thoughtful![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.2){kind=small}
thebratqueen's. It wasn't intended to be an essay, just an answer to two questions from ginmar, but because I am the longwindedest bastardess on the face of the planet, it turned into one. Cleaned up somewhat from its original format as responses in gehayi's journal, it lies within.A little on slash vs. friendship, and a lot on why I slash
ginmar asked "I have to say, one thing that just doesn't get mentioned about slash is what it does to male friendship. Is such a thing possible in a slashy universe? I mean, slash definitely adds sex to the story, but how many slash stories just deal with friendship?"
I think that there isn't a slash story that just deals with friendship because the very meaning of the label "slash" is "stories of a sexual or romantic nature between characters of the same gender." However the main idea of your question, I think, is a good one -- does an interest in slash de-value the idea of same-sex friendship. If you see every tender moment between two men or women in a show or book as a sexual or romantic one, you're probably ignoring or dismissing a lot of interesting and valuable facets of the way people communicate and connect to each other.
I don't think all slash fans (and this could mean people who just enjoy pointing perceived subtext out or interpreting it in the canon, or people who enjoy writing slash fanfiction) feel this way, but I agree that some may, and probably it can seem like a lot more given how loudly we squee when anything remotely tender or respectful, out of the ordinary, occurs between two men.
I think exploration of friendship between characters -- same-sex or not -- is a valuable thing, and should exist in more stories, slash and het alike. I think exploration of friendship between men, specifically, because it's such a hard, strange thing in this culture, is a very good thing.
On the other hand, when I read and write fanfiction, I'm mostly interested in love stories. A lot of people are; it's just what appeals most to us. And the love stories that appeal most to me are same-sex ones: m/m most of all, though I do like the occasional f/f too. I don't hate het or gen fic, or even dislike it, but I'm mostly uninterested in reading or writing it unless it has a very striking plot (I'm horrible with creating plot myself, so that would be for reading), it focuses on one or two characters I really care about, or it was written by a friend. So, I love seeing friendship, between all sorts of characters, explored in stories, but alongside the love/romance/sex, because that's my primary interest in fiction.
ginmar also asked, "The other thing I wondered is, How come so many pretty normal white women1 write gay sex? Obviously, I can understand why gay people do it---duh, it's why I write het. I'm actually afraid to ask that question, though."
I think it's a good question, when it's asked in a way that doesn't imply "because ewwwwwww" or "because it makes me think you're disturbed." Which I don't think she did here. (I assume "white women" was just a nod to the fact that there aren't that many women of color writing slash (or at all, in this fandom), a fact that Te, among other black fanwriters, has pointed out too. The biggest demographic group is white women. Though I would say that there's a lot more bi women writing m/m slash, as opposed to the usual perception that it's all straight women, than most people expect.) So, legit subject of interest.
This may go a little way toward explaining why slashers are often more attracted to slashing the not-openly-gay characters -- because these emotional issues are often, though not always, already explored for gay characters, or it's assumed they have been. We've seen it happen in canon already. Or we assume it's already happened. It's similar, in the case of characters like Lorne or Andrew where they've never said they're gay/bi but it seems pretty strongly implied. Also, the "strongly implied" gay characters like Lorne and Andrew are often stereotypically harmless or nonsexual, and it's not as interesting/sexy/emotional to try to push past their barriers as it is for men who would obviously have Issues with their masculinity being threatened.
I got sucked in by a rec to a long Spike/Angel series (which was quite plotty, and rewrote Angel S1 as an AU where Spike had come to Angel for help when he escaped from the Initiative, instead of to the Scoobies), and the m/m interactions just... clicked for me. I read more Spike/Angel and eventually Spike/Xander, and found I was more interested in the m/m, and in those two combos in particular, than the f/f and het and gen I'd previously been reading.
______
1 Later Ginmar clarified that a more accurate phrasing of what she meant would be "suburban or middle class women."
Unfortunately I don't have an answer, despite it being a good question.
I can't answer as a straight woman, to why straight women write gay sex, because I'm bi. I can guess at their reasons, assuming they're similar to mine, and I might be right, or not. Still, that doesn't really explain why a woman who's attracted to both men and women for herself would get pleasure (emotional, sexual, any kind) from writing about men being attracted to each other, either. I don't know if I have a real answer to why it appeals to me, let alone any three slashers who probably couldn't agree on their reasons either.
I can do my best to give it a brief shot though:
All of which could be true for f/f slash too, and in fact I started reading f/f slash first in the Buffy fandom. A lot of Buffy/Faith and Buffy/Willow (this was pre-Tara) and then later early Willow/Tara, back when it wasn't blatantly stated on the show that they were a couple. I kind of got glutted on it, though, started seeing the same patterns everywhere, and tired of having to sort through way too much fluffy and OOC fic to find the good stuff. Which ain't to say there's not as much crapfic in m/m. Just that the crapfic-to-goodfic ratio especially in Buffy/Willow and Spike/Willow-Sue, which was my het interest at the time, was part of what drove me to looking for other things, which is where I got interested in m/m Buffyverse slash.
thebratqueen has what she calls her "Two Dollar Theory" about why m/m sex is hot, which is that if you have one dollar, it's good, but two is better, right? So if you have one hot guy, it's good, but two is better. It's obviously a light, tongue-in-cheek theory, and obviously isn't true for everybody, either. But I like it. She has a post up right now, by the way, which talks about her definitions of slash and how/why a lot of slashers see subtext in the canon, and/or write about it. It matches up with a lot of my thoughts on it, only she's a hell of a lot better essayist than I am.
2003-11-19 03:03 pm (UTC) (Link)
the hotness is a factor in2 my reading and writing m/m slash (ie, that 2 dollar theory - lol btw)
however, there r also points in programmes were the subtext is actually really blatant - noted by many spike/xander fans in an ep. of series 7, when a guest charcter asks if there was ne 2 ppl in the scoobys who HADN'T slept 2gether - note the LOOK between s/x, which could have easily been lift out.
this is also a regular occurance in my latest obsession smallvile (altho less so season2) between clark and lex.
i think that another reason many straight females write m/m slashfic is that they r a group likely 2 become fanatics of a particular programme (more so than men, i believe), and there4 more likely 2 notice the almost-text level subtext between 2 charcters.
in general, i think u answer the questions put forward well, and i enjoyed reading your thoughts.
2003-11-20 12:48 pm (UTC) (Link)
I don't know if women are more likely to become fanatic-fans of any program, or maybe just certain programs. It's something I hadn't thought about much, beyond "I hate action shows!"
2003-11-22 07:01 am (UTC) (Link)
i thnik that ppl tend 2 c slash in sci-fi
however, most sci-fi fanatics i know r also the more open-minded ppl.
coincidence?
2003-11-19 03:08 pm (UTC) (Link)
2003-11-19 05:08 pm (UTC) (Link)
2003-11-19 03:10 pm (UTC) (Link)
2003-11-19 05:09 pm (UTC) (Link)
2003-11-19 03:24 pm (UTC) (Link)
Fanfic in general is very sexualized, and the Buffy fandom is very female. Is this true of all fandoms? If not, are other fandoms so heavily into the sexual fanfic?
And, yeah, the female character of the fandom, and the fact that so many fans of Buffy are the classic suburbanite, middle-class whatever woman does tend to bring up some interesting questions not just about slash but about sexuality in general.
I'm really interested in talking about intimacy versus sex in stories, because in a way, it's stereotyping men----you know, as horndogs who have sex with everything, everyone, at any time. I remember reading The Celluloid Closet and being struck by the way the writer talked about how misogyny and homophobia are linked, the way the heroine was around usually just to assure the audience that the two guys were het. The unintended insult to women, because they were so bland and boring no guy would want them.
I'm just rambling now, but I think it's an interesting topic.
2003-11-20 02:49 pm (UTC) (Link)
There might well be a big grand social significance. :)
On one hand, I agree with you that sexualising things that aren't, or aren't clearly, can make it harder to see the value, the admirability, of friendship that's based on other emotional connections.
On the other hand, as a few people in this thread have talked about, sometimes it's not a bad thing for lines to be blurred, for friendship to move towards romantic love, yet still be friendship.
I keep saying romantic love even though the word is making me cringe, because I feel like I need to differentiate between .. platonic love, and love that's about being *in* love with someone, and sex -- because a lot of slash is about the middle one as much or more as it is about the sex.
At least, a lot of my interest in slash is about the being in love with someone parts, more than it is about there being porn involved. Don't get me wrong, I like the smut -- but it's really not my primary turn-on in reading and writing slash. The ... somebody called it emo-porn, when referring to a story of
Fanfic in general is very sexualized, and the Buffy fandom is very female. Is this true of all fandoms? If not, are other fandoms so heavily into the sexual fanfic?
Media fandom (books, tv, films) in general is very female, with the possible exceptions of comics fandom (male-heavy) and Japanese anime fandom (maybe close to even?) So I don't know that we can guess much about Buffy fandom being different from others based on its femaleness. Is fanfic in general very sexualised, or do both of us just read a lot of fanfic that's about romantic relationships, and includes sex? I can only speak for myself in answering that I do, it's my primary interest, so I can't say how much non-relationship fic there really is. It kind of feels like trying to speculate on the contents of the mystery section at Borders when I mostly stay in the Fantasy and SF section -- I could say it seems to have the same number of shelves, but I couldn't tell you much about what's in them. With fandom beng so specialised, it's even easier to not see the stuff you're not interested in -- I know who the slash writers are, I know where the slash archives are, so a lot of the general, non-ship fic passes me right by.
Are other fandoms as sexualised? I don't know -- I've only had a few others, and they were kind of strange examples.
I started in Dr. Who fandom which is very low-sex-content when it comes to fanfic, because the original show is very low sex content -- the main character has never even been seen in a romantic relationship despite the show running for 26 years, and the very few ones that we have seen onscreen have been the kind where a cast member falling in love results in them leaving the cast. There is romance and smut fic, both het and slash, but it's not prevalent. It's a very adventure-heavy fandom. (Whereas Buffy fandom does have relationships as a big part of its canon, so I can see why they're a big part of the fanfic.)
Blake's 7 fandom, on the other hand, had not much sex onscreen, but so much implied offscreen stuff and twisted relationships, tension between almost every pair of characters... and resulted in a fandom that's heavily polarised between slash and non-slash fans -- it seems like the gen fans and the het fans often disliked slash more than they cared about being identified as separate from each other.
(more)
2003-11-20 02:51 pm (UTC) (Link)
That's the way it tended to read to me on the mailing lists, at any rate -- I didn't write slash or anything at all in those days, and only read it in printed fanzines, so I wasn't a participant in the fandom, really, just an observer, and kind of on the fringes. It got really flamey back in the day, I guess, especially since one of the lead actors, whose character was heavily slashed with the other lead actor, actively detests slash, and there's a number of extremely loud and weird BNFs in both the slash and het sections of the fandom.
So... almost no sex at all in fanfic for my first fandom, and lots of controversial sex, and a medium sized amount of adventure stories, in the second fandom, and then there was Buffy. (I suppose I was a bit of an X-Files person too, and that was definitely heavy on the romance/sex fic. Lots of slash that I didn't read at the time, and lots of Mulder/Scully that I did.)
I'm really interested in talking about intimacy versus sex in stories, because in a way, it's stereotyping men----you know, as horndogs who have sex with everything, everyone, at any time.
Intimacy and humor between men is really my porn, as it were. It's what I read slash stories for more than the sex. And indeed there are a lot of slash stories that don't have sex in them. We can call them sexualised by nature, I guess, because they're about a romantic relationship, which implies sex even if it doesn't happen in front of us, but there's a lot of slash that does deal with how the guys act towards each other, how they overcome -- or don't -- the stuff that was drilled into them about the way men have to act....
I realize any slash apologist is going to say "I wonder if you've just not been reading the right slash stories," so I won't say that. :) But I wonder if your experience with them has been that you've come across more sex-driven ones than character driven ones, and mine is different because I tend to read and forget the pfeh, bad stuff, and get recced a lot of the character-intensive stuff, based on having become friends with a lot of slash writers whose writing I enjoyed. That said, I know slash in general doesn't do much for you merely on the basis of it being slash, so suggesting you read more, or read this particular list or author, won't contribute much to your entertainment.
2003-11-20 03:05 pm (UTC) (Link)
2003-11-19 03:36 pm (UTC) (Link)
Permeable boundaries, same-sex friendships that can slide into love or eroticism or both, call that binary into question.
The idea that "friendship" as a category excludes "love" is, historically, a relatively new one. Shakespeare's sonnets, for example, occur within a culture that defines friendship differently. In the Renaissance, it was assumed that a man's love for another man could be as powerful as (and was in many ways superior to) a man's love for a woman, without being in any way related to the "unmentionable sin of sodomy." In practice, that seems to have meant that a man could love another man, share a bed with him, and quite possibly do sexual things with him without it being seen as terribly unusual within the norms of male friendship. (The same seems to have been true for female/female friendship, but there's less information available about it--surprise, surprise.)
Um, sorry. Came over all academic there for a minute. What I'm getting at, I guess, is that there is (or should be) room for friendship in slash, but it won't necessarily fit the norms of "platonic," utterly uneroticized friendship. Because the norms themselves are problematic.
How come so many pretty normal white women write gay sex?
I can only answer for myself, and although I'm white, I don't know that I'd fit the definition of "pretty normal." Not suburban, for one thing, and although I'm middle class now, I grew up in a working-class family (and have been interested in male homoeroticism since I was quite young). It probably is true that slash writers tend to be relatively well-educated and to have the leisure and resources to write and post things to the internet--but that's because anyone who writes and posts stories would fit those characteristics. It's not peculiar to slash.
Slash speaks to my sexuality in very particular ways. I'm attracted to men, but, if I had a choice, I would also prefer to be one. So slash for me is about identity play, about having sexual opportunities and relationships that I can't have in my real, female body.
I don't think this is the case for most female slashers, though.
In a way, it's interesting that we even have to ask the question. No one finds it remarkable that straight men are turned on by two women having sex. It's so unremarkable that it's in every straight porn film. (And yes, I know that there are important critiques to be made of pseudo-lesbianism for male consumption. But that's not my point here, and I also am not convinced that those critiques apply in the same way to slash.) Two attractive men in bed together = double the fun (
Plus, there's the joy of taboo-breaking, as in any other kink. Slash breaks taboos in its content (men having "forbidden love" for one another) and also in its conditions of production and reception. Women aren't supposed to be interested in this kind of thing. We're not supposed to be turned on by men fucking men, we're not supposed to like porn, we're not supposed to have kinks and obsessions and weird desires. Hence, I think, the obsession-producing nature of slash for some people. Slash is freeing.
2003-11-19 05:53 pm (UTC) (Link)
Yup. That's me in a nutshell, too. Don't get me wrong, I love being a girl, too, but...I really would rather be a gay man, oppression and stereotypes aside.
It helps that that would REALLY piss off my mom, too. ;)
2003-11-19 06:09 pm (UTC) (Link)
In my case, as a straight woman, I know I'm not transgender. I've just started wondering about the new-to-me term/concept of gender queer, though.
2003-11-19 06:53 pm (UTC) (Link)
2003-11-19 08:14 pm (UTC) (Link)
Sorry if I'm making no sense. I'm not going to sleep tonight, and I'm getting preemptively tired.
I kind of agree with a lot of this for myself
2003-11-20 07:09 am (UTC) (Link)
Re: I kind of agree with a lot of this for myself
2003-11-20 12:51 pm (UTC) (Link)
Re: I kind of agree with a lot of this for myself
2003-11-20 02:08 pm (UTC) (Link)
Re: I kind of agree with a lot of this for myself
2003-11-20 02:13 pm (UTC) (Link)
Canada or Massachusetts?
Re: I kind of agree with a lot of this for myself
2003-11-20 02:52 pm (UTC) (Link)
Re: I kind of agree with a lot of this for myself
2003-11-20 04:19 pm (UTC) (Link)
You know they sell decaffinated Mountain Dew in the States as well, right?
Canada doesn't actually require residence for marriages. How strong an addiction are we talking, here?
Re: I kind of agree with a lot of this for myself
2003-11-20 05:45 pm (UTC) (Link)
*is shocked*
Re: I kind of agree with a lot of this for myself
2003-11-21 01:28 pm (UTC) (Link)
2003-11-20 08:54 am (UTC) (Link)
2003-11-20 12:47 pm (UTC) (Link)
2003-11-21 10:25 pm (UTC) (Link)
Send me email (address in my profile) and I'll give you her contact info. It's a good read. Is 34 younger people? Prob'ly...
2003-11-20 08:51 am (UTC) (Link)
Slash is allover questioning the boundaries between gender and sex, between sexuality and gender, between friendship and love and desire.
I'd be happy with friendship fic -- though I love romance fic as a personal squee -- but our culture's obsession on romance as an end means that if you don't end up dating your best friend, you're either:
The best way to make somebody a real best friend, then, is to sleep with them. At least, that's true if you're not subverting an entirely different set of cultural norms.
This is actually why I find myself strangely attracted to Spike/Xander/Anya stories. This breaks up the painful "you can't be friends with that person, we're exclusive" constraint that the show places on the characters and allows them an opportunity to explore being closest friends in a sexual context. In the Real World I have no poly inclinations, but in fiction I enjoy the space it gives for exploring character relationships that wouldn't otherwise be there.
2003-11-20 12:40 pm (UTC) (Link)
2003-11-20 02:13 pm (UTC) (Link)
Yeah, I love the fact (apocryphal?) that there's no specific anti-lesbian-sex laws in England because Victoria didn't believe it actually happened!
I think taboo-breaking is another big one for me. *not* as a political act, or a feminit one, or anything where I'm trying to make a statement, but because the very act, and the bravery and awkwardness and confusion surrounding it, are a turn-on. Often an emotional turn-on, for stories that don't even contain sex or do but the draw is the emotions more than the porn.
2003-11-19 06:14 pm (UTC) (Link)
2003-11-20 12:28 pm (UTC) (Link)
2003-11-22 05:17 am (UTC) (Link)
That's *why* it works for me. I'm not easy sharing myself--emotionally or physically--so if I ever found someone I was that comfortable with, that relationship would likely be it for me.
But then, their theory was primarily centered around buddy/best-friend slash, and my favorite slash pairings tend to be reluctant-allies/odd-couple slash (Giles/Spike, Xander/Spike, Blake/Avon) or Our History Has History slash
If there's no strong buddy relationship (slash or het--I had a stage where I devoured Mulder/Scully, for instance, until it all got overly mushy and repetitive), I'll gravitate towards antagonist-slash. Never all out hate, though--I can't *stand* Harry/Draco and I'll never understand why it's The Big Pairing in the fandom.
Maybe I should say that I need some strong connection between the characters: at one point, I was willing to accept the possiblity of almost any BtVS pairing because everyone there was so connected; I like playing with pairings in Dark Angel because my favourites, no matter where they are now, will always have a strong bond.
2003-11-19 06:16 pm (UTC) (Link)
In the case of the Buffyverse, where I'm a big ho for Spike/Xander, the fact that Xander doesn't really seem to *have* any male friends is often remarked upon. So if a ralationship with Spike develops (or a friendship develops and then becomes sexual), there aren't a lot of guys available for Xander to be "just friends" with, unless you're going all OC (which is fine, and another issue all together).
2003-11-20 12:37 pm (UTC) (Link)
A lot of (rather clumsy I suspect) S/X fic tends to introduce Oz back into the mix to be a friend for Xander or sometimes for both of them. I think Oz works as a friend for Xander, personality-wise and canonically, but it's almost never done well in terms of reasons for Oz to be around when the setting is post S4, or his characterisation. It's as if the author really likes him, but a) doesn't know him all that well, and b) doesn't know what to do with him, beyond giving Xander a buddy. I think
2003-11-20 12:43 pm (UTC) (Link)
Word. There is definitely friendship there, but it's still friendship with sex.
Would the token minority please stand up?
2003-11-19 07:12 pm (UTC) (Link)
It might be an interesting doctoral study to run stats on the slash writers and readers and compare them to the statistics of people who are on the internet for comparable amounts of time. I know that last time I checked stats, the perponderance of people who use the internet are of Middle and Northern European descent.
SWS
Re: Would the token minority please stand up?
2003-11-20 01:54 pm (UTC) (Link)
I thought of doing a poll on sexualities, too -- asking any slash writer/reader who wanted to say, to check off "I read/write m/m f/f slash, and...." "I'm female/I'm male/I don't wish to state my gender/I consider myself __________" and "I'm exclusively straight, I'm exclusively gay, I consider myself bisexual, I consider myself mostly straight in practice, but...." etc.
Not quite Kinsey but enough choices so that the range of differences shows -- because my hypothesis is that there's a lot more women writing slash who are some form of bi, than people expect, because they either don't talk about it, or they're in a straight relationship so it doesn't come up, etc. I think the perception of "M/M slash is mostly written and read by straight women" may be not completely wrong, but not as right as people expect. (Just as the perception that f/f/ slash is mostly written by men is, I think, way off.)
Re: Would the token minority please stand up?
2003-11-20 02:01 pm (UTC) (Link)
slash dykes
(Anonymous)
2004-10-17 04:19 am (UTC) (Link)
xxx, Mog
Re: slash dykes
2004-10-17 11:40 am (UTC) (Link)
Just doing a headcount of people whose sexuality I know because they've said so at some point, there are at least 10 straight-out lesbians and 30+ bisexual women on my friendslist who all either read or write m/m slash, and that's out of about 150 people.
Modern Men and Intimacy
2003-11-19 07:49 pm (UTC) (Link)
Hmmm...maybe ginmar is right. Maybe it's just my bias. But, think, how many of you in at a slumber party or staying with relatives slept in the same bed as best friends, sister, or cousins, even as teenagers to save space. Yet I can't think of an instance where teenage *boys* did the same, personally. (Once again, maybe just me.) My two younger brothers would snuggle when they were little, but eventually the older one got uncomfortable with it. Are we as a culture more accepting of gay men being touchy-feely, then straight men? Do we still except macho-ness of our men, if they are not part of Special Sub-class:Gay (TM)? Ugh. What a horrible thing to teach our children. I hope I'm wrong, or perhaps blinded with a bias that have yet to correct.
Now I have to ponder male friendship fic, dang it. And the modern image of men.
Re: Modern Men and Intimacy
2003-11-20 01:44 pm (UTC) (Link)
I love first time fics both for the coming to terms and awkwardness moments, and for the intimacy kick you're talking about. That emotional peak that's so hard to recreate in longer stories (guilty of it myself too, I suspect) or find new ways of showing.
(I also love established relationship fics that *do* find new ways of showing intimacy and friendship mixed with romantic love. And the ongoing things that happen in a real relationship that lasts a long time. I think where good ones work and unsuccessful ones don't, may be the difference between finding ways to show those emotional connections that really reflect a long-term relationship, vs. having those same first passionate connections over and over again, and having to stretch to make the plot spur those on.)
My two shiny pieces of copper
2003-11-19 09:05 pm (UTC) (Link)
You're responsible for my Spike/Xander lurve. Because--Chocolately Goodness? First S/X I read. Got me seeing, believing, and requiring more. So, thanks for turning me on to them, and you pretty much rock.
One Cent...Why I, a white, middle class, bi woman, read The Slash: It's amazing to see an author find what meshes between the characters, and then bring them together in a way that has me going, "well, duh, why the hell wouldn't they be together, then?"
Two Cent..Why I, a white, middle class, bi woman, read slash PWPs: I have the man-woman sex, I have the woman-woman sex. What I can never have is man-man sex. It's unattainable, and that's part of the allure. Also, the way two men have sex is not how a man and woman have sex, or how two women have sex. There are different dynamics that come into play, different types of touching--all of which I find appealing and sexy and erotic.
Re: My two shiny pieces of copper
2003-11-20 01:35 pm (UTC) (Link)
Thank you! Glad I could
corruptentertain you!It's amazing to see an author find what meshes between the characters, and then bring them together in a way that has me going, "well, duh, why the hell wouldn't they be together, then?"
I agree -- especially for S/X, which even though it's my favorite, I'm perfectly willing to admit is nowhere near as canonically plausible -- as easy to sell to people who aren't already turned on to it -- as a pairing like Spike/Angel, or Buffy/Faith. Where the tension is there, the history is there and you just have to choose to see or develop it in a romantic direction instead of (or in addition to) another interpretation. With Spike/Xander, you can find tension or at least chemistry if you want to see it (especially from Xander's POV), but it almost always takes the author's skill in making the characters interact with each other, making their personalities bounce off each other and feel like they're really what the other needs... to make a harder pairing work. It's not always plot, for me, not the specific situation they get thrown into, but can the writer make the characters *see* each other, make the back and forth snap and pop.
Two articles
(Anonymous)
2003-12-23 01:16 pm (UTC) (Link)
Talking about the 'historical' beginning of slash with Spock/Kirk the author writes about the motives: "Spock, by virtue of his vulcan side, is coded female; both characters are coded androgynously; the characters have the 'marker' of maleness, the penis, but they are performing a feminine sex act. Writers and readers enjoy identifiying with one male character while desiring the other; or they identify with and desire both". - Plus: I can't find the exact quote at the moment, but later on the author suggests that writing male/male might be so popular because there you don't have to deal with clichees of male vs. female behaviour / stereotypes but have a more equal relationship-modell.
I suck royally at summaries, so I won't try to give one for the whole article, just the title "Staking a claim: The series and it's slash fanfiction" by Ester Saxey in: Kaveney: Reading the vampire slayer. In "Fighting the forces" (ed. by Wilcox / Lavery) is another one, that might be interesting for this subject: "Crossing the final taboo: family, sexuality and incest in Buffyverse fanfiction" by Kristina Busse. Maybe it's of interest to someone here :-).
- Caro
Two articles
(Anonymous)
2003-12-23 01:39 pm (UTC) (Link)
Talking about the 'historical' beginning of slash with Spock/Kirk the author writes about the motives: "Spock, by virtue of his vulcan side, is coded female; both characters are coded androgynously; the characters have the 'marker' of maleness, the penis, but they are performing a feminine sex act. Writers and readers enjoy identifiying with one male character while desiring the other; or they identify with and desire both". - Plus: I can't find the exact quote at the moment, but later on the author suggests that writing male/male might be so popular because there you don't have to deal with clichees of male vs. female behaviour / stereotypes but have a more equal relationship-modell.
I suck royally at summaries, so I won't try to give one for the whole article, just the title "Staking a claim: The series and it's slash fanfiction" by Ester Saxey in: Kaveney: Reading the vampire slayer. In "Fighting the forces" (ed. by Wilcox / Lavery) is another one, that might be interesting for this subject: "Crossing the final taboo: family, sexuality and incest in Buffyverse fanfiction" by Kristina Busse. Maybe it's of interest to someone here :-).
- Caro