~~ Makino: feminist icon.
Jan. 29th, 2005 06:27 pmI get the weirdest feeling of... relief, watching my favorite Hana Yori Dango vid (to `With You'), 'cause... this is exactly the breathless sense of... non-gendered power balance I get from the best of slash. You -can- have stories where the girl can totally stand up to the guy without making it be another guy, without making the girl submissive, without making the girl uber-pretty or superhuman.
And it's not that I like slash -because- it's some sort of superior het substitute... but it's weird to realize that really I like (and dislike!) the same things about both. Whether it's het or slash, I dig on the violence... the sense of uncontrolled anger/jealousy/fear/need. It's like... so important, right, that slash is about characters of the same gender... that it's almost forgettable that in the end, it's all about romance stories, and love works the same way with any gender, doesn't it? Emotionally, it adds up to the same emotional pay-off, though... uh, well, the boy-on-boy action thing tips the scale a bit for me, usually. It doesn't matter if I'm really involved with the characters, though-- it doesn't matter what their gender is to how real they are to me. Why should it?
I've heard before that if you had a boy and a girl fighting, you'd have issues of abuse come up, and basically the (female) readers would sympathize with the girl a lot more (or less), or something. But those are traditionalist stories that don't count on the presence of strong female characters which aren't any more conducive to pity than strong male characters. And the fact that a fic is about two boys doesn't mean their roles will be balanced, especially given the huge feminization phenomenon both in fanfiction and shounen-ai. The average writer's approach to power issues doesn't seem all that dependent on the characters' gender at all, actually. It seems more like relationship roles defining gender than the other way around.
I don't think it's a question of misogynism (heh) so much as a prevalent attitude to what romance should be like. There's a cultural norm of a passive, possessed party and an active, possessing party, and it follows beyond gender roles though it clearly originated there. And as much as I dig the boylurve, it actually makes me happier on some level to see a girl who's as strong as the boy, just because it's inspiring, isn't it? This is me, being a girl, and so instead of looking up to superheroes with amazing powers, I look up to girls who don't need a man's help or admiration to move forward. I don't care about misogynistic fic because once one starts looking, one could find it everywhere and anywhere-- what I really bloody want is feminist fiction, and it could be het or slash or femslash.
And it's not that I like slash -because- it's some sort of superior het substitute... but it's weird to realize that really I like (and dislike!) the same things about both. Whether it's het or slash, I dig on the violence... the sense of uncontrolled anger/jealousy/fear/need. It's like... so important, right, that slash is about characters of the same gender... that it's almost forgettable that in the end, it's all about romance stories, and love works the same way with any gender, doesn't it? Emotionally, it adds up to the same emotional pay-off, though... uh, well, the boy-on-boy action thing tips the scale a bit for me, usually. It doesn't matter if I'm really involved with the characters, though-- it doesn't matter what their gender is to how real they are to me. Why should it?
I've heard before that if you had a boy and a girl fighting, you'd have issues of abuse come up, and basically the (female) readers would sympathize with the girl a lot more (or less), or something. But those are traditionalist stories that don't count on the presence of strong female characters which aren't any more conducive to pity than strong male characters. And the fact that a fic is about two boys doesn't mean their roles will be balanced, especially given the huge feminization phenomenon both in fanfiction and shounen-ai. The average writer's approach to power issues doesn't seem all that dependent on the characters' gender at all, actually. It seems more like relationship roles defining gender than the other way around.
I don't think it's a question of misogynism (heh) so much as a prevalent attitude to what romance should be like. There's a cultural norm of a passive, possessed party and an active, possessing party, and it follows beyond gender roles though it clearly originated there. And as much as I dig the boylurve, it actually makes me happier on some level to see a girl who's as strong as the boy, just because it's inspiring, isn't it? This is me, being a girl, and so instead of looking up to superheroes with amazing powers, I look up to girls who don't need a man's help or admiration to move forward. I don't care about misogynistic fic because once one starts looking, one could find it everywhere and anywhere-- what I really bloody want is feminist fiction, and it could be het or slash or femslash.
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