I Am Femslash: Femslash and Community

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Title:	Femslash and Community
Creator:	writerstealth (previously sexghosts)
Date(s):	February 28, 2017
Medium:	Tumblr post
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External Links:	I Am Femslash, Archived version (scroll down)
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Femslash and Community is a 2017 essay by writerstealth.

It is part of the I Am Femslash essay series sponsored by Femslash Revolution.

Excerpts

in the interest of understanding where I’m coming from on this, I am an old, in fandom terms. I’m 41, I’m married, I have kids, a career, and all that jazz. Writing femslash is a fun way for me to express my queerness, enjoy the things I love, and get appreciative feedback from an audience that loves the same things I do. It’s pretty much a no-lose situation for me.

I wish that I’d had the internet and had access to femslash when I was a kid and figuring things out. I think it’s great that young queer girls now have this wealth of reading material at their fingertips where they can learn about sex and their sexuality and see it as normal, which it should be. As an older person in fandom though, I also feel like it’s incumbent on me to be supportive of the younger people who are sort of wandering through this world without a guide. The biggest thing, maybe the most important good that femslash can do, is offer community.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what my responsibilities are as an older person in fandom. Some of you probably read my frustrated rants about the insistence of younger fandom to apply the rather limiting labels of “top” and “bottom” to lesbian relationships and I won’t rehash it here, but one thing that’s been on my mind is what our responsibility is as older writers when we’re putting out erotica. I probably absorbed my share of dumb, shitty ideas about sex from casing my mom’s romance novels when I was about eleven years old and didn’t have the slightest idea that there was any distinction between fantasy and reality. I’m not saying we should stop writing our deliciously questionable shit, but we should be available to help when younger people tap us on the shoulder and ask, “Hey, this thing is happening to me, is this normal/OK?” I’ve even considered putting some kind of tag or up-front note on the really dicey stuff, just to remind enthusiastic young readers that what they’re reading isn’t necessarily a healthy or positive representation of sex. I haven’t quite worked out what that might look like. But in general, lately, I’ve moved into writing stuff that really elevates more enthusiastic consent. We all go through our sexy dubcon thing from time to time, but it’s important, I think, to make it clear that there’s a line between what we’d like to fantasize about and what we’d like to actually do.

Femslash is a wonderful, flexible medium for exploration, learning, and release. It’s great for giving you ideas for things to try with your partners. I know one woman now in her late twenties who was reading femslash as a fourteen year old and had an arsenal of things to try by the time she had sex for the first time two years later. It’s great for getting your sexual impulses out. Some people have posited that the act of writing fic in itself is a queer act because you’re writing stuff for other women to get off to, and I’d raise my pint glass and toast to that as well. I’ve been told by a few friends that a particular piece of my writing has gotten them laid on at least two separate occasions. Femslash is a playground for all kinds of things, including working through trauma. I wrote one piece that explored a character from the perspective of viewing her as a sexual trauma victim rather than as a villain as she’s typically viewed, and I got messages from women saying, “Thank you for writing this, I’m a trauma survivor and I’ve struggled to articulate this need to my partner but I was able to show them this and now they understand.” I race-bent and queered a character in another fic to make her a Palestinian Muslim lesbian and I got a message from a Palestinian Muslim lesbian literally freaking out because she never sees herself represented anywhere. In so many ways, it’s entertaining at least, and on your best days, you can feel like you’re doing the Lord’s work.