Two Men Are Better Than One: Why Women Like Slash
| Meta | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Two Men Are Better Than One: Why Women Like Slash |
| Creator: | Su Nact |
| Date(s): | April 9, 1999 |
| Medium: | online "academic" paper |
| Fandom: | slash, X-Files |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | Archived Copy at the X-Files University; WebCite |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Two Men Are Better Than One: Why Women Like Slash was written by Su Nact as part of "X-Files University, School of Slashology/Gay Studies, College of Interdisciplinary Studies" where fans wrote articles and essays devoted to examining the fandom surrounding the TV show X-Files.
The essay includes MANY quotes from fan's essays, personal emails, and also from academic books. There is an extensive bibliography at the bottom of the page.
For additional context, see Timeline of Slash Meta and Slash Meta.
Some Topics Discussed
- slash
- slash as underground, transgressive, dangerous, and fun
- Women and Slash - slash as a way for women to explore sexuality and social expectations
- The X-Files, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, The Professionals
- television and film as powerful mediums
- Slash vs. Gay
Excerpts
"'Slashing' is the process of reading, critiquing, and rewriting media 'texts' -- television shows and movies -- to reveal and explore homoerotic relationships between male characters," writes Patricia Lewis (2). Slash is fan-written fiction, based on popular series, that features romantic and/or sexual interaction between characters of the same sex. Slash is primarily male-male erotica, written by and for heterosexual women. However, as TV series arise that feature strong female characters, slash fiction now includes female-female romance. As fan-fiction reaches a wider audience via the internet, slash is now written and read by males and females of all sexual orientations. In the twenty years since its inception, slash has established itself as a diverse and complex literary genre and has spawned many sub-genres and cult followings of its own.
But slash is also a culture, a community where it's okay for nice girls to say, "fuck," or to imagine the man's being on the bottom. It's a mind-set where men can enjoy being sensitive and soft without being denigrated as "weak". It's a fantasy-world where love is stronger than social morays, personal inhibitions, or professional enmity. It's Romeo and Juliet. It's an imagined place where it's safe for a man's passion to override his self-control, where he has permission be forceful, even brutal, without fear of hurting his lover. It's sex and danger for fun.
"Slashers" are viewers sick of the "girl getting thrown over the back of the hero's horse and swept off into the sunset," or of Kirk seducing and dropping the bimbo of the week (Wombat, Dec. 12). They're readers who know there was more going on between Ahab and Queequeg than the editors led you to think. They're sick of heroes that don't express their feelings. They're women who want heroines that can be sexual without being "reduced to" sex objects; slash heroines have lusts of their own and don't need men to satisfy them. They're women who can imagine themselves commanding, able take what they lust for and to have their voices heard. They're guys who know how to take a joke, who enjoy playing the other side for a while. They're consumers of pop culture who aren't satisfied simply to consume, but wish to participate, expound, revise. They are cultural revisionists who deconstruct the social construction of gender
Slash is a literary genre, so solidly outside the mainstream that many slashers define it as "the dark side" of fiction. Like New York City's drag balls, slash fiction is virtually unknown outside of the close-knit circle of its rabid followers and its equally rabid opponents. Slash commentary is peppered with jargon that adds to the sense of a select community by separating the "newbies" from the "knowbies". The name "slash" itself comes from code: a "/" placed between characters' initials signifies romantic involvement. As renowned slasher Brenda Antrim writes, "I kinda like being underground - there's a bit of the rebellious streak in me that has never quite grown up" (Dec. 1).
Part of this secrecy is due to the fact that most fan fiction could be considered, by definition, copyright violation. Furthermore, the proliferation of "trolls," who e-mail the authors to express violent opposition to homoerotic fiction, encourages "slashers" to keep a low profile. This sense of "us against the world" so prevalent in the community itself is also a common theme of the fiction (Antrim, Nov.27). That many slashers publish exclusively on private mailing lists reflects fan-fiction's ability to create community through shared experience (Clerc, 42). Clerc, an analyst of internet culture, uses this intimate mode of discourse to distinguish between "'report talk,' a distinctly male mode of discourse that values information and independence, and 'rapport talk,' a female model of communication that stresses connections to others" (44). [ Janis C ] points out that many women writers use the characters as mouthpieces to share personal emotions and experiences. She postulates that emotions such as fear, lust, rage, and sorrow carry more weight in fiction if they are expressed by male characters and cannot therefore be dismissed as a character's weakness due to his sex. Brenda Antrim has this to say in defense of the social and literary functions of slash:
"Like all fan fiction, [slash] exists in the shadows between the canonical universe owned by the corporations and the well lit world of organized fan activities. . . . But as to where fanfic, and especially slash, fit in the literary tradition -- . . . it's out on . . . the forward edge of the battle area . . . . There are no boundaries but the writer's imagination and ability, no rules, no restrictions, nothing to fear and nothing to hide . . . And if that is the training ground for a new generation of writers, or simply a place where adults who've been discouraged from creativity in their workaday lives can come to play, it's still a good place to be. For many, it's a safe place, where they can be themselves and lay down the masks. For me, it's a place where I can discover things about myself by dissecting fictional characters and seeing what makes them tick" (Antrim, Nov. 27).
Another theory is that women write and read slash to attain emotional satisfaction and release. Brenda Antrim writes, "I think everyone feels like the underdog once in awhile, and psychologically it's appealing to see others fighting prejudice or rejection and winning soundly (or, conversely, losing in a way that makes the reader feel a kinship with the character)" (Nov. 27). The revisionism inherent in fan-fiction can be a way of "putting things right with the world," re-telling the story as the fan would like it told. Women who are frustrated with the emotional isolation that popular culture associates with heroism can find it satisfying to imagine "two lonely men" coming together as partners, bound by a shared goal (Cortese). [Janis C] writes in her essay, "If I Look Like This, Will You Listen To Me Now?" that, "contrary to the standard (male-informed) dictum that a writer should 'write what you know,' slash writers, and possibly women in general, write what we need."
...a woman who has felt demeaned by her own partner might find it satisfying to imagine cop partners Bodie and Doyle from "The Professionals" discovering intimacy within a framework of mutual respect. Slash flies in the face of the "boys club" frontier mentality shown in "Star Trek" and countless cowboy buddy shows. The exclusion of women in such shows implies that partnership is by definition platonic, that mutual respect, loyalty and trust preclude romantic desire.
Slash fiction threatens popular conceptions of masculinity by exposing within the fraternal order of individualistic adventurers the preexistent suppressed homoerotic undertones. Because slash threatens the patriarchal power structure, playing on masculine fears of intimacy, slash can be humorous and fun for the fans, predominantly women, who write it. However, many slash writers vehemently protest that placing their characters in homoerotic situations does not make them any less masculine. Marjorie Garber, writing about male transvestitism, asserts that it can affirm masculinity; a man creates a separate, "female" persona to distance himself from his own "feminine" feelings (4). He plays at being a woman to provide contrast, to convince himself of what he is not, and thereby "prove" his security in his manhood (4). Slash fiction is a kind of transvestitism: authors and characters can slip out of gender stereotypes and explore the richness of their full emotional potential, because it's "safe." It's fiction - it's just pretend. MJ illustrates this point in the introduction to her story, "The Inexorable Sadness of Pencils [1]," by writing, "Skinner and Mulder don't belong to me. . . . I'm just letting them out of their cage for a while so they can have a good time. I'll feed them cookies and milk and give them a nap before I send them home." Fans can "play" at assuming, and having characters assume, a multitude of gender roles, and then return to their everyday lives, satisfied that they do not have to subscribe to any of them.
Slash fiction is not simply "women who get turned on by gay men." It is a community based on a shared way of viewing the world. It is a mode of discourse that speaks to a new "masculine ideal"; contrary to Dyer's assertions, male attractiveness is no longer defined by the man's power and logic (267). The hero of slash fiction retains strength and nobility that are not threatened by his capacity for sensitivity, caring or gentleness. Through identification with male characters who achieve wholeness of personality through transcendence of gender archetypes, women realize their own capacity for experience that traditional "femininity" denies them.