Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (meta essay)
| Meta | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Girls Just Wanna Have Fun |
| Creator: | BradyGirl |
| Date(s): | February 18, 2008 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | |
| Topic: | DCU, Femslash |
| External Links: | Girls Just Wanna Have Fun |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun is an essay by BradyGirl on femslash within the DCU fandom. It was part of a series of workshops written for the superhero-muses livejournal community.
Excerpts
Wonder Woman: Amazon LoveDiana has been paired with Dinah Lance (Black Canary) and Shayera (Hawkgirl) in fic and art, and also various Amazons. It makes sense. Any sexual experiences she would have had before coming to Man’s World would have necessarily been f/f. Diana is an icon of feminism, and she would welcome lesbians and bisexual women under that umbrella.
When she debuted in 1941, Steve Trevor was her love interest, and remained so for several decades before her reboot after COIE. I happen to like that pairing (oddly enough, since I almost exclusively read and write slash), but I am more than willing to see the Amazon Princess in female relationships. Her sense of sisterhood leads her to interest in other women as women, and her sensuality plays an important part.
Canon will never give us a female lifepartner for her, but we as fans are good at reading subtext. Like Xena, the Warrior Princess, sometimes the subtext isn’t so sub. ;)
How To Write FemslashWhat if you’ve never written femslash before? You’re accustomed to writing male/male slash instead. But think about it. Most slash writers are women. Even if you identify as straight exclusively, who better than to write two women enjoying sex than a woman? A woman knows what pleases her, and writing a female giving her pleasure would be even easier than writing male/male slash.
Simply take that tack, my fellow female fans: what makes you feel good? And wouldn’t you know exactly how to give another woman pleasure?
Power dynamics are always a concern for women, considering their historical disadvantage in economic, social, and physical power down through the ages. In a male/female pairing, the woman is more likely to be the physically weaker (An interesting reversal of that in past canon was the Diana/Steve relationship). Women have traditionally been forced to resort to guile and persuasion to get what they want. Raw power was rarely in the equation.But the world of superhero women is different. From Wonder Woman and Supergirl down to the Wasp, women either possess enormous physical power, or powers that give them the upper hand, such as the hex power of the Scarlet Witch or the exceptional martial arts abilities of the Black Canary coupled with her sonic Canary Cry. In canon, women find themselves in relationships with male superheroes on a more equal footing, as civilian relationships have that pesky inbalance of power that most men are not comfortable with (again, an exception being Steve Trevor, who while asking Wonder Woman to marry him frequently in the Silver Age also accepted her superior strength and was damned glad of it when he needed rescue in either the Golden, Silver, or Bronze Ages).
Comments
[saavikam77]:Fantastic essay, hon! :DI can also see the way fem slash lends itself better to PWP than m/m slash does. :p Maybe it's a sort of role reversal for us writers - the need to both view the feelings of men, and see women exploring sexuality without all the 'traditional' or 'expected' trappings.
I haven't read a good deal of fem slash - though I *have* read a few of yours with Canary/Catwoman. (Very well done, I might add. ^_^) I'd like to venture out and read more, and this essay's definitely got me intrigued.
A few fem characters/pairings in the DCU that I've noticed don't seem to be explored in fic (off the top of my head) include Maggie Sawyer/Toby Raines (though I imagine Maggie/Lois might be interesting!), and Rene Montoya/Kate Kane. ^_^ Seems like the canon lesbians don't get much page time. O_o Anyway, I'd love to see more of them explored...