Fandom Secrets Was MADE OF WORD

[redbrunja]

117: Fuck yes.

Also, author of 115: please come over to my lj. You are completely dead-on and I would LOVE to discus the awesomeness of Sai x Sakura with you, as well and find out where you found that amazing fanart.

160: While I feel your pain, HINATA knows Naruto quite well. It's him that has no idea who she is.

(Also, I was gone all day so I couldn't answer comments - I'll be responding to comments tomorrow. Also, remember to set your clocks forward.)

Comments

[ivy-chan.livejournal.com]

They reeeeaaaally could have worded that better. As it was, the exact statement was: "You can not be a slash fan AND be feminist." Which states that being a slash fan (person) keeps you from being a feminist (person). Which indirectly states that either feminism is anti-slash, or slash is anti-feminism, since both states can not simply exist at once.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

"I think you can be a slash (m/m) fan and be a feminist. I don't see how it's an automatic contradiction."

I do think the secret is badly worded (and it was probably by someone who hasn't had these discussions much) and have thought so since I first saw it last weekend, but, while it seems to be anti-slash-or at least, against using female characters and fictions poor treatment of them as justification-it isn't condemning people for liking it, just saying that the two don't go together. Most people wouldn't want hot sauce on their ice cream, but that doesn't make them natural enemies, or mean that a person can't like both without being a hypocrite. "Not feminist" isn't the equivalent of "anti-feminist," just like "about women" doesn't automatically equal "feminist." The fact that two things don't automatically go together doesn't make them natural enemies.

[ivy-chan.livejournal.com]

Ahhhh! Yeah, totally misread. I just CAME from an argument with someone who hated slash but loved femmeslash, while claiming to hate romance, while stating that all het was sexist because of the patriarchal culture. Disregard above statement, please.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I think that most people are seeing "slash" and" feminist" close together in something that isn't encouraging the connection, and automatically jumping to a conclusion that, combined with a few word choices (I would have replaced the bit where it says slash diminishes and ignores female characters with it prioritizing male characters over female characters) does make a degree of sense,but it results in most of the responses being a response to something that isn't in the secret at all.

[ivy-chan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, like I said in my journal, I still don't agree with the secret's opinion of slash.

[strange_quark]

There are parts that could have been worded better, yes, but it does not in any way say that you can't be a slash fan and a feminist at the same time. Like, really. In fact, the first thing the secret says is that one can.

I think there is a leap of logic in the third paragraph of the secret that might not be easy to follow--from the idea that slash is inherently not a feminist thing to the poor justification some slash fans use for maligning female characters--but it certainly does not say that.

[ivy-chan.livejournal.com]

*response to meganbmoore* Right, I totally misread. Sorry about that. XD

[strange_quark]

No worries ;)

As to your response, and the person you were arguing with... uh, whut? I'm not a fan of slash and I love femmeslash as much as anyone, but seriously, whut?

[ivy-chan.livejournal.com]

I think the argument went that slash was bad because it was about guy characters only, which makes it sexist and misogynistic. But femmeslash was good because it was all about the women controlling themselves without any men at all, which meant it was good and not sexist at all. Romance was basically defined as Harlequin romance, I think, or fluffy, sentimental romance. This person liked hardcore stuff and dysfunction and power imbalances and the occasional rape.

(Guys can actually rape each other without it being sexist, and girls can rape each other without it being sexist, so that's okay. Guy/girl rape or girl/guy rape is sexist either way.) And heterosexuality was bad because of a long history of abuse and oppression, and no one can write it without that seeping in. Apparently.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I read that as "And while I'm on the subject STOP ENCOURAGING THINGS THAT TREAT YOUR GENDER BADLY AND FIND THINGS THAT DO IF IT'S GOING TO MATTER TO YOU!" (Which is kinda my mindset, but if I were writing secrets, I would have made it a separate thing instead of randomly tangenting off into another thing." But then, I also did to just completely slide off most things where I don't like the female characters or how they're treated, often without even noticing.)