My first ever slash manifesto. (Also titled: A Comment Gone Horribly Awry)

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Title:	My first ever slash manifesto. (Also titled: A Comment Gone Horribly Awry)
Creator:	starstealingirl
Date(s):	May 25, 2005
Medium:	online
Fandom:
Topic:	Women and Slash
External Links:	My first ever slash manifesto. (Also titled: A Comment Gone Horribly Awry), Archived version
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My first ever slash manifesto. (Also titled: A Comment Gone Horribly Awry) is a 2005 post by starstealingirl at slashphilosophy. It is a response post to Does m/m slash empower women?.

Excerpts from the Essay

The Good

Let's look at the positives first. I think that slash (and not just of the m/m variety, but all types of erotic fanfiction) have given women a space in which they can assert themselves as arbiters of sexuality, and not just sex objects. A woman writing or reading m/m slash reverses the traditional social order in which a man is empowered to ask for what titillates him, and the woman is expected to respond to it. (There are problems with this reversal, but I'll address them later.)

More importantly, slash in general is a safe space in which women can support one another in exploring aspects of their sexuality (same-sex attraction, identification with a member of another gender, any number of kinks) that they may not otherwise have a space to explore, as "good girls" are not supposed to write and consume porn, let alone of the varieties seen in m/m slash. I think that exploring one's sexuality in such a space can make it easier to own it in real life, and lord knows women could always use a heavy dose of sexual empowerment.

I also think that m/m slash is a way of subverting the mores of literary and popular culture, which still (I think) sees men as the primary movers and shakers, and reflects a whole bunch of western assumptions about relationships that really aren't very flattering to women.

When women (and actually, not just them; people in general) write slash, they presumably are highlighting some type of subtext in the canon of whatever fandom they're writing for, exposing the sexual undertone of a given male/male friendship, and as such are subverting the above set of assumptions.

Thus, in writing m/m slash, women deconstruct conventions surrounding gender and sexuality, and through writing about m/m sexuality (and it's important that they write about men, because it's historically been men who have created and enforced the traditional western rules of gender and intimacy), they paradoxically write themselves into a greater vision of gender-blind intimacy.

The Bad

When I talked about the empowering aspects of slash above, I mentioned that when a woman writes or reads m/m slash, she reverses the traditional men-as-sexual-subject/women-as-sex-object role. This may empower her for a time, but it's not really an empowering position overall. Reversing such a hierarchy does not change the fact that the hierarchy is there; sexually objectifying men just as women are often objectified just turns sexual inequality into a prolonged "you-did-this-to-me-so-I'm-going-to-do-it-to-you" fight, and doesn't solve many problems. And often, it's not just any men that are objectified through slash; it's gay and bisexual men, particularly in recent years as the GLBT rights movement has gained more publicity and slash writers feel the need to explicitly address their characters' sexual identity labels. On one hand, women's participation in m/m slash can help them feel greater solidarity with such men and move them to a position of supporting them; on the other, queer men are already objectified and hypersexualized in western society, and it can be argued that writing m/m slash just allows women to contribute to this. (I have to say that I am shocked at the number of slash fics I encounter in which the author writes a disclaimer along the lines of "I know homosexuality is wrong, but OMG I love teh gay secks!!!!!!!111!" And I invariably refuse to so much as glance at such fics.) And exploiting another person for one's own pleasure is never a position of empowerment.

Not to mention the loads of casual misogyny I've seen in m/m slash. I can't count the number of fics I've read where one or both members of the male couple in question wax eloquent for a few paragraphs on how much better it is to be dating each other than those stupid girls who won't stop nagging, and always want to be held, and hate your friends, and oh yeah, their bits smell funny too. Or the number of fics where one or both of the male characters are dating women, and once they notice each other they drop their girlfriends faster than they drop their trousers, and the readers are asked to simply feel happy for the men, rather than sorry for their poor innocent girlfriends. And so on. It seems that all too often in m/m slash, women writers and readers are asked to identify with the male characters at the expense of having to disavow the female ones.

The Conclusion

So, is slash empowering? I think it can be. As I said above, I think it has the power to dismantle a lot of assumptions westerners hold about sexuality and gender and love. But it doesn't always live up to its potential. And that's to be expected, I suppose. We can't all be subversive all of the time. And given that many female m/m slash writers don't write with any sort of sociopolitical agenda in mind, we're not always going to be. But I do think that it's worth it for readers and writers of slash to examine their motives in doing so, and to use slash as a tool to better understand themselves. Self-knowledge is empowerment. Period.

Comments to the Essay

[blackjackrocket]:

Geez, whatever happened to "it's just hot"?

[starstealingirl]:

It is hot. Why is it hot? Why m/m slash as opposed to f/f slash or het? Why m/m slash as opposed to porn videos, or wank mags, or erotica books containing original characters? Why do slashers keep stubbornly insisting on putting their favorite book, movie, and TV characters in sexual situations? What's the turn on? I think it's worth wondering why, and wondering what, exactly, people get out of it. And I see absolutely no reason why I can't deconstruct that desire now, and temporarily lose myself in some interesting fic later.

[galadhir]:

Certainly, you can enjoy m/m slash in addition to other things, but why choose it at all?

Well, in my case, because it is the *only* thing I find hot. Het squicks me, always has, to the point where I have to look away during the sex scenes on TV or the movies. f/f squicks me too. I am aware that my life would be easier if they didn't (the het squick makes watching most popular media uncomfortable for me.) But I can't help it, that's just how I am.

That makes reading slash as erotica less a *choice* and more of an *acceptance* of my own sexuality. The only additional thing I can enjoy is gen, and I do enjoy gen, but - for obvious reasons - not for the sex.

The argument 'because it's just hot' might sound like a cop out to you, but to me it's the essence of the thing. Slash is the only thing out there that caters to me.

[partly bouncy]:

Self-acceptance and connection to a "community" (if you can call it that)

What are you self accepting? the idea that two men going at it is something that turns you? What is such a big deal about that? Honestly, I just do not get this. Men get off on two women getting off and they generally don't go around thinking "Will the world accept me because two women, oh the hotness!"

and what makes the m/m community any different than the m/f or f/f community?

[starstealingirl]:

I'm getting a little alarmed at some of your questions at this point. It seems almost as if you're suggesting that it's somehow better to like f/f than it is to like any other pairing-- as if you're reacting to your sense of marginalization within slash by justifying your tastes as superior. I think people have said to you several times in this thread that m/m isn't really all that different from any other pairing. It just happens to be what they like-- and what's wrong with someone enjoying something they like? Why are you singling out the problems of f/f here? Are you honestly suggesting that writers of f/f or het slash never objectify their characters? Or that the voyeurism that centers around those pairings is somehow more politically and morally acceptable than that which centers around m/m pairings?

[partly bouncy]:

“It is hot. Why is it hot? Why m/m slash as opposed to f/f slash or het?”

mmm.

That was kind of why I was curious because meh, I don't get m/m. I have had some very nice people tell me that m/m is empowering and that I'm part of their slashy sisterhood as an f/f reader/writer. But then they go and define slash as m/m and I'm left cold and wondering what the hell is wrong with the picture as I don't get it. And all the arguments I heard seemed to apply to m/m only on a small picture and when looked at in the broader context seemed to be a giant feckage to the concept of empowerment.

[starstealingirl]:

These days, I'm not so much into f/f slash (I'd much rather participate in f/f action than read about it), but I agree with you that it does seem to get the short end of the proverbial stick, in terms of recognition. I'd always assumed that slash was defined as m/m because of its history, coming as it does from Kirk/Spock and all that, but I can definitely see how there are misogynist tones to its exclusivity.

[lm]:

Why m/m slash as opposed to f/f[?]

That's a good question that I've been thinking about a lot myself lately. It's funny, but the f/f I've written that I liked best was written when I still identified as heterosexual, or at least when I hadn't had f/f sex. Now that I have...I don't know. I still read it, but it's kind of lost the thrill for me. I think there's two combined reasons for this:

[1] First, one of the main things that interests me about slash as a whole is getting "inside" a kind of relationship I have not and/or cannot experience. So at this point in my life the only thing that leaves virtually, is m/m. And the reason it's slash and not plain gay literature or even gay porn is because in order to have that feeling of really knowing these people, intimately, is if they already have this big history for me.

[2] Pretty much what you said in this entry about men still being the driving force in fiction. For the most part, the books/movies/etc. I really like have stronger likeable male characters than female. Or they only have one strong likeable female characters, and a few male. And there is definitely a lot more fiction on my bookshelves starring strong m/m friendships or other (apparently) nonsexual relationships than f/f of the same variety--which has nothing to do with me seeking out books of that kind, and everything to do with those kinds of relationships just being way more common in fiction.

[partly bouncy]:

And there is definitely a lot more fiction on my bookshelves starring strong m/m friendships or other (apparently) nonsexual relationships than f/f of the same variety--which has nothing to do with me seeking out books of that kind, and everything to do with those kinds of relationships just being way more common in fiction. I guess I get uncomfortable at times with this (and I'm probably badly not responding to your writing as my own I need to express them, frustrated stuff) is that there is a decent chunk of female oriented fiction. Some of the best stuff I've read has that. Bujold, Weber, Artemis Fowl, Star Trek: New Frontiers, J.D. Robb all have strong female characters or a number of females in leading roles... Star Trek: Voyager, Xena, The Apprentice, Survivor, Smallville, Buffy, Sailor Moon, lots of strong female characters, lots of female in various canon shows... but women seem to be writing or supporting shows which basically sexualize the male form, be attracted to shows about women... in some cases, intentionally choose shows with lack of women or avoid female authors. And I really don't get that, especially when people talk about how m/m empowers women, gives them control. Control over what? By bashing and marginalizing women? By turning men into sex objects? By avoiding materials created by their fellows deliberately because the person shares the same chromosome?

[lm]:

Some of the best stuff I've read has that. Bujold, Weber, Artemis Fowl, Star Trek: New Frontiers, J.D. Robb all have strong female characters or a number of females in leading roles... Star Trek: Voyager, Xena, The Apprentice, Survivor, Smallville, Buffy, Sailor Moon, lots of strong female characters To each their own, I guess, but for my part the only fandom I like off that list is Buffy, and even then, I'm much more a fan of the male characters in general than the female. Most of the women on that show are so emotionally dependant on men (or even on other women--Tara/Willow) than they have problems functioning without them (Oz/Willow, Angel/Buffy) or even with them (Buffy/Spike). There's female-empowering messages on the show, of course, but for the most part the female characters themselves are only marginally empowered, or only empowered when it comes to the supernatural elements of their lives. The media world abounds with strong, interesting male characters who fundamentally dependent on others for their own happiness, and I just...don't find that often in the case of women.

[starstealingirl]:

It's been my experience that fans of slash rarely consciously choose to be attracted to a certain fandom because of the presence/absence of female characters, etc. Fandom seems to stem from a not particularly rational, not necessarily articulable, attraction to a certain type of fiction and/or a certain relationship dynamic. A slash fan is not wrong to like a certain movie, or TV show, or series of books, just because it has a lot of male characters. Also, different fangirls may feel different needs around different types of fiction. Personally, I don't feel a need to read or write fanfiction around series with strong female characters, because to me knowing that those characters are strong in canon is sufficient. I'm a big Buffy fan, but I've never gotten into the fandom because to me, the series stands alone. Not so with some other shows.

[lm]:

For my part I don't really see how writing about men's sex lives equals turning them into sex objects. I think most slashers have some emotional involvement with the characters they're writing about, beyond just sex appeal. If we just wanted to wank over two men doing it, we'd watch gay porn, instead of spending valuable time thinking up plots and writing them out and beta-reading and discussing why we think a particular 'ship is good and...yeah.

[stewardess]:

I do not understand why in some fanfic women have to be evil for men to be gay. Men can be gay even if women are magnificent, noble creatures. *g*

Of course, in some fanfic, it's not enough for the women to be evil -- they also have to be dead. *g*... I think some of the "women stink" fanfic is based on the belief that gayness is a choice, not the way some people are born, and also on an inability to come up with convincing original plots.

The writer who isn't sure how to get two guys into the sack resorts to killing off all the women, or making them evil and stinky, so the gals are no longer available as sexual partners. This suggests misogyny, but it also hints at a belief that men wouldn't be gay if there were nice, non-smelly, non-evil women available -- such as the writer herself, perhaps. ;)

This ties into your observation on the strange writers who say gay sex is hot, yet wrong. If someone said "BDSM is hot, yet wrong," we might disagree, but we would probably understand where they are coming from. But BDSM is a choice, and being gay is not. So perhaps these writers think gay people choose to be homosexual, which makes them immoral.

But mostly I think the women stink fics spring from laziness. Far easier to kill off the girls than to come up with a believable and interesting reason why Kirk and Spock might fuck. After all, men are sluts, so if they can't fuck women, they'll fuck each other! [/sarcasm].

For me, m/m porn is fantasy that answers the question, "What would I do with a dick and prostate if I had one?" I don't worry about any of the larger issues, except I refuse to write stories that bash women. I'm a woman, and I enjoy being one.

[vulgarweed]:

I tend to think that the act of women writing and sharing and enjoying our desires, when those desires don't necessarily correspond to what our male partners (for those of us that have them) might want them to be, is what's empowering, not anything specific in the content of the stories. For a long time women are told in so many ways that our desires (if we have them at all) are supposed to fit within certain parameters and if not then we are "bad" - I find the creativity and inventiveness and passion and humor of smut written by women absolutely wonderful. The genders of the characters getting it on is NOT irrelevant, but it's less important. The turnon of m/m slash to me is fairly simple: I'm passionately, physiologically, chemically, lustily attracted to men. Some women also, but I'm one of those 75/25 bisexuals. So, you know, two hot men with a rich, complex relationship and teh hawt sexxx - well, yum. I'm also very interested in it because it's the only kind of sex I've never experienced directly myself and never can (in this life), so there's vicariousness/curiosity/desire for the unattainable/writerly challenge of imagination/empathy, an irresistible combination. I have nothing at all against het or femslash (I've read and written both with great pleasure) but m/m I suppose is the majority of what I do because I find it most compelling for these reasons. Is it "empowering"? Well, I try to write well. I try to keep growing as a writer. Feeling I've done so, produced something good, is certainly empowering.

[cryptoquip]:

I would agree that the community aspect is really the most empowing thing about slash as a whole, though--the existence of a space where women can freely express their sexuality is extremely important. Even though I don't normally do much expressing myself (i.e., don't write a lot of fics), I think, as you say, the very fact that slash makes me ask questions about gender and sexuality is empowering.

Having said that, though, I don't really read slash for the empowerment. I haven't yet figured out why I do read it...but asking that question over and over again leads to a kind of empowerment in itself.

To change topic somewhat, I was suprised when I first learned that there are lesbians who are into m/m slash, and I am interested to read your thoughts on why it interests you. (Although I've learned enough about human sexuality in the last few years that I am definitely no longer surprised!) I love how that totally disproves the "one boy good, two boys better" theory of slash's appeal...

[chasethecat]:

Personally, I think there's more m/m slash than f/f because it allows a certain distance from the sex, and doesn't have that much to do with the deification of cock. (Although I think you're right that it plays some part in maleslash's popularity.) When you're writing or reading f/f porn, there's always the comparisons to your own body or sexual experience, but when it's m/m, most of the readers and writers don't have cocks or prostates, aren't comparing their bodies to the characters', so it seems less...intimate, maybe? Less personal. Plus, I'm less likely to get thrown out of a maleslash sex scene than a het/femmeslash story thinking "I don't personally enjoy that at all".

[vulgarweed]:

The writing is the primary thing for me, really. I'm a bit of a logosexual, I guess - turned on by characters and stories and the act of writing and reading desire itself.

One problem I have with this discussion is that it tends to take a certain reductionist POV that's all about physical gender of writers and characters and neglects the essential role imagination plays in fandom. I mean, I've written lovers who are a witch and a wizard; a shapeshifter and a werewolf; two heroic tiny little people in a threesome with a walking, sentient tree; a king who practices black magic and willingly submits to an awesome evil being although (or because) he's becoming an undead slave in the process; a Presidential candidate and running mate; an angel and a demon; 2/4 of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse....Except arguably "witch" (in a very different sense of the word) I've never been any of those things nor do I expect to be, but I don't think that's marginalizing or un-empowering to the relatively mundane human woman I am.

For me as a writer, much of the pleasure comes from making imaginative leaps. I may well enjoy writing about men (or male miscellaneous beings) so much primarily because I am not one. This doesn't mean I despise my femaleness or have "issues" with my "real" sexuality - it's because I use fiction for different reasons altogether. And for me it doesn't feel like "escape" in the sense of running from something; it feels like going to something.

[partly bouncy]:

Slash in the m/m sense:

* empowers men in the m/m sense, especially when we toss in mpreg because traditional female roles are usurped by men, adopted by men. Frequently authors are guilty of doing this AT THE EXPENSE OF FEMALE CHARACTERS IN THE CANONICAL TEXT.

* sexualizes men. sexualizes men. sexualizes men. I sat through too much Enterprise where TPTB got the fact that women liked to see their men sexualized. Just like when women were sexualized for the sake of sexualizing them, crap resulted.

* sexualizes men. Tell me, do you think the sexualizing of women and making them sex objects empowers men? Okay. Right. It does. But honestly, is that the type of empowerment you want?

* continues to give female characters the canonical shaft. Why should producers make any investment in strong female characters when they don't need to? Let's continue to put them as non-empowering, weak, wimpy, as back characters, in roles of less importance because well, women want to see two hot men. Right. That's empowering. Your slashy male on male goodness at the expense of women.

* frequently bases itself on woman bashing. When you need to character bash to justify your pairing and you bash the gender thing as one reason to do it... THAT DOESN'T EMPOWER WOMEN.

* reinforces the male schema as the dominant one as it places all discussion in the context of the male schema. Slash is from the male point of view as the characters are male. This forces women to be in that male schema. Sorry, I'm female. I do not think it is empowering to have my own power viewed from the context of the male scheme.

[starstealingirl]:

Yes, I read your entry already.

sexualizes men. sexualizes men. sexualizes men.

And f/f and f/m slash don't do this? You've never come across a piece of f/f slash that didn't exoticize and hypersexualize lesbianism? Because on those occasions where I do choose to read f/f slash, I come across it all the time.

[much snipped]

[snakey]:

Slash, whether f/f or m/m, does not empower women. The only thing that can empower women is women themselves. Fanfic of whatever stripe is not going to translate into real-world empowerment unless women get up off their backsides and *do* something (which includes being aware of what they're doing and why when they write fanfic, or anything else for that matter).

The word "empowerment" is such a hazy one. You can have every legal equality (I fucking wish) and not necessarily be "empowered".

Writing slash may be part of someone's process of empowering themself. It may also be part of someone's process of *dis*empowering itself. That goes whether it's ff or mm.

[executrix]:

It's true that, as an earlier thread said, "Your slash ain't activism" but then very little fiction writing is. (OK, maybe "Uncle Tom's Cabin.")

As far as I'm concerned, writing slash--or anything else--empowers women, because I think it's empowering for a woman to write about what she desires. For whatever, possibly culturally bound and screwed-up reason, she desires it. And no matter what anyone including Ayatollahs and the Femintern tells her she ought to desire.

The 1960s anger at objectification of women arose out of noticing that the RL women or characters treated that way were viewed ONLY as sexual objects, and furthermore in an antisexual cultural that made it necessary to despise anyone who aroused you. And even though I'd say that to a certain degree, turnabout IS fair play, there's so much backlog of idealization of the male that I don't think it's likely that male characters are considered ONLY sexual objects.

OK, sometimes female m/m slashwriters sound like they're narrating PBS nature documentaries. But also sometimes like happy wannabes, or comrades in arms, or fellow-appreciators of male bodies. Especially after many centuries of gay invisibility, visibility doesn't always equal objectifying.

Not to mention The Campaign for Clean Slash and stories that incorporate m/m romance and sex, along with f/f and m/f romance and sex, into a narrative.

[anadinboy]:

im a gay male who loves reading slash written by young straight teen girls, why they like it i have no idea, but they are revolutionary, auteristic and do not seek the permission of other women or men, they are a spontantious revolution. they are in the driving seat, leave them there

[notrafficlights]:

[much snipped]

It seems that all too often in m/m slash, women writers and readers are asked to identify with the male characters at the expense of having to disavow the female ones.

And why is this a problem? There seems to be a painful trend in slash discussion to simply dismiss this as misogyny without analysing the phenomenon itself. Why is being bitchy/clingy/feminine gendered seen as such a negative thing? I don't think it's self-hate & misogyny, as much as rejection of the negative aspects of feminine genders, such as marrying for convenience, being clingy, shallow, emotionally unstable etc. The reason we write m/m in the first place is to escape this gendered baggage. Of course we're going to reject it further in writings. That doesn't mean we hate ourselves, but we do dislike a lot of the gendered behaviour associated with "being a woman" in society.

[starstealingirl]:

If I were to write this entry over again, I would be more explicit in asserting that these are things that slash can do, not that this is what they do do. Slash, like most things, has no monolithic meaning. It has deconstructive potential, but it can also be used to stereotype. Usually, it does a little bit of both. On one hand, I've met a lot of slash fen who have questioned their homophobia and their sexuality through taking part in slash communities; on the other, I observe a tension between that trend, and debates in slash communities as to whether characters in such fics really "act like men," ranting about the "feminization" of slash characters, etc. Just because slash fen might identify with characters across gender and sexuality identity borders, doesn't mean they think those borders don't exist.