K/S Survey for the K/S Press

Fan Survey
Title:	K/S Survey for the K/S Press
Surveyor:	Liz
Date(s):	2004
Medium:	print
Fandom(s):	K/S
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K/S Survey for the K/S Press was done by Liz for purposes of her dissertation.

The survey was administered at KiScon.

Results of this survey were in The K/S Press #94 and soon became a part of From Slash to the Mainstream: Female Writers and Gender Blending Men.

Liz's Remarks

Dear all, firstly a huge thank you to everyone who filled in a K/S questionnaire for me at the recent KiS Con! I have totaled up all the answers and the following is an account of them and my thoughts about them, forgive me it seems very formal, its just I am used to writing stuff like this formally for academic papers and not informally for friends. Firstly this research was undertaken as a small part of the PhD I am writing in English Literature, my thesis is about female authors and appropriated fictions of male/male relationships. I have written about Mary Renault, Susan Hill, Pat Barker, Patricia Nell Warren and Marion Zimmer Bradley amongst others. In my final chapter it occurred to me to show how patterns seen in these texts can be seen outside of the professional field in slash (here K/S) fiction. My main argument is that there exists a body of both professional and amateur women writers who are interested in exploring intimacy between men, sometimes this intimacy is sexualised, as it is in K/S, sometimes it remains within the bounds of friendship, as it does in many a good gen story, sometimes this intimacy explores the nebulas territory in between the sexual and the nonsexual. Much of my thesis is taken up with discussing what draws women towards writing stories about intimate male relationships, why Alexander and Hephaistion for Mary Renault, Rivers and Sassoon for Pat Barker and Kirk and Spock for us? To help expand on the conclusions I have drawn from the texts I wanted to conduct this survey amongst readers and writers of K/S because it seemed to me that we are probably a large and readily available group of women who are lightly to share interests with the professional authors I am stundying.

Some Questions

The first three questions focused on trying to decide if there was a connection between K/S and mass market male/male romances.... Next I asked what elements in Trek made it seem slashy to you. I asked you to rank in order, of whether they made you see TOS as slashy, 16 possible reasons. Here I was trying to explore which elements seemed to you to have potential for (sexual) intimacy. The following is a summery of the results. I have ranked the reasons in order according to the average of all the responses so here, from the most popular to 1. It's because their greatest commitments seem to be to each other. 2. It's because of the emotional dependency between Kirk and Spock. 3. It's because the mind meld gives them a way of sharing feelings 4. It's because they rely on each other personally 5. It's because they are always together 6. It's because Kirk and Spock share their emotions and feelings 7. It's because Kirk and Spock hold eye contact a lot 8. It's because they seem jealous of each others other relationships 9. It's because Kirk and Spock exchange casual touches 10. It's because they stand so close 11. It's because they are very close friends 12. It's because they always end up together at the end of the show 13. It's because they must rely on each other professionally 14. It's because Kirk and Spock work closely together 15. It's because neither Kirk nor Spock have a steady girlfriend or wife 16. It's because we see Kirk without his shirt on a lot.

Some Answers

... I asked about what elements were most popular in K/S stories, this was because I wanted to see if the elements we had picked up from TOS continued to be our focus in the stories we wrote about it. So here are 16 elements of interest in K/S from the most important to the least important (again this is a summery of the average responses). Writers take note!! 1. Emotional sharing 2. Expression of feelings 3. An exploration of how their friendship or working relationship develops into love 4. Sex that is emotional 5. The depiction of equality in the relationship 6. A depiction of the friendship Kirk and Spock share 7. Images of oneness such as but not limited to the meld 8. Sex that is tender 9. Elements which show how Kirk and Spock are dependent on one another 10. The depiction of an ideal relationship (at least by the end of the story) 11. Sex that is passionate 12. Some acknowledgement of their professional lives together 13. Descriptions of how Kirk and Spock work together to solve a problem 14. At least one sex scene 15. Physical or emotional suffering 16. An exploration of the power structures between Kirk and Spock.

Studied: Killing Time

Academics who have investigated this before have tended to focus on overt physical cues such as eye contact and standing close, and have often implied that K/S is a kind of misinterpretation of standard, filming for TV, conventions. But it has always seemed to me to be much more complex than that... The element that on average was considered most slashy was 'because their greatest commitments seem to be with each other' -- this is about the depth of the relationship rather than any physical elements. Another peripheral interest which inspired this question was the text of Della Van Hise's Trek Novel Killing Time. As I am sure you all know there are two versions of this text, one of which has been edited to remove what the editors felt were 'K/S inferences.' However on the whole the major changes just removed images of physical closeness, leaving the novel still depicting Kirk and Spock's relationship as extremely intimate. It is perhaps this factor that makes even the edited text seem slashy to those who come from a background of K/S.

Some Conclusions

... responses tended to focus on stories which explored the emotional side of the relationship, which did tally with what interested you in TOS. However I was surprised that elements of dependency and professional and personal bonds as shown on TOS ranked relatively low. I think that because, to an outsider, the sexual elements of K/S are what is immediately striking -- these have tended to be highlighted in academic accounts of K/S such as Penley and Ross's which highlight the shock value of the sexual elements of K/S. However I think that on the whole we are interested in sex mainly for its potential to further our exploration of the emotional intimacy between Kirk and Spock. Sex for the sake of sex is relatively unimportant to K/S. What is important is the emotional interaction between the two men. In the context of my thesis this will support my argument that because of the salience of sex in our culture we tend to draw a demarcation line between sexual and non-sexual texts (and relationships) which is perhaps preventing us from seeing that the sexual and non-sexual text might actually be involved in exploring similar areassuch as intimacy and emotional closeness. In this way TOS and K/S are similar texts because they focus on interpersonal relationships even though one is sexual and the other is not. My next questions addressed the issue of sexuality. This was really inspired by Constance Penley's assertions that all K/S fans thought that Spock were heterosexual in K/S despite the sexual nature of the stories.

I think [some of my] results suggest that one of the things K/S is interested in is exploring how love can transcend sexuality, since no one thought Kirk or Spock were homosexual before they met each other everyone is assuming their attraction is in spite of, rather than because of, an innate sexuality. I also think that beginning from the assumption of heterosexuality or bisexuality kind of intensifies their realisation of their love for each other and makes their eventual commitment to each other more unique in their lives. I am still puzzled by anyone seeing Kirk and Spock as heterosexual at the end of a K/S story— are you out there? Can you enlighten me as to why you feel that way? Is it because Kirk and Spock are really different species' to one another, rather than the same gender?... Anyway, I think questions like this are really rather hard because our terms for describing and labeling sexuality carry so many cultural connotations and stereotypes with that that it is hard to classify Kirk and Spock with our 21st Century categories.

The survey being done at a con probably skewed the results in several ways, it only captures the opinions of those fans who are the con going sort whatever that may be! Also there may be a bias towards print fans and opposed to net fans for several reasons. Surveys also document the opinions only of the sort of personality who likes to fill in surveys, this may not actually be the average opinion! Also because I used descriptions I had thought up myself I may have forced you (by limitation) into seeing TOS and K/S through the same structures that I did!

In the future, I'd like to see how the answers to the questions are connected -- for instance are those people who like their K/S to be close to TOS particularly drawn to emotional rather than physical elements in TOS and K/S? Are those people who are most interested in emotional aspects less likely to see Kirk or Spock as homosexual in K/S? I have decided to wait until I have some more data before trying to make comparisons like this everyone at my con (K/S CONnections) will be given a copy and I hope will fill it in! I'd also be interested to know if there are differences in how primarily print and primarily net fans view K/S and TOS, or is that just a fannish myth? Unfortunately, I didn't ask any questions about this so I can't know anyway! However one day I might be able to set the survey up on the net (too dense to do this at the mo.!) and perhaps attract a different type of respondent, although this probably wouldn't separate print/net fans as much as one might think?