Violence in M/M Vs. F/F

Meta
Title:	Violence in M/M Vs. F/F (ask itself did not have a title)
Creator:	fopperyy
Date(s):	February 3, 2017
Medium:	online
Fandom:
Topic:	Femslash, Slash, Purity Culture
External Links:	Violence in M/M Vs. F/F
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Violence in M/M Vs. F/F was a topic sparked by a tumblr ask sent by fopperyy to profujoshi. The ensuing discussion touched on the history of femslash in anime fandoms, a perceived shift away from dark themes in F/F fanworks due to purity culture and anti-shipping debates, and the belief that this was now happening within m/m slash spaces.

Original Ask

fopperyy asked: Hi! I wanted to address an ask you answered a few days ago about violence in m/m vs. f/f. I think you're absolutely right, that there is more violence in m/m content because men are the subjects & most people are socialized to recognize and accept men as more violent (as well as better accustomed to withstanding violence.) Part of what makes the argument of the other ask so ridiculous, is that this entire anti movement paints itself as coming from a place of social awareness, (cont.)

comes from a place of sexism. I mentioned how people are accustomed to the imagery of men in dark, violent situations; male characters go through this stuff all the time! (Not just in m/m) In contrast, female characters generally aren’t allowed to go through disturbing situations and are certainly not allowed to be the cause of them. It comes back to girls being sweet, soft, and innocent in a way that tumblr often misguidedly perpetuates. (cont.)

The fact is, women are just as dark and disturbing as men bc all our minds work in the same way, and there ARE women abusers and women rapists and, yes, EVEN f/f rape and abuse. It exists in real life, so I think the fact that there is practically NO fictional media portraying it is far more telling than the fact that m/m rape fic exists. In fact, I hate to pull out the survivor card or, but I was raped and abused brutally by another girl as a young teen. I want to read manga & stuff (cont.)

about similar situations, because everyone enjoys reading about characters they can relate to. It was completely disheartening when I was younger to not be able to EVER find a similar situation portrayed. It made me feel like I was some extreme statistical outlier. However, I wasn’t. It is simply that media & fandom & society doesn’t like to show violent, disturbing girls; it’s a way of keeping girls ‘palatable’. If you’ve ever read/watched any f/f content (I’ve read a LOT tbh), a lot of (cont.)

the characters are the same worn-out stereotypes doing the same worn-out things, because variety is not encouraged when it comes to women. It’s literary same-face syndrome. Anyway, I’ve ranted quite a bit. My final point is: social awareness has no law over fiction. However, if you really want to play the social issues card, at least understand what it is you’re talking about. Thanks for putting up with all the asks! -fop.

I don’t have much to add to this because you’ve covered everything so thoroughly. Speaking just from a media standpoint, it’s a shame that we see so few female villains and even when we do, they are usually objectified or their character traits all revolve around seduction and sex. There’s just no variety.

And in the real world, ofc, denying that women can be horrible or punishing them less than men for the same crime is just doing them a disservice. Putting women on a pedestal is harmful too and is especially horrible for the people who suffer abuse at the hands of a woman.

Comments

[lvxiuwendono]
Huh? It may be a generational or cultural thing, but ever since I started getting involved in femslash fandom rape and violence has been the favourite plots, be it subtle, character driven portrayals like Shoujo Kakumei Utena or explicit rape fantasy fanservice like Cross Angle or Valkyrie Drive. Like, favourite plots of porny Sailor Moon fiction is “Sailor Soldiers raped by female villians”. Slash and femslash are exactly the same.

[fangasmagorical]
So far as I can tell, it is generational. Femslash used to be very much the same as mslash in the nineties and early 2000s, in terms of darkness and villainy.

However, the recent reactionary backswing to purity politics in fandom which is only just now reaching mslash, completely wiped out all concept of female villains in fandom years ago.

First, let’s look at, as you mentioned, Sailor Moon. Specifically, I am thinking of the once immensely popular (though now rather less so) shipping of Chibi-usa and Hotaru’s villainous forms. Although the villain x villain version of the ship lives on, as does the good x good version, I remember very clearly how popular Mistress 9 x Chibi-Usa fics, art, and fandom activity were.

And in those pairings of a villain and a protagonist, there were extensive studies- both fetishistic and not- of rape, abuse, manipulation, grooming. It was dark, it was violent, it was all over the place.

And we knew, of course, that it was bad. We were shipping villains, after all. We knew what was going on was horrible. BUt it was also engaging, interesting, and in my case, proof that people like me (abuse and rape victims) existed.

These fics were some of the ways I found comfort and catharsis after I was raped, which is why the memory of them sticks so much. And why the stark absence of newer works in the same vein is so easy for me to see.

Fast forward a couple of decades and look at another prominent magical girl series that is rife with opportunity to explore horrible subjects: Madoka Magica.

Here we have a set up that begs for the same treatment: a dark haired, purple themed girl who does horrible, dangerous things out of a misguided, manipulative, dangerous love for a pretty pink innocent.

And yet, any time art and fiction in that vein bubbled up in the (female dominated parts of) the fandom, it led to immense harassment campaigns. People being driven off their sites and rings for daring to suggest that the all-too-canon obsession and pain Homura experiences, and the total lack of consequence for her any action, might lead to the inevitable abuse that, somewhat ironically, was itself canonized in the final movie.

The fights were immense, and they were brief. Within a few months, the shift was well and truly complete. Discussing the dangerous, villainous aspects of Homura’s character was all but illegal. The only way it was acceptable was if you were decrying the entire show as “abuse porn.” Certainly you could not make fic or art on the subject.

It happened with other fandoms too, nearly simultaneously. I remember, for example, the entire Vriska debate in homestuck: another character who was openly and unapologetically awful, and whose awfulness it was not acceptable to explore unless you were spending twice as much energy decrying- loudly, aggressively- how bad she was and how anyone who enjoyed her was also criminally violent.

Personally, I assume it was a manifestation of the increasing social awareness of fandom and tumblr, taking an unfortunate turn.

This purity-obsessed backlash never really hit on male characters, and male/male ships.

Until now.

With female characters and female ships having been driven into submission almost uniformly these days, what’s left is male characters and ships.

Which is where modern anti-shippers come in, screaming not only about how good (how obedient, how cleansed) f/f ships are (because any trace of villainy has been stripped form them for almost a decade), but how anyone who ships filthy, dirty m/m is dangerous and criminal too.

Which is odd, for a group claiming to be socially just, since they… habitually refer to queer ships and criminal and disgusting.

BUt homophobia is cool when you’re using it to punish women authors/artists for not conforming to ever-tightening restrictions on what they are allowed to do and create.

[rhodanum]
This touches on a TON of my issues with fandom. In order:

I noticed the cleansing of femslash of any ‘impure’ elements over the years. The end-result can be seen clearly on Tumblr, where you see femslash ships and dynamics constantly being referred to in soft, gentle, twee, pastel terms, again and again and again, no matter the ship. More power to people who enjoy that, but the problem is that it’s usually the only sort of presentation you run into because it’s the only sort of presentation allowed to exist without some sort of backlash. Same thing about people going on and on about how ‘perfect’ and how ‘pure’ femslash ships are. It just sets my teeth on edge, not just because it’s a classical manifestation of purity culture in action, but because perfection and purity as tropes bore me to absolute death!

Give me female villain/heroine ships with absolutely nothing gentle about them! Give me female anti-heroines that are as flawed and filled with mistakes and jagged edges as the archetypal male Byronic Heroes, who constantly fuck up and wreck their relationships, because they can’t deal appropriately with emotional intimacy! Give me middle-aged, hard-faced, ruthless lady Generals who have short-term, no-strings-attached relationships with woman after woman after woman in the Legions, because they lost their great love years ago and nothing else comes close. Give me femslash ships with faults, with sharpness, with cruelty, with control, with Stockholm Syndrome, with irredeemable mistakes. Don’t spend all your time trying to cram anodyne flower-crown fluff down my throat, because all it’ll do is just make me tell you to go piss up a rope.

The fact that purity bullshit moved to M/M ships after the F/F contingent was suitably ‘tamed’ isn’t any surprise to me at all. You can see it right now, with the constant shouting about what people are ‘allowed’ to write in the slash fics. Brutality? Violence? Sexual violence? Dark kinks? All of it right out. Until what you’re left with is the same thing as with femslash – an endless parade of ‘this ship is so pure uwuuuu’ and ‘this ship is so healthy uwuuuu’ and ‘this ship is so balanced uwuuuu’ with almost nothing else, unless you’re willing to open yourself to some heavy-duty harassment and denigration. To be clear, my issue isn’t the existence of healthy, balanced ships – I believe in variety being what gives meaning to life and variety also being what makes fandoms interesting. Meaning Cinnamon Roll ships co-existing with much darker ones, without a constant trend to make the latter disappear, by any means necessary, until the former dominates across fandoms.

[cyanwrites]
We see the result of f/f cleansing in the Star Wars fandom too. I’m a darkfic writer myself; I find the exploration of dark themes to be enjoyable and cathartic, so I am all for dark f/f ships… but they don’t exist. Even f/f ships that by right should be dark are tweaked into saccharine candyfloss wholesomeness - that is, when they don’t exist for the sole reason of blocking a ~problematic~ m/f ship.

Just the other day, I read a post praising Ahsoka/Barriss as a wholesome lesbian ship. In canon, Barriss turns out to be a domestic terrorist who murders civilians and children, then frames Ahsoka for the bombing which gets her expelled from the Jedi Order and almost executed. However, I have only seen cutesy lesbian handholding headcanons featuring these two, nothing exploring Barriss’ point of view as she turns from the Light Side to terrorism or Ahsoka’s dawning realisation that her (girl)friend has framed her for mass murder… And most of the time, Ahsoka/Barriss is not even written into fics but is merely used to counter the (consensual, respectful, loving, but technically with an age difference and therefore ~unacceptable~) m/f Rexsoka.

I have also see Ahsoka/Ventress mentioned, which ought to be an even darker ship - a bitter ex-Jedi and a murderous ex-Sith teaming up to solve crime? Sounds awesome to me! But again, it’s only used to foil Rexsoka (and erase Ahsoka’s canon bisexuality). The fact that Ventress has maimed or murdered several of Ahsoka’s clone friends is never mentioned, nor is their age difference apparently an issue.

Not only are there no dark f/f ships in space, f/f ships apparently cannot by definition be dark even when they are. Age differences are hugely problematic in m/f ships, suspect bordering problematic in m/m ships, and… just… not mentioned… in f/f ships, nor canon gaslighting or other darkfic staples that would tarnish fandom-favourite f/f ships. Mentioning any of these (canon!) things gets you accused of lesbophobia.

I would love to read f/f darkfic in the Star Wars universe, but it just. doesn’t. exist. And it’s immensely frustrating.

[grison-in-space]
YES. THIS. Is this what the fuck has been happening in f/f heavy fandoms? Because I don’t want it and I have a fucking hell of a time finding f/f that doesn’t do it in pretty much every fandom in which I fucking look!

Good lord, this makes me want to go write Nebula/Mantis out of sheer spite–and they’re not even fucking dark, they’re fucking adorable, Nebula is the most ridiculous murder baby, but like. Like.

-endless screaming- I don’t want cute, pure f/f! I want fucking women, adult women, with depth to their backgrounds and hopes and fears and ridiculous blind spots and spite and rage and malicious joy and passion and the full goddamn spectrum of human emotions! I want women with enough personality to sink a fucking battleship by looking at it funny!

I want women who are fucked up and don’t know it and women who are fucked up and do and women who have never encountered such madness and are struggling to cope! I want women who feel things vividly and women who feel like nulls and worry about it sometimes, women who have been trained their whole lives to look after the emotions and comfort of everyone else in the room and women who can’t read those things if you held up the biggest magnifying glass in the world!

I want jealous women and women who try to control their feelings but can’t quite and women who have emotion sneak up on them, unexpected, and who didn’t intend anything this ridiculous to happen to them! I want insecure women who can’t work out how to ask for what they want! I want emotionally clueless women who don’t know what it is they even want!

I want fully-fledged fucking human beings with their feet under them and minds like pointed arrows or like warm clouds with a sting in the tail or like water over rocks or like roaring train tracks, minds that you ride alongside and go “Oh. Oh. It’s you! This couldn’t be anyone else!”

Because the only way you get pure and perfect–and if you hear me spitting those words with contempt and spite, good–is by being bland, so you don’t upset or even annoy anyone. And sure, I ain’t gonna point out flaws in that, but I’m not going to love it or bother seeking it out, either. Give me some goddamn flavor in your f/f, and I’ll love it so much I won’t ever give it up.

-grumbles- I knew I should write that Pitch Perfect Aubrey/Chloe thing in the back of my head–because you can’t tell me that a woman so wound up and anxious that she projectile vomits onto a stage in her anxiety and loses her goddamn mind when her bestie imprints on someone else isn’t hiding something in the back of her mind that she’s gotta deal with. But the whole fandom felt soft and fluffy and totally, utterly devoid of stakes to me, and I was scared to write it because I felt out of place, and that was a mistake. I should have tried to get what was in my head onto paper.

It’s bad fucking enough that canons tend not to give us enough emotional depth and complexity in our female characters to work with and build off of, for those of us who’d rather not have to fill those in from scratch. But it’s worse that we suck that characterization and that personality out of so much f/f. It’s there in gen and it’s there in het and hell, even some m/m writers know how to write women well; it’s been driving me nuts over the years that I have such a hard time finding f/f I love except f/f written as cis-swaps, and this lays out a huge part of the reason why.

[poemsingreenink]
This answers…so many of my questions about femslash.

Like, I kept wondering “Where is all the dark stuff? Why is everything so…pink and sweet, and not that weird Utena pink. Not that, what the hell is going on pink? That pink that looks like Dolores Umbridge approved it. There is a strange amount of no sex happening. Is that me? I mean, I’ve finding it, but it’s harder to find. Is that just because there’s fewer people who write femslash?

I like horror movies. I have to be in a very particular mood to watch a Hallmark movie because they are usually very sweet, and I don’t always want that. Of COURSE I was going to look for dark femslash.

And some of what’s said above eerily lines up with what straight women would sometimes tell me in college, “Oh two women is the perfect relationship! There are no problems! No fighting!”

How about this, we slash Dani from Midsommar with one of the women in the Swedish Death Cult. Flower crowns, and dark femslash.

Bing, bang, boom.

See, there’s a solution to every problem.

[poemsingreenink]

Okay but like. Can we acknowledge there’s a difference between allowing conflict and character flaws in f/f ships and selling child porn, rape fic, and intense abuse as Super Hot and Sexy?

Like, the fandom’s dichotomy of f/f into “absolutely perfect flawless pure couple” and “horrific toxic trash that should be visibly punished” is a problem, and I often see sapphic characters and relationships demonized for pretty normal drama. And the further than fanfiction concept that women are incapable of rape and abuse is obviously a societal issue.

But this post seems to conflate the two above problems with general “hey fic that encourages pedophillic/rape/etc. is bad” sentiments, and pretty much everyone I know who holds those sentiments thinks it’s equally bad regardless of the genders involved. And I think the question of fetishization, e.g. straight men being overly interested in lesbian torture porn and straight women being overly interested in m/m torture porn, is still relevant.

Like, I know a lot of people reblogging this are way more concerned with the actual problems of purity in femslash, but this post lends itself too easily to “writing smut about a ten year old and distributing it to adults to jack off on is totally cool, actually,” and it makes me really uncomfortable.