Slash and the Ethics of Voice

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Title:	Slash and the Ethics of Voice
Creator:	Thamiris
Date(s):	September 2, 2002
Medium:	online journal post
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External Links:	Slash and the Ethics of Voice; archive link page 1, archive link page 2
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Slash and the Ethics of Voice is 2002 essay by Thamiris.

Some Topics Discussed

• misappropriation of culture
• is realism in fiction required
• policing other people's fanworks
• slash, erotica, and fantasy
• queerness and slash
• feminism and slash
• a discussion about marginalization and race

The Essay

Seems a gay man or two has objected to the representation of his brethren in slash, complaining about the lack of realism. My mental response to this has changed my position on the issue of slash as a queer or feminist act for me: I'm going to have to switch to feminist. See, I don't really have any intention of fully representing the gay male community. First of all, I don't believe that this is possible: too much divergence there. Not all gay men share the same views on safe sex, AIDS, relationships, violence, advocacy, just like not all women share the same views on the same subjects. There are arguably positions on each that some groups feel are more moral or appropriate for the group, but no indisputable evidence exists to say which, definitely, is the position that best represents said group.

In fact, I'm not even sure what role realism plays in slash in any form. Is even the emotion represented there meant to be real, or an improved, honed, purified version of it? That is, when slashers depict love or jealousy, is that feeling absolutely mimetic, or is it imbued with a nobility or a catharsis or an intensity that it lacks in real life? The same applies even to physical description: the landscape depicted seems more fantastic, appropriate for a genre--slash--that has very strong connections to fantasy and romance. In other words, I think the objection to slash's misrepresentation of gay men is a misleading one, since I'm not entirely sure your average slasher has any intention of "adequately" representing this community, however one would define it. I'm not sure, in other words, how this community could be adequately defined, not least because as a writer I'm not attempting to define it. Should I be concerned about this, about my own lack of interest in representing the community whose voice I've apparently co-opted for my stories? This question seems to hearken back to the issue of voice appropriation that was so trendy in the 80s, when scholars wondered whether the appropriation of a minority voice was an act of discrimination.

Initially, the side against appropriation declared that yes, it was discrimination to borrow a voice that didn't belong to one, because it depended on a kind of imperialist poaching of another's territory, resulting in an "inauthentic" representation of the original subject and thereby transforming that subject into an object. According to this logic, I couldn't write fiction from the perspective of, say, a black, heterosexual male because I'm a white, bisexual woman, facts that would limit my ability to reproduce his voice with any compelling accuracy.

But what if my intention as a slasher isn't to reproduce a gay male voice with any accuracy? What if my interest in writing slash is all about privileging my interests and desires, and thus marginalizing the group whose voice(s) I'm using to tell my story? Because, truth be told, that's what I'm doing. My stories skirt many key issues in queer representation; hell, even my sex is prettied up. But is this immoral? Unethical? Skeezy?

Maybe. On the other hand, as I suggested above, I don't think that there is some authentic voice to be reproduced. Queer voices take many forms, and I've seen fiction written by gay men that is more fluffy, less realistic, than mine. Moreover, I don't think that fiction needs to be about authenticity or realism unless it's deliberately purporting to do this. Otherwise, as a fiction writer, I don't have an obligation to anyone. Fiction isn't about pleasing the majority, or the majority of a minority, and often--maybe never--it's not even about doing the right thing, itself a hard-enough position to determine.

I'm not saying that people can't criticize the effects of a story or its social implications. The more you interrogate a text, the more power it has, so how could I, a writer, object to critical analysis, to reaction? But, to me, fiction isn't about ethics or morality, and the idea of writing responsible fiction, whatever that may be, makes me gag. Stepping back to consider the idea of a writer's responsibility to produce moral fiction, fiction that adheres to the beliefs and values of any group, rather than to the interests of the writer herself, I'll admit that I'd be distressed if some freak justified his creepy-to-criminal behavior based on something I'd written in a story. But would that be my responsibility? Hell, if someone is so whacked that he'd mistake fiction for reality, then he was fucked up long before I came along.

While the idea of a whacked criminal seems to slide a little far from my point about the ethics of accurate gay-male representation, I don't think it really does. In both cases, to do the apparently moral thing, I'd have to excise from my fiction those elements that please me as a writer, those qualities that satisfy my needs. While I can't deny the narcissism in my response, at the same time, any demand that I re-envision my fiction to suit the needs of an outside force stinks to me of censorship. Yes, I realize that it's "only" fanfic, but while fanfiction might not matter much to you, it does to me. My writing is about ripping holes in my own universe, about addressing issues that matter to me, and while my stories are distinct from me in many ways, they're also part of me, an extension thereof, since I created them. Therefore, you can certainly tell me what I can and can't do, but, baby, I sure as fuck don't have to listen. This is, in brief, why I feel that slash is a feminist act. It's about me doing what I want in a way that contradicts what I'm expected to do as a woman, to be a pain in the ass instead of the safe, good, quiet little girly.

To conclude: if some gay men want "realistic" gay fiction, then by all means let them write it. God knows I feel that there are issues that need to be addressed and redressed for the queer community at large. I object, however, when anyone implies that I have a duty to do this. The only voice that should matter to an author is her own. If that voice tells her to write mimetic fiction, reproducing in detail the lives of some gay men she knows, then cool. You go, girl. But if she's going to do that, let her do it because she wants to, because it satisfies some need in her, and only then.

Some Fan Comments at the Post

[vissy]:

God, don't tell me someone expects slash to be socially responsible and representative of the gay community. It's fiction and it's fantasy and it's fun. And it doesn't have much if anything to do with the gay community at large...

[snipped]

Don't know why slash writers should be obliged to be any more 'realistic' than the next fic writer. I hate to be melodramatic, but applying 'should' to any sort of fiction just brings up images of bookburning in my head. Let's just stick with grammar and continuity nits.

[[[revolutionaryjo]]]:

This is, in brief, why I feel that slash is a feminist act. It's about me doing what I want in a way that contradicts what I'm expected to do as a woman, to be a pain in the ass instead of the safe, good, quiet little girly.

Thank you. In two sentences you put brilliantly what I can't explain to most people in two hours.

[stresskitten]: The thing is, erotic fiction written by gay men, about gay men, for gay men, isn't necessarily all that "realistic" either. So I tend to think that the complaint is really not so much "this is not what gay men are like" as it is "this is not the type of erotic fiction that gay men like."

[darthhellokitty]: Hell, erotic fiction in general is not realistic. It's not supposed to be. If it were realistic, you'd have the noise the bed makes, and the need to scratch your nose in the middle of everything, and the wondering about how you look in your bra, and that funny smell from the catbox (and does he smell that too, and does he think you're a slob?), and the sudden desperate need to go pee afterwards. That's why it's fiction. We write, we put in the stuff we like, we leave out the stuff we find tedious.

[thamiris]:

The thing is, erotic fiction written by gay men, about gay men, for gay men, isn't necessarily all that "realistic" either. So I tend to think that the complaint is really not so much "this is not what gay men are like" as it is "this is not the type of erotic fiction that gay men like."

The thing is, "what gay men like" is a pretty broad category. Some gay men like fluffy romantic stories, as some slash fen have written them; others like their men stronger, etc. Same thing with women. And "realism" is a sticky issue when talking about slash, which doesn't present itself as a realistic genre.

[snipped]

*blinks* Do you ever get the feeling some people take this whole fanfiction thing way too seriously? I mean, jeez, it's for entertainment and such. Who said it had to be realistic?

LOL *raises hand* I'm totally guilty of taking the whole fanfiction thing seriously. Whether that's too seriously or not remains to be seen. But if I'm going to invest my energy in this thing, I may as well go whole hog.

'Course, I'm one of those people people who bitch, moan and roll their eyes at the various totally inaccurate scenes of drug consumption the media likes to throw at us.

Right. But are they under any *obligation* to represent the drug scene accurately, or even in a moral way? Arguably, tv is more open to censorship, or should be, or maybe should be, than conventional fiction, because its goals are different. Slash in particular is written by adults for adults, so we're dealing with a fanbase (overall and theoretically) that should be mature enough to recognize the gaps in reality presented within the stories.

[giogio]:

Right. But are they under any *obligation* to represent the drug scene accurately, or even in a moral way?

No, in fact it would probably diminish the visual impact of the scene except possibly in terms of its shock value (as was the case with Monet's Olympia). Most visual representations are not "realistic" (though they may be "naturalistic"---it's quite useful to clearly distinguish between the two while engaging in any kind of textual analysis), but rely on archetypes and "mythologies," for lack of a better term. They idealize and simplify, because archetypal imagery is idealized and simplistic by definition, and they are largely symbolic, which requires the viewer to be familiar with the symbols. As an example, pick a Renaissance-era painting of the Last Supper by any artist, then try to identify Judas Iscariot. Judas Iscariot is almost without exception portrayed as a near-caricature: the guy with the hooked nose, the beard, the "Jewish" look, if you will. Judas is the outsider, the foreigner, the heretic; he represents everything that is feared by your average god-fearing Renaissance citizen.

Those drug scenes I mentioned, as well as the majority of the slash I have read is not "realistic" in its portrayal of "reality." It instead relies upon a familiar system of symbols and archetypes to create imagery that is easily identifiable by and enjoyable to the viewer and therein lies some of the appeal of the arts in general, be they high or pop art: we like to be presented with an idealized picture because it removes us from the tedium of "reality." Even "naturalistic" art is very seldom "realistic" because "realism" as such doesn't appeal to us---we see it every day after all. I doubt that there are very many pieces in any medium that are actually representative of the "reality" they purport to portray. It is not the artist's obligation to portray reality either, it is the responsibility of the artist to create art. I may occasionally be annoyed by what I consider shoddy research or false representations, but in essence, I agree with you that the artist has no obligations in her portrayal of any given subject. How does the old saying go? Ars gratia artis. Art for art's sake.

[minotaurs]: Some people just seem to miss the point. I mean, it's "fiction". As in "not reality". Sigh. This is the same mind-set that many "activists" have, that everything must serve the Cause (and the word "Cause" must always be capitalized). This leads to a thing, any thing, being judged solely by how it relates to the Cause. I applaud your willingness to be yourself, and to write from yourself.

[king chiron]: I have to wonder if these same gay men also object to 'unrealistic' protrayals of gay culture, erotic or otherwise, written by gay men? Perhaps the crux of the issue is that they simply object to women writing about the gay male experience period?

[ ingridmatthews ]: I once told a friend that slash had nothing to do with queerness. She gave me Ye Olde Two-Headed stare.

[thamiris]: LOL I must admit that I'm of two minds about this. Part of me has always felt that slash was queer, in the way it upsets conventional gender boundaries, but now I'm wondering if that's really accurate or honest (which is what I was trying to say in my post).

[sidewinder]:

Ah, thank you...

Y'know, I was just beating myself up last night over some fic ranting I saw posted elsewhere, rather related to the topic of realism in slash, that had me in serious doubts as to the merits of much of my fiction. You've given me some balance on the issue.

Yes, I believe in realism to an extent--keeping the characters "real" to readers who know them from the original source, trying to research enough not to make glaring errors or mistakes in either the canon or setting, actions, etc. But I'm *not* necessarily trying to write real gay or bi men (sometimes the characters I'm writing aren't even human, so how can I insist on forcing human behavioral patterns on them?) I'm writing down the fantasies that keep me entertained in my head and hoping that other readers--other SLASH readers, primarily--will find them entertaining as well. Sometimes even they won't, given our interpretations of the characters may differ severely--but man, don't make me try to please first all fans of a source by meeting their expectations of characterization, AND all gay men out there looking for a "realistic" read.

[calligrafiti]:

Having just finished the collection Best Gay Erotica 2002, I've got to question the idea of a unified "gay community" voice. These stories were selected by two gay men and written, according to the author blurbs, by several other gay men. And they are as varied as any collection of stories I've ever read. The only commonality is that they all feature some level of gay sex.

Now since I'm a bi-ish female, and by definition not part of the gay male community, it could be I'm missing some inner-community signifiers. But the voices in general ranged from hard-edged to downright sappily romantic. One story in particular [spoiler alert!] had an older man die and ascend to a hardbodied heaven with the love of his live. [/spoiler] I could see this happening in a Clex fanfic and probably will.

Also, saying slash fanfic doesn't capture a community's voice suggests that slashers are a coherent community themselves, and while there's a certain acceptance of varied sexuality among slashers, I don't think we necessarily speak with a single voice. Yes, we're mostly female. But we're a lot of other things, too. Since I've started writing slash I've corresponded with transgendered, gay, bi, poly, lesbian, bi male, and, yes, gay male people. (And a whole heaping bunch of straight women.) Dividing people into communities by sexual preference (or skin color, or religion, or gender, or what have you) seems disturbing enough. What community should the transgendered daughter (at the moment) of a Korean dad and a Jewish mom claim? Then saying that people should only speak with the voice of that community raises far too many free speach flags for my comfort.

Futhermore, speaking only with the voice of ones community really messes with potential dialog. I learn through my writing. If I can't write something down in a way that makes sense to me I have to re-examine my assumptions about the topic. Then, when and if I get feedback about publically posted writing, I learn more about how my assumptions line up with the views of others. If the slash fanfic "community" is in some way distorting the voice of the gay male "community" then can't that tell us something? Maybe we aren't trying to represent that voice. But if we are, and we're getting it wrong, then perhaps we have false assumptions that can be addressed. If I'm writing dialog that no two gay men would ever say (although, being human, I don't think we could say two gay men would never do X. There's always someone.) am I doing it because I don't understand the voice of their community or because I'm disregarding it for the purpose of the story? Getting feedback from a member of that community will let me know if I'm screwing something up. Then I have a choice between authenticity and the needs of the story. It puts another arrow in my writing quiver. Also, seeing how an allegedly sympathetic community such as slash fanfic writers views their community could be a learning experience on the other side as well. Does our writing suggest that we see gay men as fluffy romantic kittens or sex obsessed size queens? Why? Is there a cultural assumption at work? Is the gay community's voice projecting what they want to the larger culture? If not, why not? Or is the larger culture simply disregarding it? It seems that there's an opportunity for information gathering in both communities.

[thamiris]:

Slashers are incredibly varied, and I think that sometimes we forget that, assuming that because one voice or a series of similar voices speak loudest, then those voices are right (I'm speaking here of voices in general, not any in particular). I'm surprised, in fact, that we haven't seen more breakdown between writers who like certain types of stories, more lists created that cater to specific tastes/audiences. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw that in the future.

[snipped]

I think that you make a lot of good points here. It makes sense to listen to other people's points of views, to take into account what we *could* be doing, because maybe what we're doing now isn't as rich as it could be (and is it ever?). But listening for the sake of self-education and betterment and changing because someone feels that we should are two different things. I like the idea of informed listening and informed reaction.

[musesfool]:

Interesting post.

I like to keep the politics of any sort out of my reading (unless I am, of course, reading *about* politics of one sort or another), and I'm still formulating my own response to fanfic as political, but I will say this:

The only realism that means anything to me in fiction is the emotional realism. If the emotions *feel* and ring true, then that's good. If they feel false, contrived, overblown or off, then that's bad.

In fanfiction, I have one other necessity - that the characters be true to themselves as I understand them. I can take some pretty wild leaps, if the writer is good enough to make the connection between the character onscreen and the character in the fic.

Out-of-character-ness is the biggest sin, imo, and one all of us are guilty of at one time or another.

Anyhoe, I had a vaguely similar experience recently regarding "realism" in fiction, when I tried to write a PWP set in ancient Babylon. You know I have a whore fascination, and the sacred prostitues of Ishtar were too good an opportunity to pass up, for me.

Yet when I presented the first scenes to my betas, there was much nitpicking about the historical accuracy of such details as "why would the hero care about the heroine's orgasm?" and "women were chattel then and you've got to write them as such" instead of them taking it as the fun, exotic erotica I was going for.

I still have not finished that story.

Not the same thing in the political sense, but in the sense of how realistic does a work of fiction *have* to be, if the main point is to entertain or arouse?

I will admit to preferring having my fantastic fiction grounded in verisimilitude. I'm far more willing to accept vampires and aliens and gay chocolate milk giving cows if the writer is at great pains to assure me that there are no mountains in Kansas, you can't get from Columbus Circle to Fulton Street in two stops on the 6, and that the sun really does set in the west, than I am if they get the little details of the world wrong, but when it comes to emotions and relationships, it's about what feels right.

After all, fiction isn't fact. But good fiction is truth.

[cmshaw]:

i hear what you're saying about both the impossibility of "fully representing the gay male community" and the need to use your own desires instead of trying to cater to men's wishes. i fully agree there. however -- to play a little devil's advocate -- i'm lazy. why should i, when i sit down to write a first-time slash story, reinvent the wheel? been there, done that, now i want to focus on the characters and the setting and start playing with the nuances of what makes this time different, what this shows me about the characters, what funny things can be said, etc. like using a show canon to give me characters in the first place, it's a shortcut to the things i'm really interested in writing.

the more you know about a thing, after all, the easier it is to sketch it in with only a few brushstrokes -- that's why i don't spend several pages introducing my canon characters, even when i'm writing for people new to a fandom. it's been my experience that it's the people who don't know anything about what gay men have said about their lives who infodump "gay" emotions into their stories. one way to impart "realism" is through unwanted details -- sort of a "look, it must be real or i wouldn't have to mention this" -- but there's another way, which is to simply be relaxed with a subject -- more "look, if i were making this up on the fly i'd be nervous about it". there's more realism in mentioning that the flim won't fly because the whooziwhig is broken than in spending two pages on the physics of how the whooziwhig makes the flimdanger hover, in my not-so-humble opinion, but that can't be done unless you can expect your readers to be unsurprised that it's the whooziwhig that hovers, and if you're still surprised by it, that's hard to convey.

then again, perhaps i'm just over here writing in a niche called "realism kink". :)

[azimuth]:

... when I write slash, I do not write about gay men, as in men who have a gay identity or live a gay lifestyle. I write about men having sex with men. Period. I think Foucault had something to meaningful to say about that, but it was a decade ago that I read anything brainy about this issue so don't quote me. ;-)

I think slash often elides gayness because it's not the forbiddenness of gay sex that attracts me (and maybe many slash writers) as much as it is just hot to see two men doing it or two particular men doing it. It is the whole issue of sex with the other partner rather than "gay" sex or "gay" men having sex that makes the story hot to me. Being gay usually never comes into play in my fictive worlds simply because in my fictive worlds, being gay is not the issue. Maybe being sexual is, maybe being sexual with this particular person is, but not the actual fact of it being between two men -- that is already assumed to be normal/ordinary. Maybe that is naive and socially irresponsible since we live in a homophobic world and every day gay men suffer because of their orientation. Writing for me is all about personal expression, and while I would like to imagine myself being on the leading edge of social and cultural revolution ;-) I'm not going to kid myself.

I think that action against homophobia is necessary but is slash fiction necessarily or even possibly part of that fight? Overtly political fiction never interested me for it seems a tad too preachy. I agree with you that I do not write slash as an expression of queer politics (especially since I ain't queer) but instead as a feminist act, or even only as an act of personal sexual liberation.

Maybe our slash is utopian because we have done away with a lot of the issues around sexual orientation.

Is utopian fiction bad?

Basically, I am not writing as part of some liberatory politics. I'm writing for my own jollies and those who might get jollies from reading my stories. I'm writing because it is personally fulfilling and titilating. I am not laying down some prescription for the future or writing out an analysis of the present or past. I'm expressing my own desires -- usually for like-minded people.

I think that if some people in the gay community don't like slash that's fine. It wasn't written with them in mind. It's usually written by women for women and represents our own desires -- however warped or liberated they might be. Hell -- most straight fiction has, for centuries, not represented many aspects of straight feminine sexuality objectively -- whatever the hell that might be -- but do we throw it all out?

One final note: this is fiction. It is larger than life, even when it is meant to capture real life. No one wants to read laundry lists and hear honest-to-god dialogue. We get that every day in real life. We want drama, not just more of the same-ol same-ol. So what if the characters are larger than life and the situations larger than life? That is why many of us read fiction in the first place.

Life, by comparison, is so . . . mundane.

[EW]:

Hey Tham

I get the same stick as an historian. Do I have to be a nineteenth-century missionary in order to write about them?? If I did, obviously we'd have no historians!

Personally, I think that slash fanfic is a genre like any other - it has its conventions, its emphases, the things that make people choose to write and read this genre instead of (say) cowboy/western fic. I'm a gay man who writes slash. I don't feel any need to address pressing social issues or write "gay fic". I'm not even writing "men" in the generic sense, so much as characters whose personalities are already established to an extent in a TV show. Within fandoms, writers seem to me to get lots more criticism for not writing "Daniel" as "Daniel", than not writing Daniel as a "man".

I've had lots of responses from readers who think I'm a woman. Every now and then, when a reader knows I'm a man, they write to complain that my slash is different from what they like, the sex is different, and it's because I'm a man. But I can't read a piece of slash fic and say definitively whether it was written by a woman or a man. Similarly, gay porn (which is popularly believed to be more how a man would write) is often written by women, and you can't tell. Similarly, a classic gay writer like Mel Keegan is actually a woman, and I didn't realise that for years.

I think slash is gender blind, in many ways, but that it has good and bad writing, like any other genre. There is just an overwhelming assumption that if you're writing slash, you're a woman, when actually you're following the conventions of a genre that you like.

Thinking about this a bit more, though, I do have a problem with the idea that men who sleep with men are somehow not gay, or even bisexual, but that it's a natural progression of friendship. This is particularly prevalent in fandoms like Sentinel and Stargate. I have many women friends, one of them I consider to be my closest friend, but I would never ever have sex with her. It seems to me that if you're going to buck canon and turn it into slash, or even extrapolate from very slashy canon, you still have to create believable characters with realistic motivations. Otherwise, I don't buy the story and I stop reading.

In the Sentinel, for example, Blair Sandburg is pretty much 100% heterosexual. (That's my take on the character, anyway.) But I could also see him as someone who experiments, might try anything once, and might even be hiding his bisexuality in the forbidding police environment. All of those explanations I might buy, with this particular character, but the author can't just be lazy and have Jim and Blair in bed with each other (unless it's PWP). I need to see how canon Blair ends up in bed with canon Jim.

I'm not sure if I'm making this point very clearly. But I think slash authors don't work hard enough at turning canon into slash sometimes

.

[blacksquirrel]:

I'm jumping in on this thread a little late, but I really wanted to comment on one little part of the original post that doesn't seem to have been discussed. First off, I'd like to say that I agree with most of the things you wrote - Slash is totally about whatever the authors need it to be about. However, I don't think that this is necessarily a reason to give up on using slash as a part of both queer and feminist politics/motivations/actions. What political goals would be served if all narratives about relationships portrayed them "as they really are," or as they are for some imagined representative center of a given community, or (even worse) as vehicles to talk about "community issues." Are relationships "as they really are" all that wonderful and liberatory? I completely agree that the media propagates misinformation about a number of different groups, but I fail to see the political utility of stories that endlessly reproduce the status quo, as though there were no possible alternatives. I don't feel that gay bashing or AIDS stories really help the public image of gay men. What they do is reproduce stereotypes of gay men as powerless victims and, despite authors' best efforts, this is a victim-blaming society wherein such tales less often seem to provoke sympathetic responses, but rather comments along the lines of "I am a good person. I don't want to endure pain and suffering. Therefore, if I can convince myself that those who suffer do so because they deserve it -because they are bad people - then I will be safe. I won't have to face the likelihood that I may encounter pain because those who suffer are bad while I am good."

I suppose my point is that queer politics does not necessarily benefit from the reproduction of relationships "as they are" or issuefic because real relationships for queer people today do not represent the "true essence" of what queer relationships are in some cosmic sense, but rather what queer relationships can be within a homophobic/racist/misogynist/exc/exc society. Perhaps the purpose of idealized fiction is to show the painful gap between what we have and what we *could* have.

One final comment on the appropriation of voice - rather than pulling out the identity politics flag and insisting that women can't write realistic gay men, wouldn't it be interesting to ponder what it means for hetero/homo/bi women to write their dream of what a relationship should/could/may be like using gay men? It seems strange that gay men should object to becoming ideal ego/ideal objects in the fantasy lives of so many women. What would society be like if more people chose ideal ego representations across racial/class/gender/sexuality lines in this manner? How many wealthy white men ever contemplate being a poor black lesbian?

Discussion at the Post Between an Anon and Fans

There was a very lengthy discussion among fans that was driven by an anonymous poster. Some excerpts:

[anonymous]:

But what if my intention as a slasher isn't to reproduce a gay male voice with any accuracy? What if my interest in writing slash is all about privileging my interests and desires, and thus marginalizing the group whose voice(s) I'm using to tell my story? Because, truth be told, that's what I'm doing. My stories skirt many key issues in queer representation; hell, even my sex is prettied up. But is this immoral? Unethical? Skeezy?

I can only wonder what your reaction would be to these same questions, if the main issue wasn't sexual orientation, but instead race.

[thamaris]:

I can only wonder what your reaction would be to these same questions, if the main issue wasn't sexual orientation, but instead race.

You seem to have left your argument at home, along with your name. The truth is, I feel that a writer owes no one anything. No, I wouldn't want to read or write a racist text, but I accounted for critique of narratives in my position above, so if someone wrote one, then I'd make noise. I endorse discussion; I just don't feel that *fiction* writers have any obligation to produce ethical material. Fiction serves any number of functions, and one of them is to provoke thought and discussion.

[anonymous]: My argument is that the gay men you mention are suggesting with the noise they're making that you *are* writing what's for them the equivalent of racist texts, and that perhaps you should find a better rationalization for it than the tired old "it's only art" argument Leni Riefenstahl's been making for the past fifty years.

[thamiris]:

My argument is that the gay men you mention are suggesting with the noise they're making that you *are* writing what's for them the equivalent of racist texts, and that perhaps you should find a better rationalization for it than the tired old "it's only art" argument Leni Riefenstahl's been making for the past fifty years.

Since you've assumed the advocacy position, what, then, do you suggest is the best approach to take when writing about bi or gay men? I'll all for dumping an old position *if* I'm presented with a compelling case. You're not giving me one here. If my position is homophobic, then show me how. Lecturing me with judgmental, underdeveloped points is wasting my time and yours.

[anonymous]: I'm not advocating any particular approach. My point is that the arguments you've presented don't wash, largely because, as you've freely admitted, you've changed horses in mid-stream, and suddenly decided that what you've been doing isn't what you thought it was all along, a queer act, but instead a feminist act; I usually find it difficult to be convinced by anything that identifies itself as rationalization after the fact, and I must admit that I'm somewhat baffled by the apparent ease with which you've retroactively altered your own motives for what you've already done. So maybe two suggestions *are* warranted: 1) if you're going to be doing something that requires a justification as lengthy as the one you've provided in your original post, it's probably a good idea to work out your justification *before* you start doing it, and then stick to that justification; and 2) if you're going to change the justification you offer for what you do, then maybe you should think about changing what you do as well; for example, if your current, revised motives for writing are, as you now state, feminist rather than queer, maybe you should now stop writing about gay or bi men, and avoid the voice-appropriation issue entirely by writing instead about women. And with #2 I don't mean to say that women should write only about women, or men only about men, queer about queer, bi about bi, and so on, because otherwise all we'd have is writers writing about writing, and what's more boring than that? It's just a suggestion that seems in line with your newly-minted priorities as an author, which I'm not entirely convinced are best served by your old, queer, pre-feminist subject matter. Then again, I'm only an old, queer, pre-feminist, so what do I know? Perhaps the brave new frontier of slash is to be found in stories of Clark Kent and Lex Luthor pausing to rim each other while doing research for a history project on the suffragette movement.

[pandarus]:

I don't think [thamiris is] claiming to have cold-bloodedly sat down at the beginning of her slash-writing career and decided that she wants to achieve such-and-such a political impact (be it queer or feminist) and thus will write in such-and-such a fashion, appropriating such-and-such a voice. And I think you know that, really, even if you feel that the wording of this journal entry can be interpreted in such a way. It's the other way round, surely? Thamiris writes slash. It's a creative act. Thamiris also, being an analytical & introspective kind of person with a brain as well as a soul & a libido, tries to consciously figure out what her various unconscious motives are for being attracted to this form of writing.

If I'm misconstruing the situation, I do apologise. Personally, I write slash (and gen, and a little het) and I'm puzzled over why I write slash. I'd pretty much concluded that the genders were incidental, and that the fact that the amorous stories I've written tended to be samesex was neither here nor there - it was simply a matter of being interested by a particular pair of characters & the dynamic between them. But I think it IS more complicated than that, in fact, and I think that the business of women writing about male/male sexual relationships can often have more to say about female sexuality than about male sexuality. And that's okay.

I mean, I don't much rate Martin Amis's book Night Train , which purports to be written from the POV of a woman; she's one of the butchest women I've happened across and she's called Mike, and knowing that she's written by a man you do find yourself thinking "this really isn't an authentic female voice". But if I believed that it were written by a woman I wouldn't have this reaction, because I'd just have to take the character on her own merits. And it may very well be that Martin Amis isn't trying to write 'a believable woman' - but even if he is and he's failed, then there's nothing wrong with the book being out there for people to read & judge for themselves what it's trying to do & whether it's successful.

There is a lot of bad writing out there in fanficland. There are a lot of worrying agendas out there, and a lot of ignorant and/or naive writers. Personally I find the fact that there's a tradition of misogyny in slash fic profoundly disturbing - this is often straight women distorting straight female characters & writing them in a non-representative way. What the hell's that all about, eh? But there's some excellent writing out there too, and that's why I continue to read slash.

As women, we grow up with movies and books and poems and plays and TV etc which show us things from a male point of view. Certainly this has shifted, but still the vast majority of art to which we've been exposed growing up has been androcentric. In films, the gateway character is generally male & the female characters are generally still portrayed from a male perspective - as objects rather than subjects. I don't think it's surprising that slash writers should appropriate this 'male' perspective for their writing, or engage in what is, effectively, authorial transvestisism; I think it's a natural extension of this whole honorary-bloke-for-the-duration-of-watch​ing-the-film/reading-the-book thing.

I mean, sometimes one writes slash because character A and character B have chemistry which begs to be explored, and it just happens that they're the same gender. Gunn/Wes and Clark/Lex are like this. Other times slash can be about something less narrative-driven, though, and be far more overtly tied up with the writer's own issues and desires - issues & desires that she'd rather address in a same-sex environment, because she doesn't want to be bogged down by the tired & reductive stereotypes that burden traditional heterosexual romantic fiction.

I also think within pornographical writing there are different agendas and responsibilities at play; I mean, I hear what you're saying about playing the race card, but the circumstances aren't actually parallel. Erotica isn't necesarily TRYING to be literal, or earnest, or politically correct - and this is as true of mainstream published het romances as it is of slash. In writing which has as it's entire raison d'etre nothing but porn, we get to play 'let's pretend' - because the text isn't trying to speak for all members of such-and-such a group of people, it's about the writer addressing his/her own particular desires as articulately as s/he can within what seems to them the best narrative framework. NC17 Slash is no more about accurate representations of male homosexuality than heterosexual porn films with girl/girl pairings are about accurate representations of female homosexuality. Sometimes the slash is realistic. Other times it's very clearly a game of here's-what-I'd-do-if-I-had-a-cock-for-a-d​ay - and there's really nothing wrong with that.

If this appropriation of voice is a case of empowered people taking the voice away from disempowered people & misrepresenting them (especially if it's in a context which has repercussions for he misrepresented parties), then okay, you've got big fat ethical issues to deal with & it's A Bad Thing. But women writing about The Gay Sex - that isn't a case of gay blokes being disempowered. It's a case of women expressing their sexuality and their creativity in an unlikely but very satisfying fashion. Which is a good thing, I think. I mean, yes, it's subverting masculine authority and all that shit in the name of hot boy-on-boy action, but it's not exactly damaging the patriarchy in any tangible way or having a negative impact upon ANY gay men.

[anonymous: Believing what you're doing is harmless doesn't make it so (okay, so I maybe I *did* call Abdul a Paki, but hey, I didn't *mean* anything by it). Perhaps the gay men Thamiris mentions at the beginning of her original post are suggesting that it IS harmful to SOME gay men, even if they're not speaking with the one single authoritative gay male voice. And I do find it curious that, while claiming to believe that writers have no ethical responsibility, Thamiris takes such pains to declare herself ethically kosher, arguing that because she's doing this for feminist reasons and because there's no unified gay voice to misappropriate she's actually doing something good, or at least nothing worse than some fluffy gay male writers who are just as guilty as she is. As for slash being a subversion of male authority, if you think a group of women devoting most of their time to watching, talking about and writing about largely male-produced programs on mass-market American commercial television is subversive of male authority, then I guess I won't be holding my breath for the revolution.

[pandarus]:

Believing what you're doing is harmless doesn't make it so (okay, so I maybe I *did* call Abdul a Paki, but hey, I didn't *mean* anything by it).

*blink* Um. No, indeed, it's perfectly possible to do harm without believing you are doing harm. However, I must reiterate that I don't think the power dynamics at play between white/black directly parallel those at play between (gay)woman/gay man, so playing the race card doesn't actually add weight to your point.

The problem is that I can't imagine any circumstances in which a badly written piece of erotic fanfiction, or a well-written piece of erotic fanfiction which did not represent such-and-such a viewpoint, COULD possibly be 'harmful' to any gay men. I mean, irritating, yes; I've read stories and been annoyed/appalled by the poor characterisation and/or bad writing. But how this could be harmful still baffles me. I've shuddered at the distortion & wussification of characters, and at US writers making a cock up of trying to write British character voices, and at all manner of other things. But it doesn't HARM me. I'm not trying to be combative about this - I sincerely don't see how it could be harmful.

Do I understand that you're saying that Slash IS harmful? If so, in what way? And is it all slash, or just slash written by women?

[anonymous]:

Once again, I must reiterate: your inability to imagine how something might be harmful doesn't mean it can't be harmful. And once again, I must point to the gay men Thamiris mentions in her original post, who you've conveniently ignored. Also, given all you've said, I don't think you've really "dismissed" the subverting-male authority argument; it seems very much a part of your, and Thamiris', position. Which leads me to my principal objection, not to slash itself, but to the fairly prevalent argument that it's some kind of semi-radical feminist culture-jamming activity: it's my belief that this argument actually buys into straight male authority's harmful construction of queerness, by acting as though queerness is so inherently aberrant or unnatural that simply by introducing queer elements into the products of mass culture you're doing something subversive, naughty, cheeky or clever. At this point, slash is about as subversive as a story about a straight man who pretends to be gay so he can share an apartment with two female friends. As for the "lesbians" in het porn, I don't watch het porn, so I can't really comment.

[snipped]

If writing hot boy-on-boy porn is the point, the "end in and of itself", then why is it hot boy-on-boy porn ***about heterosexual characters from TV shows****!!!!!!!?

Besides, you're missing my point, which isn't that slash is all the things you say I've said it is, but that some of those who write it have said that it is those things, and that I object to some of the implications of that position. I personally have no problem with slash per se: my problem is with slash writers who use suspect and at times self-contradictory arguments to put themselves on some higher ground where they can dismiss those who do have problems with it.

And speaking of those people, your argument that slash has no social impact because it exists in some sort of hermetically-sealed community *once again* ignores the gay men Thamiris mentions in her original post. (Those poor lost boys--I'm really beginning to miss them.) And as for your cornflakes analogy, I think the crucial difference is that cornflakes aren't human beings, and therefore aren't likely to have any objections to being eaten. I've been called a lot of things in my life--why, just the other day a perfect stranger called me a fucking homo--but I've never been called a cornflake.

Fan Comments Elsewhere

[flambeau]:

The connection between men, realism, and slash came up twice in private conversations recently, it's on the Symposium message board, it spread to the fca-l discussion list, and it's in a post in thamiris' livejournal. Clearly a happenin' topic. I just want to say meh and wave my hands in the air a bit in a half-hearted way. Truthfully, I've been growing less and less enamored of the notions that slash has to live up to some kind of realistic gay man standard, some kind of realistic guyness standard, and even waits for the thunderbolts some kind of realistic characterization standard.

Not to say I don't appreciate, and generally prefer, stories that work with some of these elements, especially the last one. I often do, and I'm usually not so interested in fiction where Duncan transforms into a pink unicorn and Methos needs to be fucked every two hours for obscure immortal biology reasons and they have fourteen children called things like Esmeraldina and Precious, because really. But. This realism thing is different for everyone, this characterization thing is different for everyone, and the freedom not to be realistic and to get the fantasies out there is kind of cool.

And I don't think the purpose of slash is to write realistically about men. Or about anything else. If slash has a purpose, I guess it is whatever the purpose of every individual writer happened to be at the time of writing, possibly added to the purpose of every single reader aiming to get something specific out of her reading, so yeah, I'm sure that's in there somewhere--but I think mostly what's in there is fantasy fulfillment, and the fantasy may or may not include things that the writer and/or reader define as realistic. (Please note that fantasy does not necessarily mean sexual fantasy; I'm using it to mean the event the writer wants to see happen, whatever it is.)