Slash & Het & Femmeslash

[redbrunja]

I had a whole bunch of friends come over for my belated birthday party, which was a blast. I'm really lucky in that my friends are friendly with each other, so if I step out for a minute I don't have to worry about anyone being left out of the conversation.

Only downside is that I'm super behind on comments, but that's a small price to pay. ^_^

And now, meta.

When people get to discussing slash and het (note: femmeslash is almost never mentioned in these discussions) there will be, at some point, at statement to the effect that 'slash and het are equally problematic' meaning that arguing that one is inherently better is pointless. The fact that neither genre is more feminist or subversive by default is true but what doesn't get mentioned is that het and slash and femmeslash are troublesome and empowering in different ways.

Before I begin, a few notes:

-no genre is quantitatively better or worse than any other. Romance novels are not less worth-while than lit novels, nor are they automatically written with less skill.

-every genre (especially in fanfic) is largely composed of horrible stories.

-not every story or fanfic says or is trying to say something subversive or culturally relevant. This is okay. Stories can be neutral. They can just be there to be PWP, they can just be there to watch the characters have adventures.

That said-

At its best, slash is both subversive and feminist, a genre written by women for women and comprised of narratives removed from the heteronormative culture standards.

At its worst, slash is misogynistic and forces blatantly sexist roles on the characters involved, while erasing and vilifying women and femininity. Additionally, it can be portray men in unrealistic and objectifying ways.

At its best, het is a way to celebrate relationships between equals as well as deconstruct and explore traditional and nontraditional gender roles. Also, it can be used to forfront forefront female characters who are often not given the same screentime as their male counterparts.

At it's worst, het supports sexist dynamics and glorifies the male point of view, as well as reinforcing the idea that all women must be in a relationship to be happy, that that The Man You Love > Everything Else In Your Life.

At it's best, femmeslash gives even more screen time and attention to the ladies and allows authors to explore issues that might feel unnatural or out of character for a male character to be party to. Additionally, because femmeslash is less popular within the fandom, I have noticed a trend for there to be more well-written fics when looked at proportionally.

At its worst, it objectifies women and supports the idea that lesbians do not get happily ever afters.
supports the idea that lesbian leads to death.

Your thoughts?

[ETA: I'VE EDITED THIS A BIT TO REFLECT POINTS THAT COMMENTATORS MENTIONED, TO CLARIFY SOME OF MY THOUGHTS, AND ADD THINGS I FORGOT.]

Comments

[qualapec.livejournal.com]

I actually spent most of the day thinking off-and-on about what you said in your last post on the topic. The 'Yaoi and Misogyny Bingo Sheet'.

I'm glad that you provide a fairly even point of view of how het and yaoi can be empowering but also can be used to subvert women. I can think of examples of both.

Although, a couple of things I think you don't touch on:

-The fact that slash/yaoi often portrays unrealistic and objectified males. The argument could also be made that, at it's worst, it devalues men the same way a two-dimentional female character devalues women; as sex objects instead of people.

-You make some good points about how femslash could be empowering...but I think you forget a few downsides to it. If yaoi can be misogynistic at it's worst, then femslash can be man-hating at it's worst. It's NOT a worm hole where matter can only travel one way. The very idea that one gender is excluded from a romantic relationship CAN be horribly abused. Just as easily as someone could write about two men who were driven to each other by a long line of women who are portrayed as horrible witches who used them, one could write a story about Amazon warriors that are convinced men are apes that are only good for reproduction and that real pleasure and understanding CAN ONLY be found in another woman. Basically what I'm saying is that things that are true for yaoi are going to be true at some point for femslash as well (you know...minus anything that involves a penis). There are right ways and wrong ways to write each, but I think they can be equally damaging when written wrong.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

he fact that slash/yaoi often portrays unrealistic and objectified males.

You're right, I didn't think of this.

Just as easily as someone could write about two men who were driven to each other by a long line of women who are portrayed as horrible witches who used them, one could write a story about Amazon warriors that are convinced men are apes that are only good for reproduction and that real pleasure and understanding CAN ONLY be found in another woman.

This is true. However, have you found that trope to exist in a significant portion of femmeslash? I know I didn't say this in my main post, but I was purposely writing about problems that I have seen in multiple fics, and in my readings of femmeslash, I've yet to come across it.

[neko-no-kaze.livejournal.com]

On tv troupes wasn't it something called sturgeon's law that guarantees 90% of everything is going to be horrible?

Romance novels are not less worth-while than lit novels, nor are they automatically written with less skill.
True, they're just written a different way or rather for a slightly different purpose. Not that's bad, just some people will like it and some wont. Which is how everything goes really.

By the way, happy birthday, albeit very belated.^_^

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

On tv troupes wasn't it something called sturgeon's law that guarantees 90% of everything is going to be horrible?

Yep, exactly.

And while romance novels DO have different tropes in their genre than lit does, even excluding that, there are some romance novelists who have an better grasp of the craft of writing than some lit authors do.

And thanks!

[tobu-ishi.livejournal.com]

Romance novels are not less worth-while than lit novels, nor are they automatically written with less skill.

Some novels are both. Jane Austen, much? 8D

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Great example.

[sarolynne.livejournal.com]

For the most part I agree with you--all three... genres seems like the wrong term to me, since I tend to think of that as mystery or fantasy or historical fiction, non-fiction, porn, etc, rather than how the bits fit together. All three configurations can be very, very good, or they can be very, very bad. Empowering, or exploitative. And most of the stories written of any of them will just be crap.

However, I felt like you missed the biggest pitfalls of femmeslash: objectification. I would say that, at it's worst, femmeslash erases real lesbians and creates a sort of category of straight or bisexual women who preform lesbian acts for the titillation of the viewer/reader, normally presumed to be male. Obviously, lesbians (gays) dying as a result of their forbidden love is a very problematic trope, but I would say that lesbianism for male consumption is alive and well in fandom, and at least as bad.

I also think that it's a little troubling to say that het is at it's best when it's a deconstruction. Yes, yes, I know; poor little heterosexuals without all their representation--BUT. I would say that representations of equal partnerships in het relationships are far from well represented. Het fic can also be a way to celebrate and explore that, as well as to deconstruct the problematic nature of traditional het narratives.

So, like I said, I agree with most of this, but those are two things I'd add to the list.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Thank you for your input, I've edited in the comments about objectification in slash (both slashes) and your thoughts on het (which was actually my hardest entry to write, because it's what I'm drawn to read).

[parallactic.livejournal.com]

At its worst, it supports the idea that lesbian leads to death.

I've read f/f slash for Western media sources, and a handful for anime/manga fandoms. From what I've seen, death!fic is pretty rare, unless it's based on a canon heavily weighted towards doom and gloom. I've also seen fic that retroactively femslashed characters where one was already dead in canon. But those were more outlier cases. I think lesbian death happens more in original media sources; at least the U.S. ones. Japanese media tends to portray f/f (yuri) as a passing phase, and how het is the only "real" type of relationship.

At it's best, femmeslash gives even more screen time and attention to the ladies and allows authors to explore issues that might feel unnatural or out of character for a male character to be party to.

I'd say that from a feminist perspective, the best thing about femslash could be that it explores relationships between female characters. Male characters just end up getting marginalized.

And I actually think that m/m slash and f/f slash overlap in how they're both removed from heteronormativity, and written primarily by women (http://community.livejournal.com/girlwank/3704.html). They have that in common, but m/m and f/f do operate differently. M/m slash and het can put the female gaze on men, which is the opposite of how it usually works in the mainstream. Het and f/f slash can be about women writing about female characters.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

I think lesbian death happens more in original media sources; at least the U.S. ones. Japanese media tends to portray f/f (yuri) as a passing phase, and how het is the only "real" type of relationship.

Yep, lesbianism=death is very common in western television, and within fandom, that is often represented as lesbians not getting a HEA (I've edited my post to clarify this.)

They have that in common, but m/m and f/f do operate differently. M/m slash and het can put the female gaze on men, which is the opposite of how it usually works in the mainstream. Het and f/f slash can be about women writing about female characters.

That is a very good point.

[nimblnymph.livejournal.com]

Just jumping in real quick about the yaoi/slash and feminism thing.

When yaoi first came into being, it was written by women for the intention of giving themselves a more proactive role in a male dominant society. Because women were not supposed to go on the same exciting adventures as the men and because any female manga-ka who TRIED to give her heroines more action were pretty much given the no-go, they designed yaoi as a way of doing just that. The manga-ka basically use one of the male characters as a self-insert so that the female readers can identify and have SOME kind of representation in the action story. That's why in series that are specifically meant to be yaoi, you have the uke personality type. Uke doesn't mean submissive. It just refers to the one who is representing the female persona.

And while I don't like or agree with women essentially being forced to write as men just to get their ideas out, I do understand that at the time yaoi was made.. that was their ONLY choice. It was a subtle sort of rebellion against the male dominance in their culture, something that a LOT of yaoi fans and writers tend to forget nowadays.

So while it may feature m/m as the pairing... yaoi is, at its heart, a feminist movement.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

*nods*

Yeah, slashers do have a tendency to have this disconnect between slash and gay people in real life.

Thanks for the birthday wishes!

[strange_quark]

I woke up about an hour ago and the coffee hasn't kicked in yet, so if my reply makes no sense, blame that...

I think that when slash is at its best as you've described -- an accurate portrayal of gay relationships that recognizes their validity -- then that CAN be a feminist thing. Feminism is about more than just women's rights -- in fact I think that feminists owe it to themselves to take up other causes because those causes, while not directly related to women, involve women. Racial issues, for example, affect POC of all kinds but they do have specific ramifications on WOC, and so feminists owe it to themselves to be against racism.

Same is true of gay and lesbian issues. Even if you're talking about a m/m relationship, what you're dealing with is battling traditional views about gender dynamics and sexual dynamics -- feminist issues.

[nimblnymph.livejournal.com]

I agree with everything you've said. It really, REALY irks me when slash fans don't understand that, at its root, yaoi is a feminist concept. And then they go on to say how "this woman is stupid" or whatever, yet they consistently characterize one of the men in their OTP as being the stereotypical female; why doesn't he like me, I want to express me feelings but can't...

I get not liking a character. But there's a difference between not liking a character and bashing the hell out of them without any real argument other than "she's stupid". For example, I read a Hellsing fic that was Alucard/Anderson. And the reason it was A/A is because "Integra's is a bitch and I don't like her." Oh, and there was apparently some sexual tension between A/A that I missed in the manga because the other argument was that A/A was canon.

Anyway, the point is... like you said, a lot of slash makes the females out to be bitchy, nasty women when in fact they aren't. In the case of Integra Hellsing, the writer was confusing strong and confident with bitchy and unlikeable. Also, again as you pointed out, if you're gonna change the personality/mindset of one of your OTPs to being more feminine... what the hell was the point of writing slash to begin with?

Now, you know I love slash, but I love it for very different reasons than the above. First, I like certain aesthetics for my pairings, which extends beyond just physically looking delicious together. I like them to compliment each other personality wise while not being totally reliant on that person to exist. Hakkai/Sanzo is my favorite yaoi pairing for the sheer fact that both men are incredibly intelligent, very strong willed and have the right personalities to suit the other. But it's almost impossible to find GOOD fic with this pairing because Hakkai ALWAYS adopts what a lot of people seem to think are "female" attributes. And by the end of the fic... you wonder why in the hell Sanzo is still with him.

I blame the het fail on Japanese cultural beliefs more than anything else. They've made it a stereotype now that any female character in love with a male character must do EVERYTHING for him. Put her life on the line, give up her goals and plans for the future just to be with him... You see it everywhere, so it's now become an accepted thing in fandom. The men are the most important things to women.

The one point I wanted you to elaborate on is the last one. Femmeslash equals death? Are you talking about character death or what? Because, and maybe I've just gotten lucky in what little good yuri I've found, I'm not seeing a correlation between lesbian relationships and death in fanfiction. There's a definite correlation between lesbian relationships and angst, i.e. you see more "omg, what is everyone gonna say?" type scenarios and uncertainty in femmeslash than slash, but death? I'm not following you.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

I think too many people just look at Teh Pretty when shipping and not enough at character dynamics.

And I think yaoi, at it's roots, is both feminist and sexist, so the onus is really on the individual author to pick which route they're going to follow.

etween not liking a character and bashing the hell out of them without any real argument other than "she's stupid". For example, I read a Hellsing fic that was Alucard/Anderson. And the reason it was A/A is because "Integra's is a bitch and I don't like her." Oh, and there was apparently some sexual tension between A/A that I missed in the manga because the other argument was that A/A was canon.

Another reason that Hellsing fandom is full of fail.

Also, again as you pointed out, if you're gonna change the personality/mindset of one of your OTPs to being more feminine... what the hell was the point of writing slash to begin with?

Exactly! It comes across as hating vaginas, like 'oh, the female body is just SO UGLY' which makes me shudder SO HARD when I think about it coming from other women.

I blame the het fail on Japanese cultural beliefs more than anything else. They've made it a stereotype now that any female character in love with a male character must do EVERYTHING for him. Put her life on the line, give up her goals and plans for the future just to be with him... You see it everywhere, so it's now become an accepted thing in fandom. The men are the most important things to women.

Japanese cultural beliefs? Oh no. That is totally an american cultural norm as well.

Are you talking about character death or what? Because, and maybe I've just gotten lucky in what little good yuri I've found, I'm not seeing a correlation between lesbian relationships and death in fanfiction. There's a definite correlation between lesbian relationships and angst, i.e. you see more "omg, what is everyone gonna say?" type scenarios and uncertainty in femmeslash than slash, but death? I'm not following you.

I clarifying that in my post, because I didn't say that well. What I meant was, it is much, much less likely to see a yuri couple being happy together than a yaoi couple. Yaoi has no lack of curtain!fic - I have YET to see a femmeslash curtain fic (as such, it's totally on my to-write list.)

[nimblnymph.livejournal.com]

I just wrote a rather long reply to bellzooks about that, so I apologize for keeping this brief since I don't feel like reposting everything I just said:

1. When yaoi was first introduced, it WAS intended as a feminist outlet. It was written by women for women because they were unhappy about the poor representation of women in manga. And it's unfortunate that they had to play into the male-dominant standard to do this, but they did what they had to do to get their stories and voices heard.

2. Yaoi, like many things, has shifted in relevance and meaning over the years tangentially to the changes in societal views. For the last 10-15 years, yaoi HAS been more about bringing awareness/celebrating gays rather than women expressing themselves through men. The same shift in meaning can also be applied to the seme/uke relationships. At the beginning, seme and uke was only used to help define the hidden female character in the story. Now, it's been twisted to mean the woman or submissive partner, which wasn't always the case in classic yaoi.

And I agree with you that being part of the slash fandom doesn't make you an advocate for gay rights. While there IS a certain element of it that is being used to help spread awareness and potentially change closed-minded perceptions of gays and lesbians, a lot of the slash fandom objectifies gay relationships by women-- much like lesbian relationships are objectified by men. So no, it's not by any means a perfect medium for getting the message through. But there are those who DO try and use it for positive results.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

That is a really good point. Because I have seen the disconnect among slashes in acting like slash is okay but homosexuality is not, or acting like gay people are gay for the slasher's entertainment.

There are some very negative stereotypes about the gay community, and some of them are actively encouraged in the slash community: for example, the uke/seme stereotype, wherein one man must be 'the woman' and the other must be 'the man'. That mindset in particular has spread beyond fandom, and while I'm not saying that it's at all to blame on female slashers, some parts of the slash community are encouraging it. I can't help but think that women using one of the men involved to represent 'the female persona' (as mentioned above, as well) is a part of that, and I think it can be pretty negative both for gay rights and for feminism. Writing about two gay guys doesn't necessarily equal writing something that isn't heteronormative, given some of the more unfortunate fandom tropes.

Word to this. And it's really a shame that a genre that is nominally about gay characters can NOT represent homosexuality.

Great icon, by the way.

[hieronymousb.livejournal.com]

I really agree with you that forcing heteronormative roles into homosexual pairings can get fairly problematic. Some couples of any variety may enjoy taking on aspects of roles -- some women do, after all, choose to be housewives -- and that's fine, but what I oppose is the notion that couples absolutely have to adopt traditional "male" and "female" slots. And unfortunately, I notice the slash community can sometimes make a huge issue of who tops or bottoms, to the point of not finding a pairing tasteful if the roles are allowed to reverse or if a the pairing is not portrayed with the tops/bottoms fitting according to how the person likes them -- which just goes to show that our society is so ingrained in the notion that one person must fit one standard that we cannot conceive of it being the other way around, and that this is a huge deal for the reader, or even perhaps fetishized accordingly.

However, that being said, I want to say that the issue of slash's (usually female) authorship versus its (obviously gay male) content cuts both ways: I absolutely think women who write slash and are interested in the gay community owe it to the gay community to be accepting and to educate themselves on deeper issues pertaining to LGBT concerns. Frankly, I think slash may actually be a good stepping stone for this, in the case of some young girls. I was about 16 when I first wrote slash and developed some interest in m/m relationships in fiction, and for me, this correlated with a growing natural interest in my own lesbianism and my own curiosity about LGBT issues. So while a lot of girls hamfist their portrayals of such sensitive topics in their early fiction, I think many of them will be on the right track in the long run. 13-year-olds will be 13-year-olds. But that's quite apart from the people who are intolerant of actual homosexuality, but like slash. I cannot even begin to comprehend that.

Lastly, when I said this issue cuts both ways, I mean: I've also seen the problem of gay men coming into the slash community and assuming positions of authority towards the women writers, and I've seen women allowing this to happen, or fawning over the guys, and the guys expecting special privileges. Now, I think this is decisively uncool. Sure, guys writing friendly tips for female slash writers is well and good (such as the late Minotaur's points about gay sex, for slash writers), but there is, dare I say, a level to which assuming authority can become another example of male privilege. Because honestly, while slash writers need to understand that gay men are not just Shinies who exist in a fictional vacuum, gay men also have to accept that on some level, slash is about female sexuality, too, and so it doesn't necessarily have to be 100% realistic, and it doesn't have to compromise aesthetics that appeal to women.

And honestly, most guys do realize that. It's just sometimes that it becomes a problem.

[iapetusneume.livejournal.com]

The trope that 90% of everything is crap (I know this was mentioned before), is something that I believe is very true. I think this happens with every genre, and subsection of genre. (I don't like calling LGBT stories a genre, unless the struggle with issues surrounding it is central. Otherwise, put it in action/adventure, romance, mystery, historical fiction, horror, wherever it should go.)

And to be perfectly honest, it's the badfic that's one of the reasons I'm not really involved in fandom anymore. I don't have the patience I used to have in looking for goodfic.

I end up reading a lot of yaoi, because, well, there's a lot of fic about it. I mean, I like it, but I don't like it more or less than het or femmeslash. And geez, I don't remember the last time I read genfic on a regular basis, if only because it's so hard to find.

But the other reason I don't read a lot of fanfic anymore is because the "worst" is often what I see in the fanfic I (attempt to) read. I don't want to read about a man being shown as "girly" as part of a pairing in a fanfic if he isn't like that in the original series, just like I don't want to read about a woman being butch in a relationship if she actually isn't like that. The reason I want to read fanfic is because I want to see the characters I like so much from a series in yet another story, and them being in character.

Unfortunately, if the series itself is misogynistic or male-bashing on some respects, this will probably be something one will run into the fan fiction, too. Naruto is a good example to use here - unfortunately there are issues in the story itself. Sometimes one is lucky and finds fic that tries to right some of these wrongs, but one story can only do so much.

I'm getting rambly here, and I think I lost what I was originally trying to say.

I know that some people say that they don't want to read about what they have. They don't want to read about a stable, good functioning relationship because that's what they have. I must be weird, because the relationship I have with my boyfriend is very much one of equals, and that's exactly what I want to read. I hate misogyny and man-bashing, and don't want to see it in the stories I read, no matter what the flavor. (the exception to this is when the character doing the bashing gets called out on it and gets a verbal bitchslapping, but then again it's not something I'm fond of seeing on a regular basis.)

So I did get all rambly, and I hope there is some sense found in this long comment. But thank you for posting this, it really made me think.

I also have a post partly inspired by the bingo card you talked about in your last post, and that'll be up later. (But it'll be more about race than gender issues.)

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

(I don't like calling LGBT stories a genre, unless the struggle with issues surrounding it is central. Otherwise, put it in action/adventure, romance, mystery, historical fiction, horror, wherever it should go.)

Agreed. It only works in fandom where you ARE dividing types of fic up by who is macking on who.

Unfortunately, if the series itself is misogynistic or male-bashing on some respects, this will probably be something one will run into the fan fiction, too. Naruto is a good example to use here - unfortunately there are issues in the story itself.

I disagree about this. When looked at as a whole, I've found Naruto fandom to be FAR more loving and respectful on the ladies than you would expect from the canon - yet canons like Avatar, which are, in some ways, close to ideal with regards to gender dynamics, has a hugely immature and sexist fandom.

[lynnxlady.livejournal.com]

I just want to say that this post is a great summary of the goods and the bads of all the pairing "genres".

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Thank you. ^_^

[hieronymousb.livejournal.com]

Oh, hey. I've written a few posts about these genres. I brought up some of the points you're outlining here. This subject always fascinates me, so I am eager to read through all your comments.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Well, I hope you enjoy reading what people have to say.