in the same way, sometimes in conjunction with the sexuality.

I only add that because as you say: slash is a many splendored thing. I think that simplifying slash and how it functions on so many levels is wrong, simply because it can't be simplified easily. It is different for each person involved.

[filomena]:

The one thing I'd add to the discussion on straight women slashing men: I've often seen this as the "fantasy of safe remove," and you are correct to point out that it's not precisely equivalent to traditional male-oriented lesbian porn. I sometimes think that it is not gay sexuality but transgression that women wish to appropriate: at a gut level, many still view men fucking men as the most threatening act to traditionally gendered roles and desires, and to show it is to open up a broader space for all such acts. By putting it like that, I'm intellectualizing the process but not the phenomenon, I think, which is yet another indirect way that women sometimes seek agency, in sexuality as in so much else.

Paradoxically, this need not be a consciously feminist act; in fact, insisting on the transgression can coexist with deeply misogynistic depictions of women and with very heteronormative story arcs. But that too can be a way of claiming an agency at a remove.

And ironic icon is ironic, just because. :)

[chaosraven]:

One thing I think you briefly touched on but that, for me, is the most important part of slash fandom is that it's evolving. The way we write men or approach the idea of a source straight character being gay in a fic has changed SO MUCH since the early days. I see it more obviously in yaoi because the negative tropes were really hardcore in the 80s/90s but it's become a lot more nuanced. No longer does rape (only) mean "I love you", it can now actually mean rape which is HUGE. I think awareness of social issues has really helped influence and improve the quality of what we write and, though so much of it is still fantasy, I think that fanfic is starting to reflect a better reality than the one it had been in the past. I have more thoughts, but if I don't put the internet down, I'm going to miss class. >D

[lanjelin]:

That was quite a lot of text, yeah, but an interesting read! I agree with most of your points, (if I understand you correctly).

Though I think there are some widely accepted preconceptions about three separate things that you spoke of that should be challenged; why people slash, how yaoi compares to slash, and heteronormativity in slash/yaoi.

Oh! Though first I'm going to say that I don't think we're (I'm a slasher too) watching shows with slash goggles as much as we've taken off the hetero-goggles (i.e. we stopped presuming everybody to be straight until proved otherwise).

But yes; why slash? You talk about different reasons people have for slashing, but I'd like to add that the same people may have different reasons for slashing at different times!

I mean, when I watch something, a dynamic (or potential dynamic) between two characters may strike me as interesting, and I may start to ship them. I don't care if they're male or female.

OTOH, as I find two men having sex hot, I may search out fic to just satisfy that particular urge, or kink. The two don't always overlap. Also, sometimes I can read the most preposterous situations that could never be IC for the characters and still be aroused; I know it's completely out there, but I get a thrill from seeing those particular characters in that situation anyway. I totally operate on different parameters depending on the genre (kinkfic or fic meant to be IC, in this case, though sometimes they overlap too).

There is also the undefinable allure of a M/M pairing in a canon that isn't created to depict "the gay lifestyle" or some such; the appeal of it being as normal as M/F relationship. The thought that Sam or Dean could fall for a man without it affecting their personality or habits in the usual clichéd way. I don't exactly know why that is so appealing, though I have my theories.

Oh, and as a side note; I think it's useful to separate kink and fetish, and also acknowledge (as you did) that what we find hot in fic is a fantasy and won't affect our treatment of real people.

Then there's the slash vs. yaoi thing. I know people seem to think there's some inherent difference. There really, really isn't (apart from that the (western) manga/anime fandoms have less meta, in general).

In Naruto people argue about who is IC to write on top (or seme, which is basically the same thing), Sasuke or Naruto; in Supernatural the discussions are just as passionate, but a lot wordier. There are a lot more essays on why a certain character could never be on top in any given slash fandom, I can tell you that!

I've also seen just as many depictions of male characters as the wilting flower type in slash fic as in yaoi.

Lastly, the heteronormativity in some slash/yaoi. I actually think it's something rather different; I think it's simply the thrill of putting a male character in the position of being desired, admired, and seduced. To create a situation for a male character that is only ever applied to female characters in published fiction.

The other character then automatically becomes the seducer, but he's incidental; in this type of fanfic it's all about 1: putting your favourite character in the focus of everybody else in the fic, and 2: witnessing the dominance over and seduction of a male character made vulnerable.

Sometimes it's a bit of a wish-fulfillment (the writer putting herself in the position of the seduced character), but I wonder if it isn't just as often the writer seducing the focal character by proxy? For a woman (especially a young woman, which it usually is writing these rather immature type of stories) it can feel very empowering.

[daunt]:

Holy cow, woman, that was amazing. SERIOUSLY facinating look into slash fiction and the 'why'...you addressed so much great stuff in this. I had so many thoughts while reading, I'll have to reread and take some notes so I can comment again. :)

Slash is such an interesting thing to me, the sociology and psychology of it is entirely fascinating.

I agree though, slash is not just one thing. It is never just one thing for me, at least. Lord knows I have read things expressly for the kink and the sex. BUT I find that the stories that are character-faithful, written with a high degree of depth, more meaningful and more exploratory are far more satisfying to me on an intellectual level.

I keep calling it 'emotional porn' or 'intellectual porn' which really sounds so tawdry but it IS satisfying in a way I can't describe as sexual but seems to hit similar mental areas for me. It is stimulating to me both intellectually and creatively.

[pandarus]:

I think it's a fascinating and complex topic; I was frustrated and irritated when the researchers last year or the year before, that Ogi Ogas guy and his mate, weren't actually interested in trying to figure it all out. They'd decided that slash (which they were parsing as straight girls fantasising about having cocks so they could vicariously penetrate men [their normal object of desire]) was much the same as Transexual porn (which they were parsing as straight men fantasising about being penetrated by women [their normal object of desire]) - and, having decided that, they evidently weren't much interested in questioning their assumptions.Like finding out where and how LGBTQ people fit into this whole scheme of things. Which was a damned shame, because although that's certainly one aspect of slash, it's by no means the whole story, and failure to take into account the ways in which female desire and voices have been societally circumscribed means you're not going to get anywhere with trying to understand slash, afaic.

[lmeden]:

I've taken my time reading this, because it's such a wonderful, intelligent, and utterly challenging post to comprehend, so I'll try and respond to everything that I, ah, responded to when reading.

So, I started reading fanfiction when I was young - illegal young, even in the most lenient and medieval of states - and over the years slash has become just another part of my being. I can't imagine existing without slash, as odd as that may sound. But I've never actually analyzed my addiction beyond the thought that slash is hot. Now, at least, I have a better idea of why I love slash so much, and what I've been missing by blindly reading fic. Thank you for that. I think that I'm going to think about what I'm reading from now on.

This post is also amazing because it has solved the most elusive dilemma of fanfiction for me - what that hell is wrong with my writing. And this is it. When I write a pairing, I don't consider the dynamics of the relationship, whether I am objectifying a character or whether I'm skewing the original dynamics in a thoroughly unconvincing way. Now I can think about the relationship I've built - why does it work, what drives the characters, and above all, are the characters equal? (I've also just discovered that every woman I've heretofore written is either an unremitting bitch or completely self-reliant. It probably speaks loads about my own personality and mental trauma, that I've been depicting women thus for a while now.)

Also, I've recently discovered a trend in my thought. I don't think about sex when writing a pairing anymore. I simply pick my characters, be they male or female or anything in between, and write about them, without considering their interactions beyond "this goes there". And now, now, I can make conscious choices. You've freed me from the chains of ignorance (at least some of them), I swear.

Thank you for writing this. It has completely enhanced my understanding of fanfiction, character dynamics, and the foundations of relationships. I feel smarter. I also feel like a bit of a fool. But this post is going to remain a personal bible for me. I'll be referencing it for clarification until I finally get it. Until that distant day, thank you.

[emei]:

To me, as a queer girl, I do have moments of something like a "het-squick" reaction to fic that turns jarringly heteronormative. That happens now and then in both het and slash (though much more rarely in femslash, in my experience.) It ties in with what you wrote somewhere about how a large part of the appeal of slash is getting stories that don't pigeonhole based on gender. Straight women feeling squicked out by het fic probably have mostly different reasons. I'm wondering if it could be tied to the idea of writing slash as porn on a safely removed distance - and if het appears, that distance is gone without warning. So that having a character that mirrors their own gender/body appearing in sexual relationships would implicate their own experiences in an uncomfortable way. That still doesn't really explain the viscous attacks on the women in the source text. But I do think there might an element of not wanting "real life" in escapist porn (which unfortunately sets up the reader's experiences as the only real ones & supposes that lgbt people are somehow less so). So perhaps a phenomenon with homophobic & misogynic implications, but rooted in something more complex than self-hate or disdain for those who desire female bodies?

[wychwood]:

Thank you for writing this. I find when this debate comes round, I read a lot of things, and get all confused in my head, and have about eight different contradictory opinions all at once, and then I forget about it until the next round of debate. But I really like what you've done here in terms of pointing at lots of the very different things that are going on under the heading of "slash". It is confusing! Because it's pretty diverse and therefore can't be summed up in a single sentence! Yay.

[msilverstar]:

There is such a spectrum amongst fans, and I think you've hit on a number of reasons why slash is so prevalent.

In my case, I'm more on the het side of things, but my fandom is incredibly slashy, so I read mostly slash, and am grateful it exists.

One thing I've noticed about het fic is that anything set here and now (in most cultures) has a hard time finding romantic tension and crisis. Most reasons for any random man and woman not getting together tend to be weirdly contrived and unlikely, and the old reasons are disconcerting. If Hermione's not getting involved with Charlie Weasley because she doesn't think she's pretty or nice enough, I go, WHUT? There's a strain of Torchwood slash where Jack and Ianto love each other very much and live happily ever after, but the canon itself went and broke that.

In short: when everything is allowed, not much UST.

[pandarus]:

But RPF AUs are NOT just sticking a familiar face on a character; in RPF, we glean what we can about the people from interviews, statements, Twitter, and reading their actions. You can tell bits and pieces about them. So often, the best RPF AUs are the ones where they DO seem as real to their real-life personas as possible. Which is another aspect. We work with their public personas. It's not quite the, but what we see of them. And really, isn't that true for all characters? [From: kasuchans-v2]

Well, you know, I was explicitly referring to how I conceptualise RPF AUs, and why in this one instance I can cheerfully read a particular genre of what appears to be fanfic without feeling that canon and characterisation are mandatory. Since I had been banging on about how important that was to me, it only seemed honest to admit to there being an exception to the rule.

I'm not quibbling that that is how most people within RPF fandom engage with the people upon whom they base their writing; as far as I can see, it's a little like playing 'Fantasy Football', in which that which stands in for canon in FPF is whatever one can glean about the actual people.

But for me personally, I find celebrity culture in general, and gossip (about one's neighbours, one's co-workers or Adam Lambert) pretty viscerally distasteful. I feel similarly awkward about based-on-a-true-story type movies, in which the truth of people's actual lives and experiences and characters is distorted in order to make an engaging narrative.

I can understand that there is a liminal space between the actual human being and the general perception of them; I recognise that in the case of many celebrities that projected persona is actively manipulated and fictionalised to a greater or lesser extent (extreme versions being with things like the Beatles' movies etc, where people are playing versions of themselves). But it doesn't fascinate me the way that fictional narratives do, and it makes me feel bad for the people being stalked by the paparazzi.

I am really not happy about reading regular RPF. I've read it - hell, arguably the hottest porn I've ever read in my life was Calico's LotRIPs - but ultimately I find myself feeling squicked by the intrusiveness of it. I have friends who read it and write it - fine. I know people who are similarly interested in reading celeb magazines and knowing who's doing what to whom (which is a very mainstream impulse, after all), but it really isn't my cup of tea.

So, for me personally, stories like 'Food Porn' (in which Jensen Ackles is a chef at a restaurant called 'Supernatural', his flatmate Jared Padalecki is a food blogger, he has a terrific kid called Ross with his food critic ex-wife Jessica Alba, and the restaurant staff include Katie Bell, Chad Michael Murray etc etc) these work like original movies starring various actors who work on the CW, and they does not creep me out. If there are little nods to RL "canon" in the AUs I read, I wouldn't recognise them, because I don't follow what the actors get up to in their real lives. I'm perfectly happy to read about them being pirates or ninjas or doctors or detectives, but if their actual family start appearing as characters, I start feeling awkward and uncomfortable for everyone involved (and that's waaay before we get into the incestporn and the bestiality and all the rest of the things that people cheerfully write about actual people in kink memes).

So whereas for my usual engagement with fanfic, canon characterisation is fundamental to whether or not I will be able to enjoy a story, with RPF AUs I don't KNOW much/anything about the people being named beyond how they look onscreen (and sometimes not even that - I tend to mentally substituted Owen Wilson for Chad Michael Murray, because I wouldn't recognise Chad if I fell over him in the street, and he always seems to get written as the kind of character Wilson's made a living portraying).

[blueyeti]:

I have the *potential* to get squicked by het. But I'm gay, so I'm mostly squicked when there's an implied/actual placing of the female reader into the place of the female participant. I usually only squick on what probably counts as heteronormative (or just bad) het sex: if there's unconscious power relations, missionary position, Twilight-ness where there is socially dictated submission (which isn't BDSM) to the male in sex/life, most blowjobs. If it's well-written, if it's part of a plot I'm enjoying a lot, if it's very character-conscious, if there's power relations which are acknowledged (good BDSM) or on the female's side, I'm alright. I can find those really sexy. It's not a guaranteed squick; I only say no het on things like podbang because I *can* squick, rather than I will squick. (I think I said no heterosexual romances, but scenes, pairings or secondary plots/pairings were fine.) I think I'm squicking on heterosocial assumptions, and inadvertent (or encouraged) self-insert moments.

By the same process, I can get squicked by feminised slash sex and (unchallenged/not-challenging) WNGWJLEO slash. I'm squicked by the heteronormative parts of it (and the fact that those things usually = badly written), because slash *should* be gay and when it's not it's far too jarring. So really, in this I'm heterophobic.

...let me try to get these thoughts out.

Because of the level of straight folks who read/write slash, and the associated privilege in their portrayal of gay relationships, you get a weird middle group which isn't present in things which are RL published and either have a) gay in them (political correctness/completeness), b) have tragic gay in them (all those evil lesbians, or ones that die, or both *looks at Whedon*), or c) are published as gay fiction, put on gay bookshelves, and not read by anyone who isn't looking on the gay shelves. I dislike category C immensely, because it is reactionary to B, and therefore they must all get their happy endings and gay utopias. I don't mind a bit of B, because I'm more inclined to mo stories which are complex and 'realistic' (to me) than implausible romance stories. And A is just being contemporary.

Because of the fact that straight folk are reading gay fic there's some awareness on the part of LGBTQAI (henceforth: queer, but I also mean straight-but-aware) authors that their audience doesn't necessarily have their experience (writing for/to the Other). Unlike the published writers of C, who are writing *to* their audience of Same. Because C is writing for Same it leads to lots of wish-fulfillment fantasy, which is the right thing to do as part of a community who is responding to the evil/dead queers of mainstream media. C's an effort so that readers get a sense of community and hope and have their own version of Twilight. (Lesbian utopia in politically/socially fucked Sth America, uncomplicated gay happiness in WWII...) Like you said, I think that most of the slash which looks like C is written by the privileged straight folk of a fandom, because the queer writers aren't thinking they're writing to Same, so don't want to make things less complicated than RL.

So we end up with slash sitting somewhere else. It's aware of its audience, and that audience isn't necessarily part/aware of gay history, for queer writers and aware!of!gay!being!complicated straight ficcers. It writes Issues (DADT in SGA being my current love) which, because this is fanfic, are still romances and mostly angle towards happy endings anyway. They are, in a way, a lot more politically/socially aware than published C ever is, because C is far more *focused* and pointed in its wishfulfillment. And it's occasionally considered bad form to bring up B in RL (at least in front of the queer lit advocate at my uni) because the only books important to gay identity *should be* the ones which are happy, because otherwise you mess with people's heads and make them scared. C is a social duty to be a happy community of gays (possibly running the world better than the straight folk are doing it: see the Sth American novel). Those who are aware of C in fic are also aware that C is voyeuristic and so try to *be* better than C, or excuse their own uses of C.

In the better incarnations, slash is a far better introduction to a queer community than queer lit, because queer lit *rings untrue*. And it's better because there are elements which are voyeuristic (we all look at each other, just like high school, but we are like you said, looking at internal and external lives as well as bodies), and there are people who won't let the issues disappear.

[greyhafren]:

I am both bisexual and one of those people who find it difficult to read het. Sometimes I try and figure out why. Occasionally I figure out a piece or two, but never the whole picture.

I think there is some truth to what you say about revulsion of self. Like many women out there, I am not comfortable with my own body. This in turn makes me uncomfortable reading about women in sexual situations. Whether because I'm one of those readers who puts themselves in the characters place or because I draw comparison between (the usually smoking hot) female character and myself.

However I don't think that's the whole story. There's an emotional element there that I can't quite put my finger on to do with the power dynamics and gender roles present in most het fic and pairings. It's something like, I feel it belittles the female character and therefore makes me feel belittled as a woman. As ridiculous as that sounds. I don't really understand where that attitude comes from, because in my real life relationships that's really not the case. Even so, in fiction I often find that the rare het pairings I am drawn to are the ones that aren't what could be described as conventional - Mulder/Scully would be a good example.

References

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