~~ I slash because I dare....?

[reenka]

This guy sitting by a single computer in the lab with his girlfriend, it seems like, checking out livejournal & chatting about the size of his friends list (....)-- oh man, it kind of freaks me out ^^;;; Heh.

...I mean, partly it's the coupley thing and partly the omg-lj-in-the-real-world thing, but partly it's the whole 'easily sharing a computer with another person' thing. Not just when you -have- to, either, but enjoying it. Like, you can watch a TV together because you're -watching-, not participating, not typing, etc. But this is much more more like sharing a single handheld game or a typewriter-- kinda. o_0 I mean, I realize I'm the weird one here, but. Possibly this is just a level of geeky possessiveness (...) most people don't reach--? Yes, my computer is MINE MINE MINE MINE!!1 (...mine.) I also feel like this about my books. Anything else, go ahead and take, ahahah. -.-
~~

I remember not really checking scans_daily much because well, sexualizing comics isn't my thing, quite, but at the same time there were too many 'mainstream' posts somehow. This sort of gives me a different perspective on the whole 'fandom as female space' vision of things.
    Actually, I consider my own attitude to the community an interesting aside, because in some ways you could say I "don't like slash" because I tend to be so picky about who I want to see slashed and how, etc, and I also don't get off on superhero types in suits and their manly needs or whatever. Though I do have plenty of pervy moments where it's like 'snog already' (your average fighting game being one example-- show me two guys fighting and I'm like SEX! SEX! SEX! possibly moreso than if they're hugging... but that's neither here nor there, except perhaps I haven't seen enough comicbook villain/hero slash-- but still, the muscles... eh). Anyway, you could say that I'm still not the target audience of scans_daily, whatever the case.

On the other hand, I'm female, in fandom in large part because I feel two cocks are better than one, like romance with non-stereotypical power-balances or sex-roles, and am naturally drawn towards stories about boys' relationships, platonic or not. So in a real enough sense I'm a typical slasher fangirl.


    I'm not mainstream in any normal sense but close enough to it from a girl-geek sense. And I tried to imagine a slash fandom full of men in vaguely equal number to women and felt... odd. I mean, I'm absolutely certain it will never happen no matter how comfy men get with homosexuality because the -type- of stories in their approach-- ie, romance-- have never been the sort most guys liked. I'm not trying to perpetuate stereotypes so much as say what's been my experience with people who identify as male. The separation is more about types of stories than gender, it seems like, with gender being correlated. It's just that of course people would -care- more about gender issues; even the slash vs. non-slash kerfuffles often come down to issues of identity and sexuality rather than storytelling philosophies per se. I should say though, that most people's storytelling philosophies are actually related to their sense of identity, of course, and so it gets hopelessly mixed up.

A het/gen community might coexist more easily than a gen/slash comics scans one only because het has natural dominance of sorts over het in overall media and people tend to accept it as 'normal'. I think it's a delicate balance of power with het-gen & slash that was always easily tipped by people with differing preconceptions.

Actually, even the gay/straight males I know of in HP slash fandom: Abaddon, Copperbadge, Alex Malfoy-- look at their work. Plot and/or action-heavy even when it's romance, though of course it's hard to draw real conclusions because the sample-size is so small; naturally there's a large percentage of women who also write plot-heavy stories, but I'm just saying -all- the male writers in fandom write them, it seems like, except for Aidan Lynch and his 'Unthinkable Thoughts'. And the ones who write smut write pretty hardcore porn it seems like, rather than the sort of character-driven romances that also have smut girls write heaps of.

    In this case I'm not even generalizing but genuinely thinking of all the male slash writers I can think of at the moment. So basically what I'm saying is, it becomes hard to say how much of the 'oppression' is actually the product of natural tendency-- in terms of women not shutting guys out of fandom but guys actually avoiding because it's not their thing for reasons other than pure homophobia.

And I say this as someone who actually has a knee-jerk 'you homophobic asshole!!!' reaction when someone says they don't like slash. I seriously feel like that even if someone says reasonably 'but I'm not homophobic' or whatever, and I'm like 'yeah, you don't sound like it, but there's still something wrong with you!!' ahahaha, though I know it's just that they could not like to mess with canon or they don't like romance or it's just physically unappealing like uh, goat-sex. -.- I also feel uncomfortable about the girls in fandom who do like het romance but not slash because of the whole 'but I'm interested in -women's- bodies & issues' thing, which is a positive and healthy enough thing but it still bothers me they're not interested in males-- like, there seems something wrong with that--? But I'm not saying this isn't wild bias, because it is; though a part of me still whispers 'you should fix that, try to widen your perspective'. Knee-jerk, as I said.

So yeah, my weird feelings when imagining a huge influx of men into slash fandom weren't because I don't want a guy to read my fics or I actually consciously write -for- other girls-- I mean, the only person who's read all my fics is my best (non-fandom straight guy) friend. Yes, I've made him read them all, he didn't read the porny bits of his own free will-- but the point is, I don't feel weird about (straight or otherwise) guys reading my fics or talking to them about slash and I enjoy the largely outside perspective-- that's partly why I made my guy friend read my slash fics, after all.
    The weirdness is all because of my awareness that as a -group- exceeding some intimate small number, the dynamics of the community would change in an uncomfortable direction for us-- because while it -is- possible to have a unisex space, online or otherwise, that unisex quality in -itself- is a different nature to fandom as it currently exists. It would mean significant change, though the impact is negligible until there's something like a statistical shift.

Their priorities would be as out of place as a bunch of gen fans sharing slashers' space to the point of not just coexisting (which obviously happens just fine), but actually influencing what sort of things get written/posted/discussed-- which is what happened-- was always in potential of happening-- in scans_daily. To me, the separate-but-equal thing is really about the divide between those different fic philosophies; and perhaps, in some as-yet non-articulated way, I am saying slash is a philosophy itself, a way of interacting/looking at fiction. Hmm.

Comments

[notrafficlights.livejournal.com]

but at the same time there were too many 'mainstream' posts somehow.

Well, you could always post some non-mainstream stuff inbetween my pretty Midnighter/Apollo Authority picspam. ;)

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Hehehe, strangely this just occurred to me-- I wouldn't even have to scan them 'cause I -have- scans, ahahahaha. AAHAHAHAH BOOKS OF MAGIC SLASH HERE WE COME :D :D :D

[notrafficlights.livejournal.com]

Yay!

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

(...Though, I mean, there's actual snogging, no need to force the slash, there... muwahahahahah....)

[notrafficlights.livejournal.com]

Of course. That's why I love the Authority Apollo and Midnighter are the best big gay dads ever XD. Yay for canon gay!

[fiendling.livejournal.com]

oh man.. reenka was such a familiar name to me! im gonna have to remember this one.. i always forget name changes D:

lunacy lunacy lunaccccyyyy

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

HEHEHEH!!
...for some reason that's making me cackle.

I sort of like my sort-of anonymity o_0
I AM SORT OF LIKE THE SHADOW THAT FLAPS IN THE FANDOM.
Or... something.....-.-

[fiendling.livejournal.com]

...
discovering the nature of [Bad username or site: <lunacy @ livejournal.com] is like trying to catch smoke... trying to catch smoke with your bare hands..... gahaha

[fiendling.livejournal.com]

dammit, thats supposed to be lunacy

[profshallowness.livejournal.com]

Here via metafandom - caveat, my bias is that I probably fit into the het romance -het/gen overlap camp, and I found your take on all this interesting but, I also feel uncomfortable about the girls in fandom who do like het romance but not slash because of the whole 'but I'm interested in -women's- bodies & issues' thing, which is a positive and healthy enough thing but it still bothers me they're not interested in males-- like, there seems something wrong with that--? Er, aren't male bodies and issues a part of her - for they're definitely involved, and, depending on the story, can be the POV character/at the forefront of the het. Sure some writers idealise or fantasise or marginalise the male character, but not entirely - they can't. I don't know whether this argument would be better directed at femslashers?

[profshallowness.livejournal.com]

I meant to say metafandom :)

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Ah, in retrospect I realize maybe I should have provided a link, but at the time it was my usual conscientiousness talking. Basically, there was a het/gen-writer/reader off metafandom a week or so ago, maybe two, where she had this manifesto as to why she liked het and not slash, and she said it was because being a girl made her primarily focused on female issues, and if there was -no- female body involved, like in slash, then she wasn't interested. She seemed to like femslash okay, but her main interest was La Femme Nikita het.

And I thoroughly enjoy het in the right pairing/fandom, of course, La Femme Nikita included, but I was somewhat bothered by that whole take on it-- like yeah, it's not as if het isn't about the guy, I think she acknowledged that, but just to focus on the female as a vehicle for a self-insert so explicitly bothers me. Of course, a big part of the argument for why slash works for a lot of women is because of this self-insert issue turned around-- because these women are uncomfortable identifying with a potentially prettier or more fit female body, and a gay guy is supposedly safe and non-threatening. The whole implied misogyny bothers me only slightly more than the way that op marginalized straight men as foils to the empowered woman-- okay, now I'm being too harsh.

What she really said was that she liked het because she liked the power struggle and/or differential implicit in her type of het story and addition of the female body that supposedly most slashers are escaping.

[profshallowness.livejournal.com]

Thanks for clarifying where you were coming from. I know what post you're referring to, and in the interest of full disclosure, I friended the OP after reading it :)

but just to focus on the female as a vehicle for a self-insert so explicitly bothers me. It didn't bother me so much, I'm not even sure that I read it quite like that, but then I've seen much more explicit self-inserts and read worse too. I find I waver on the elf-identification issue, because there can be an issue of identification that draws me to read about certain characters anyway, and I have a whole 'I'd rather not think about it' block about POV, though I think that's because I like fluidity - I can, as a reader, and the more distanced writer, switch from m, f to omniscient to outside reader, though it's a bad sign if I'm aware of doing it.

I didn't read her as marginalising the male in het, like you go on to say, she was looking for the site of conflict between the m and f characters.

Mileage varies and all that.