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

[nimblnymph.livejournal.com]

"But back to the origins of yaoi, the thing is that something being born of a feminist desire doesn't actually MAKE it feminist, especially when the end result is something that enforces patriarchal rules and standards."

Agreed, but I would say that applies to yaoi as we've understood it for maybe the past 10-15 years. I don't actually consider a lot of the current yaoi projects to be productive to feminism and promoting equality between the sexes. Like quite a few things, it's been twisted over time by media and shifting public opinion/perception so that it is what it is today. But that doesn't change the fact that it DID start as something born from feministic standing.

When it was first introduced, the women writing it were using the ONLY tools they could to get their stories and voices heard. Any time they introduced a heroine acting in ways that didn't fit the norm, they were being shut down and told they couldn't publish it. So, the only way they COULD get recognition for their work was by USING that male-dominant way of thinking as best they could. They used the patriarchal system to get their very feminist ideals out there and to try and change things from the inside out. Isn't part of feminism tying to institute change however possible? As far as I understand yaoi and its history, that's exactly what those women were trying to do.

Also, I just want to be clear that I'm not attacking you or anything. I'm actually having a lot of fun talking about this and really hope the feelings at least a little mutual.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Oh, don't worry, I didn't get the impression you were attacking me at all.

The thing is that, much like I can accept that some romance authors included the rape because it was the only way they could have a woman have sex and without dying (then you have the ones like Bertrice Small, which are pretty much nightmares in the making), I can only really accept it for the time. When the same thing happens NOW, and is used as an excuse for current habits and trends, I can't get behind it at all. The difference is that the romance genre has moved on (fans today tend to be merciless with books that include "forced seduction," outside of the paranormal romance genre, which is one of the reasons I'm EXTREMELY picky about what I'll touch there) and progressed past that, slash/yaoi hasn't, and its fans (the most vocal ones, at least, which are more likely the minority than not, but it's what's SEEN the most)often treat it as the only way, and glorify the idea that it's somehow "better" that it's focused on men, the sexuality of men, and relationships between men. (Which is why, even though I can believe that some approach it as feminists, I can never buy into the arguments regarding slash as feminist, because regardless of the how or why, it's a genre that, by necessity, places the primary focus on men, their relationship, and their sexuality. And lets face it "women getting together to talk about how interesting men are" is one of the oldest patriarchal standards in gender relationships.)

[nimblnymph.livejournal.com]

Okay, good. I just know I can be a bit intense about things I'm really interested in, and sometimes it comes across as me going on a bloody, snarky verbal rampage. So, if you're cool with it, I'm cool.

Now, back on topic:

God, you and me both about the paranormal romances. I actually stopped reading one of my favorite authors because of the utter trash she was producing. And as far as the slash/yaoi fans... those loud ones are of the new wave generation of fans, the ones that I personally can't stand. Most of them tend to like it because their friends do, they don't understand the real history behind it and generally don't give a damn about anything BUT their OTPs. If you talk to any old-timer yaoi fans, they'd agree with me that the yaoi and slash you see now is MUCH different than it used to be.

As I said (I can't remember to who now, but someone on this thread) before, the yaoi we see NOW is definitely not related to feminism. It's been warped from its original intent, so I think it's perfectly understandable that you don't see it as relating to feminism at all.

And I also understand where you're coming from about it being about men and their relationships and how that wouldn't be condusive to feminism in the least. But what I ALSO understand is that the manga-ka who started yaoi really didn't have much of a choice. They either wrote shounen about men or stuck to shoujo. So, rather than do that they chose a third option; adopt shounen in such a way that they could use it to their advantage and make it more accessible for women.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

What author, out of curiosity? (The only one I really trust at all these days is Marjorie Liu. Her current book has what may be the first romance novel heroine with one arm. Then again, her books may also have the only one-eyed badass shapeshifting amoral mercenary mom in romances, too.)

I think the main difference in where we're coming from is where we see the line between feminism and feminist result, and approaching from a feminist standpoint, but with a result that isn't necessarily feminist.

[nimblnymph.livejournal.com]

That would be Laurell K. Hamilton. I won't clog up red's page by writing yet ANOTHER rant about her character assassination, lack of plot and just in general craptasticness that made up her ten or so books.

Yeah, that sounds about right. As united as feminism is in having one common goal, people view the progress and activites done to achieve it differently. But it was still wonderful having this discussion with you! Thank you very much for that.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Ah, LKH. Yeah, vampire books are another reason I'm picky. I actually didn't get into UF until LKH already had a reputation for jumping the shark. I was working in a bookstore at the time and a coworker who read them was telling me about them, and another was listening and snatched the book from my hands and said I was too innocent to read them. (Never mind all the romance novels I'd bought...)

[nimblnymph.livejournal.com]

Well, in her defense the first 6-8 books in the series are VERY good. But then LKH goes and turns her heroine into a raging nymphomaniac and claims that THAT is character expansion. Yeah... okay. Her last book? Four pages in and the heroine's already having sex. And the sex doesn't stop. Oh, and the plot? There's something vague in there about vampires, an evil twin and vampire politics but the MAIN focus is that a werewolf, who's the midnight snack for her vampire boyfriends, doesn't want his family to think he's gay so he asks her to go home with him.

*ahem* Anyway, I stopped buying the books at book 10 when it started getting pretty bad. She's had 8 or 9 since then that I've not bothered to read. And she's also why I wanna tackle an UF novel for NaNoWriMo, just because she set a standard for UF heroines that I personally don't like.

[qualapec.livejournal.com]

I've been reading your comments, and they are very fascinating with the level and thought you go into it. That's always great to see on the internet.

Now...you mention the rape trope in old romance novels, and how you understand it given the time period. That, to me, seems like an example of female writers stretching the boundaries and using an unconventional method, similar to the history of yaoi. That seems to be even more damaging culturally than the yaoi/slash stories. "No means yes" has been a problem in our society because of it.

Girls get together and talk about men. Although it seems like a generalization to assume that becomes the fixation of their lives. Men ARE a topic of conversation because they are often a topic of interest. That doesn't strike me as wrong, but perfectly natural (please, don't take that to mean that I think homosexuality/bisexuality is unnatural, but heterosexuality is equally natural). And I DON'T mean this as an attack, but it seems presumptuous to assume that because focus is shifted to men it's unhealthy behavior for girls. It seems better than leaving the topic as some mysterious thing, and for some I can see how yaoi could be a good outlet for that kind of conversation. That doesn't mean it's right that teenagers are pushed to that because of society's view on sexuality, but yaoi seems like a way of bypassing it instead of reinforcing it.

I understand where you're coming from when you say that yaoi's not necessarily feminist in and of itself, but what is unclear to me is whether or not you're saying it's automatically anti-feminist.

Also, you responded to a post of mine on the "Yaoi/Slash Misogyny Bingo" post that Redbrunja made two posts ago...I understand that some of the arguments that girls use to explain their attraction to yaoi can be problematic, however, some seemed valid. That bingo sheet almost seemed to claim that if a female fanfic writer doesn't like writing about female characters in a sexual sense, then that points to internal misogyny while the same would not be true for a man. To me, that seems horribly unfair. Men are allowed to explore sex through f/f relationships, but it's misogyny for girls do it through m/m. If most of the characters I write are male and I make the CHOICE to do so, does that mean I'm not a feminist? I don't think so, because the very definition of feminist is the ability to make the choice.

I apologize if any of this post came across as confrontational, I'm just a little confused as to the point you're trying to make.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I think where you're uncertain about my comments is that you seem to be reading it as "not something" means "the oppositie of something. Saying that women talking about men and their secuality and how they're interesting isn't automatically feminist (as fandom tends to portray it) is not saying that it's misogynistic, nor does it mean that a person whose main interest in fandom is m/m slash can't be feminist.

And keep in mind that when men and women express interests, they're expressing them from completely different sets of cultural baggage and expectations, just like a man cooking (that is, doing something traditionally regarded as a female role) carries a completely different weight, and is received far differently, from a female undercover agent (a traditionally male role.) For that matter, compare the number of successful movies about men bonding with or caring for children, or having to adjust to some degree of domesticity that requires them, to some degree, to take up a traditionally female role or task to the number of suscessful movies about female spies, action heroines (overtly secualized or otherwise), female pirates, female buddy cops, and female adventurers. That is, women taking on traditionally male roles and narratives. The simple fact is that male development, exploration, and appropriation is still considered to be the norm, and the default, while female development, exploration and appropriation is treated as an afterthought.

ETA: Another thing to keep in mind is that slash (as manifested in fandom) is a sexual kink or interest combined with a character and/or narrative interest. Feminism is a way of thinking and approaching life. There is, in essence, absolutely no correlation between the two. They can coexist in harmony, they can coexist in antagonism, and they can exist in the complete absence of the other. It's the individual (or, more often, I think, fandom hivemind) that connects them.