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revenaPrevious reports: “Láadan vs. tlhIngan Hol: Differential Diffusion of Created Languages”
“Women's vs. Men's Magic in Fantasy”
“Never The Hero: Girls in Genre Literature”
“An Agent’s Point of View”
“Feminist Romance”
Ok, I’m skipping over several pretty awesome panels here (and I do intend to go back for them), because it’s the slash panel that people have been wanting to see the report on, and if I make myself wait until I have time/energy to report on all of the others, it’s gonna be weeks and weeks yet before I get around to it.
Not that it hasn’t already been weeks and weeks.
So, without further ado, my report on the “Why Women Write About Gay Men” panel at WisCon 30, which was moderated by Pam Keesey and included Lyda A. Morehouse, Nonie B. Rider, Elisabeth Vonarburg, and Cynthia Ward:
Ok, so, the summary thing for this panel read:
Slashfic, yaoi, and gay male fiction: why are strong women (even lesbians) writing about men instead?
And I would suggest that that may have been a mistake. What the title and summary of the panel attracted, basically, was an audience made up half of people who were interested in (and invested in) yaoi, and half of people interested in (and invested in) slash fanfic. And you know what? Judging by that one panel, I don’t think there’s a lot of crossover.
So, the first large chunk of time was taken up with explaining (and, inevitably, arguing about) what slash means to the yaoi fans, and what yaoi means to the slash fans. Once that was out of the way, the “why write it?” could get started!
Except it kinda didn’t. At least, not in the way I was expecting.
Instead of a discussion of how it’s kinda weird that so many women (including many of the attendees of the panel, who were, after all, hanging out at a feminist sci-fantasy con) are interested in writing exclusively about men, it mostly was a discussion of how totally awesome slash is (the yaoi fans got ignored a lot – slashers are loud) and how totally cool/empowering/transgressive it is to write it.
Reasons for the awesome of slash that got bounced around included:
* It allows writers to explore romantic relationships that can truly be between equals, without any of the inequality baggage that a female/male relationship inherently carries.
(to which I cynically reply – so, what about femslash? Or, you know, writing in fantasy worlds which aren’t necessarily steeped in the patriarchal tradition of the modern US? And, does this explain the huge mass of Harry/Snape dubcon fic hinging on inequalities of age and experience that’s out there?)
* The male characters are much more interesting in the source text, to begin with, and it’s natural that they’d be interested in each other.
(this is what we call laziness. You want the characters to be better developed? Develop them!)
* By writing male characters as homosexual, we are being really subversive!
(I’m sure lots of people can come up with counterarguments to this one. I’m just gonna move on)
* Men raping each other is really hot. And my therapist said I should write it as a form of anger management therapy, so it’s good!
(I am not kidding about that. Paraphrasing, yes, but joking? No.)
Somewhere in there, a few truly interesting things got said. One person brought up the idea that a lot of slash (and yaoi) isn’t really about actual gay men – the characters don’t act like real gay men. They don’t even act like real people. They often act like whatever aspect of two men getting into bed together it is that the author fantasizes about. I would have liked to have seen more exploration of that idea (slash characters as the embodiment of female desire), among others.
But what got the most time in the panel was a) definitions, because we had two groups of people with two different vocabularies trying to talk to each other (the moment when one panelist started to explain “canon” to a yaoi fan and described a bunch of things in X-Files fandom that are fanon was particularly hilarious), and b) a celebration of how cool we all were for being interested in fictional buttsecks.
Which, ok – I don’t have a problem with slash! I think fanfic, generally, is really interesting. I enjoy reading it. I very occasionally enjoy writing it. I very much enjoy studying it. And I think slash fanfic can be about exploring relationships between equals, or transgressive writing, or even simple hotness, which is not a bad thing for all that it is not a lofty ideal (for most).
But I think there are some less-awesome implications to the way slash is often written. I would suggest that in the majority of slash fiction that’s out there on the internets, there’s one big thing going on that ought to alarm a feminist reader. The women completely disappear. Often violently.
No, seriously, think about this. What happens when an author wants to write about a male character getting it on with another male character who happens to be married in the sourcetext? Where does the wife go? Sometimes there’s an amicable divorce. Sometimes she quietly dies of some relatively painless disease. More often, she’s revealed to be a horrible person who is clearly not deserving of her husband. Sometimes she’s killed violently. Sometimes by the husband himself, or his lover. Sometimes she’s raped. Sometimes, by the husband himself, or his lover.
Sometimes, she’s just gone, and no explanation is given.
That happens to other female members of the supporting cast, too. The girlfriends, the ex-girlfriends, the female best friends – they all too often disappear.
Now, mind you, I’m not saying this always happens. Certainly there are authors out there who write, say, Harry/Ron in which Ginny and Hermione are still friends with the guys, and hang out with them a lot, and so on.
But I think the disappearing women are more common. And even if it’s a much, much smaller percentage than I think it is, even a tiny trend of this sort is troubling. The writers are overwhelmingly women. What are we saying about ourselves, when we erase the fictional women from the texts we love?
Are we saying that we want to write about relationships between equals, and only men can be equal to one another? Are we saying that we don’t believe ourselves to be equal to men? Are we saying that we don’t believe we can ever achieve an equal, loving partnership for ourselves?
Are we saying that we want to write about interesting people, and only men are interesting? Are we saying that no female character in the source text is worth our interest? Are we saying that we ourselves are not worth interest?
Are we saying that male homosexuality is the best/only way to subvert patriarchal heteronormativity? Are we saying that two women in bed together are less powerful than two men? Are we saying that heterosexual men and women can’t be subversive or transgressive?
I do want to make it clear, in case this post ends up getting linked outside my flist (which could happen – this topic seems to be really hot right now) that I’m not claiming to have answers, or authority in this matter that is any greater than anyone else’s. And I’m not saying that slash is categorically bad, or that het is categorically good, or the other way around, or making that sort of value judgment at all.
What I’m saying is that I attended a panel at a feminist science fiction and fantasy convention where pretty much everyone in the room (myself included) congratulated herself on her awesomeness in being able to appreciate the wonderfulness of slash.
And when I shyly raised my hand, and said, in a voice made shaky with adrenalin, that as much as I enjoy slash, I am often troubled by it, because it so often seems that in slash fanfic, women completely disappear (often violently, often after being made to suffer sexual violence) – no one had a response.
We talked about how Cyclops and Wolverine are Totally Doing It, instead.
“Women's vs. Men's Magic in Fantasy”
“Never The Hero: Girls in Genre Literature”
“An Agent’s Point of View”
“Feminist Romance”
Ok, I’m skipping over several pretty awesome panels here (and I do intend to go back for them), because it’s the slash panel that people have been wanting to see the report on, and if I make myself wait until I have time/energy to report on all of the others, it’s gonna be weeks and weeks yet before I get around to it.
Not that it hasn’t already been weeks and weeks.
So, without further ado, my report on the “Why Women Write About Gay Men” panel at WisCon 30, which was moderated by Pam Keesey and included Lyda A. Morehouse, Nonie B. Rider, Elisabeth Vonarburg, and Cynthia Ward:
Ok, so, the summary thing for this panel read:
Slashfic, yaoi, and gay male fiction: why are strong women (even lesbians) writing about men instead?
And I would suggest that that may have been a mistake. What the title and summary of the panel attracted, basically, was an audience made up half of people who were interested in (and invested in) yaoi, and half of people interested in (and invested in) slash fanfic. And you know what? Judging by that one panel, I don’t think there’s a lot of crossover.
So, the first large chunk of time was taken up with explaining (and, inevitably, arguing about) what slash means to the yaoi fans, and what yaoi means to the slash fans. Once that was out of the way, the “why write it?” could get started!
Except it kinda didn’t. At least, not in the way I was expecting.
Instead of a discussion of how it’s kinda weird that so many women (including many of the attendees of the panel, who were, after all, hanging out at a feminist sci-fantasy con) are interested in writing exclusively about men, it mostly was a discussion of how totally awesome slash is (the yaoi fans got ignored a lot – slashers are loud) and how totally cool/empowering/transgressive it is to write it.
Reasons for the awesome of slash that got bounced around included:
* It allows writers to explore romantic relationships that can truly be between equals, without any of the inequality baggage that a female/male relationship inherently carries.
(to which I cynically reply – so, what about femslash? Or, you know, writing in fantasy worlds which aren’t necessarily steeped in the patriarchal tradition of the modern US? And, does this explain the huge mass of Harry/Snape dubcon fic hinging on inequalities of age and experience that’s out there?)
* The male characters are much more interesting in the source text, to begin with, and it’s natural that they’d be interested in each other.
(this is what we call laziness. You want the characters to be better developed? Develop them!)
* By writing male characters as homosexual, we are being really subversive!
(I’m sure lots of people can come up with counterarguments to this one. I’m just gonna move on)
* Men raping each other is really hot. And my therapist said I should write it as a form of anger management therapy, so it’s good!
(I am not kidding about that. Paraphrasing, yes, but joking? No.)
Somewhere in there, a few truly interesting things got said. One person brought up the idea that a lot of slash (and yaoi) isn’t really about actual gay men – the characters don’t act like real gay men. They don’t even act like real people. They often act like whatever aspect of two men getting into bed together it is that the author fantasizes about. I would have liked to have seen more exploration of that idea (slash characters as the embodiment of female desire), among others.
But what got the most time in the panel was a) definitions, because we had two groups of people with two different vocabularies trying to talk to each other (the moment when one panelist started to explain “canon” to a yaoi fan and described a bunch of things in X-Files fandom that are fanon was particularly hilarious), and b) a celebration of how cool we all were for being interested in fictional buttsecks.
Which, ok – I don’t have a problem with slash! I think fanfic, generally, is really interesting. I enjoy reading it. I very occasionally enjoy writing it. I very much enjoy studying it. And I think slash fanfic can be about exploring relationships between equals, or transgressive writing, or even simple hotness, which is not a bad thing for all that it is not a lofty ideal (for most).
But I think there are some less-awesome implications to the way slash is often written. I would suggest that in the majority of slash fiction that’s out there on the internets, there’s one big thing going on that ought to alarm a feminist reader. The women completely disappear. Often violently.
No, seriously, think about this. What happens when an author wants to write about a male character getting it on with another male character who happens to be married in the sourcetext? Where does the wife go? Sometimes there’s an amicable divorce. Sometimes she quietly dies of some relatively painless disease. More often, she’s revealed to be a horrible person who is clearly not deserving of her husband. Sometimes she’s killed violently. Sometimes by the husband himself, or his lover. Sometimes she’s raped. Sometimes, by the husband himself, or his lover.
Sometimes, she’s just gone, and no explanation is given.
That happens to other female members of the supporting cast, too. The girlfriends, the ex-girlfriends, the female best friends – they all too often disappear.
Now, mind you, I’m not saying this always happens. Certainly there are authors out there who write, say, Harry/Ron in which Ginny and Hermione are still friends with the guys, and hang out with them a lot, and so on.
But I think the disappearing women are more common. And even if it’s a much, much smaller percentage than I think it is, even a tiny trend of this sort is troubling. The writers are overwhelmingly women. What are we saying about ourselves, when we erase the fictional women from the texts we love?
Are we saying that we want to write about relationships between equals, and only men can be equal to one another? Are we saying that we don’t believe ourselves to be equal to men? Are we saying that we don’t believe we can ever achieve an equal, loving partnership for ourselves?
Are we saying that we want to write about interesting people, and only men are interesting? Are we saying that no female character in the source text is worth our interest? Are we saying that we ourselves are not worth interest?
Are we saying that male homosexuality is the best/only way to subvert patriarchal heteronormativity? Are we saying that two women in bed together are less powerful than two men? Are we saying that heterosexual men and women can’t be subversive or transgressive?
I do want to make it clear, in case this post ends up getting linked outside my flist (which could happen – this topic seems to be really hot right now) that I’m not claiming to have answers, or authority in this matter that is any greater than anyone else’s. And I’m not saying that slash is categorically bad, or that het is categorically good, or the other way around, or making that sort of value judgment at all.
What I’m saying is that I attended a panel at a feminist science fiction and fantasy convention where pretty much everyone in the room (myself included) congratulated herself on her awesomeness in being able to appreciate the wonderfulness of slash.
And when I shyly raised my hand, and said, in a voice made shaky with adrenalin, that as much as I enjoy slash, I am often troubled by it, because it so often seems that in slash fanfic, women completely disappear (often violently, often after being made to suffer sexual violence) – no one had a response.
We talked about how Cyclops and Wolverine are Totally Doing It, instead.
