Why gay stories? (not a complaint)

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Title:	Why gay stories? (not a complaint)
Creator:
Date(s):	May 14, 1997
Medium:	Usenet
Fandom:	Star Trek: TOS
Topic:
External Links:	Why gay stories? (not a complaint), Archived version
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Why gay stories? (not a complaint) is a post by Pat (and the resulting discussion) on Usenet at alt.startrek.creative.

Some Topics Discussed

• why are fans interested in slash, why do these fans tend to be women?
• focus on Star Trek
• the differences among slash, gay fiction, and "published slash"
• the differences between how men write and how women write
• how emotion is portrayed in slash, in other kinds of stories
• equality and power between characters and what this means for writing and desire

Original Post

This discussion [about fanfiction preferences] has gone on for an unbelievably long time without evolving into anything more interesting than who likes what (IMHO). In a group like this, I'd have expected somebody to beat me to the more interesting question of *why* who likes what.

Specifically, why do straight women like/write gay stories? It isn't just an ASC phenomenon. I have a book on Japanese Manga (Comics) pointing out that gay story lines are commonest in the comics aimed at adult women. Am I the only person who thinks that this in itself is much more interesting than whether ASC members are free to post whatever, to killfile other things, or should buy better internet subscriptions?

Maybe we can get a useful discussion for writers out of this controversy. If you think it's hopeless, feel free to

disregard.

Fan Comments

[Kamin]
Honey, you've just hit on one of the great mysteries of the universe. While I don't know the women who write the slash stories here (and I wish I did, some of the P/K stories are better than the show) that most of my female friends are devout followers of fag-hag-dom. I've asked many of the women who play hag to my fag, and none of them really gave me a good answer. My sister came the closest by saying that gay men are "sweet." Whatever that means. I've seen _Kinzuna_, which you might be familiar with, if you like animé. It's a story of two gay men, with the traditional animé plot devices, but it is of a sort of genre marketed towards Japanese women. "I suppose it's one of the universal mysteries which you could either never know, or which would drive you mad if you did." All I do know is that I enjoy the slash stories..except G/B, which I find a little...weird...Keep writing and posting honeys, I'll always be here to read (I am going to post a few soon).

[Macedon]
Good question, and something I've asked several people (here and elsewhere). And yes, slash isn't just an a.s.c phenomena. There's also some published "slash" which I don't think is quite the same thing as gay fiction (although it's sometimes shelved with gay fiction). The *tone* is different. That's not, to my mind, a critique or a virtue, simply an observation.

For whatever it matters, I happen to be straight, but I roomed with a gay guy (also a writer) in Atlanta for three years. Ian introduced me to gay fiction. It just doesn't *feel* the same to me as slash. Now, by "gay fiction" as opposed to "slash" I mean mostly stories about gay men written by (gay) men, or about lesbians written by lesbians. But there are certainly stories written by women about gay male characters which *feels* more like gay fiction: stuff like Mary Renault's THE CHARIOTEER, or Ellen Kushner's SWORDSPOINT. (Note that Renault was herself a lesbian, though.) But there's also published stuff that feels more like slash: e.g. Patricia Nell Warren, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Misty Lackey. It doesn't have the same tone as, say, Christopher Bram or Robert Ferro or David Leavit (sp?). And no, I don't think it's *just* the gender (and orientation) of the author, although that's obviously a contributing factor. (I don't belong to the club that says a woman can never write a convincing male character or a man can never write a convincing female character. It's simply harder, I think. Takes more "homework" on the part of the author.)

When J and I sat down to write "Eye of the Storm" part of why she wanted me involved (aside from getting Jake's voice out of me and making the language sound marginally like "Orfeo") was to try to bridge the gap between the "tone" of slash and the "tone" of gay fiction. She hadn't read any Trek slash before she wrote it, but she was familiar enough with published "slash" and was intrigued by the whole phenomena.

In any case, what I'd be curious to know if whether any of the women slash writers/readers are also regular readers of gay fiction written by men? If not, is it simply a matter of never having tried any, or did you try some and dislike it? What about the gay guys who read both slash and gay fiction? Comments on the "tone" difference? Any gay male readers of the group who do read gay fiction but *don't* like slash? If so, why?

[Jane]
I'm a straight woman who writes slash sometimes, but never (I think) with the romance as the main purpose of the story. I like stories in which a character suddenly finds that his friends are no longer his friends, or might not be, and turning a close friend into a potential sexual predator is one way of exploring that. Which is why the slash situations in my stories tend to be more predatory than romantic.

I've read a little (male) gay fiction, not much. I'm not comfortable with it. I realise I'm generalising, but it was too aggressive, promiscuous and just downright physical for my taste. I don't read het erotica either. On the other hand, what I'd call 'gay fiction for a general audience' (James Kirkwood, Armistead Maupin) I like because there's that feeling in the straight (or closet) characters that they're a little off balance with the situation, and... and okay, because the gay men are sweet.

Now, if I like sweet gay men, then the Voyager boys fit the bill perfectly. But no way is Spock in pon farr 'sweet'. He isn't even sweet when he comes round and apologises and tries to pick up the pieces afterwards. The James Kirk who gets sexually involved with Spock is not 'sweet'. If he seems to be, I feel the author has let the character slide. The appeal for me with these stories is definitely in the area of 'how the hell did this happen to us?' and 'how do we keep the rest of our lives from falling apart now that it has?'.

I would just as happily write (or read) a story in which Kirk discovers he's a surgically altered, brainwashed, Romulan sleeper, or Ensign Kim finds that his best friend Paris has been secretly sabotaging Voyager's opportunities to return to the Alpha Quadrant because he can't face going back to jail.

Slash is just another way to up the emotional stakes.

[Evelyn/Scarlett]
Good show, people. This is an intriguing thread.

(Disclaimer: The following are my opinions! Read, enjoy, disregard, jump up and down on top of, whatever. ;)

Personally I enjoy slash fiction and occasionally write some of my own. I haven't tried gay fiction yet, that I know of, because most of the authors whose (usually fantasy) work I end up reading are female, and my reading preference is definitely m/m. I'm sorry to say that I thus don't know what difference there is in tone between slash and gay fiction. Could you describe it, Macedon?

For me the slash appeal is in several things:

(1) the presence of two male characters. One (portrayed-as-) lovable man is good. Two are better.

(2) characterization. The slash I've read seems to me to focus more on characterization than on sex. I find the former emphasis much more intriguing than reading about the mechanics of making out.

(3) equality in romance. I've almost never seen a hetero romance in which both people in the couple had equal power in the relationship. Power differences between two people in a romantic relationship are unappealing to me (I don't mean bdsm -- I mean situations in which one partner has much less *say* in the relationship than the other--hmm, hopefully that explanation is comprehensible...). Slash fiction, on the other hand, is much more equal, perhaps because, after all, these people are both men, and that factor immediately helps make them seem to be on more even footing with one another. Equality "ups the stakes," as Jane put it.

Other comments?

[Deb/Peddycoart]
I read The Lord Won't Mind ages ago, probably the first "gay fiction" I had ever read, and nothing else reminds me so much of the slash fiction I tend to read now.

I think newer gay fiction tends to be far less emotional, although I agree that it is still erotic.

I also think that the uniqueness of a m/m expressed emotional bond hightens the eroticism for me more than in f/f where that expression is more expected. I think it is tough to write emotional passion between two men and do it well. Too often it seems like the "feminine" version of romance and lacks the male tone it needs. These are half-baked thoughts that I'm sure can stand revision since I haven't given enough thought to whether I believe there are ultimately distinct passions for each gender.

Interesting questions to ponder!

[Atara Stein]
Why not? I got into slash in a kind of odd way. I started working on an academic conference paper (eventually book chapter of a very unfinished book) on Q as a Byronic hero. In the course of watching and rewatching the Q episodes, I began to feel rather obsessed with both Q and Picard and the dynamic between them. I also read Peter David's two Q novels, which I enjoyed a lot, but I also thought, "Shit, I can do that." I started writing _Qstruck_, which is a vaguely R-rated exploration of the dynamics between the two of them. I wasn't at *all* interested in equality; rather I was trying to explore shifting power. Q usually has the upper hand; but Picard gets to have the upper hand for a while as well.

Meanwhile, I got on the net and started reading "Oh Captain, My Captain," "Only Human," and other fan fiction. I really got the idea for my first NC-17 P/Q story from Alara in a letter, where she was speculating on Q appearing as a woman to seduce Picard and Picard being furious when he found out. I came up with my own twist on that. Again, I tried to alternate the power position, achieving more or less equality. By the time I wrote the sequel, I was much more interested in one-sided power dynamics (as I was in the bits I contributed to _His Beloved Pet_ and in my vignette "The Collar").

To me, the appeal of slash is not the possibility of equality, but rather a chance to put two really interesting characters together. When I started writing the stuff, I thought of myself as straight, leaning towards bi. Now of course, being in what I hope will be a lifelong relationship with Ruth, I find the term "lesbian" the most convenient, but I still have the hots for Patrick Stewart. To me, Picard and Q were simply the most interesting possible pairing I could write about. My own favorite kind of erotica to write and read is f/f (and I write non-fanfic f/f erotica), followed by m/m, followed (distantly) by m/f. But ultimately it's the characters and their dynamic that draws me to write about them, which is why I've ventured into Q/Janeway and Paris/Torres.

My favorite couple to read about after P/Q is Garak/Bashir. I loved Mary's series ("Cardassian Lessons" and the others), and I very much enjoy Sophie's stories and other G/B. I've never found Bashir worth a second look myself, but again I enjoy the power dynamics those two seem to inspire.

Ultimately, give me a good bdsm story with hot sex, hot s/m, with an electric dynamic between two strong characters, one who's strong enough to take charge, and one who's strong enough to submit with fervor and grace, and I'm happy. The gender really isn't all that important.

As usual, I have once again proved that brevity isn't my idiom.

[Jeanita]
Well, speaking as someone who's loved slash for nigh on two decades I'm... well, I'm actually no more qualified to speak on this subject than anyone else, but I find it very interesting, so I'm going to jump in. I read heir love for one another and coming to terms with it. For the most part, however, in gay male fiction I find the emotional elements are described very clinically, or implied rather than stated outright. The plot is likely to develop around an action/adventure drama rather than a get love/lose love/get love again theme.

In slash, even though the characters may not speak of their love outright, the author will spend a lot of time describing the characters' feelings, and when they do engage in an act of physical love, they are often motivated as much by love as by lust if not more so. Torch's vampire series comes to mind as does Ruth's _His Beloved Pet_. Brenda Antrim's Krycek/Mulder stories, Killa's K/S... in fact, most of the slash I've read focuses heavily on the characters' emotional interactions with one another. They will 'check in' with each other or with the reader a great deal, i.e. "Kirk felt..." "Krycek was sad because..."

All in all, I would say the biggest difference between slash and gay fiction is the amount of attention paid to emotions. This is, however, based on reading a fairly limited amount of gay fiction (a few novels and short stories). Feel free to blow holes through these opinions as seems appropriate.

[Macedon]
Tone is a tough thing to describe because it's a combination of things, but I'll try. Nevertheless, keep in mind that when dealing with generalities there WILL be exceptions. I'm well aware of that.

And that caveat given, I believe the tone differences rise from a multitude of things, some of which Mark, et al, have already touched on. As Mark pointed out, there's often a level of "reality" to gay fiction. I hesitate, though, to say that slash categorically *lacks* this, but perhaps it's less inclined to address "gay issues," if you will. The gay male writers of gay fiction tend to be writing mainstream, not SF, and that makes a difference right there. They're more interested in dealing with things from the "now" that they deal with in daily life: AIDS, coming out, family relations, subtle and not-so-subtle bigotries, etc. Not all gay stories have unhappy endings, but yes, a lot do, or at least have "mixed" endings where everything ain't peachy, but it's not necessarily tragic...kinda like life. ;> But then, not all Trek slash ends happily, either, as with Killa's "Turning Point," or it ends with victory and tragedy, as with Laura's "The Lily-White Boys Lilly White Boys." So there *can* be mixed tones in Trek slash, as well. But yes, I think at least some of the differences in tone relates to the genre. Mainstream "lit'ry" fiction is more often slice-of-life writing, which contributes a certain tone. Slash writing *tends* to be more idealistic and romantic, which in turn contributes a certain tone. There are exceptions to both, obviously.

Another difference comes from emphasis. A couple of folks have commented on the fact that slash is more likely to deal with emotions than gay fiction is. I'm not sure I agree, in those terms. Yes, men can separate sex and love more easily, but I certainly find a lot of emotion in gay fiction. What I think I'd say is that slash is more inclined to lay the emotions out in terms (often romantic terms) recognizable to women readers because they're written by women.

There are differences between the ways men and women write, when looked at as a group. Again, exceptions certainly exist--in many ways, I *am* one of those exceptions--and the better the writer, the less easy it is for me to guess "blind" the gender of the author. A lot of this is a function of culture. As I love to point out to my history students, romance novels in antiquity (and yes they did exist) were written BY men FOR men! Also, there's a big difference to me in the difference between American male writers and, say, an Egyptian Muslim writer like Naguib Mahfous, or a Japanese writer like Marukami. There's even a difference between American male writers and British male writers, or Euro-American male writers and American Indian male writers. But in terms of American fiction, male writers and female writers often have different interests and focuses. This is reflected in *purchase* patterns as much as writing patterns: who buys what kind of fiction. There are also differences in the way emotion is portrayed in fiction. Women like to spell it out more, men tend to assume it or indicate it via action. The better the writer, the less obvious these differences are. Good fiction is good fiction. What I see happening among the "masters" is that women writers become more adept at "show don't tell" while the men become less inclined to assume the emotion is understood, or to ignore it.

[snipped]

Anyway, what all this goes back to, I think, is that in slash, since the writers tend to be women writing for women, includes emotional triggers recognized by the readers or which meet the needs/fantasies of the readers, in a way gay male fiction by gay male authors doesn't. I think the best writers are those who are able to appeal to an audience of both genders, but without doubt, some types of stories *do* appeal more to one gender than the other, and are even intended to do so. They're hitting more "buttons" with one gender than the other. (Of course there's always personal taste. I have a colleague in my department who's female and a big reader of military fiction, and I've met a few guys who -- usually secretly -- read romances. Interesting comment on our society, isn't it, that the woman can read her mil fiction at her office desk a the guy wouldn't dare sneak out a bodice ripper for fear of ridicule. Folks who think our society has reached anything like gender equality need only consider the above to realize it hasn't.)

Last, and this is true of only some of the slash I've read, but enough to be noteworthy: one or both of the guys don't act like guys. And that leads me into the below....

I have not, admittedly, read lots of slash, and sometimes I'll give a story the "old college try" only to quit part of the way through because I totally lose interest or the characterization drives me buggy, or whatever. Anyway, I have a somewhat limited frame of reference, but in about half (or more) of what I *have* read, one of the things which turned me off was the fact that the relationship was NOT equal, and that one of the male characters behaved in feminine fashion and/or was treated as a "weaker" member of the partnership, which then read as feminine. I've noticed this more in slash where one of the partners is younger (like C/P with P usually being the more feminine), or when one of the partners is more naive. It rubs me the wrong way, but I sometimes wonder if the authors are even aware that they're *doing* it, and that bothers me more. It makes me wonder if we as a society have become so accustomed to unequal partnerships that we're unable to imagine them equal?

Now, I'm well aware (and have met) some gay couples who do adopt butch/femme roles, perhaps from lack of other examples, perhaps from personal preference. But a lot of the gay couples I've known *don't* do so (particularly the younger ones). So in that respect, some slash I've read has not reflected the interpersonal dynamics of gay relationships I've known among friends. They just don't *feel* right to me.

(I should note: I've read plenty of stories where women are not unequal partners with men and are not treated as weaker or to be protected or in need of instruction. The fact that I sometimes see this in slash is, therefore, not only not reflecting many of the gay male relationships I've known, but it's also not reflecting an increasing number of straight relationships, either.)

[Ruth Gifford]
Welcome to one of the great mysteries of fanfic. I've been involved in this discussion before and sometimes it sounds like an announcement on day time TV: "Slash Stories and the people that love to write them; on the next Oprah."

Seriously, the slash myth goes like this: In the early 70s straight women started writing slash stories about Kirk and Spock. The movement spread and soon there were Starsky/Hutch slash 'zines, Blake's 7 slash 'zines, Professionals (Brit spy TV show) slash zines, and so on (now we've got an ever increasing list: Highlander, X-Files, Sentinal, Wise Guys, Due South, Forever Knight, Space: Above and Beyond, Babylon 5, ER, and on and on). One of the prevailing theories about the phenomena is that these women were writing a replacement for the romance novel in which the partners are more equal than the characters in the romances. Then there's the "no good female characters" theory. To invent a female character put one at the risk of being accused of Mary Sueism (the fan fic community traditionally looks down on Mary Sues). To use a female character from the show might be impossible if the female characters on these shows are either non-existent or always getting killed off to preserve the story line. So if you can't invent your own character and the female characters on __________ (your favorite show here) are boring, or worse, not worthy of _________ (your hero here) why not have him fall in love with _________ (your other hero here).

Then there's the theory that a writer might like both primary characters enough to want to "have" both of them to herself. Yet another theory is that the characters had enough emotional connection to one another that it only made sense that (given the right circumstances) a bond of friendship might be made more physical.

All of these are valid in one way or another, but I imagine that slash gets written for as many reasons as there are writers of slash. The myth of who writes it is no longer valid (if it ever was), particularly on the net. As Alara pointed out we have increasing numbers of bi women and lesbians writing slash. There are gay men who write slash (one of my favorite XF slashers is a gay man), and there are even a few straight men who write it. With the advent of interesting female characters (Janeway, Kira, Scully to name a few) there is now f/f slash, something you didn't see all that long ago. To turn the tables we also have lesbian writers writing het TrekSmut. Obviously these days, anything goes.

So why do we write slash? I've got to get personal here, because I don't like making broad sweeping pronouncements. I write it because I like to write about the characters that I put into these slash stories. I personally think the onscreen chemistry between Picard and Q was far more interesting than that between Picard and Beverly Crusher, and I like to write about Picard. Since I also like him as a sub, Q fits the bill nicely (nothing but a god will do). I find the idea of two men having sex to be fairly hot, and the whole alpha male dominance thing gets interesting when sex is involved.

For me the equality thing is approached in an odd way. I take an already unequal relationship and make it even more unequal. The I (hopefully) go from there and show that Picard (ostensibly the "weaker" partner) isn't weak at all, and that Q (the "stronger" partner) *needs* Picard as much (if not more) as Picard needs him. There is equality in my stories, but it's not in the most recognizable of forms.

One other reason I write slash is that I view it as a political act. I didn't start out viewing it that way, but the more I look at slash, the more I see the politics that are involved (for me at least). When you take that most American of Icons, the lead man on a TV show (I'm not being US-centric here, it's just that whole star culture is weirdly strong in this country), and put him in bed with another man, you are changing his default setting. Until three weeks ago, there weren't any queer *lead* characters on American TV (I mean regular old commercial, network regular series TV). To suggest that the stalwart Captain Kirk might be all man and at the same time might be gettin' it on with his best friend is pretty radical. To suggest that Starsky and Hutch might be lovers might make someone think that not all fags are sissy boys. To take the young handsome "ladies man" (Tom Paris, Julian Bashir, and so on) of a TV show and give him a male lover is going to raise some eyebrows. When I take the traditional gay-smut storyline of the older man/younger man in a hierarchical situation (Picard and Jack in "When We Get Out of This") and put the leader in the somewhat more submissive role, I'm messing with a stereotype. If I'm lucky, it makes people think, and that's one of the things I really like about slash. Some of the compliments I treasure the most are the ones were people way, "now I understand ______ (whatever my point was)."

Oh and I also write it 'cause it's fun to write.

[Alara Rogers]
Personally, I'd rather see one male and one female. I always thought this was because I was bisexual until I learned of about a bazillion bisexual slash writers.

I actually sometimes feel slash is pernicious, because of the argument someone made earlier that "het is mostly about unequal relaitonships..." Canon sometimes gives us strong women (until DS9 came out, the only ones were the B7 women and Princess Leia, but now we have Kira, Dax, Janeway, Torres, and in her own way Kes, and then of course there's B5, and yes, Ivanova *is* God. Unless delenn is.) I feel that writers who are comfortable with unequal relationships and standard paradigms gravitate toward het, so you get a bazillion Janeway/Chakotay in which Janeway melts into Chakotay's strong arms, or Mulder/Scully where Mulder is Scully's strong pillar. Whereas the writers who are not comfortable with unequal relationships decide (wrongly, in my iopnion) that this is the result of there being a woman in it, so they move to take the woman out, instead of working to make her stronger.

At the same time, I can't condemn slash for this, because it's not the slashers' fault we have so many boring women like Crusher and Troi, and besides, a lot of slashers are doing this because they really like the male characters better, or because, as you said, it's a turn-on to put two men together. So it's not that slash is the problem, but I sometimes feel that if slash didn't exist as an outlet, more people would write strong het relationships instead of whining that they don't exist and writing slash instead. Which just adds to the problem, because if the *only* people writing het are the traditionalists who make the woman weaker, any new person coming in will see this, and if they want an equal relationship they'll go "bleah" and turn to slash, and it goes on.

In my case, I'd been writing fanfic for years before finding organized fandom, and as a card-carrying female chauvinist pig who perceived herself as protector of, champion of, and domniator of a little brother, to me the idea that the woman couldn't be as strong as the man made no intuitive sense whatsoever, as my paradigm for male-female relationships was me and my brother and I was definitely in charge there. So it never entered my head that the women can't be written to be strong; in fact, because as a kid I was homophobic but fascinated with genderbenmding, I invented my own version of slash where I *made* one of teh guys a woman and then got them together. (Yes, I still do this. :-))

Actually, the kind of slash that irritates me the most is the kind where someone made one of teh characters femmy and wussy (usually bashir or Harry Kim; I have never seen Picard *or* Q made femmy, and Kirk and Spock, I've heard it's about even. It's really really hysterical when they do it to B7. Avon as a femme... doesn't bear thinkign about. :-)) If you were going to do that, what was the point to making it slash at all? Interestingly, I find *less* of this with young writers, and less on the Net than in zines.

[Sonja]
Wow, this is like one of the most fascinating discussions this newsgroup has ever had! I wonder if so much fanfic is written mostly by women, though, (even non-slash fanfic), because women are *not* getting something out television that they want (most fanfic writers are writing for themselves more than for an audience, many fanfic writers I know never or rarely show their stuff to anyone). Since TPTB do indeed target shows like Trek to young males this seems even more likely. That's something I still don't understand... you know I'm a single adult female with a decent amount of disposable income, why am I not important to advertisers? Probably because they are a bunch of old fogies who haven't realized yet that the paradigm shifted a LONG time ago. Jerks.

Alara, totally agree with you that both men and women censure men who do dare to be touchy feely (hell, I do it to myself, I'm a very controlled person who doesn't like to see emotional displays, nor do I like to give in to them). Part of that's culture, part of that's probably genetics.

[...]

TNG didn't do a very good job with characterization either, IMHO. The characters all managed to stay fairly static throughout the whole seven years, and the women characters were especially disappointing. That might be a reason that slash tends to get written so much too. I mean, there aren't many really interesting women Trek characters to match up with your favorite guy. So, if you do want to write an adult story, well, there's just more interesting male characters to choose from.

[Alara Rogers]
They know you're important to advertisers, but they don't realize you watch science fiction. Science Fiction shows have traditionally been for boys and young men; supposedly, we watch Sisters and shows like that.

Actually, if you look at the commercials shown during DS9 and Voyager as opposed to the commercials they used to show during TNG, it demonstrates that they *do* recognize that, whether by accident or design, a lot more women watch DS9 and Voy than they did TNG. TNG was dominated by beer and car commercials. DS9 and Voy get their share of car commercials, but now they also get detergent and shampoo, while beer commercials are almost entirely gone. I believe, in fact, that Kira's new outfit and the introduction of Worf was intended to recapture a male demographic they saw themselves as losing, since single young females still make less money than single young males (which is a sexist fact of life, but can be put into perspective when you realize that a huge percentage of the female population will not marry a man who makes less money than they do, and that men generally work longer hours).

[...]

...except for Data and Worf, TNG was quite terrible at developing its characters (well, actually, it developed Picard pretty well, and dare I say it, Q showed enormous growth. :-)) I agree that a lot of slash exists because the women aren't interesting; however, why is it then that Blake's 7 still has so much slash, when you have fascinating characters like Jenna, Cally, Dayna, Soolin and Servalan to choose from? Okay, so often those characters got toned down a bit from their original power, but unlike Crusher and Rand and Chapel, they were interesting concepts, and unlike Troi, several of their early episodes *explored* them as interesting concepts (Troi was a fascinating concept that never got used right.) Or, why does anyone bother with Chakotay/Paris when Chakotay has Janeway and Paris has Torres? (Actually, IMHO, the strongest relationship on that show is Paris/Kim, which is why I don't question Paris/Kim-- every other Voyager character could be a woman, and they *still* would be the strongest pairing.) This shows it can't *just* be that the women are inherently boring.

It's a really fascinating topic. On the one hand, you have people who slash because that pairing is the best one there (I firmly believe the most intense and interesting pairings in Trek between main characters are Kirk/Spock, Kira/Odo, Bashir/Garak, Picard/Q and Paris/Kim. Janeway/Torres had promise, but fizzled. *all* of these pairings but Kira and Odo are slash. Is it that I think the women are boring? No -- Dax is great, but she's at her greatest when she's not in a relationship; Janeway is great, but her chemistry is with Chakotay, who bores me silly.)

On the other, you have the people who slash because they like two cute guys. And yet, at the same time, there are people who slash because het troubles them and they can't be bothered to fix it. I know one woman who argued that it was a good thing that the one female character in a Japanese fandom we were both into never appeared in the fanzines (which mostly focused on slashing the two lead characters) because most of the stories would feature her being raped and loving it. This is not a reason why it's not a good thing she isn't there; this is a reason why one might not enjoy what *is* there of her, but I couldn't help feeling this was a really bad excuse for wanting to see her excluded from fanfic.

[Susan Legge]
Right - why slash?

This is a very interesting question and I suspect we are going to get as many answers as there are slash readers and writers.

I am about to drag the discussion downhill.

I know that for me, *one* of the reasons is the question of identification.

As a child and an adolescent I was a voracious reader, mainly of historical fiction of the Walter Scott, Dumas, Stanley J Weyman (remember him anyone?) Baroness Orczy, Anthony Hope variety and there was no one I wanted to identify in there who wasn't a chap. If I wanted to emote and experience along with someone, it was one of the guys, certainly not one of those soppy women who had to be rescued every verse end. Why imagine yourself as Princess Flavia when you could be Rudolph Rassendyll and have all the excitement, all the power and all the sword fights too?

When Startrek came along that pattern was already set. I didn't want to bonk/snog these guys (even though theoretically I was old enough to be thinking like that). I wanted to *be* those guys. This did not mean I wanted to travel the galaxy snogging women with gold lurex foundation garments and unfeasible hairdos; no, I wanted to be brave, decisive, competent and beloved by the multitudes (and I wouldn't have minded being good-looking either).

Now I seem to be stuck like that - there is no one I see on TV that I want to be in the same way.

Even now when I wrote slash, the voice I am writing from is me *as one of them* and this way I get to be one of them and have sex with the other. Best of Both Worlds :)

That's just for me - everyone has their own way in but I don't think you should over-look the sheer naughtiness of it. Writing slash enables one to get two good-looking blokes together and give them intricate and successful sex to do and it's just that *little* bit naughtier than straight sex. Not only that, but I suspect that successful erotica/porn/arousing fiction requires that the participants have better sex than the reader/writer usually does. Sex can be great but in real life it can also be boring and uncomfortable and really *not that great*.

Slash is largely written by women about men and I have to admit, they all seem to having much more fun than I've usually had, bigger climaxes, more romance, more perfect understanding of what each partners wants by the other partner. Because we are women, we don't know what it's like for chaps, so we can project what we want onto them. It *might* be like that for them, but they're chaps and we'll never *really* know.

Mind you, once you're into the slash world you can do all sorts. You can use it to make sexual/political points; you can write sweet romance; you can write thrillers or straight (so to speak) porn; you can explore consent or anti-gay bigotry or the strain of maintaining a relationship with your commanding officer, or an omnipotent alien or a being you don't wholly trust.

You *could* do that in non-slash but you'd miss the extra kick you get from the rest of the baggage.

[Jessica Krucek]
Because you're supposed to be pining over guys or watching soaps, or that sort of shit. I'm a 20 year old female college student. I was a teenaged female when SeaQuest was on. when they aimed it at young men, it was a damn cool show. It got a feamle audience, though, and the chages they made to appeal to said audience - YUCK!

My sister and I always hated the stuff aimed for girls (hell, it took me until I was 12 to even appreciate Jem, and then mostly for the songs), She-Ra being an exception. It was too-clean, and too polite, and totally unralistic. No one fought, the villians were concerned with not power, but making people unhappy...

Sorry. Give me Ming the Merciless, Lex Luthor, C.O.B.R.A., the Deceptagons, and the Queen of the Crowns!

[Judy Gran]
I've been a devout K/S fan for nearly 20 years, have read other slash but have never really gotten into any other slash fandom. K/S moves me deeply because it's TOS and because of the characters of Kirk and Spock. I'm a straight woman who, like others who have reported their experience here, always identified with the heroes, not the heroines, in the novels I read growing up. Yet I have never wanted to not be a woman, in fact I am very glad I am a woman. I'm also a card-carrying radical feminist of a Marxist-anarchist stripe. Like Jess, I don't want to get laid with Kirk so much as to *be* Kirk and love Spock, who is a lot like the men I love in "real" life.

I agree with those who've said that the appeal of slash is in the equality of the characters. It's not that I can't imagine a male character such as Kirk in an equal relationship with a woman -- in fact, in my travels through Trek fandom, I've written a couple of Kirk/f stories, including a Kirk/Areel Shaw story and one in which Kirk was involved with the anarchist governor of a colony. Heavy-duty Mary Sue impulses were operating in both cases. However, as Joanne Russ wrote in her incredibly insightful analysis of K/S in *Magic Mommas,* the advantage of slash is the relationship transcends not only sexual preference but gender as well. In slash, the writer and reader don't have to work against the gender-role stereotyping that creeps into even the best-intentioned m/f story.

To me, this is what's so wonderful about K/S and slash. I've worked hard during the last couple of decades to build and maintain an equal relationship with my husband, to try to raise non-sexist kids, to succeed in a profession that is still quite male-dominated, and to balance family with a pretty responsible job. Perhaps I'm not as motivated to read and write about equal relationships in m/f fan fiction because I feel I am living that problematic and working through those issues in real life. But in K/S, I can imagine a relationship in which equality is not even an issue, in which the characters can focus exclusively on other issues without the problem of gender roles even coming up.

Probing my sexual fascination with slash, I think part of it is the alignment (for lack of a better word) between masculine sexuality and other qualities that appeal to me about our heroes: competence, strength, courage, leadership ability. I don't believe that men and women are sexually different animals, but I do think that masculine and feminine sexuality is constructed differently in our society. A highly sexual man can draw on his sexuality to nourish his social role as a strong, competent leader in a way that is much more difficult for a highly sexual woman to do. Our "feminine" sexuality tends to be constructed as delicate, soft, pliant and "ladylike," or else as nuturing, giving and "motherly"--but not as powerful, decisive and assertive. So, when we women act as powerful, strong, courageous, competent leaders, we are in some sense working against society's expectations about us as sexual beings. Kirk, of course, doesn't have to do this -- he is sexy just being the kind of leader he is in a way a woman might not be. I suspect this is one reason why women characters in leadership roles often come across as sexless (Janeway, for example), and why so many women in leadership roles IRL are "Earth-mother" types rather than commanding, decisive, assertive types like Kirk.

What I draw from this is that in a slash relationship, the characters seem to bring more of themselves into the bedroom than I usually see in a m/f relationship. And no, I am not talking about "who's on top" or who penetrates whom. I do not think that the ability to penetrate one's partner has anything to do with being powerful, commanding and decisive. In my personal fantasies, it is usually Kirk who gets penetrated because I identify with Kirk and ... um, well, you get the picture.

Just some minor demographic information about K/S in response to some posts about the increasing role of gay women in slash::

First, from my experience in K/S fandom, which goes back to 1978, I think K/S fan fic (in zines) has always had a certain number of gay and bi women writers, although most of the women writing K/S in zines are heterosexual. K/S written by gay men is extremely rare, but it does exist. Has anyone read Pete Fisher's *Dreamlovers* published in 1983 or 1984 or so? It's by a gay guy who was in love with Kirk, went to cons, salivated over Shatner, and wrote a fan fiction novel about Kirk. A couple of years later, the novel was published as a fanzine. I was amazed at how good it was, and how squarely it fell into the framework of Mary Sue (or Marty Saul, in this case). The author created an alter-ego, a 20th century trucker who gets transported onto the Enterprise, who has an affair with Kirk. The K/S relationship isn't consummated in the novel, but the pair are definitely on their way (once the trucker is safely returned to his own century).

Second, while the majority tendency in K/S has always been to portray the characters as basically heterosexual men who fall in love with each other, it has always been true, since practically The Time of the Beginning, that a significant number of K/S writers see one or more of the pair as bisexual. I do think that the tendency to portray the men as bisexual or gay has increased in recent years. It seems to be increasingly common to see Spock as "innately" gay, though lacking experience or interest in gay sex before Kirk. Kirk is increasingly portrayed as bisexual. I suspect that this is because the women writing K/S, like the rest of us, have become more comfortable with gayness and no longer see it as particularly forbidden or taboo. Many of the early K/S stories show the men struggling earnestly with desires that shock and confuse them. You can tell that the writers were writing against the background of the closet. The characters experience a shaking of the foundations in coming to terms with their sexual feelings for each other that it's difficult for more contemporary authors to recapture.

I don't see a strong correlation between the sexual orientation of K/S authors and their view of the sexual orientation of the characters. I can think of several heterosexual women writers who write Kirk as bisexual and/or Spock as gay. Conversely, I know several bisexual women who write both men as "straight" (before each other).