Add lesbians
| Meta | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Add lesbians |
| Creator: | theunitofcaring |
| Date(s): | November 5, 2014 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | |
| Topic: | Femslash |
| External Links: | Add lesbians, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Add lesbians is a post by theunitofcaring that is critical of the types of relationship dynamics created in femslash fanworks.
Post
the problem with ‘just add lesbians’, though, is that when a lot of fandoms do have a campaign for f/f pairings or a femslash day or a lesbian-recs campaign, the result is lots of pretty feminine girls flirting and kissing and having effortless choreographed sex.your lesbians do not question their gender or fuck men praying it’ll change something or shave their heads or fall for their straight friends or wonder if they’re broken. your lesbians are all confident in their sexuality, or adorably shy. your lesbians are all content with their lives. your lesbians are all afab.
you are afraid to hurt your lesbians. your femslash does not break people and put them back together. your lesbians don’t set their ex’s clothes on fire or call a blocked number eighty times or break down crying in the supermarket when someone calls them a fat ugly dyke. they are too 'badass’ for the world to touch them and you mean well but it means I, the reader, can’t touch them either.
you are afraid to have evil lesbians. we don’t drive drunk and we are never abusive and we don’t get fired from work for theft and we don’t plot the annihilation of the continent of North America. you are afraid to have complicated lesbians. we don’t cheat and we aren’t vindictive and we don’t have to decide whether to take a nation to war, or to ration the food in the zombie apocalypse.
our relationships are never complicated, our crushes are always requited, we don’t have kinks and we all like sex and we are, all of us, pretty girls, the sort of girls that men like to watch kissing.
At this point when a fandom holds a femslash drive, I cringe.
add lesbians. but make them messy ugly people, nerdy arrogant people, ruthless powerful people. make them rivals or archenemies. hurt them, break them, let them kiss each other back together, or fail to, or not love each other enough to try. make them bite when they kiss, or make them hate kissing. But for the love of god just make them people.
Comments
[audible-smiles]: hmm hmmm this is pretty generalizing and there are lots of femmeslash fandoms i dont believe it applies to but hoenstly I find it impossible to relate to lesbian characters without gender issues so like Willow and Tara mean very little to me Brittany and Santana mean very little to me lesbian fanfic between femme women means very little to me I am glad it means things to other people! I am very glad and I am happy to see relationships between women on tv or in people's personal writing but like...it gets lonely over here where the fat dykes with no fashion sense are homophobia representation also I have a bad habit of saying 'lesbian' about relationships which involve bi or pan women and I apologize for that trying to get better
[chibirisa20]: I've said this before and I'll say it again. I can never get into femslash fandoms for this reason. The "fans" are always too afraid to actually 'do' anything with it. And from that you can just TELL it's only being made to keep the girl away from the guys(all while claim they aren't "like those" fujoshi), cause god forbid she actually has a crush on one of them. I just leaves a bad taste in my bi mouth.
liathwen-slays-dragons:I don’t know if anyone else feels this way, but I’m afraid to write a complicated lesbian relationship. Because look at what happens on Tumblr if someone thinks you said something wrong! You get attacked, hounded!
“You have no idea what you’re talking about because you’re straight!” “Homophobic!” “You’re portraying them as terrible because you are a gay-hater!”
It might make me cowardly, but there is no way I’m going to put myself out there and write from my heart and write a manipulative/abusive/unsafe/whatever gay or lesbian relationship because I am afraid of Tumblr and the people who SAY that they are fighting for equality but really just want an excuse to think they are better than other people. And obviously, that’s the minority, but it’s a pretty damn vocal one, wouldn’t you say?
rainbowloliofjusticeand then they wonder why the default (minus heterosexuality being the majority) of relationships default to just m/f.
You can actually experiment and make them people.
Just like how everyone wanted the Gay Best Friend ™, this is that except gay pairings. They don’t want people in an actual relationship, they want dressup dolls.
It’s why they get so mad and volatile when media that has LGBT+ couples in it doesn’t portray them in a way that is all smiles, hugs and kisses, etc. Where there is mental illness and anger, bitter exes and breakups, complicated relationships with oneself and sexuality, etc.
They just assume all of that kind of stuff is a fetishization of LGBT+ people even though it really… Isn’t. The actual fetishization of LGBT+ people is treating them like uwu couples where handholding and light kisses are the depths of intimacy and they’re too Badass ™ to be affected by anything or anyone else.