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Jan. 29th, 2005 02:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
merelynAnother fandomy essay pointer. This one is on misogyny in slash by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lasultrix. I think the discussion is pretty interesting. I've been mulling the issue over.
Here are my thoughts on gender, sexuality, and misogyny in the slash fandom And just to warn my flist, it's possible that only Meg and Jack have the multi-fandom-nerdiness-psych-anthro security clearance to pick up a lot of the references:
Misogyny, IMO, is a definitely problem among slashfen. I do have my slash colored glasses on, and it's hard to approach a show or set of books or a movie without them. This means that I tend to be automatically drawn toward male characters, and ignore the female ones until they prove themselves to be cool. This isn't really fair of me.
I'm sure over the years there have been plenty of female characters I've disliked on principle because they got in the way of a slash pairing. While this is not the only factor contributing to misogyny among slashfen (more on that later), I would say that it's one of the major ones. And while most people would agree that the female-as-an-obstacle-to-slash outlook is a source of misogyny, I think there's actually a lot going on in this area.
In looking back on the female characters among the shows/movies/books I like, I divided the fictional female characters into (roughly, mind you) two categories: the main character and the GotW (Girlfriend of the Week):
The main character is the girl that one half of your pairing is canonically linked with; they flirt, they banter, they are going to be together at some point whether you like it or not. Let's say Hermione, if you ship Ron/Anyone Else. Or Arwen from LoTR (though there are other fandomy reasons to hate movieverse!Arwen).
The GotW comes mostly from TV, buddy cop/spy, one-pairing fandoms- I'm thinking S&H, dS, MFU, Sentinel and (I'm assuming, as I've never seen the canon for this one) Pros. This girl is only around for an episode, so her relationship with one of the guys is never, ultimately, a threat to your OTP. For example, Janet the Bounty Hunter from Due South.
Anyway, common sense says I'm gonna hate the main characters and generally ignore the GoTWs, right?
Wrong.
There are few characters I tend to hate more than GoTWs. I don't mean to. I try to keep an open mind. But it doesn't matter how cool she is, or how well-developed, a GotW is simply not right at all for one of my boys. She isn't. That friggin' homewrecker. Whenever Mere comes in contact with one of these, hissing and spitting generally occurs. Alternately, there are plenty of main female characters that I really like (Hermione, Jane from the Dark is Rising), even though they get (or will get) together with one half of a favorite pairing.
Sure there are exceptions to this. There are some main character het relationships that may me physically ill in canon (Amy/Ephram is just badwrongbad, and Amy is a raging headcase), and some GotWs I really like (uh...Janet has some good lines). Still in general, why should this be? Why do I have such a strong anitpathy for female characters who are temporary, non-slash-threatening ones?
Because the difference lies not in the female characters, but in the fandoms themselves. As I said before, the GoTW is mostly a product of the buddy cop show. In general, these shows don't have a lot of supporting female characters, and certainly none that enter into a long-term romantic relationship with either of the main guys. Also, the canon is centered around the relationship between two guys. There is built in homoerotic-ness here:
"Do you find me attractive?"
"We have each other."
"Whatever else the show is about, there's one thing you can't get past, and that is that it's about two people, two human beings, loving each other and caring for each other."
"A partnership is like a marriage."
And this picture, to name just a few examples.
Because, see, there are levels of slashiness in canons. (Here's a really good discussion of it over onthefourthvine's lj.) Some shows are gayer than others- Smallville, the Sentinel, I'm lookin' at you. Other shows really aren't. In ensemble-based fandoms like HP or Buffy, there are a lot of characters with very dramatic/touching/bantering relationships, but anything beyond that is more speculation than not. You have to have your slash-glasses on in order to make anything out of it. Canon only provides the world and the two characters; it's up to the author to craft a romantic relationship with them. In these fandoms, because I don't expect a lot of canon slashiness, I can therefore accept/expect canon het. Even though I ship Ron/Draco, I know that Ron and Hermione are getting together in the books and no one finds that cuter than me. (In fact, if I could find any fics that do them justice, I might even read R/H het fic.)
This is different on the gayer side of fandom. While I'd probably have a heart attack if, say, JKR revealed to us in Book 6 that Percy and Oliver were secretly shagging, I've been rewatching some DS episodes lately, and there are moments when I'm suprised that RayK and Fraser don't just start making out. And that is really what's at the heart of why I tend to hate GoTWs. Because it's hard to reconcile the absolute gayness of what were used to seeing on screen with a het relationship on screen. There is less of a disconnect between canon and fanon.
Therefore (finally the theory I've been leading up to)...
The more overtly slashy a fandom is, the greater the OTP-threat posed by female romantic entanglements. Whereas if you're involved in a less-slashy, more speculative canon, canon het relationships don't matter as much because canon doesn't matter as much. Of course, this is just my opinion, and I don't expect it to apply to everyone. And of course it's not going to be possible to conduct a scientific study to see if there actually is a correllation between the gayness of a fandom and the level of misogyny. Still. Any thoughts on that?
As for other factors discussed: the relationship between the mostly female slash writers and fictional female characters is, as others have said, complicated by the sadly catty nature of female relationships in real life. Straight females are in competition with each other for guys, and I agree that this spills over into slash fandom, where most of the authors probably want to get with the guys as much as they want them to get with each other. So the female character presents a two-fold threat, subconsciously treated as a the girl who stole your boyfriend and a homewrecker (as discussed above) all at once.
While the homewrecker model applies to the fandom at large, the other part doesn't work for me personally, because I'm gay. In real life my attitude toward women is different I'm sure from most straight girls. And in fact, in addition to being homosexual, I would also consider myself to be an extremely homosocial person. Almost all of my friends are girls (seriously, check out my facebook profile if you're on that). So why do I have an antipathy toward female fictional characters when in real life I really prefer women over men? Why am I so drawn to male fictional characters when I have relatively little close interaction with them in real life? Why do I prefer m/m slash over femslash? What's going on here?
I don't know. But here are some initial thoughts.
As for the first question, I'm thinking there's a large element of hetsquick going on here. Where any canon heterosexual relationship poses a slash threat on both sides. It interfers with the "everybody's gay!" fantasy world that I like to play in, where I'm not in the minority for a change. Because being gay doesn't get rid of the competition thing. Maybe it's just competing with girls over girls instead the other way around; it still bleeds in. Any thoughts?
As for other two questions, I think I have more of idea. This is due to what I call the Big Gay Sex Drive. See, I like girls, but I do have an aesthetic appreciation for men. But (thanks partly I think to slash frying my brain) I'm not turned on that much but heterosexual sex; therefore I can think a guy is hot, but I don't actually want to do him. 'Cause I'm a girl. Therefore, in a sexual context, guys are only hot if they're doing each other. And slash is an outlet for that. Because unless I want to hang around Williamsburg's numerous gay bars, I don't really get to see a lot of hot guy on guy around here.
Also, the whole emotional aspect of it. In all honesty, this is what really attracts me to slash more than anything- you know, characters and feelings. And if I want to see a heterosexual example of that, I'll watch When Harry Met Sally, or Titanic or something. But there aren't a lot of good gay romances on screen and in books, and besides, they're expensive and hard to get a hold of. With slash, there are hours and hours of well-written stuff available at the click of a mouse. There's a lot more I could talk about on this issue, but I'll spare you.
As for femslash, well I can pretty much tie that to my own sexual history. Because in any sex scene with a female, it's natural that I would mentally place myself in the mind of the female. And I guess you'd think that as a lesbian I would therefore read craploads of femslash. But you'd be wrong. Why? I will admit it- I'm not comfortable with my body, I'm still a virgin, and the idea of getting that physically close to anyone terrifies me. So why would I want to read something where I would be vicariously experiencing something I have major psychological hang ups about? I wouldn't. So I really don't read a lot of it. And with m/m slash, there's no girls in sight, and no uncomfortable reminder of my issues. Though I guess I should like, work through that, or sumthin. :)
Anyway, we've finally reached the end of my ramblings. Congrats if you'd made it this far. Honestly.
lasultrix. I think the discussion is pretty interesting. I've been mulling the issue over. Here are my thoughts on gender, sexuality, and misogyny in the slash fandom And just to warn my flist, it's possible that only Meg and Jack have the multi-fandom-nerdiness-psych-anthro security clearance to pick up a lot of the references:
Misogyny, IMO, is a definitely problem among slashfen. I do have my slash colored glasses on, and it's hard to approach a show or set of books or a movie without them. This means that I tend to be automatically drawn toward male characters, and ignore the female ones until they prove themselves to be cool. This isn't really fair of me.
I'm sure over the years there have been plenty of female characters I've disliked on principle because they got in the way of a slash pairing. While this is not the only factor contributing to misogyny among slashfen (more on that later), I would say that it's one of the major ones. And while most people would agree that the female-as-an-obstacle-to-slash outlook is a source of misogyny, I think there's actually a lot going on in this area.
In looking back on the female characters among the shows/movies/books I like, I divided the fictional female characters into (roughly, mind you) two categories: the main character and the GotW (Girlfriend of the Week):
The main character is the girl that one half of your pairing is canonically linked with; they flirt, they banter, they are going to be together at some point whether you like it or not. Let's say Hermione, if you ship Ron/Anyone Else. Or Arwen from LoTR (though there are other fandomy reasons to hate movieverse!Arwen).
The GotW comes mostly from TV, buddy cop/spy, one-pairing fandoms- I'm thinking S&H, dS, MFU, Sentinel and (I'm assuming, as I've never seen the canon for this one) Pros. This girl is only around for an episode, so her relationship with one of the guys is never, ultimately, a threat to your OTP. For example, Janet the Bounty Hunter from Due South.
Anyway, common sense says I'm gonna hate the main characters and generally ignore the GoTWs, right?
Wrong.
There are few characters I tend to hate more than GoTWs. I don't mean to. I try to keep an open mind. But it doesn't matter how cool she is, or how well-developed, a GotW is simply not right at all for one of my boys. She isn't. That friggin' homewrecker. Whenever Mere comes in contact with one of these, hissing and spitting generally occurs. Alternately, there are plenty of main female characters that I really like (Hermione, Jane from the Dark is Rising), even though they get (or will get) together with one half of a favorite pairing.
Sure there are exceptions to this. There are some main character het relationships that may me physically ill in canon (Amy/Ephram is just badwrongbad, and Amy is a raging headcase), and some GotWs I really like (uh...Janet has some good lines). Still in general, why should this be? Why do I have such a strong anitpathy for female characters who are temporary, non-slash-threatening ones?
Because the difference lies not in the female characters, but in the fandoms themselves. As I said before, the GoTW is mostly a product of the buddy cop show. In general, these shows don't have a lot of supporting female characters, and certainly none that enter into a long-term romantic relationship with either of the main guys. Also, the canon is centered around the relationship between two guys. There is built in homoerotic-ness here:
"Do you find me attractive?"
"We have each other."
"Whatever else the show is about, there's one thing you can't get past, and that is that it's about two people, two human beings, loving each other and caring for each other."
"A partnership is like a marriage."
And this picture, to name just a few examples.
Because, see, there are levels of slashiness in canons. (Here's a really good discussion of it over on
thefourthvine's lj.) Some shows are gayer than others- Smallville, the Sentinel, I'm lookin' at you. Other shows really aren't. In ensemble-based fandoms like HP or Buffy, there are a lot of characters with very dramatic/touching/bantering relationships, but anything beyond that is more speculation than not. You have to have your slash-glasses on in order to make anything out of it. Canon only provides the world and the two characters; it's up to the author to craft a romantic relationship with them. In these fandoms, because I don't expect a lot of canon slashiness, I can therefore accept/expect canon het. Even though I ship Ron/Draco, I know that Ron and Hermione are getting together in the books and no one finds that cuter than me. (In fact, if I could find any fics that do them justice, I might even read R/H het fic.)This is different on the gayer side of fandom. While I'd probably have a heart attack if, say, JKR revealed to us in Book 6 that Percy and Oliver were secretly shagging, I've been rewatching some DS episodes lately, and there are moments when I'm suprised that RayK and Fraser don't just start making out. And that is really what's at the heart of why I tend to hate GoTWs. Because it's hard to reconcile the absolute gayness of what were used to seeing on screen with a het relationship on screen. There is less of a disconnect between canon and fanon.
Therefore (finally the theory I've been leading up to)...
The more overtly slashy a fandom is, the greater the OTP-threat posed by female romantic entanglements. Whereas if you're involved in a less-slashy, more speculative canon, canon het relationships don't matter as much because canon doesn't matter as much. Of course, this is just my opinion, and I don't expect it to apply to everyone. And of course it's not going to be possible to conduct a scientific study to see if there actually is a correllation between the gayness of a fandom and the level of misogyny. Still. Any thoughts on that?
As for other factors discussed: the relationship between the mostly female slash writers and fictional female characters is, as others have said, complicated by the sadly catty nature of female relationships in real life. Straight females are in competition with each other for guys, and I agree that this spills over into slash fandom, where most of the authors probably want to get with the guys as much as they want them to get with each other. So the female character presents a two-fold threat, subconsciously treated as a the girl who stole your boyfriend and a homewrecker (as discussed above) all at once.
While the homewrecker model applies to the fandom at large, the other part doesn't work for me personally, because I'm gay. In real life my attitude toward women is different I'm sure from most straight girls. And in fact, in addition to being homosexual, I would also consider myself to be an extremely homosocial person. Almost all of my friends are girls (seriously, check out my facebook profile if you're on that). So why do I have an antipathy toward female fictional characters when in real life I really prefer women over men? Why am I so drawn to male fictional characters when I have relatively little close interaction with them in real life? Why do I prefer m/m slash over femslash? What's going on here?
I don't know. But here are some initial thoughts.
As for the first question, I'm thinking there's a large element of hetsquick going on here. Where any canon heterosexual relationship poses a slash threat on both sides. It interfers with the "everybody's gay!" fantasy world that I like to play in, where I'm not in the minority for a change. Because being gay doesn't get rid of the competition thing. Maybe it's just competing with girls over girls instead the other way around; it still bleeds in. Any thoughts?
As for other two questions, I think I have more of idea. This is due to what I call the Big Gay Sex Drive. See, I like girls, but I do have an aesthetic appreciation for men. But (thanks partly I think to slash frying my brain) I'm not turned on that much but heterosexual sex; therefore I can think a guy is hot, but I don't actually want to do him. 'Cause I'm a girl. Therefore, in a sexual context, guys are only hot if they're doing each other. And slash is an outlet for that. Because unless I want to hang around Williamsburg's numerous gay bars, I don't really get to see a lot of hot guy on guy around here.
Also, the whole emotional aspect of it. In all honesty, this is what really attracts me to slash more than anything- you know, characters and feelings. And if I want to see a heterosexual example of that, I'll watch When Harry Met Sally, or Titanic or something. But there aren't a lot of good gay romances on screen and in books, and besides, they're expensive and hard to get a hold of. With slash, there are hours and hours of well-written stuff available at the click of a mouse. There's a lot more I could talk about on this issue, but I'll spare you.
As for femslash, well I can pretty much tie that to my own sexual history. Because in any sex scene with a female, it's natural that I would mentally place myself in the mind of the female. And I guess you'd think that as a lesbian I would therefore read craploads of femslash. But you'd be wrong. Why? I will admit it- I'm not comfortable with my body, I'm still a virgin, and the idea of getting that physically close to anyone terrifies me. So why would I want to read something where I would be vicariously experiencing something I have major psychological hang ups about? I wouldn't. So I really don't read a lot of it. And with m/m slash, there's no girls in sight, and no uncomfortable reminder of my issues. Though I guess I should like, work through that, or sumthin. :)
Anyway, we've finally reached the end of my ramblings. Congrats if you'd made it this far. Honestly.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-01-31 09:29 pm (UTC)Because unless I want to hang around Williamsburg's numerous gay bars, I don't really get to see a lot of hot guy on guy around here.
This made me laugh out loud. The thought of you in a coordinated pink outfit and gaze hiding gigantic sunglasses hanging around colonial gay bars (which I'm assuming are few and far between) trying to spy on guys making out is hilarious.
Jack and I were talking about this today, and she was saying in addition to the misogyny in slash, there is also a repitition and approval of several stereotypes about gay men. Jack mentioned a doujinshi (the fanfiction of manga) that as a climax to a happy ending has one guy saying to the other: "You've ruined me for everyone else, I can no longer find women sexually desirable, and I think this is a game for you as you are a girl-virgin and could leave me for a woman, but please don't fuck with me because I love you." The themes of gays as recruiters leading what were happy straight men away from heterosexuality and then "ruining them" for women, also the idea that gay people just haven't found that right person of the opposite sex yet (although this usually takes the form of the gay(er) one fearing being left for a woman) run rampant through this little scene. (I have a funny story about that I'll have to tell you next time we talk) And although this is an extreme case, this occurs in milder forms in a lot of slash.
What's interesting is that this seems to run counter to other themes in slash of the main characters being heterosexual or quasi-bisexual except for this one special person, whom they have a relationship primarily based on emotional connection, to which the sex is not about finding their bodies desirable necessarily, but finding them as a person desirable because they love them. The amount of times I've read things along the lines of "The fact that is was [insert name here]'s [insert body part of choice]'s doing [insert sex act of choice] to him was [insert positive adjective]..." is uncountable.
I wonder if both sets of themes could occur in one story? That would be one f-ed up story.
So, meeting your ramblings with ones of my own...hope you enjoyed them!
-Meg
no subject
Date: 2005-01-31 10:25 pm (UTC)Funny story? *pokes*
"The fact that is was [insert name here]'s [insert body part of choice]'s doing [insert sex act of choice] to him was [insert positive adjective]..." is uncountable.
That line rings very true to me in terms of a RayK POV dS fic. I guess Fraser's the "gayer" one in that pairing.
But I think that theme is definitely prevalent in the S&H and Pros fandoms (from both characters' sides), and maybe Sentinel too, at least from Jim's POV. It's present in dS, but not as there as in the others, I would say. (And this is a lot of speculation on my part.) Probably because RayK and Fraser are, to some extent, 'pre-queered for your viewing pleasure' to quote Kat Allison.
Hmm. It would be interesting to do an anaylsis of the relationship dynamics and popular themes in the slash fanfiction of fandoms like HP and DS, as compared the fanfiction (I hesistate to call it slash) of a fandom like QaF, where everybody is, in fact, gay and out of the closet.
And thank you for you ramblings. I did enjoy them.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-31 11:25 pm (UTC)I was just thinking that today! I want to put a question on our questionaire that we give to people what their feelings are about cannonically gay fandoms (like QaF and Oz (at least parts of Oz)) as opposed to strong subtext fandoms (like dS and Sentinel) and light to no subtext fandoms (like Buffy and HP) Which do they prefer to write/read in, and why?
Interesting thought about writing in cannonical shows: judging from the American QaF fandom, most of the writing centers on exploring canonically together couples. I would assume (hope) that more writing would be done on non canonical couples, but that's probably why I rarely read QaF, because Brian/Justin just doesn't do it for me (Yay Ted/Emmett!).
And about the Sentinel, that phrase does appear, mostly with Jim POV (although this is mediated by playing up Jim's boarding school->military->warrior tribe->cop lifestyle; in other words isolation from females for large chunks of his developing life, and assuming that this has led him to a comfortability with, if not gay culture, at least, to quote Francesca in Nothing On, "the occasional low pressure guy grope") Blair, with his long hair and nipple ring (Incidentally, I saw a web chat with the guys who played Blair and Jim, and someone asked Garrett (who plays Blair) if he really had one. *palms face* He didn't answer.) makes a perfect target for queering, although the amount of GotW that he has create some obstacles. I couldn't comment on S&H or Pros.
-Meg
P.S. *shrugs about funny story* :p
no subject
Date: 2005-02-01 02:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-01 02:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-01 02:37 am (UTC)As for QaF, there is some subtext there- Brian/Michael. Relative subtext (sure, they kiss all over the place) but it's there. And you can still write speculation stories (like Brian/Emmett, for example, though why anyone would do that is beyond me). Of course Brian/Justin is responsible for a lot of the fic, but then they don't exactly conform to the slash version of happily ever after. They're a pretty fucked up couple, so there is room to work with. It's just like an entire fandom of established relationship fics.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-31 11:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-01 02:20 am (UTC)Also, another thing I've seen a lot, in refernce to Blair and his high number of GoTWs, is the logic that if Blair- or Napoleon, to pick another "ladies man" type of character- is, because he picks up a lot of women, a very sexual person, and therefore more likely to be willing to experiment with guys. Or, to use another piece of logic, any guy that picks up so many women must do so because he's trying to cover/repress some homosexual tendencies. So, counterintuitively, a character's frequent, onscreen examples of heterosexuality becomes, in slash fandom, proof positive that the character is secretly gay/bi.
And as for characters who don't have any much of a love life in canon- like Fraser, or Illya- authors fill in the blanks- with secret, closeted affairs and longings.
And even if you have a steady, in canon girlfriend (like Wash/Zoe in Firefly)- or even if you are, if fact the het OTP of your show (like John/Aeryn in Farscape), someone's going to write you into an "occasional low pressure guy grope" kinda story.
So you can't win- the slashers will find some way to get you into bed with a guy. :)
It'd be interesting to make a study of the "gayification" techniques used in slash.
Nothin' on but the tv. (not really)
Date: 2005-02-01 07:56 am (UTC)I...can't...comprehend...any...of...this.
By I gotta luv you guys.
I'm am s**ned off my a** right now and I thought you might appreciate some amusement on my behalf. (edited for content)
Emily (THE BRUGG!!!)
Re: Nothin' on but the tv. (not really)
Date: 2005-02-01 08:01 am (UTC)Em
Re: Nothin' on but the tv. (not really)
Date: 2005-02-01 12:16 pm (UTC)