Slash: Painting Male Faces Female
It flickered across my tweetstream this morning: @dickon_edwards to give talk about slash (Blur slash, in particular) at the NPG, touching of course, on Dennis Cooper and his infamous Alex James "slash" as part of a talk on Queer Perspectives.
(I put the description of Dennis Cooper's work as "slash" in quotes because, although it depicts gay sex involving a pop star, which many people think of as the very definition of Slash, it was in fact, very *untypical* of the Slash genre.)
This is, of course, to me - someone who was the curator of a mostly Blur-oriented fan fiction site, in the mid to late 90s, before the days of LiveJournal and DreamWidth and gated communities (so I, personally, had to take the blasts and the threatened lawsuits when pop stars were not amused by my authors' work) - a bit like a red rag to a bull.
Is Slash "Queer"? That's a question that gets endlessly debated within the Fan Fiction communities. My problem with assigning Slash solely as a Queer concern is one of Authorship, and implied Audience, and the misogynist assumtions involved.
Slash is inherently 'not Hetero-Male'. But just because something is 'not Hetero-Male' does not make it automatically Queer. When I paint pictures of naked, vulnerable or available males, I am often told that this work is "homoerotic." Um, how? A straight female painting a naked male is *anything* but "homo" - the automatic assumption that a naked man *must* be evidence of homoeroticism is to deny the fact that females could experience desire, or, indeed, posess a sexuality at all, let alone the visual experience of sexuality. It is the same mistake that assumes Slash, because it depicts men, must be "homo-erotic."
I often quip that Slash is no more representative of gay sexuality than the standard "Lesbian Scene" in mainstream hetero male porn - nor is it *supposed* to be. It is the Performance of homosexual acts for an inherently hetero audience, rather than *actual* Queerness.
Slash (and the greater category of Fan Fiction which it is a part of) is one of the few spontaneous, unfettered expressions of *female* sexuality allowed within our culture. It is pornography created almost exclusively *by* females and *for* females. (Edit: mostly, but not exclusively hetero.) Women have been creating Slash for at least 50 years (the term originates from the Kirk/Spock romance texts of the original 1960s Star Trek) and yet it's ignored, swept under the carpet (except for those occasional "OMG Man discovers slash and writes article about how WEIRDED OUT he is" moments of press hysteria) because women aren't supposed to be interested in porn.
Then, suddenly, a man (Dennis Cooper) writes a gay wankfest about a male pop star and OMG OMG Slash is suddenly "High Art" and it's GROUNDBREAKING and both pop culture and Highbrow Journals are suddenly interested in discussing it.
(Are any other women getting flashbacks to those kinds of conversations where you and a gang of men are sat round a table Talking About Music and someone will pose a question, and you'll answer it, but they'll act like they haven't heard you, and carry on, like no one has answered the question, so you repeat your answer - no response. And then suddenly a man across the table will snap his fingers and go "oh yeah, Archie Bell & The Drells - Tighten Up!" and they all clap and say "yes, of course" - like, did you not just hear me say that THREE TIMES?)
So we've got yet another case where it's this thing that women do, and yet it's only addressed within High Pop Culture when *men* talk about it. I can't tell you the number of times I've read some Male Pop Critic mention that he's been asked to talk about Slash and Fan Fiction, then almost as an afterthought goes "ooh, maybe I better read some..." I mean, the usual way it's brought up is by (male) critic addresses, snarkily, (male) Pop Star "Did you know people write GAY SEX FANTASIES about you on the internet?!?!??"
And yet no one ever thinks to ask the people who already *are* experts in it. You know, the women and girls (wait - there's the problem. Right there.) who actually write and consume the stuff.
See, here's my take. And you will see why all the "OMG, why do people only pay attention when it's a *man* doing/talking about it?" carping comes in. Because this is inherently written into the structure of why *I* engage in, create and read Slash. The obvious bias towards men within pop culture, and the exclusion of female voices from it.
My earliest fandoms were Star Trek and Star Wars. (OK, technically, I used to watch Dr Who in the 70s, as a toddler from my father's lap, hiding behind his knees when it got too scary. But we're talking about the first fandoms where I engaged with the text on a personal level, and interacted with other fans.) When you're 9, you want to identify with the characters, partly you're looking for role models, partly you're just looking for who you are going to be when you play "Star Wars" with the neighbourhood kids. And let's face it. The roles for women in sci fi of that era were *RUBBISH*. Playing "Star Wars" was problematic - there was only one woman in it, and all she did was stand around waiting to get rescued with her hair tied in knots.
And playing "Star Trek" - as a pre-teen, I loved Star Trek more than I loved Star Wars, because I could already see that it was more complex, that it was more "sci" and less "fi" - and it used science fiction to address the philosophical issues I was starting to be interested in. But the roles for a 10 year old girl to project herself into? Well, it was Lt. Uhura or green-skinned alien girlfriend of the week? No thanks!
And yes, I know that Lt. Uhura was a groundbreaking character in terms of the depiction of race on primetime telly. First major black character, first interracial kiss... yes this is significant stuff. But as a female role model? Communications Officer? Fuck that - she was the bloody RECEPTIONIST. Her role just reminds me of the endless companies I've worked for where all the Board Members are males, except for the lone woman who is the "Director Of PR" because, like, girls are so GOOD at communicating, aren't they? (notice anything about all those pictures of "receptionists" in the link up there?)
The interesting characters, the ones who got to have emotions (or not, and struggling with it, in Spock's case) and character development and decent plots - they were all men. Passionate, impulsive Kirk; logical, intellectual Spock; the cranky but compassionate conscience of McCoy; houseproud Scotty. These were the people *I* identified with, and they were all men! So is it really any wonder that when women projected themselves into the universe of Star Trek, they chose to animate and inhabit the males?
Anyway, fast forward to puberty, and I have to admit I swapped sci fi geekdom for pop. Aged 12, I fell in love with Duran Duran and synths and new wave haircuts. And guess what, yet again, it was gang after gang of 5 Fearless Men with no females in sight (except the rotating Other-ised Girlfriend Of The Week in their videos.)
And you know what? The roles of women in the world of Rock Music were EVEN WORSE than those in Sci Fi. It wasn't even a choice between "stand around with your hair in buns waiting to get rescued" or "ship's nurse in a miniskirt" - it was basically groupie or... nope, just groupie. That's it, that's your role, that's all you can aspire to, as a woman, in rock music. (Wait a few years, and if you're lucky enough to be in an American indie band, you can be the token Girl Bassist, but this is 1982 and indie hasn't been invented yet.) GROUPIE. Disposable sex receptacle. No thank you.
See, I already know what to do. I grew up on sci fi. I got used to the idea - if there are no female role models available, identify with a male one. But hey, I'm hitting puberty. I'm... experiencing... odd... urges... As everyone else in my grade was picking who their Duran Duran boyfriend was going to be, I was experiencing the bizarre and conflicting urges of simultaneously wanting to fuck them and *be* them, all at the same time. So where my mates were lusting over John or fawning over Nick, I became that weirdest of creatures - I became a Nick/John slasher.
It had nothing to do with Queerness. Aged 12, I didn't even know what "Queer" was. It had nothing to do with wanting to "be a gay man" - it was a defiant statement about the rubbishness of the roles assigned to women. It was a *female* response to a world from which females were excluded.
Now I know that I don't speak for all Slash consumers or writers in this regard. For some women, the lack of female characters is part of the *appeal* - no perfect, toned, blonde, barbie model girlfriend to feel insecure in comparison to. (This saddens me in ways I can't entirely express - how thoroughly the Beauty Myth has twisted the ability of women to even enjoy their own sexuality.)
And obviously not all women *have* to identify with the male characters they slash. Sometimes it is just about the smut. Many women choose to consume or produce slash because well, let's face it, men kissing men, men making love to men is TOTALLY HOTT on a visceral, physical, visual level. (You know, all those things that females are not supposed to care about in our sexuality, because we are "not interested in pornography" and all that.) If you're a woman who finds male bodies beautiful or desirable, having two of them, with added extra bonus emotional content - double the pleasure.
And yeah - the emotional content is an implicit part of the appeal. Guys getting emotional, guys bonding, guys going through hurt/comfort and all the other slash conventions - this has its own sexual and romantic appeal to women, independent of the lack of female voices and role models within the cultural world - whether that culture is Rock Music or Science Fiction. Slash is a way of exploring and inhabiting the emotional landscapes of our culture's Texts, whether that Text is a television show or the pop narrative of Four Lads With Guitars Who Become Famous.
It's a common complaint, in internal criticism of Slash by other fans. That the men in Slash don't behave like men (even gay men); they behave, well - like women. Those heady, emotionally charged friendships that spill over into almost romantic intensity... the jealousy, the oversharing, the emotional dynamics... that's the emotional landscape of teenage girls and the women they become.
Slash is NOT a way of painting "straight faces queer" as Dickon would have it. What it is, when you participate in it, is a way of women painting MALE faces "FEMALE."
Anyway, I survived adolescence. I grew up. The Indie explosion happened. Riot Grrrl happened. I was part of that generation of women in the early 90s who woke up and decided to start their own bands. For a brief bubble, it was awesome. Women invaded the Male Space of Rock Music. Men decided that it was possible to redefine Masculinity in a way that looked almost as if we could all actually throw off the gender role straitjackets entirely.
And then just when it looked like the world was opening up, there followed the Britpop Backlash. The NME put its foot down, it was time to stop bopping our handbags round to the Marxist Feminist Dialectic of Stereolab and go back to treating pop music like a football match between two gangs of straight, white, cis males. (And girls had to get back to their traditional role of cheering from the sidelines wearing British Flag Bikinis - ironically missold to us as "Girl Power") A multicoloured, multicultural, multigendered landscape got reduced down to Blur v. Oasis.
Except, well... with *Blur* we initially wanted to protest "But no! They're more like us than against us - they went to ART SCHOOL. They have girlfriends in riot grrrl bands! Their proper cultural counterparts aren't football louts like Oasis, it's queer theory referencing gender terrorists like Suede!" Except no, watching the pop culture landscape of late 90s British "indie" change, and become whiter, more male, more heteronormative - it was a real conflict, to watch a band you thought you loved slowly destroying everything you *did* actually love about a music scene.
Well, we knew how to react to this, didn't we, ladies? When they took away our female role models, and started forcing this male-centric worldview down our throats again, we picked up our pencils and started re-writing, in fan fiction, the world we didn't get in the "real" fiction of the pop landscape.
And wow, were Blur a slashable band. All bands - well, the good ones at least, the ones that aren't just props for one person's ego - revolve around a creative Romance. (Think Lennon/McCartney, think Jagger/Richards.) Blur were interesting because they didn't just have *one* central romance (the obvious Damon/Graham pairing) they had this strange triple-act between Damon and Graham and Alex, with the pairings constantly being pulled off balance by the presence of a third party. That was what made their music interesting (Damon and Alex combining to form a pop landscape that Graham would rip apart with ugly-beautiful guitar noise) and what made the slash interesting (what's the OTP? Is it Damon and Graham because they were childhood friends? Graham and Alex because they were art school pals? Damon and Alex because they were thrown together by Graham's refusal to join in Groucho-fuelled tabloid antics? And what about Alex's love affair with Damien Hirst? Graham flouncing out of Blur in a lover's tiff and Damon taking up with Jamie Hewitt? The possibilities were endless!)
But anyway, I digress. (Slash is like that - once you see the world in that way, it's very hard to pull back and view interactions "objectively" and not as a series of "romances" again.)
Yes, we Slashers, we know that we are only borrowing homosexual acts for our revisionist female rewriting of pop texts. But that borrowing is mutal, evidenced by the way strong female artists get rewritten as "Gay Icons." Gay men take strong women for their Gay Icons because strong Out gay males have traditionally been so lacking in our homophobic society. So we do the same thing. Females rewrite male pop culture figures as gay when strong *female* characters are so lacking within our misogynist cultural landscape.
(I put the description of Dennis Cooper's work as "slash" in quotes because, although it depicts gay sex involving a pop star, which many people think of as the very definition of Slash, it was in fact, very *untypical* of the Slash genre.)
This is, of course, to me - someone who was the curator of a mostly Blur-oriented fan fiction site, in the mid to late 90s, before the days of LiveJournal and DreamWidth and gated communities (so I, personally, had to take the blasts and the threatened lawsuits when pop stars were not amused by my authors' work) - a bit like a red rag to a bull.
Is Slash "Queer"? That's a question that gets endlessly debated within the Fan Fiction communities. My problem with assigning Slash solely as a Queer concern is one of Authorship, and implied Audience, and the misogynist assumtions involved.
Slash is inherently 'not Hetero-Male'. But just because something is 'not Hetero-Male' does not make it automatically Queer. When I paint pictures of naked, vulnerable or available males, I am often told that this work is "homoerotic." Um, how? A straight female painting a naked male is *anything* but "homo" - the automatic assumption that a naked man *must* be evidence of homoeroticism is to deny the fact that females could experience desire, or, indeed, posess a sexuality at all, let alone the visual experience of sexuality. It is the same mistake that assumes Slash, because it depicts men, must be "homo-erotic."
I often quip that Slash is no more representative of gay sexuality than the standard "Lesbian Scene" in mainstream hetero male porn - nor is it *supposed* to be. It is the Performance of homosexual acts for an inherently hetero audience, rather than *actual* Queerness.
Slash (and the greater category of Fan Fiction which it is a part of) is one of the few spontaneous, unfettered expressions of *female* sexuality allowed within our culture. It is pornography created almost exclusively *by* females and *for* females. (Edit: mostly, but not exclusively hetero.) Women have been creating Slash for at least 50 years (the term originates from the Kirk/Spock romance texts of the original 1960s Star Trek) and yet it's ignored, swept under the carpet (except for those occasional "OMG Man discovers slash and writes article about how WEIRDED OUT he is" moments of press hysteria) because women aren't supposed to be interested in porn.
Then, suddenly, a man (Dennis Cooper) writes a gay wankfest about a male pop star and OMG OMG Slash is suddenly "High Art" and it's GROUNDBREAKING and both pop culture and Highbrow Journals are suddenly interested in discussing it.
(Are any other women getting flashbacks to those kinds of conversations where you and a gang of men are sat round a table Talking About Music and someone will pose a question, and you'll answer it, but they'll act like they haven't heard you, and carry on, like no one has answered the question, so you repeat your answer - no response. And then suddenly a man across the table will snap his fingers and go "oh yeah, Archie Bell & The Drells - Tighten Up!" and they all clap and say "yes, of course" - like, did you not just hear me say that THREE TIMES?)
So we've got yet another case where it's this thing that women do, and yet it's only addressed within High Pop Culture when *men* talk about it. I can't tell you the number of times I've read some Male Pop Critic mention that he's been asked to talk about Slash and Fan Fiction, then almost as an afterthought goes "ooh, maybe I better read some..." I mean, the usual way it's brought up is by (male) critic addresses, snarkily, (male) Pop Star "Did you know people write GAY SEX FANTASIES about you on the internet?!?!??"
And yet no one ever thinks to ask the people who already *are* experts in it. You know, the women and girls (wait - there's the problem. Right there.) who actually write and consume the stuff.
See, here's my take. And you will see why all the "OMG, why do people only pay attention when it's a *man* doing/talking about it?" carping comes in. Because this is inherently written into the structure of why *I* engage in, create and read Slash. The obvious bias towards men within pop culture, and the exclusion of female voices from it.
My earliest fandoms were Star Trek and Star Wars. (OK, technically, I used to watch Dr Who in the 70s, as a toddler from my father's lap, hiding behind his knees when it got too scary. But we're talking about the first fandoms where I engaged with the text on a personal level, and interacted with other fans.) When you're 9, you want to identify with the characters, partly you're looking for role models, partly you're just looking for who you are going to be when you play "Star Wars" with the neighbourhood kids. And let's face it. The roles for women in sci fi of that era were *RUBBISH*. Playing "Star Wars" was problematic - there was only one woman in it, and all she did was stand around waiting to get rescued with her hair tied in knots.
And playing "Star Trek" - as a pre-teen, I loved Star Trek more than I loved Star Wars, because I could already see that it was more complex, that it was more "sci" and less "fi" - and it used science fiction to address the philosophical issues I was starting to be interested in. But the roles for a 10 year old girl to project herself into? Well, it was Lt. Uhura or green-skinned alien girlfriend of the week? No thanks!
And yes, I know that Lt. Uhura was a groundbreaking character in terms of the depiction of race on primetime telly. First major black character, first interracial kiss... yes this is significant stuff. But as a female role model? Communications Officer? Fuck that - she was the bloody RECEPTIONIST. Her role just reminds me of the endless companies I've worked for where all the Board Members are males, except for the lone woman who is the "Director Of PR" because, like, girls are so GOOD at communicating, aren't they? (notice anything about all those pictures of "receptionists" in the link up there?)
The interesting characters, the ones who got to have emotions (or not, and struggling with it, in Spock's case) and character development and decent plots - they were all men. Passionate, impulsive Kirk; logical, intellectual Spock; the cranky but compassionate conscience of McCoy; houseproud Scotty. These were the people *I* identified with, and they were all men! So is it really any wonder that when women projected themselves into the universe of Star Trek, they chose to animate and inhabit the males?
Anyway, fast forward to puberty, and I have to admit I swapped sci fi geekdom for pop. Aged 12, I fell in love with Duran Duran and synths and new wave haircuts. And guess what, yet again, it was gang after gang of 5 Fearless Men with no females in sight (except the rotating Other-ised Girlfriend Of The Week in their videos.)
And you know what? The roles of women in the world of Rock Music were EVEN WORSE than those in Sci Fi. It wasn't even a choice between "stand around with your hair in buns waiting to get rescued" or "ship's nurse in a miniskirt" - it was basically groupie or... nope, just groupie. That's it, that's your role, that's all you can aspire to, as a woman, in rock music. (Wait a few years, and if you're lucky enough to be in an American indie band, you can be the token Girl Bassist, but this is 1982 and indie hasn't been invented yet.) GROUPIE. Disposable sex receptacle. No thank you.
See, I already know what to do. I grew up on sci fi. I got used to the idea - if there are no female role models available, identify with a male one. But hey, I'm hitting puberty. I'm... experiencing... odd... urges... As everyone else in my grade was picking who their Duran Duran boyfriend was going to be, I was experiencing the bizarre and conflicting urges of simultaneously wanting to fuck them and *be* them, all at the same time. So where my mates were lusting over John or fawning over Nick, I became that weirdest of creatures - I became a Nick/John slasher.
It had nothing to do with Queerness. Aged 12, I didn't even know what "Queer" was. It had nothing to do with wanting to "be a gay man" - it was a defiant statement about the rubbishness of the roles assigned to women. It was a *female* response to a world from which females were excluded.
Now I know that I don't speak for all Slash consumers or writers in this regard. For some women, the lack of female characters is part of the *appeal* - no perfect, toned, blonde, barbie model girlfriend to feel insecure in comparison to. (This saddens me in ways I can't entirely express - how thoroughly the Beauty Myth has twisted the ability of women to even enjoy their own sexuality.)
And obviously not all women *have* to identify with the male characters they slash. Sometimes it is just about the smut. Many women choose to consume or produce slash because well, let's face it, men kissing men, men making love to men is TOTALLY HOTT on a visceral, physical, visual level. (You know, all those things that females are not supposed to care about in our sexuality, because we are "not interested in pornography" and all that.) If you're a woman who finds male bodies beautiful or desirable, having two of them, with added extra bonus emotional content - double the pleasure.
And yeah - the emotional content is an implicit part of the appeal. Guys getting emotional, guys bonding, guys going through hurt/comfort and all the other slash conventions - this has its own sexual and romantic appeal to women, independent of the lack of female voices and role models within the cultural world - whether that culture is Rock Music or Science Fiction. Slash is a way of exploring and inhabiting the emotional landscapes of our culture's Texts, whether that Text is a television show or the pop narrative of Four Lads With Guitars Who Become Famous.
It's a common complaint, in internal criticism of Slash by other fans. That the men in Slash don't behave like men (even gay men); they behave, well - like women. Those heady, emotionally charged friendships that spill over into almost romantic intensity... the jealousy, the oversharing, the emotional dynamics... that's the emotional landscape of teenage girls and the women they become.
Slash is NOT a way of painting "straight faces queer" as Dickon would have it. What it is, when you participate in it, is a way of women painting MALE faces "FEMALE."
Anyway, I survived adolescence. I grew up. The Indie explosion happened. Riot Grrrl happened. I was part of that generation of women in the early 90s who woke up and decided to start their own bands. For a brief bubble, it was awesome. Women invaded the Male Space of Rock Music. Men decided that it was possible to redefine Masculinity in a way that looked almost as if we could all actually throw off the gender role straitjackets entirely.
And then just when it looked like the world was opening up, there followed the Britpop Backlash. The NME put its foot down, it was time to stop bopping our handbags round to the Marxist Feminist Dialectic of Stereolab and go back to treating pop music like a football match between two gangs of straight, white, cis males. (And girls had to get back to their traditional role of cheering from the sidelines wearing British Flag Bikinis - ironically missold to us as "Girl Power") A multicoloured, multicultural, multigendered landscape got reduced down to Blur v. Oasis.
Except, well... with *Blur* we initially wanted to protest "But no! They're more like us than against us - they went to ART SCHOOL. They have girlfriends in riot grrrl bands! Their proper cultural counterparts aren't football louts like Oasis, it's queer theory referencing gender terrorists like Suede!" Except no, watching the pop culture landscape of late 90s British "indie" change, and become whiter, more male, more heteronormative - it was a real conflict, to watch a band you thought you loved slowly destroying everything you *did* actually love about a music scene.
Well, we knew how to react to this, didn't we, ladies? When they took away our female role models, and started forcing this male-centric worldview down our throats again, we picked up our pencils and started re-writing, in fan fiction, the world we didn't get in the "real" fiction of the pop landscape.
And wow, were Blur a slashable band. All bands - well, the good ones at least, the ones that aren't just props for one person's ego - revolve around a creative Romance. (Think Lennon/McCartney, think Jagger/Richards.) Blur were interesting because they didn't just have *one* central romance (the obvious Damon/Graham pairing) they had this strange triple-act between Damon and Graham and Alex, with the pairings constantly being pulled off balance by the presence of a third party. That was what made their music interesting (Damon and Alex combining to form a pop landscape that Graham would rip apart with ugly-beautiful guitar noise) and what made the slash interesting (what's the OTP? Is it Damon and Graham because they were childhood friends? Graham and Alex because they were art school pals? Damon and Alex because they were thrown together by Graham's refusal to join in Groucho-fuelled tabloid antics? And what about Alex's love affair with Damien Hirst? Graham flouncing out of Blur in a lover's tiff and Damon taking up with Jamie Hewitt? The possibilities were endless!)
But anyway, I digress. (Slash is like that - once you see the world in that way, it's very hard to pull back and view interactions "objectively" and not as a series of "romances" again.)
Yes, we Slashers, we know that we are only borrowing homosexual acts for our revisionist female rewriting of pop texts. But that borrowing is mutal, evidenced by the way strong female artists get rewritten as "Gay Icons." Gay men take strong women for their Gay Icons because strong Out gay males have traditionally been so lacking in our homophobic society. So we do the same thing. Females rewrite male pop culture figures as gay when strong *female* characters are so lacking within our misogynist cultural landscape.
posted by Masonic Boom | 11:04 am
16 Comments:
Firstly, nice post. I enjoyed reading it. I've got a gay mate who writes slash and your final point about creating out and out strong men makes sense to me and helps me understand what I, as a straight dude, find a bit difficult to understand.
However,the majority of Slash my housemate and gay friend show me (or leave open on their laptops) seems to be simply pornography and does little to reflect any of the values or make any of the statements you say are there.
I am willing to admit given my limited ieas and exposure to genre that i've simply not read enough to see it, but isn't it possible that it's just an outlet for sexual feelings rather then any form of societal comment?
I mean sure some comment is inherant but I don't know if I'd go so far as to suggest it's purposefully entered into the writing as you seem to here
P.S I emailed this to my mate but knowing him he'll not read it.
Love love love yes yes totally agree two thumbs up yes yes yes. Exactly precisely, yes yes yes.
OK, wow. Thanks for getting into such detail, really appreciate it. I'm also really interested to hear about yr gay housemate & his experiences of Slash. Because I don't mean to go all "OMG a black swan!" but in *years* of running a fan fic site (& this was in the early days of the web when males outnumbered females about 10 to 1) & speaking to dozens of writers & hundreds of readers - with a few exceptions (men I knew thru the fan communities) all of them were female - or at least identified as female.
Maybe this was on account of the bands having strong female fanbases (certainly true of Duran) but although I've met gay male erotic writers, I never met a male (let alone gay male) Fan Fiction writer. That doesn't mean they didn't exist (hell I still know men who insist female DJs don't exist even though I am one) just that I never encountered one.
So if your housemate did read, I'd be really interested in hearing his experiences, & to know his fandom, his 'ships etc. It's certainly my experience that male erotic writing can be quite different from female (I hate to make gender based generalisations but in the words of an erotic writing editor "I've never read female erotic writing that mentioned penis length & I've never read male that didn't!"
I find it odd though that you seem to think that porn & "societal comment" are somehow mutually exclusive. Sexuality & what one finds pornographic (or erotic) is one of those areas where the personal is HUGELY political. Perhaps as a straight male your experience of the world & culture & your sex/sexuality align to the point where you don't *have* to think about it.
& perhaps this is one of those places where Queer & female aligns - that simply to find or create culture or porn that reflects *you* rather than the presumed straight male IS a struggle & a political statement. It's easy for straight males to find strong role models & erotic/love interests in mainstream pop culture. For women & Queers we often have had to make our own.
Well said! One thing I have noticed, being also into gaming, is that there are a number of gay male gameing fan fic writers, in fact I teamed up with him to knock out a few stories,never mentioned them before as I know you are not into gaming,but....I also have a female friend who writes....wait for it.... World of Warcraft Slash. She "came out" to me about a few years ago when we were chatting about cute boys and story writing, and she mentioned she had some things she was wondering if I'd like to read, but was I bothered by "descriptions of boys with boys" to which I responded "hell no, slash right? been of fan of that for years, just in the rock formant" So she sent me the link, with strict instructions NOT to let her husband know about it.
signed, JoMosrite
It's two of them a mate of mine (B) and my housemate (S). I've got no idea of any of it is online but B's stuff is Star Wars and House slash and S' is more of the historical persuasion, he did one with Robespierre and Danton for instance,and I've sent them both an E-mail but I'm relctant to ring either of them and be like "Hey, I was reading this thing on gay porn on the net and...".
It's a bit difficult for me to come around to your mindset, and vice versa, but I think you are right. As my sexuality is "Normal" and is hand delivered to me 24/7, so much down to the individual kinks in my sexuality are met frequently by characters on mainstream tv, it's hard to imagine ever having to go looking for it in the manner you describe.
P.S B does literature review here:http://aussierebel.wordpress.com/ I'm not sure that he ever talks about his *ahem* private writings on there though so I wouldn't hit him up.
You know, I really think you've underestimated Princess Leia.
OK, fair enough, Spliffe - I haven't seen the films in, oh, 25 years or so, so you are relying on a child's memory. And I understand that Leia gets better in the later films, but she's still SHIT in the first one. Anyway, like I said I PREFERED STAR TREK.
Ha ha, Jo - even though no, I'm not into gaming, I do still "woo-hoo!" proud that you're writing slash now.
:-D
OK, this is a quote from VerbingTheNoun, who emailed me about this post, but I thought her email brought up a number of interesting points so I asked her if I could reproduce it in its entirety here. (Split into two comments because it's long.)
1. I do agree that there is nothing inherently queer about slash, but I can't possibly agree with the statement that slash "is written by hetero women for the consumption of hetero women" - in fact, a lot of the slash-heavy fandoms I have been part of have been populated with QUEER women in a large portion, as well as some men (though, yes, very few men). Besides I am queer myself & I don't want to be excluded from the definition of slash fandom :( I think the thing that people SHOULD say instead of "slash is queer" is "slash is homonormative" which is totally a different issue, but slash is also not hetero.
2. The main reason I have heard people call slash queer is because it's (frequently) women writing to get other women turned on, which sounds kind of gay until these same people realize that a lot of the time the women reading are being turned on by, um, men. So it's not really that gay, no. In other words, I agree on this point but I just want to bolster what you were saying with extra material.
3. I really like the point you bring up in your post that it's not meant, or not always meant, to be a realistic depiction of gay relationships or moreover even really ABOUT gay relationships.
More from @VTN:
4. I also can't unequivocally agree with the statement that slash is, as you describe it, 'painting male faces female'. I absolutely agree that part of the reason I started writing slash is because I was interested in that kind of narrative, where two people develop a strong emotional connection, and I was also feeling a complete lack of female presence in any of the worlds I wanted to write about, so I began identifying with male characters when I made up scenarios. (This is borne out by the fact that, once I found some fandoms where there WERE women to write about, I started writing about them.) I also agree that for hetero women, sexual scenes between two men are more fun to write because men are who they are interested in sexually, and now there are 2 of them!
But I...okay, I wasn't around at the beginning, which I should always say as a disclaimer, and yet, even the slash I have read from earlier days doesn't in my opinion make the men act 'female' because wtf does that even mean? (And it often, in my opinion, focuses on reinterpreting narratives of 'male bonding', again, whatever that means.) I don't like the idea that men can't have certain characteristics without being labeled feminine. You're right, people do use this in their rhetoric when dismissing slash ("oh, it's a ridiculous silly fantasy because they have TURNED MENZ INTO WOMENZ, it's unrealistic, bad writing, blah blah blah").
But the thing is, they are also dismissing these 'feminine' characteristics as 1) restricted to females, 2) bad. And especially considering the article you tweeted about the difference - well, the lack thereof - between male and female brains I think it's important to emphasize that slash isn't giving men the qualities of women, it's saying that certain qualities don't have to be restricted to only one gender. So I think this idea that slash somehow 'feminizes' the male characters is in itself a little restrictive. Rather that it says women can identify with men because we actually have characteristics in common, and the lines that divide 'male' from 'female', and 'masculine' from 'feminine', are really a lot more blurry in real life than they are in the mainstream media.
Which I think, to me, explains something about why so many of the people I have met through slash fandom are queer - because it doesn't dismiss their own forms of gender expression by pretending they don't exist like the rest of our media does. And I guess that brings me back to the point that slash isn't queer so much as non-heteronormative.
So here, I feel a bit hoist on my own petard, because I've spent my entire life decrying the false dichotomy of "male" and "female" even as I use these words as shortcuts - to signify a certain set of gender roles, while recognising that they are conditioned and socialised *roles* rather than deterministic Freudian Destinies.
Almost all of what VTN writes in Point 4, I absolutely agree with.
However, my biggest caveat is that when I used the phrase "painting male faces 'female'" (and to my defense, I did put "female" in quotes, indicating that I meant the conventional gender role rather the biological) - but I also used this phrase as a headline to reinforce the idea that Slash and Fan Fiction are still, primarily a *female* world and a mostly female activity. I mean that in the most positive of ways - it's that rare place, as talked about on Metafandom the other day, where a female gaze and a female audience is implicitly assumed. It is NOT an attempt to reproduce or coopt the world of gay male sexuality, it is a (stereotypically) female way of engaging with texts.
(And yes, although we've managed to find 3 examples of gay males who write slash, that doesn't change the overwhelming majority that comprises the female authorship and audience. I mean, as much as it pains me to say it, despite the fact that *I* am a Female Electronic Music Producer, and I know several other females - the *world* of Electronic Music Production, like it or not, is still a VERY male and masculine sphere - even to the extreme of often being set up to deliberately exclude women, to keep it so. I don't think Slash *tries* to exclude men in the same way that, say, Electronic Music production forums go out of their way to exclude women, I think it's more a question of lack of interest. But it is still an environment that presumes a female audience.)
Also, I don't have the negative association with "female" that, as she points out, colours the negative criticism of "oh noes, you painting our MENZ as WOMENZ." Because, we, as authors, are projecting our own thoughts and motivations onto our characters, we are still viewing them through a female lens. All I can say is, that from mine own experience, I *write* men diferently when I write Slash than when I write general or het Fan Fiction. And this is a deliberate choice, for all the reasons that I outlined in the blog.
As to Point 1 - I have changed the blog so as to highlight that it is "written by women for the consumption of women" and left the "hetero" out of it. From the lofty heights (and senility) of my advanced age, I had simply forgotten the heady mixture of the exploration of sexuality that drove my own early experiments with the writing of slash.
Although it's very easy to get sniffy and dismissive of the sexual imagination of "bi-curious adolescent girls" (this dismissal makes me rrrrrage when it comes from others, even as I've used it on myself) - I think that I have unfortunately downplayed this aspect of it, in order to make it fit my "BUT IT'S NOT ABOUT GAY MEN!" ranting.
You're completely right, and I was narrow-sighted. Slash can indeed be queer, but with the caveat that the queerness comes from the authorship, not from the acts depicted.
In fact, I've certainly done that myself, way back in the mists of time when I was a gender confused teenager. It was easier to work through the puzzle of tumultuous quasi-romantic feelings *I* had for passionate female friendships by projecting those situations onto pop stars I'd write about. But I was using the scribblings about "Peter and Daniel" to work out my own sexuality, rather than make any statement about theirs - but perhaps I only recognise this with hindsight.
Thanks for airing my views and for your response to the points in my email Kate, I am working this morning but when I get home I will reply to your replies. :)
Aight, time to actually respond to these comments! Not a whole lot to say actually as I totally agree with everything you've said in response to my comments. And I wanted to thank you for editing the sentence about "by heterosexual women for heterosexual women". :)
So - men who slash! Why aren't there many of them? I think that part of it is indeed because a lot of the time it doesn't really have any relation to actual relationships between men, and gay men who are searching for a realistic depiction of their own experience generally won't find it in slash. Probably because not only are the writers not themselves gay men, they also aren't interested in creating something realistic. They just want to tell the stories in their own heads. And in my personal opinion, most-to-all of the people who read slash understand that that's the purpose of the stories.
I also think that (again going back to that article you tweeted the other day) part of it has something to do with the fact that writing stories that are not intended to be published (though a lot of slash writers will disagree with me, I think fanfiction writing is a completely different process, maybe even a different art form, from writing fiction for the market) is considered an activity only appropriate for women. We get this "men are visual, women like to put it in writing" thing which may come 100% from social pressures for all I know but still seems to have been true for a lot of people I know (though man, did I get told when I started to explain to a male friend why I write erotic fiction - "well, men often like to watch porn whereas women get turned on more by reading it" and he interrupted me saying he liked to read stories just as much as he liked to look at pictures/video - fell flat on my face, I did).
And then it becomes a cycle. [men are pushed away from writing while women are pushed toward it] --> [men don't write as much as women] --> [circles based around writing are populated mostly by women] --> [men don't join in because they don't want to be the odd one out] --> it all begins over again.
I have to admit it's actually pretty awesome to be a part of a community where people don't expect me to be male, and where my experiences as a woman don't make me the odd one out, for once.
Great post!
Whenever the "Is slash queer?" argument comes up, I'm refreshed to see points of view that don't decide that if it is not, it is inherently worthless. I see that all too often.
Frequently it's framed as straight women co-opting queer frameworks or identities and therefore silencing queer voices. However, it seems like often the argument swings so far that way that it ends up with gay males silencing female voices, and reinforcing the whole idea that female sexuality is non-existent and/or worthy of scorn.
I'm always happy to see people put forward that slash can be both not-queer and worthy-of-existing.
fascinating post and debate.
I agree women's desire and the female 'gaze' do not necessarily need to be framed as 'queer'. Though, it could be argued that as they have been so repressed and ignored in our culture, they are inevitably a bit queer as they go against the norm.
also I would say that men watching girl on girl porno would be different from a man writing a slash fic about Sex In The City characters getting it on. I wonder if any have?
hey i saw these videos and thought u might be into them, they're only tangentially related to this post but it seemed a good place 2 tell u about them. this is plax from ilx btw
http://www.feministfrequency.com/2010/08/remixing-pop-culture-event-videos/
I'm watching the first one and its pretty good so far at least.
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