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

[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.

[sarolynne.livejournal.com]

I saw someone else had mentioned male slash above, so while I agree that fetishizing gay men can be pretty ugly too, I figured I didn't need to turn this into a laundry list. Besides, it sort of feels worse to me when it happens in femmeslash--there's so much more objectification of women out there, and men in general get to much more privilege, I just end up primed to be more offended by it when I come across it in femmeslash.

Probably my bias showing there.

[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).

[sarolynne.livejournal.com]

That makes sense. XD