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]

I THINK I get what you're saying, and if I AM understanding you correctly then I agree.

What you're saying is that yaoi, even though it started off as a feminist outlet, shouldn't be considered JUST THAT. It's also about acceptance of a gay lifestyle as well. Or am I missing the mark here?

I would say that that's true moreso with more the more current yaoi projects than the older ones. The Japanese people have always been a bit more tolerant of same sex relationships, at least until Western influence came into the scene. I'm not sure how it is nowadays, but historically they were pretty okay with it. The yaoi we relate to more currently (and by currently I mean within the last 10-15 years) I feel COULD be seen more as a celebration of homosexuality rather than anything inherently feminist. There's been enough progress over the years as far as feminism is concerned that there's no longer a NEED to use a male representation in a manga. It's become totally okay for a girl to join in on the action, though the number of manga-ka who actually do it WITHOUT the woman being subpar to the ability of her male counterparts is still lacking. So yaoi nowadays CAN probably be interpreted as more of a gay oriented thing than it was before.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I'm actually not convinced that there's much overlap between an interest in equality and desire for representation for "real" homosexual and bisexual people and slash/yaoi.

There are some who expression an interest in more representation in mainstream media, but most seem to focus on a desire for a specific character (often with another specific character) to be used for that representation, which is more a case of desiring your specific kink or interest to be legitimized somehow. (Which really ties back to the idea that women's sexuality is something to be secret or ashamed of, or that has to be justified.)

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Yes. See, I'm VERY interested in more homosexual and bisexual characters, both single and in relationships, being represented in mainstream media. Not to mention trans characters who aren't evil or jokes. I'm not, however, interested in hunting for reasons why interactions between these two characters I like, or this character I like and a main character, is actually coding for why they would be written in a sexual relationship if the writers could get away with it. Especially when (almost inevitably) there actually is another character being written as romantically (explicitly or implicitly) involved with one of them.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I think where I part from fandom in general is that fguring out who might sleep with who and ways to figure out how a ship could work strikes me as the LEAST interesting part of fiction, most of the time.

I think some (maybe even most) people who are interested in slash definitely have an interest in the representation of the LGBT community, but I don't think that that's what actually causes most of what we see, as it manifests..

[nimblnymph.livejournal.com]

HAHA!! The only reason I know anything about yaoi and its history is because I had two different friends write thesis papers about it in one year and I did the beta reading on both of them. One of them looked at the transition of yaoi over its history and the other looked at the relationship aspect of it. Both were very good papers.

But it did inspire me to look up a bit about it, and one of the source articles that was cited was in Women's Studies Quarterly. I'll have to look up the exact issue and author, but it was really good and did tie back into the feminist roots. Also, there's an American woman named Tina Anderson that does a FANTASTIC job of creating realistic gay characters and storylines. She's also given a few interviews that are really, really insightful. A book I DO have that mentions a bit about Japanese history with homosexuality is Pink Samurai.