big gay meta: slash communities and queer fan communities

[hth]

For years, marythefan and I have had this running argument over the relative queerness of slash, and here's the thing. I was entirely wrong, and she was entirely right. Now, with the fervor of the convert (the very lazy, conflict-avoidant, cognitively muddled convert...), I want to try to make this idea clear to people like me, who think it sounds like bullshit at first. Hopefully it will take somewhat less effort than moving in with each one of you individually and talking for five years. *g*

There's this thing, this community and tradition, that is slash fandom. But there's also this thing, this somewhat less organized but no less creative and articulate and engaged group of people who are queer media fans. (By this you may wonder whether I mean "queer fans of media" or "fans of queer media." That's not an easy question to answer, but I'll try to get back to it in a second, okay? Stick with me for the moment.) It's a big Venn Diagram: there's slash space and queer space, and then a whole lot of people (like myself) who identify as both, who are entrenched in both perspectives and both communities. And many (most?) of us discovered and entered both communities simultaneously, which is why I think it's so easy for us to assume that the two groups are identical. They aren't.

It's easy to see from one direction, really. The world is FULL of queer people who are science fiction geeks and comic book geeks and pop culture junkies, but who don't give a hot damn about slash fandom. We all know that -- I mean, surely we all know that! Some of them just think it's kind of an oddball thing to be into, some think it's fine and dandy but not their cup of tea, and some of them are pretty suspicious of slash for a multitude of reasons. But they are definitely NOT slashers, and they more often than not don't really understand or appreciate what slash is. They are outsiders to what we do as slashers. They know that, and we know that.

What's harder, it seems like, for some slashers to recognize is that it's exactly the same from the other angle. Being a slasher doesn't mean you necessarily have the slightest insight into, or interest in, the queer community. The acafan and meta-heavy wing of slash fandom has been saying this for some time: that slashers don't necessarily write about queerness, they write about things that relate largely to straight femaleness. Actually, I added in the "necessarily" -- that's often left out of the position statement, which I think is vastly more correct if you include that one word. There ARE slashers who write about queerness -- both straight and queer slashers who do so. Some slash does that. Just not *all* slash.

So, if a lot of ink (virtual and otherwise) has been spilled over what slash is -- what does it mean, separate from that, to have queer fandom? Essentially, I would say it's a space within Fandom that looks at texts for what they say about what it means to be queer. Sometimes that means queer subtext -- sometimes it means queer characters -- sometimes it means texts that challenge social norms about sex and gender in ways that are relevant to queer experience. But in order to do any of this, to participate in a legitimately queer fandom...I'm not going to be the border police and say, yes, you have to be queer -- but you have to have some legitimate, real sense of what "queer experience" could mean. In the majority of cases, yes, that's going to come about because you identify as queer yourself; it's normally going to be lived experience, not the vicarious experience of the ally.

I can already feel the objections some people are going to make to this. Queer people disagree with each other all the time! Gay men have experiences and concerns that are different from those of lesbians! Bisexual people have experiences that are different from both! Bisexual people who live within the queer community have a different perspective than bisexual people in heterosexual marriages! Transgendered people are a whole separate thing! Race! Class! Nationality! Religion! Individual difference! Okay -- yes. "Queer experience" is a false singular; the reality is, of course, "queer experiences." And that's what makes queer fandom fun and exciting -- if we all agreed on what images and media and positions spoke most clearly to us, there'd be no point in talking about it at all. Diversity, huzzah!

However, for the most part, what you can say is that people who identify as queer do so because they feel like their lives are different than they would be if they were straight. People who *don't* believe that are very unlikely to take on the label of queer or be very interested in queer analysis. How different? In what way? How should we use that difference as consumers and producers of media? What are the political uses and limits of the idea of difference? Those are the conversations that go on in queer fandom. That's what we talk about.

Those are not questions that are about slash. Slashers, on an individual level, may participate in queer fandom, and they may bring what's going on over there back into slash. In fact, I think that's been happening at a good clip for the last ten years, leading to an immense surge in fresh, interesting voices in slash that largely weren't there Back In the Day.

Slash is largely about pleasure. That's not to denigrate it as merely porn or merely entertainment: pleasure, particularly female pleasure, is a powerful and politically-charged concept. We still live in a society that is profoundly ambivalent about female sexual pleasure: we're fascinated by it and we resent and fear it as well. For women to take full responsibility for who they are as sexual beings is not unimportant, and for women to insist on varieties of romantic fantasy and erotic stimulation that speak to *them,* not to the people they've been informed they should be -- that matter. Slash matters.

But queerness isn't about female pleasure and female pleasure isn't about queerness. It's just that there are a lot of us for whom the two are related in various ways, and a lot of those very people have been hugely influental in shaping *both* the slash community and the queer fannish community, so that there's a constant flow of ideas and dialogue between the two that can even obscure the fact that it's a conversation *between* rather than a conversation *among* or *within.*

Hopefully this provides some context for some of the things I've said lately, both here and in cathexys's journal, about my discomfort with the way the slash community often deals with gayness -- the OMG, THAT'S SO GAY! discourse. Because, look, here's the thing: slashers invented slashiness. Not y'all personally, but the current generation of slashers inherited a tradition and shaped it and refined it and evolved it, and we who are slashers, who are within that community, are the sole and unequivocal arbiters of what "slashy" means. Not that we always agree with each other -- again, half the fun! But it would be flatly ridiculous for someone to come in from outside the slash community and tell us what's slashy and what's not. We know slash. That's our turf as slashers.

Queerness is the turf of queer fans, not of slashers. You know who gets to say what's so totally gay? Gay people. Not that they will always agree with each other! Not that they will always *disagree* with what straight people think. But the thing is, people who are saturated in queerness and spend our lives thinking about the queer issues -- guys, we get to be the voice of what's SO GAY.

Doesn't that just make sense? I mean, I have Jewish friends and have studied Judaism and truly admire the religion and the culture in many ways -- but as much as an ally as I consider myself, I would never in a bazillion years blithely assume I could announce what was a so very Jewish way to think, act, be, believe. And if I did, if I wrote in my livejournal about how X character's actions were just, my God! SO JEWISH, you know?!? -- particularly when the character isn't canonically Jewish, but just pings my shiksa sense of what "Jewishness" means...I would expect my Jewish readers to look askance at me. It would be, at best, a weird thing to say, and at worst, an immensely insensitive thing to say. Even if they agreed with me that there was something Jewishy about that moment, I think they'd be justified in wondering wtf I was thinking when I said that.

That's how I often feel when I see people who are entrenched in the slash community but not in the queer fan community making similar statements about queerness. I get that slash fans are generally natural allies; I adore many of my straight sisters in slash fandom, and I believe that most of them truly are innocent of homophobia. But it makes me feel weird to listen to people who are allies, who are interested, but who are outsiders who possess privilege in this situation, pretend to operate from a position of insiderness. It's kind of patronizing, just like it would be if I charged around having all the answers about what, say, Asian-Americans were really like. I might be right in many cases, or I might be dead wrong -- more likely, it's oversimplifying to say yes, I got it right or no, I got it wrong. But whatever, the point is, I wouldn't do it because it's an inappropriate position for me as a white American to take. If I want to talk about Asian-Americanness -- say, because I'm writing a CSI story about Archie or a Buffy/Satsu epic -- I would listen a lot more than I talked. I would try to be faithful to what I heard people whose experience it actually was saying.

That so many slash fans believe that advice can't possibly apply to them -- freaks me out, actually. Being a slasher is not a Gay Ghetto Pass. It's one thing to say, you know, for the purposes of my stories, I don't need to know about queerness, because these characters aren't "really" queer, they're "really" reflections of my experience, on which I am an expert. I have mixed feelings about that statment, but I can appreciate the intellectual honesty of it.

My sense of compromise grinds to a halt when slash fandom claims the authority to parse not what is slashy, but what is gay. If you care about queer experience, do what other power majorities do when they want to learn about and be involved with a minority group: listen, listen some more, and when you speak, speak from a position of someone who is a guest in other peoples' reality, not from a false sense of insiderness or queer credibility. If you don't care about queer experience, that's okay, too. Just don't say that you do. Don't pronounce about gayness as a lark if the reality is that gayness is irrelevant to what you care about as a slasher -- which is slashiness.

Comments

[jadelennox]

Just YES on so many levels.

I think the parallel that makes it easiest for me to understand is how irritating I used to find it, back in the dark ages when I was an undergraduate, when a gay male friend of mine used to take for granted that because he was gay and male he couldn't be sexist, he could speak for women, he got a default feminist pass, and everything that went along with that. Because, just, no. Yes, he experienced gender and sexuality based discrimination and assumptions in the world, and yes, he had to deal with men sexually and romantically. That did not give him a feminist pass.

Hell, I don't even claim queer cred, even though I do identify as queer, because I live such a heteronormative life that I don't experience any substantive discrimination, and I'm not part of the community.

(Your Jewish example works for me, too, because I remember trying to explain to somebody how Matt Parkman on Heroes is obviously Jewish in so many ways (though not canonically so), and yet Charlotte Charles on Pushing Daisies and Matt Albie, both canonically Jewish, just *aren't* played very Jewish. And I couldn't, because it's a very internal, difficult to describe thing, and doesn't come down to stereotypes but my internal vibe -- and as you say, I'm sure I completely disagree with practically every other Jew out there, because that's what it's like to have opinions about these things, but still, my arguably controversial-if-anyone-else-cared gut feeling is an insider's gut feeling.)

Slash *can* be gay, but isn't necessarily. I think that necessarily you added is really very valuable.

[hth-the-first.livejournal.com]

when a gay male friend of mine used to take for granted that because he was gay and male he couldn't be sexist, he could speak for women

Oh, that's a good example, too! Gay men frequently make fantastic allies in women's struggle against misogyny...but that still doesn't make it appropriate for them to ignore the realities of male privilege and presume to interpret women's experiences. Excellent.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad I wasn't the only one who keeps flashing back to this post (http://bettyp.livejournal.com/43179.html?style=mine) (I think that's the right one, isn't it? the feminist or queer one?).

And I like how you separate the two, because I think they are different things, though, I suppose some of the problem is that more and more fans *are* writing slash as queer rather than slash as feminist.

I said a few times yesterday (not wholly tongue-in-cheek) that in the olden days of WNG that problem never occurred (now there were other, related problems, like colonization, of course), but the assigning identity rather than reading subtextual relations didn't happen in the same way...

So, while I think you can theoretically separate queerness and slashiness, I think it's harder to do in discussions or stories, because the two do intersect quite a bit. Moreover, I'm not sure that caring about gayness is necessarily sufficient to make someone not be a slasher first at times...this is much too messy a field in identity politics, theoretical interests, and fannish actions...

[hth-the-first.livejournal.com]

Oh, man! I'm so glad I copped up front to the fact that I haven't always held this position, or else I'd look like a schmuck when you linked to that, wouldn't I? *g*

Reading that post from six years ago, what amuses me is that I now think both our claims are wrongheadedly utopian: for all the reasons I mentioned at the time, I think she was wishfully projecting when she said "slash is feminist," and I was wishfully projecting when I said "slash is queer." It's not always easy to see the fandom you have behind the spectre of the fandom you want and need.

You know, re: WNGWJLEO -- I do kind of miss that! I was never so much with the raining hot death on that trope as a lot of people were, I guess because I interpreted it (naively, perhaps) as positing "gay" as a social construction, which jibed exactly with the received wisdom of my feminist and queer-studies academic background. I was taught -- and mostly still believe -- that "being gay" is an identity that has to be invented and accepted, and is something different from "experiencing homosexual desire" or "having sexual relationships with people of the same gender." By those terms, it's TOTALLY possible for, say, Jim Ellison to not see himself as the possessor of a gay identity, even if he sees himself as Blair's soulmate, spiritually and emotionally and sexually. I even thought that was kind of a clever, subversive critique of our cultural binary: are you GAY or are you STRAIGHT, which one IS IT, dammit?! I realize in retrospect that it wasn't always (wasn't often? wasn't ever?) being deployed in quite that way and wasn't normally being read in quite that way...but I enjoyed it on those terms! But yeah, I think fandom as a community so roundly rejected that trope that hardly anyone in their right mind would court the open scorn of their audience by producing that kind of story now...which as you said elsewhere, probably does lead to the sense that in order to be taken seriously, they have to at least come off like they're interested in gay identity -- whether or not they genuinely are.

And hell, yes to intersection. These are two communities that have both nourished and fed off of each other in many, many ways -- it reminds me of the feminist community and the lesbian community. They ARE different and it's a fool's game to confuse them...but it's naive to think the distinction between them is clear and uncontrovertible. They are profoundly entangled and always have been.

[lomedet.livejournal.com]

Yes. Just...yes.

This was gorgeously articulated, and *absolutely* needed to be said.

thank you.

[hth-the-first.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'm glad you feel like it met a need.

[ubixtiz.livejournal.com]

Very interesting post. I agree with a lot of what you've said here. I've often found myself wincing at pronouncements that something is "SO GAY" (or occasionally a less savoury wording, but I won't get into that) without really knowing why, and I think you've articulated a large part of why it's uncomfortable -- that what they mean is "slashy" and to use "gay" in its stead is innacurate and/or presumptive.

I wonder, though, if context might not be as important as the individual's queerness/understanding of queer experience. This is the internet after all, and when I see someone expounding on how gay such-and-such is, I don't necessarily know anything about the person at all, so how can my discomfort be related to their "queerness"? In such a case, I have to relate my discomfort to the use of terms indicating queerness within a slash context rather than to the insiderness or outsiderness of the speaker. I don't think such a statement would be any more acceptable coming from someone who is known to be queer and/or who has demonstrated a propensity to discuss or think about queerness.

[hth-the-first.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I think the conflation between "slashy" and "gay" is a large part of the story -- but not all of it, mainly because I'm not convinced that every slasher who says "gay" really *does* mean "slashy." I think in a lot of cases, it reflects what they truly do think "gay" means. So some of it is inaccurate language, but some of it is also insufficient knowledge.

And it's true, on the internet, you don't always know who is speaking from what position. But at the same time...sometimes you do. I mean, I've been in the slash community for twelve years now, and not everybody around here is unfamiliar to me! I can often bring to bear other information about how invested and knowledgeable the speaker is about queer issues, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. It's a "community" in part because we're not all strangers! And particularly the people who do a lot of talking, their backgrounds and interests and interpretive lenses start to be known.

I do think -- and this might be an intellectually sloppy position, but it feels just, intuitively -- that there are things that REALLY ARE more acceptable coming from a queer person than from a straight person. I mean, I think *The Big Gay Sketch Show* on Logo is fucking hilarious, but if I suddenly learned that the writers and performers were all, in fact, straight people? It would lose a huge amount of its humor value and suddenly feel very uncomfortable to me -- it would be people in power picking on the Other, rather than the queer community getting pleasure out of its own foibles. And that's different, as far as I'm concerned.

[cesperanza.livejournal.com]

I agree with this, though I think the problem might be--as it so often is--sloppy (or as Anna Devere Smith calls it: lousy) language: I think that often the person going, "that's so gay!" means, "that's so slashy!" but isn't being precise enough to say so. It's like, those words mean something within the context of the "slashy game" that they DON'T mean in a larger context, and one of the downsides of LJ and doing fandom more in public is that you are often speaking outside of your particular "game" without knowing it. And then someone points out that you're speaking in an imprecise way and the person gets all mad. (I personally have similar issues with the word "porn"--I don't believe slash, even very very erotic slash, is "porn".)

I'm also more aware of the spectrum of queer/slash, because like you I've been back and forth over the years: slash is queer! no, feminist! no--wait, there are feminist queer people, and-- Never mind, I'll come in again! There are a lot of stories that really are about the/a queer experience, and there are a lot more that are about a female experience, and probably the ones I like best are the ones that live on the knife's edge between the two, where metaphors happen and a fantasy of personhood and agency and self-actualization shimmer like a vision for everybody concerned!

[hth-the-first.livejournal.com]

I think that often the person going, "that's so gay!" means, "that's so slashy!" but isn't being precise enough to say so. It's like, those words mean something within the context of the "slashy game" that they DON'T mean in a larger context

Sometimes, I think it is a matter of that kind of imprecision. Sometimes I think there's other, less innocent stuff going on as well. Mostly, though, I'm not at all convinced that every slasher who sees this kind of language used -- regardless of the OP's intent -- understands that "gay" is being used in a way that doesn't mean, um, "gay." *g* I think it's perfectly easy for fans -- especially younger fans who haven't logged decades in dialogue with queer people the way people like you and I have! -- to look at that kind of discourse and absorb it as "things I have learned about the gays." I think there's often this blithe assumption that everybody knows the words I say don't mean what they normally mean in this context -- like Humpty Dumpty, we keep trying to say that the word means what we choose it to mean, nothing more or less! And like Alice, I'm saying, wtf, that's crazy! That's not how words work! (I'm paraphrasing, obviously. *g*)

slash is queer! no, feminist! no--wait, there are feminist queer people, and-- Never mind, I'll come in again!

Heeee! Yeah, it's a strange morass, made all the weirder because, as I said in the post and upthread to Cath, there *is* so much truck between the two perspectives, and so many people whose perspectives are informed by both. I compared it to being a lesbian and being a feminist: not the same thing, but you're CRAZY if you think that in this culture, your experiences in either commuity are not deeply shaped by the history of the other one.

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

Excellent post and excellent to see changes to well written about! I like the Venn diagram analogy, and I'd use it with feminisms and slash as well--i.e. slash is not necessarily but can be feminist, some is, some isn't, and it all depends on the specific feminist idea you're talking about.

And the slash=gay literature which I've heard on and off since I came into fandom, no no no no no. Although, again, there may be some overlaps between some texts (but then gay literature is also problematic a term though necessary).

So....it's all much more messy and complex and fascinating with lots more to write and write about in future, happy sigh!

[hth-the-first.livejournal.com]

With regard to the relationship between feminism and slash, I think the way I'd frame it is that slash has *feminist implications* although it isn't necessarily feminist in and of itself -- just like any women's space has feminist implications...sometimes at the same time that it has implications that are actively anti-feminist. I'm thinking about other female-driven literatures like soap operas and category romance novels: I think it's shortsighted to erase either the feminist or the anti-feminist stuff that's potentially contained there. Same with slash: it has a complex relationship with feminism, I think, and to say that feminist stuff goes on inside slash and that there are feminist ramifications to slash isn't entirely the same as saying slash IS feminist.

[utterfrivolity.livejournal.com]

Huh, that's given me a lot to think about. Because when I try to articulate why I slash or what slashing is about, I think I may try to conflate two different purposes that are both key to my personal experience as a slasher: women using male characters to explore sex, emotions, and relationships without the burden of dealing with personal gender hangups or inter-gender relations, and women (or occasionally men) exploring gender and sexuality issues through fanfiction. For instance, I've remarked before that I think that Straight as a Circle (http://toomuchplor.livejournal.com/52472.html) is what slash is all about. I wonder if the reason I find it so particularly satisfying is that it happens to fulfill both purposes for me. Hmmm....

[hth-the-first.livejournal.com]

That is EXACTLY why it took me personally so long to make this cognitive leap. I personally have used slash in both ways: to explore my own emotional and sexual pleasures, AND ALSO to interrogate texts from a queer perspective. And obviously if I was doing both things (sometimes simultaneously, sometimes shifting back and forth between them), then obviously everyone else was doing both of those things as well! *slaps forehead* Other people =/= me -- right! I keep forgetting! *g*

But I think my experience is a common one among those of us in that overlapping space, and we hear our experiences repeated just often enough to make it easy to believe that it's THE experience. When it's not! It's just the best of both worlds. *g*

[spike21.livejournal.com]

*phew* As I commented before, I am I believe in agreement with you about this idea. I am enjoying thinking through your argument here.

[hth-the-first.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you're still enjoying it the second time around! *g* Thanks for the support.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

As a straight slash fan, I've always been aware that slash=/=actual gay male experience. (You'll have to pardon me if I use the terms gay or queer inappropriately, since, as you said, I'm an outsider to that community.) I've recently been watching a lot of films and books made by and for gay men, and have found that gay works, even if they are light and fluffy and not weighty issue-driven tracts, usually include some or all of the following:
-coming out
-the experience of losing friends or being ostracized for being gay
-AIDS (though less so now than ten years ago)
-gay culture—whether that be the West Village club scene or San Francisco or just the presence in the film or book of fag hags and gay bars

All of these things are features of actual gay experience. I can remember only a handful of slash stories that have ever included any of these. Gay fiction which you'd pull of the Gay/Lesbian shelf at B&N has a completely different feel from slash. Slash stories far more often (or at least, those I read, which shows my preference) follow the line of a standard heterosexual romance. Look at the popularity of all the Harlequin challenges. This, I think, is because many slash fans love the tropes of standard het romances but are put off by the often anti-woman underpinnings, so slash is a way to escape the negative associations but still preserve the enjoyed heterosexual cliches. Plus, you know, hot guys.

All this has been said before, of course, so, just, yes. I agree with you.

(Also, Dan Savage mentioned slash on his Savage Love podcast a few weeks ago, much to my glee, but in the context as a non-threatening way for a straight married woman to explore her sexual imagination. He then said he didn't get it.)

[ratcreature]

Though personally I think slash has really quite a lot in common with lesbian romance. I mean, before I read slash I read lesbian romance and lesbian mystery with added romance (I never read het romance, and only some het mysteries, well, not before fanfic lured me to the dark side and into reading het fanfic) and okay, some there's some coming out stuff, but it really was pretty much like slash IMO, only with fewer penises. So I think if you want to compare and contrast m/m slash with queer literature you should start with comparing it with lesbian fiction, not with gay fiction.

[amalthia]

I don't really have anything to add but just wanted to say I loved your essay.

[hth-the-first.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I appreciate that.

[gwyndolin.livejournal.com]

I think it's easy as a writer to forget you're making all this shit up. All writers do -- all writers have to. If I ever want to have characters in my books be anything but human, female, white, middle-class, etc., I have to spend some time trying to imagine the experiences of others. I'm going to have an imperfect understanding, no matter how much research I do, but I have to trust to empathy and the conventions of fictions to get me through.

What I can't do, however, is ever think that the things I made up in my head are necessarily true and give me some special insight or expertise into these things in the real world. That's the step I think some writers fall down on.

Well, except for gay samauri lizards. I *am* an expert on those.

[hth-the-first.livejournal.com]

What I can't do, however, is ever think that the things I made up in my head are necessarily true and give me some special insight or expertise into these things in the real world. That's the step I think some writers fall down on.

Yeah, sometimes I think that is the problem. In other cases, I think the issue is that fanfic writers are assuming "everybody knows" that the things they write are Fantasyland versions of reality and not Actual Reality (ACT UP! Fight AIDS!) *They* may know that what they imagine doesn't give them insight, but it's hard for readers to know the difference between "just go with me, this is crazy fantasy play time!" and "here's this thing I'm really saying because it's a totally reasonable thing to say." Those of us who aren't psychic are perpetually caught in, "wtf, is she *joking* or *serious* or what?"

Well, except for gay samauri lizards. I *am* an expert on those.

Well, YEAH! (But I get my gay samauri lizard ghetto pass, don't I? Seriously, some of my best friends are gay samurai lizards! Check the list, okay...?)

Also -- happy birthday, princess! *hug*

[viciouswishes.livejournal.com]

You know who gets to say what's so totally gay? Gay people.

I think I need that icon and then we need to make ones for every other group to use in every other argument like this.

[violetvision78.livejournal.com]

Yes, that would be interesting!

My hubby and his gay friend (T) were out at a store and a friend (J) of my huby who is het walked up. J announced to them that something in the store was ... "That is Soooo Gay!" and laughed.

My hubby turned and looked at T for a response. T said "We don't say that."

Month later, T and my hubby were looking at something that T's man bought and T said "That is so Gay." My hubby then said, "We don't say that." LOL! They laughed when T said it was ok with him only when other gay men say that.

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

In general, I think I'm in agreement with you. I think there are certainly case-by-case exceptions -- some things may be both "gay" and "slashy", there are slash fans (both queer and not) who have enough knowledge of queer issues to notice that something is intended to represent "gayness", events or persons on screen being "coded gay" -- that sort of thing.

Of course, I am pretty sure that I once argued that Sentinel slash was less queer than Sentinel gen, so my opinions could be suspect. :)

[hth-the-first.livejournal.com]

some things may be both "gay" and "slashy", there are slash fans (both queer and not) who have enough knowledge of queer issues to notice that something is intended to represent "gayness", events or persons on screen being "coded gay" -- that sort of thing.

Oh, God, yes! I think that's what I was trying to say with "overlapping space" -- that there's a whole not inconsiderable body of fannish work that *is* both gay and slashy, and a whole lot of fans who *do* think and speak from both perspectives. Definitely. But it's a matter of combining two perspectives, not of there only being one perspective in the first place, if you see what I mean.

Of course, I am pretty sure that I once argued that Sentinel slash was less queer than Sentinel gen, so my opinions could be suspect. :)

We've all said some pretty odd things in the past. *g* Fandom will fuck with your head, dude! *g*

[dovil.livejournal.com]

Being a slasher doesn't mean you necessarily have the slightest insight into, or interest in, the queer community. The acafan and meta-heavy wing of slash fandom has been saying this for some time: that slashers don't necessarily write about queerness, they write about things that relate largely to straight femaleness.

*holds up lighter*

I have to admit I don't see how slash necessarily relates at all to the gay community, just because it is about writing and reading things from a overwhelmingly straight female perspective which is to be devoured by a female audience. It's almost the fictional equivalent of straight women being paid to 'turn gay' in the porn industry for a male audience - it might be going through the motions, but I don't see it as paricularly being part of the lesbian community or in any way liberating.

The supposedly gay men and their relationships that are written by women very rarely reflect how I see any of my gay friends interact or their relationships, which might just be my way of compartmentalising things because otherwise it could be a bit creepy, but yeah, I don't see slash as being particularly gay, at all.

As a sidenote I think that might be in part why I get so annoyed when women insist that the guys that they slash really, really aren't interested in women, even if that goes against what we see on the screen, because I hear enough derogatory remarks about women already from gay friends (even if it is often wrapped up in jokes) and I don't really want to hear other females singing the same song by implying that women are expendable second rate goods and no match for the real deal. If a character likes boobies on the show I don't think there's any reason to have him running into the shower to cry and scrub himself if a pair turn up on the page in fan fiction. But that's just my own pet peeve.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, except that I don't see many gay men in the porn industry paying straight women to turn gay whereas at least in my corner of fandom, I'd guess about half of the slashers around me are queer identified...which does change the dynamic and the overlap a bit...

(which is not to disagree with your point that most slashers aren't writing gay men, but they may also not necessarily be writing straight heteronormativity either...)

[acari.livejournal.com]

What an interesting post. Definitely gave me things to think about. In the last year or so I've have noticed in myself a tendency to cringe whenever unknown-to-me fen state a character is SO GAY. I think reading your entry made it more clear to me why that may be.

[hth-the-first.livejournal.com]

Awesome! I've been hearing a lot of variations on that: "I've been feeling uncomfortable, and I didn't know why..." I hope this is just one entry point for fandom to start talking about where queerness really does fit in around here.

[very-improbable.livejournal.com]

This is so well-argued and deals with such significant stuff that I really wish I had more to say than "Testify!" Maybe I will be able to come back later after it's stewed in my brain a while and elaborate and/or find things to disagree with.

Oh, and I once was asked by a straight fannish friend what I considered to be the gayest episode of Highlander, and I found it necessary, in order to be precise with my categories, to list three separate episodes: the gayest, the slashiest, and the most homoerotic. (Which may say something about this issue or may just say something about Highlander.)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_abulafia/]

What were your criteria for distinguishing between gay, slashy, and homoerotic? I know I've been guilty of casually conflating the three, and I know that "gay" is different from the other two because it's an identity thing rather than an objectively observable phenomenon, but I don't know how I'd approach the task of evaluating whether something was "more homoerotic" or "more slashy."

[popfantastic.livejournal.com]

Wow, this sums up a lot of the disconnect I've been feeling from slash fandom for a number of years. (The rest of the disconnect probably has to do with slash fandom as straight female pleasure center, but I won't poke that one with a stick.)

For reasons your post so neatly dissects, I'm increasingly feeling like it is incumbent on non-queer-fandom-slashers to be more linguistically precise. Because even if everyone on all sides knows and agrees that "gay" means "slashy" when you use it in slash fandom, it's not just some overlapping terminology: that's literally the descriptor of the other culture I'm in. (In other news that won't be happening soon, I would also like a pony.) Occasionally, I sense that slash fandom may use these terms and labels with the belief that it's helping to reclaim them (in what context? for whom?). In other words, saying "that's so GAY" in the way slashers do sometimes strikes me as a way for slash fans to enjoy the sense of positive nonconformity and hipness that well-meaning non-queers associate with queerness and to reinforce their ally status...without actually having to deal with the other stuff that comes with being queer or being a fierce ally outside slash fandom.

[hth-the-first.livejournal.com]

Because even if everyone on all sides knows and agrees that "gay" means "slashy" when you use it in slash fandom, it's not just some overlapping terminology

And that's a big flippin' if. I've been in slash fandom for twelve years, and this is the first I've heard of it, so by what rights is everyone so sure that "everyone knows"? Frankly, I still think it's a somewhat disingenuous argument, because I go back and try the game of substituting out these apparently synonymous terms, and -- John's hair is so slashy? (It has a crush on Rodney's bald spot, one assumes.) John looks so slashy when he stands with his hip like that? Etc. etc. Those sentences don't make sense vis a vis what *I* thought "slashy" meant. They do make perfect sense if they're repeating a certain perception of what "gay" means, however. So the evidence that the two words "really mean" the same thing inside slash fandom...is not wholly compelling for me.

[sexonastick.livejournal.com]

listen, listen some more, and when you speak, speak from a position of someone who is a guest in other peoples' reality, not from a false sense of insiderness or queer credibility.

Thank you for this.

[hth-the-first.livejournal.com]

Thanks for commenting! I'm glad you got something out of it.

[kumquatweekend.livejournal.com]

Oh dear, that is brilliant. It's all the things I've always thought but never even considered discussing.

Coming at slash from the bisexual-in-a-heterosexual-marriage side of the fence, I've always thought that slash would be totally unnecessary (for me) if fictional female characters were just written better. Fun and pretty, sure, but more a study of the slashed characters' personalities rather than their sexual identities. If that makes any sense.

Ergo, slash POV =/= queer POV. But I never really knew how to say it.

[hth-the-first.livejournal.com]

Thanks! You know, I used to hear that said a lot when I was first in slash -- that if there were good female characters and good, healthy *relationships* between male and female characters on tv, we'd be likely to transfer our writing-about-relationships to female characters in het relationships that we "identified" with. And I think as tv has become more woman-positive, bit by bit, we really *have* seen some of that -- a lot of people who once only identified as slashers (like me!) now think it's no big deal to write het. There's less of a sense that Slash Fans were one nation and Het Fans were another nation and you had to cross the borders somehow. A lot of people just write fic.

But not everyone. There are still people who are deeply identified with slash *as slash* in a way that I don't think is going to change. Nor am I saying it should change! I'm actually glad that, as it turns out, we're not going to have to trade away slash fandom to get great female characters on tv. Both/and is far and away better, no contest.

[pocky_slash.livejournal.com]

Here via very_improbable, and I've already left one novel-esque comment on here, but why not another?

I think this essay points out a lot of things that have always made me uncomfortable with some of my straight slash-fandom friends. Many of my RL friends are queer just because... I dunno, I attract Teh Gays like a moth to a flame. (I also attract many straight girls who apparently decide they are going to experiment with me and then go back to being straight. This is another incredibly depressing issue all together) But a lot of the people I've met through fandom, slash fandom particularly, are straight chicks and occasionally, while talking with them about our shared ships or fandoms, they'll say things that make me deeply uncomfortable. I never thought too hard on it before, but in retrospect, I think the assumptions about queer culture and gayness in general is what was so unsettling.

And, you know, there's a whole enough essay to be written by someone with more time and less laziness than me about where lesbians fit in in regards to slash fandom. To be totally honest, I write about characters who have chemistry and who interest me. I'm honestly not that attracted to guys and it's not some sort of wish fulfillment or "man, those two are so hot!" that a lot of slashers have. And, really, sometimes I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb, as I'm often surrounded by women who are looking at stories and canon with a different perspective than I am. I'm hyperaware, as I'm writing, that often times I'm completely out of my depth when it comes to gay sex and gay mentality. I'd like to think that there are some things that are universal across the queer spectrum, but I'm sure that, just as I feel there are things I've gone through that are super-specific to being a female attracted to other females, there are probably milestones and feelings and expressions that are super-specific to being a male attracted to other males and there's always this fear that I'm going to miss it or that my writing is going to read really obviously as though it was written from some sort of mythical "lesbian perspective."

Anyway, that's all to say that I loved this essay and I think that even being part of the queer community leaves a lot of questions when approaching fandom.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Heh, I am attracted to men, but the majority of characters I write about are not attractive to me (when it comes to reading, I read so widely that the people I find attractive are only a very tiny percentage), and I think I'm pretty rare in that regard, too. A lot of people won't even touch a fic without at least one guy they find hot, if not both.

[zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com]

+1

[hth-the-first.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

I don't agree with everything you say here, but I do agree with most of it, and it's all very well said.

Mostly, though, I just want to kiss you for these three little sentences: There ARE slashers who write about queerness -- both straight and queer slashers who do so. Some slash does that. Just not *all* slash.

-J

[hth-the-first.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I think we're far from done with the is it or isn't it queer? argument, obviously. But I've pretty much surrendered to the wishy-washy position that it is and it isn't. Works for me! *g*

[heyiya.livejournal.com]

Here from cathexys, and great post! In fact, it makes me think that I was definitely conflating the two bubbles in the tentative arguments I was making in response to her post, because the small part of slashdom that pops up on my flist has a close to 100% overlap with queer fandom (or anyway highly-queer-aware-fandom) and if I see any OMG-so-gay posts they are usually coming from people who are OMG so gay themselves. :)

Although! From a perspective neck deep in queer studies, I do want to say that queerness isn't about female pleasure and female pleasure isn't about queerness doesn't ring entirely true to me. Certainly *gayness* and female pleasure aren't necessarily connected, but I do think the kinds of female pleasures slash makes available are not heteronormative things. They just aren't about gay identity; I would say that slash's queerness is of a different sort than what we generally understand as queer culture, but I think that not all kinds of queerness have to be located there. Though it seems worth adding that not all kinds of queerness have to be fabulously revolutionary and radical, either, which I think sometimes gets left out when people, including me, go about identifying stuff as queer.

[hth-the-first.livejournal.com]

There are days when I think queer studies can ruin a person for life. *g* No, you're right -- there are different, let's call them different arenas of queerness, and there's a definite value in the perspective that *all* challenges to heteronormativity are one type of queer. I don't want to write that off altogether.

But on the other hand, it's becoming more and more obvious to me that it's terribly easy to "challenge heteronormativity" on one hand -- by making out with your girlfriends in a bar, by voting against "marriage protection" amendments on the state level, by writing hot Harry/Draco action -- that don't come anywhere near to engaging what I called in the OP the central questions of "queer fandom."

It's hard to keep all the terms straight and stop them from bleeding into each other and all that, but what I'd like to do is not define slash and queer fandom by the orientation of the participants (slash is what straight girls do and sometimes we let in the queers, queer fandom is what queers do and sometimes we let the straights comment), but by the *function* of the communities. What's being done there? What need is it filling? What's the ultimate aim?

It's an imperfect system (they all will be, I have no doubt), but I've noticed that a lot of things that seemed impenetrable to me about slash become easier when I say, hey, I'm bringing my queer-fannishness to the party right now and expecting it to be the Most Important Thing, whereas really this is a slash thing and other stuff altogether is serving the main needs here. My wish, I guess, would be that slashers who are not also queer-fandom-identified would more often make that same mental leap and step away from situations where the queer fandom is trying to make meeting *its* needs preeminent.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Here from cathexys' link.

I think it matters a lot what the person saying "It's so GAY!" means by that--"it's so sexy" or "so fabulous" or "just like me" or "just like my best friend, who I'd like to understand better" or "it's like a train wreck...I can't stop watching it!" or "it's fascinatingly disgusting!"

What bugs me about a lot of fanfic is that it seems to buy into Tillyard's idea of the Elizabethan World View--i.e., that everything fits into a hierarchy, and slash is "only" AU, or stories about canon gay characters are "only" gayfics--and, of course, what bugs me most of all, that it's OK for male characters to relate romantically, sexually, or both to other males. Just as long as they don't, you know, make a habit of that sort of thing.

I've been in fandom, mostly slash, for about eight years. Writing about gay people. Sometimes space!gay people, with space!pink triangle buttons and space!condoms. (Space!condoms are tear-out sheets from a book. They conform to the anatomy they're wrapped around.)

[hth-the-first.livejournal.com]

I think -- if I've learned one thing from Fandom over the years! -- that the intent of a speaker/writer/author means something...but less than the speaker/writer/author usually thinks it means. *g* I don't discount the intent behind words, not entirely. But nor do I think the right answer -- in *any* circumstance -- is to fall back on, "Well, I'm the speaker/writer/author, and if you're not hearing it the way I meant it, you need to change how you hear!" Not that you're saying that...but I think some people kind of are, and it makes me inclined to respond to any discussion of "what we mean" with a big, rousing, I do not give a damn. *g* What people SAY means at least as much as what they MEAN, and arguably much more.

and, of course, what bugs me most of all, that it's OK for male characters to relate romantically, sexually, or both to other males. Just as long as they don't, you know, make a habit of that sort of thing.

Wow. I can't recall EVER reading fic or meta coming from the slash community that I received that way. That's interesting. My experience has been that slashers much *prefer* their BSOs to make a habit of it. *g*

[harriet-spy.livejournal.com]

As you know from my comment on the last post, I've been thinking about this myself, and I have to wonder if part of your change in position isn't actually a result in changes in fannish practice.

I feel that as a straight woman coming into fandom at a particular point in time, the interpretive practices I used were fairly queer ones--albeit, of course, deployed in pursuit of my straight-girl pleasure. And I think there were a lot of slashers like me. But, you know, in those days there was a lot of subtext to be had to apply those practices to. But in the last decade or so, TV has changed a lot. Instead of what someone else called "naive" subtext, ambiguity, and uncertainty, we have moved into a world of definiteness, of black and white: when no one can be queer, anyone could be queer, but when you actually have a significant queer population, that leaves everyone else looking awfully straight. Now TV has its queer characters and...everyone else. And that's bound to affect slashers' approaches to their texts.

For instance, although I would obviously never say that SGA is unslashable (and of course this is a subjective judgment), it's just not the same as even Smallville, much less some of the true slashy classics of the 80s. Lex Luthor has more queerness in his little finger than there is in the entire population of Atlantis. Yet the fervency of the slasher rhetoric is the same. It feels like we've replaced the hunt for subtext with the imposition of this particular (still-emerging) construct of "TV gay" and each episode provides an opportunity to try to read the characters onto it and mold it to fit the characters better. "John didn't comb his hair this episode...that's so GAY!" (That this "TV gay" is so often linked to any degree of male unease or awkwardness around women, leading to the distasteful spectacle of a largely female audience shrieking in delight every time any male character has a less than 100% successful encounter with a female character, is perhaps an intersectional issue to be discussed at another time.) And maybe now, now that actual queerness can be seen on the TV sometimes, we feel that we must lay claim to some versimilitude, too--thus dropping the word "slashy" in favor of "gay."

Of course, I don't and can't condemn new-model slasherdom as a pastime--it's just something that doesn't engage me much at all. (It used to be that slash let me engage intellect, heart, and loins in a reading, and now I feel that I'm being asked to choose, and that's no fun at all for me.) But I have grown to share your unease. I wish people were more open about the fact that "TV gay" is a construct that has just about nothing to do with actual queerness and everything to do with...the multitudinous other things we do with slash--and so would give up "gay" again for "slashy." Because I can't escape the feeling that when you have a privileged group gratifying themselves with a fantasy of an oppressed group, you're always on dangerous ground, but when the privileged group ends up using language that implies that their fantasy is actually the reality of that group, you're heading right over the edge.

[wemblee.livejournal.com]

Yet the fervency of the slasher rhetoric is the same. It feels like we've replaced the hunt for subtext with the imposition of this particular (still-emerging) construct of "TV gay" and each episode provides an opportunity to try to read the characters onto it and mold it to fit the characters better. "John didn't comb his hair this episode...that's so GAY!" (That this "TV gay" is so often linked to any degree of male unease or awkwardness around women,

Yes yes yes yes yes yes YES. YES.