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Sir Psycho Sexy (akai_senshi) wrote in slash_rants,
@ 2007-12-12 16:57:00

Current mood:	confused
Current music:	Hurt, "10 Ton Brick"
Entry tags:	discussions, misogyny, rl gay

Of Slash and Gay- Discussion.
This is the new mod here, akai_senshi, and I just want you all to consider some things.

There have been quite a few things on my mind about the nature of slash and slash fandom. A lot of GLBT individuals see fandom as a haven from heteronormativity, inasmuch as any character can be slashed. However, fandom, like real life, tends to be formed mainly of straight people, and straight people who sometimes do not care about real-life GLBT issues, but just want to have an excuse for two pretty boys/girls to fap to. Sometimes, this constituent of fandom can be homophobic. (If I had a penny for every time some rabid yaoi fanbrat called me a “faggot” for either a.) shipping something “less pretty” than their ship or b.) even DARING to be in yaoi fandom [the girls having the “no boys allowed in yaoi fandom” mentality], I could pay for my college tuition.)

The point I am getting to is this: Is slash helping to reduce heteronormativity in real life? Or does it even matter? Or is it something in between? Why is there such a struggle between non-homophobic het fen (they just prefer het, but back GLBT IRL) and a lot of slash fen? Why is this so complicated? Also of note is that many yaoi fanbrats tend to be misogynist, which could complicate things. Are they slashing men because they secretly hate themselves? Or are they emulating a popular Western stereotype about gay men?

DISCUSS PLZ.

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ficangel
2007-12-12 10:25 pm UTC (link)

I've noticed that great heaping whacks of fandom, slash and het, seem to have enormous problems with women, period, so I think that it's this: Are they slashing men because they secretly hate themselves? Fandom is an overwhelmingly female space, probably the only large-scale place in which femininity rather than masculinity is the assumption until proven otherwise and where female sexuality is openly discussed, and yet I've run over and over again into female fans who automatically think that all women, even fictional women, are their competition.

The point I am getting to is this: Is slash helping to reduce heteronormativity in real life?

And:

Why is there such a struggle between non-homophobic het fen (they just prefer het, but back GLBT IRL) and a lot of slash fen?

I want to say that it is helping, because fandom has reached a point where to say that you're a slash fan but that you don't support GLBT rights in real life is essentially to be run out on a rail by the police forces of social ostracism. However, I think that a lot of the struggle between slash and het fen occurs when slash fen think that they're being "cool" or "trendy" for shipping slash pairings, so they're still defining homosexual relationships as intrinsically Other by using them as a form of rebellion. I tend towards television/media fandoms rather than anime, so I can't comment on the average age of fen in your fandoms of choice, but I've noticed that this attitude is much more prevalent among the younger fans.

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rubyfruit_pixie
2007-12-13 12:18 am UTC (link)

However, I think that a lot of the struggle between slash and het fen occurs when slash fen think that they're being "cool" or "trendy" for shipping slash pairings, so they're still defining homosexual relationships as intrinsically Other by using them as a form of rebellion.

On the other end of the spectrum, as of late, there are het fans who see themselves as "rebelling" or "nonconformist" or as "moral crusaders" for shipping het pairings. I think that wearing the title of "slash fan" like a faddish piece of jewelery is something done by the younger/newer fans, while wearing the title of "het fan" like another piece of faddish jewelery is done by the older/not-so-new fans.

I'm usually in anime/videogame fandoms, so...yeah. Forgive me if I'm rambling.

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	ficangel 2007-12-17 04:28 pm UTC (link)
	I've run into a few of those, yeah, especially in fandoms like SPN where slash is the norm and het is the anomaly. This is why blogging software has changed fandom for the better, IMO-the ability to self-select your audience and avoid a lot of that. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	rubyfruit_pixie 2007-12-17 05:10 pm UTC (link)
	As someone who likes slash and het, the het fans who act like moral crusaders make me not want to be in the het fandom anymore, if that makes any sense. (Reply to this) (Parent)

rubyfruit_pixie
2007-12-13 12:14 am UTC (link)

I never understood why guys weren't allowed in yaoi fandom. Girls are welcomed in yuri fandom, but are looked at strangely.

Pah, I'm bisexual, and a girl, and as someone who loves slash and het about equally (it averages out, since I'm in a lot of fandoms), I think that it is the fact that many female yaoi fans seem to be misogynist. Slash, to me, is helping, just a bit, to reduce heteronormativity. I think that, though, most slash fen tend to slash men, in part, because they hate themselves, and in part that they're emulating a stereotype about gay men. What that is, I don't know. There are a great deal of them.

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keieeeye
2007-12-13 10:08 am UTC (link)

All I know is what I say to people when this comes up sometimes. I don't do yaoi. It's questionable whether I do slash. What I do do, is characters who happen to not be straight. Yaoi terrifies me slightly because it seems from where I'm standing that it's not about the characters, it's about the sex, it's about who's seme and uke, it's about... and here is private in-joke time... how pretty their nipples are. And that's maybe where all the OOC fic comes from because it doesn't matter how they get to the sex, just that they do. For me, it's the interpersonal relationships, how they play off each other, that's interesting.

I mean, sex is good too, obviously. But they shouldn't just see each other and become overcome with lust for each other's sizzling man loins. There should be extrapolation.

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	nosselinfea 2007-12-13 11:06 am UTC (link)
	But they shouldn't just see each other and become overcome with lust for each other's sizzling man loins. There should be extrapolation. Indeed! PWP is good, but porn WITH plot is even better. I still call it slash though. If I write a fic that has no sex in it at all, but still focuses on that relationship between two men, I still consider it to be slash. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

keieeeye
2007-12-13 11:15 am UTC (link)

Yeah that's why I said it's questionable, because 'slash' means different things to different people. To me it's anything m/m or f/f, though I usually specify the latter as femslash. To others it's a specific kind of gay, much as yaoi is, and I'm not a "slash fangirl", I just have a beloved and favourite character who's gay, and one of my pet interests is the whimsy and fluidity of human sexuality.

We had fun in an RPG today with sexuality. My girl was being incredibly open and honest about the fact that she finds basically everyone attractive. One of her friends is still denying quite loudly that he's gay. Two straight boys leapt at the chance for a threesome (m/f/f implied) with her so she said it was a brilliant idea and tried to wrangle it with her and both of them (m/m/f, neither of them went for that idea...). We were all basically sitting there cracking up for two or three hours, but underneath how funny it got, there were actually some really interesting interactions going on.

And Demelza's this really political, feminist.... champion of equality etc and ended up in this big conversation about, fuck... schoolyard bullying and people's obsessions with each other's sex lives and how it tied in to society's prejudices, and how sexuality changes, and how lust should be honest rather than repressed and put in boxes and labeled. It was very, very fun. That's one of the things I love about RP, when I can use it to explore ideas. I love ideas, I'm all about ideas.

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	nosselinfea 2007-12-13 11:32 am UTC (link)
	grins Yes! Me too. Although I am very much a slash fan in addition to the wanting to explore ideas. I'm a m/m slash fan first, f/f second, and het comes absolutely nowhere, but mauybe that's just a product of my own gender/sexuality fluidity. (Reply to this) (Parent)

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nosselinfea
2007-12-13 11:02 am UTC (link)

I'm probably not the best person to come to for a decent statistical sample, because I'm neither straight nor gender-normal, but here goes anyway.

My main fandom is rpf/rps (real-person fic/slash), which as far as I can tell, seems to have a strong GLBT-positive contingent, possibly because in some way rps bridges a gap between the fictional world and the real world. I've read rps slashfic that has touched on real-world subjects like AIDS, homophobia. I agree with

ficangel; that to admit to homophobia in certain fandoms (rps being one of them) is a sure-fire ticket to ostracism.

Are they slashing men because they secretly hate themselves?
I suspect it's just a normal thing. It's no secret that the majority of straight men are aroused by lesbian porn, so why should it be so unusual that straight women are aroused by gay porn? It's just that it's taken this long for women to dare admit it. There are certainly enough women who slash men that don't hate themselves.

Or are they emulating a popular Western stereotype about gay men? That's probably just down to lack of knowledge and experience. I cringe when I see certain stereotypes in slashfic, but if the fic is being written by a woman who's never met a gay man in real life, never interected with her local GLBT community, never read any gay erotica besides slash badfic, she couldn't possibly write anything else but popular western stereotypes.

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turelietelconta
2007-12-13 02:36 pm UTC (link)

*here from

meta_roundup*

Is slash helping to reduce heteronormativity in real life?
For me, I can answer with a definite yes. Simply because they showed a broader amount of relationships, and sexual orientation besides heterosexuality. Reading enough of those stories changed my automatic assumption about people's sexuality, including a good deal of clichés that came out of movies/TV shows.

I am, however, not a rabid slash fan, but more a reader of het and slash, and even some gen, if I like the story. I'm not in anime/manga fandom, so I'm really not acquainted with yaoi fanbrats.

I guess some of the struggles between het- and slash-fen may come from a time where slash was hidden and looked at strangely. So pehaps slashers feel attacked by people not liking slash, and het-fans don't understand slashers feeling attacked. That's just some speculation...

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yonmei
2007-12-13 02:41 pm UTC (link)

Why is this so complicated? Also of note is that many yaoi fanbrats tend to be misogynist, which could complicate things. Are they slashing men because they secretly hate themselves? Or are they emulating a popular Western stereotype about gay men?

I think they're slashing men because two men together turns them on.

I think that the misogyny which many women are taught to feel for ourselves/for other women is orthogonal to the desire to see two men making love.

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kuchenhexe
2007-12-13 06:18 pm UTC (link)

Are they slashing men because they secretly hate themselves?

Considering the number of slash fans I've seen say they flat-out don't understand, get, or like any of the female characters, considering... well... the noisy factions of the Wincest fanbase and their crusades to write the producers to try and get them to keep all females characters off SPN...

Anyone who claims that women aren't more vicious to other women is deluding themselves. You're more likely to get away with using cramps as an excuse when you're sick and doubled over if your boss is male. Female? She's more likely to tell you that you're faking how bad it is and to suck it up. Most women are raised, however subconsciously, to view other women as 'competition' that must be eliminated. Catty backstabbing really isn't all that terribly unusual among groups of "friends". I've never really been in those circles, but I've sure as hell seen a lot of it (which is why I tend to avoid most people in general and get leery around hardcore slashfans.)

No, I'm not saying all are like that. But I have met enough of them that there IS some merit to that. And the most rabid protesters against that are usually the ones who bash the female characters the worst. The ladies doth protest too much, IMHO.

Armand, I prefer het. By and large, I prefer het. Femmeslash is a close second. Slash is a more distant third which I'm extremely picky on.

I'm also bisexual currently in a same-sex relationship, and if we could get married here, we would be doing so in a heartbeat. So basically, I'm gay, and I prefer het. I'm also not the only one - I know of someone else who's a definite lesbian, and the pairings she usually goes for are het as well.

I don't hate slash. I hate how so much of it is so badly done and that if you complain about anything in regard to it, even if it's just the senseless rape of the written word, the rabid ones will start foaming and scream "homophobe!" I hate the intensity of the sheer fanatical crazy that can surround it. I hate it when straight people write it and then treat m/m sex like the purest love known to mankind in the history of the world and they're furthering the cause of GLBT with their hot gay pr0nz. I hate the mentality and femme-bashing I keep running into in the slash corners of fandoms, and because of all that...

...

I find myself hating slash, and being very, very picky about the pairings and quality thereof.

I prefer het. Yes, there are plenty of het fans that can be elitist and wanky. Truly hardcore anti-slashers piss me off as well, usually because most of the time they're also religious fundies who are simply against GLBT people as a whole. But slash fans make me leery and they can be more rabid and vicious, and use accusations of homophobia and intolerance to shame people who simply do not like slash to make themselves look morally superior and enlightened.

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kuchenhexe
2007-12-13 06:22 pm UTC (link)

Let me clarify on something about females and slash:

There are plenty of women who just find it hot. Hell, I think the pairings I like are hot. Some women are just into it because it pushes their buttons - and they do not turn around and bitch about female characters at the drop of a hat. I was addressing the 'hating females' question, and the fact that I have met quite a few who do bitch about a vagina owner getting too close too their favorite male characters. Those are the ones I was talkignabout.

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ficangel
2007-12-17 04:33 pm UTC (link)

Bingo. The idea of two men together does all kinds of things to me on a purely lizard-brain level. But I don't immediately call any woman on the show a drunken slut for not being a saint (though a saint would immediately be called a Mary Sue). And, yeah, I am calling out every single person who attacked Katie for having the audacity to drink two weeks before she was of age and have someone drive her home rather than attempting it herself.

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dropsofviolet
2007-12-13 06:39 pm UTC (link)

Why is there such a struggle between non-homophobic het fen (they just prefer het, but back GLBT IRL) and a lot of slash fen?

As a non-homophobic het fan, I sometimes get squinty looks from slash fen who think that my disliking (not really disliking, but being sort of meh about yaoi) slash is just a cover for hating the GBLT. I'm a bi girl who loves yuri, but not yaoi, and I don't know a lot of slash fen because of those looks I get. It makes me uncomfortable.

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qem_chibati
2007-12-13 10:57 pm UTC (link)

It depends where you are, if there are other guys around your more likely to be welcomed I think... I remember seeing a few guys on aarinfantasy which is a yaoi/shounen ai focused forum, and I can't recall them having any trouble, but then I'm not really active there.

Hmm, on the one hand there are some really twitty fanbrats - on the other sometimes those fanbrats grow up and out of it and exploring deeper in the m/m fanbase helps them to do so.

I've also found that IRL, although their not exactly sensitive, guys that have a lot of exposure to yaoi and are... accepting of it's presence even if they don't like it, while they might crack a lot of jokes about it are more likely to be accepting of actual GBLT issues.

So I do think it assists with reducing heteronormativity.

It's not perfect - but even yaoi itself has some progress...

>Or does it even matter?
Yes it does matter. Encouraging people to think about the issues that their writing about and increasing understanding of those issues is always a good thing.

>Why is there such a struggle between non-homophobic het fen (they just prefer het, but back GLBT IRL) and a lot of slash fen?

Because people are twitty and the fuckwad theory of the internet rules all... D:

>Also of note is that many yaoi fanbrats tend to be misogynist, which could complicate things.

Some are; Some I think get a little carried away. Het pairigns aren't immune to misogynist statements either - especially when they clash with another het pairing.

You also have to remember that although yaoi has a lot of shitty romance scenes - a lot of it is duplicated in a genre I call, shitty shoujo...

Most of the problems and cliches in yaoi - are also common to romance in general - which is also why some women are drawn to it - they want to be able to read their trashy romance, but when it involves women they find it a bit harder to enjoy... It's a complicated tightrope, and it must suck if this is an actual issue that you face in real life.

I uh, find it easier to tolerate bad writing in a m/m pairing than I do in one that contains women, because I identify with women more... Although, I do read gen, het and yuri/femslash pairings.

Um, this means I come off as more of a slasher in fandoms where my OTP may be het.

Finally - um, yaoi /is/ all about the sex - Boy's Love is the catch all term for it now in Japan, where as the word yaoi is associated only with explicit sex scenes if in a magazine or novel series or explicit m/m doujinji really, as far as I understand.

There are some stories that focus more on the characters - although there are no guarantees.

Seme and uke and strict roles are pervasive across the BL genre in Japan, but there are some amusing parodies and things that are changing it. There is also the fact that strict roles are pervasive across all of Japan's writing, which makes it frustrating sometimes when reading about women...

Um, I think that a key word "switch", will help you find more even pairings - where they swap between roles.

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