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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 incathexys'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.
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.
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Date: 2008-02-14 03:57 am (UTC)From:And I'd love to hear more about queer fandom -- I tend to see a certain fannishness embedded in gay/lesbian/queer cultures, which more often takes the form of communal viewing & watercooler (or bar) chatter than "let's start an LJ comm!" because it's already woven into the fabric & sociality of those cultures but not the central organizing theme or principle. And then there's networks of GLBT/queers-in-broader-fandom, and sometimes specifically GLBT/queer fan (sub)cultures (around, say, Star Trek or Xena), etc. So it feels like there's a certain queer fannishness that includes but also extends beyond what we typically call "fandom", including slash fandom. Which isn't necessarily germaine to your post here, but really interest me.
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Date: 2008-02-14 04:48 am (UTC)From:Yes. Yes, yes, yes.
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Date: 2008-02-14 05:00 am (UTC)From:Also, are we good? We had an email exchange and I didn't hear back from you - I wanted to make sure that you and I are okay with each other, even if we disagreed on that particular topic (not very much, I don't think, but some.) *checks in*
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Date: 2008-02-14 05:10 am (UTC)From:Sorry I dropped out of that exchange -- I guess I sort of felt like I said my piece and you said yours and there wasn't anywhere else to go. *g* I'm still squicked by what happened there, but -- you know, people disagree! You're still cool in a wild multitude of ways! (As, occasionaly, am I. *g*) Nice of you to think to check up on the situation, though -- that's awfully thoughtful, and again, I'm sorry if the moment I chose to opt out was a weird one or came off bitchy somehow. My social instincts aren't always the best (she understated.)
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Date: 2008-02-14 05:23 am (UTC)From:here via rm
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Date: 2008-02-14 04:05 pm (UTC)From:So, if someone outside of a community starts making judgments about and for the other community, I think they need to take a step back and do a reality check. "No one knows how it feels to be me..."
A het man writing a fiction about 2 women together will most likely be different if it is a lesbian women writing it...just as a fiction written my a het woman about 2 men together will most likely be different.
In Fandom (fiction), I view any fiction attempts to write 2 straight characters as gay is being a form of slash(which is probably wrong).
I view 2 gay men characters being written in fiction as being gay fiction and not slash (no matter who is writing it). Of course, gay fiction and slash can be divided up by what point of view it is being written from or what type of writing style is being used. I think it comes down to the point of view of the writer and the reader.
I believe it is hard to classify all slash as being female writers writing about 2 straight characters in a fictional gay setting. It makes it feel like a stereotype. It may be right on the average, but you can not place it all in the same group...we need individualization.
Love watching L Word, but I do not read fictions about it. I like to keep the characters on the show in my mind completely the way I view them being portrayed by who originally created it.
I know that the portrayal of that gay relationships in slash is not the reality of a gay relationship, but someone's fantasy or means of expression of 2 characters they like.
I view it this way if it is written by a man or woman. I like seeing the different takes on things if it is from a man or woman writing.
All this comes from watching Stargate. I would watch Daniel Jackson and think he had some gay qualities, but never said it out loud to my gay friends. I was shocked and happy when I found THING on the internet. I started reading Jack/Daniel slash...all kinds of it. Loved it! I then found out it was called Slash. Now, I enjoy McKay/Sheppard (Stargate Atlantis).
Before slash...
And before my fascination with Jack/Daniel, my first moment of reaction to gay content before I had any gay friends was from a movie. I watched Bruce Willis in the movie Jackal kiss another man. It was Bruce's character pretending to be gay to a gay man to get into his house later for his operation. I was so floored by my reaction to the one simple kiss and the gay man's reaction to the kiss. I had no idea where my reaction came from, but it stunned me that my reaction to it was so strong.
So, seeing a fictional gay character being kissed by a het character lead me to the land of Slash. It is good to explore and evolve in what gay or slash means to you.
I do not think that anyone can truly judge another and know what is in their heart and mind. These are a few things from my heart and mind, and I hope it falls on open ears. All of the above into might be the reason why younger fan girls are mixing up slash and gay in fiction and in reality.
I have never talked to any of my gay friends about my slash fascination. I have talked to them about my gay fascination like with the Bruce Willis character’s kiss. I guess I may ask and see what they say.
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Date: 2008-02-14 05:46 pm (UTC)From:I've always thought the most interesting aspect of slash is not in the fiction but the community. Slash isn't simply about female self-pleasure but about women providing sexual pleasure to other women, intentionally writing to sexually stimulate other women, and catering to the sexual desires of individual women.
And while most slashers may well self-identify or live in the RW as heterosexual, in terms of behaviour, I'd argue that those same het slashers are often participating in homosexual activity.
And yes, the relatively recent shift to identity-centered constructions of homosexuality leave little room for talking about situational homosexuality, especially among women (with the exception of dismissive talk about college lesbian "experimentation" or "it's just a phase"), but I'd argue that slash fandom is a location of continuous, situational homosexuality, and not simply "queerness" in terms of something being existing outside of or challenging heteronormative culture.
As to whether these are "real" lesbian experiences, I'd argue that part of what makes slash so hard to talk about in the world at large isn't the "I write porn" aspect, or the "I care about TV" aspect, but the difficulty in explaining what it means when one woman intentionally writes stories designed to get another woman's panties wet, not for profit but in the hopes of being provided a reciprocal orgasm.
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Date: 2008-02-14 08:15 pm (UTC)From:I agree with the original post too - I hadn't split the two groups up as clearly as that, but those basic distinctions make sense. I also think that there are at least two broad groups of fans - one set who are 'just in it for the hot men' and aren't interested in what it's really like to be gay (something that really annoys me is high school fics where the topic of homophobia is never even touched on. I mean, what? I don't know anyone who grew up in an area where being gay was super-duper OK at the age of 10/12/14/16) and one set who are in it for the queerness and the pushing of the sexual envelope in a variety of ways (genderswitch, mpreg, etc. etc) (perhaps what you might call the political side), and the two sets generate very different material with some overlap in the middle.
(sorry if this has come through multiple times - my internet connection SUCKS)
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Date: 2008-02-14 07:30 pm (UTC)From:FWIW I have an article in the latest issue of Off Our Backs on slash as a lesbian feminist endeavor...
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Date: 2008-02-14 07:39 pm (UTC)From:I liked your essay, and I really tried to understand all the facets of your thesis; if I'm a little off, please feel free to correct me. Also, please overlook any misused terminology -- I freely admit I'm an outsider to both slashiness and queerness.
At the risk of offending you (or anyone else), I think you're worrying too much about the "genuineness" of experience. There's the old writing cliche that you should write what you know, but that can't ever be taken literally. Without writing what one doesn't know, some great works of fiction would never have been created (e.g., pretty much all sci-fi, fantasy, and horror fiction is largely made up by the writer).
It almost seems, by your argument, that only a queer writer could write something that captures the essence of what it is to be queer. (You know who gets to say what's so totally gay? Gay people.) Extending that logic, I could then counter that no gay person could ever write a story that effectively captures the essence of what it is to be straight; because while gay people may live in a world that is largely straight, they'll never have to face the struggles of forming a relationship with a member of the opposite sex (for something that's ostensibly necessary to propagate the species, one might think it should be a tad bit easier to form a working relationship between a man and woman). But I would never agree that a gay could never write a story that captures the essence of a hetero relationship, and I find it borderline offensive that you're suggesting the opposite is true.
So I have to question the major premise of your essay -- that slashers can authoritatively say what's slashy, but only those who are queer can authoritatively say what's queer. On many levels, I agree with that wholeheartedly. But rather than get overly protective in their attempt to own their own world view and minority status, wouldn't it be wiser for those in the queer part of your Venn diagram to acknowledge that, hey... just because someone isn't gay doesn't mean they'll never understand at least some aspects of what it is to be gay. Some things about the human experience are universal -- the need for companionship, the pain of rejection, the joy of new relationships, the fear of being surrounded by hostile out-groups. I simply think you prioritized the differences between the groups without properly contemplating the similarities. And by drawing a line in the sand and saying, "Slashers, we like some of your writing, but don't ever think you'll fully understand us," is every bit as offensive and misguided as any slasher who says, "I write stories with gay relationships, and therefore I understand what it is to be gay."
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Date: 2008-02-14 07:48 pm (UTC)From:(no subject)
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Date: 2008-02-14 07:42 pm (UTC)From:Well, that and thank you so much for this post.
ETA: I lied. I do have something to add, in response to your last paragraph. In general this: 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. is perfectly valid and I agree with you.
When the canon gives you queer (of whatever flavor) characters that particular line blurs to hell and back. Or at least hearing 'it's not about what's really queer' becomes more frustrating. Especially when it's taken away from the creative aspect of fandom, and into the meta.
Or maybe frustrating isn't the right word - disheartening comes pretty close, though.
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Date: 2008-02-14 08:05 pm (UTC)From:Yeah, I'm with you - I think the times I've heard someone do the "so gay" thing, what they mean is either "so slashy" or (and I'm not sure if this is the same thing or not) "so romantic/loving/affectionate" (and once "so campy", but that was unusual and specific), although I've never been half this articulate in my objections (more like a vague "that doesn't sound quite right")
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Date: 2008-02-14 09:30 pm (UTC)From:I started really thinking about this in the last couple of years -- the "[whatever it is] is SO GAY!" The example that springs to mind is the clip of the male ice skaters dressed as some kind of of porn image of cowboys -- leather vests, chaps, cowboy hats, etc. A friend introduced me to it as "the gayest gay thing that ever gayed!" and I didn't think a thing of it, at the time, I just enjoyed the clip.
And then I really started to notice how many times slash fans said that an episode was so gay, or something a character did was so gay, etc., and it started to really bother me, but I had problems articulating exactly why, because I knew what they meant, and I knew they weren't being homophobic, that it was seen as a positive thing, but still, I was uncomfortable.
Part of it, I think, thinking about the ice skaters, was that it seemed to implicitly deny that the men in question, who were definitely being overtly sexual, were in any possible way doing it for women, not men. I mean, sure, they were men touching and doing things with other men, but they were doing it for entertainment, for the wider audience, and somehow, saying it was "so gay" seemed to be limiting that audience, maybe. And other instances seemed to be implying that whatever was done, since it was "so gay," was not something that a straight man could, or would, do (similar to your previous post), and that made me uncomfortable, as well.
And I realized that what seemed to really be bothering me was that those things that were tagged as "so gay" tended to perpetuate a particular stereotype of gayness. "So gay" seemed to mean "things that only a gay guy would do!" or sounding like a gay guy (Rodney participating in the girl talk in "Trio" and saying he'd do John Stewart over the other options, for instance), but all in ways we've stereotyped as being gay, and not straight. The unthinking perpetuation of the stereotype was at least a large part of what bothered me, along with the limitation that such things were obviously not things a straight man would do.
Of course, I think what is often meant by "so gay" is really "so slashy," which is, as you imply here, a very different thing. Not always, maybe. But even thinking about calling Rodney's participation in girl talk "so slashy" instead of "so gay," what it makes me think is that it portrays a Rodney in whom a slasher sees an "opening" for slash. It's not really about Rodney's sexuality, as such, but that there is this aspect to him that opens him up to the slashy gaze. The ice cowboys were so slashy, subtext so overt it was practically melting the ice. Sportsy slaps on the butt are so slashy, males touching males in a non-sexual way that opens them up to the slashy gaze.
So, yes. Um. I agree! I'm a slasher, but I'm not personally queer, and my gaze is that of a slasher, not of a queer individual, and there's going to be a difference.
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Date: 2008-02-15 01:50 am (UTC)From:These things bother me too, because they stereotype both gayness and heterosexuality. By saying that is "so gay!" the fangirls are also saying that a straight guy would never feel so comfortable in his sexuality to be able to find one guy more attractive than another (and in fact that's just how one of the women prodded Rodney into playing). Or that a straight guy would never suggest to Ronon that he (John) would be okay with him (Ronon) dating a guy. It could not be, because straight men are so... uptight! Homophobic! Unevolved! Ugh.
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Date: 2008-02-14 09:44 pm (UTC)From:Long-ass comment (I get carried away)
Date: 2008-02-15 01:08 am (UTC)From:Yes, yes, yes. Well said, all very valid points and I'd like every slasher to read this, so I'll link it in my LJ, not that many people read that... I can't really say I've met slashers who try to tell anyone what's gay or exclaim "that's so gay", but that's probably due largely to a smart and mature Flist. I'm sure they're out there in abundance, just like in RL.
The only thing I would like added here is a definition of "queer", because it's a word you're using a lot that might mean different things: simply "not straight", or from an academic perspective there's the whole "Queer Theory" which is more about questioning existing views on gender and gender roles (at least, it was at my Uni).
I feel vaguely that even if I were gay, "queer" takes a lot more living up to, if you know what I mean? Like you have to be a little more extreme/active/political/whatever to be allowed inside that definition. Some would argue that not quietly accepting the traditional or societal assumptions about gender etc would render you queer or at least having a queer perspective, but somehow I think you might not agree with that? It would be the more academic view, and not quite fair to the queer folk on the street.
About who gets to say what's Jewish, gay etc, it's not unlike how it's ok for coloured people to be calling each other "nigga", but not for a white person to do so. And I (fairly straight girl with next to no "queer experience", though truly un-phobic in every way) nurture some guilt about the way a zillion girls have marched in and usurped the whole "being gay" thing. I'm thinking especially of self-serving slash which as you said isn't really queer but reflections of the writer. I don't really see intellectual honesty in that - why write it queer if it isn't, and you're not? I find it a little immature and yes, patronizing.
And I hate knowing that a lot of queer people would probably feel objectified, demeaned and offended by some of the fic out there which frankly portrays the characters as less than actual people. That's why I like the use of honest fic labels like "pure fluff" and "gratuitous smut" when they apply. No false marketing. I stand by my userpic, but I don't claim to know anything else about having male/male sex, being a girl'n'all...
I should probably mention that I think fic, slash & het, is to no small extent porn for women. Not porn, porn, but rather what women use instead of porn. I hate to concede that in general, women really are different from men, and not least when it comes to the erotic. Men download porn, I read fic. And yeah, I rate fic to be more and "better" than porn. I'm very picky about what I read, and really good fic is porn for the intellect and for the purely emotional part of me. Before I saw the light of slash, I got similar kicks from het. This is a whole other discussion but my point is, a very small percentage of slash has anything to do with the more demanding definition of queerness. So slashers, take a step back and think about it. Then keep on writing the good stuff.
Thanks for the quality meta! / Josie
Re: Long-ass comment (I get carried away)
Date: 2008-02-15 01:35 am (UTC)From:That may be true for you and maybe it's even true for the majority of women, but that does not make it true for all. I know quite a lot of women who watch porn, or who, if they're reading to get off and not just to read a story, prefer written porn from Nifty, etc. than fanfic.
Re: Long-ass comment (I get carried away)
From:Preface my entire response with IMHO
From:Re: Preface my entire response with IMHO (ditto)
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From:Re: Preface my entire response with IMHO (ditto)
From:no subject
Date: 2008-02-15 01:29 am (UTC)From:Right, now to look at the idea that to appreciate “queerness” in fandom/slash - to look at slash and extract/comment on issues that are relevent to queerdom you have to have a “queer experience” of some kind.
Ok, I have to say yes and no on this.
On the yes side I agree in that, no, you simply CANNOT understand fully what it is like to be queer unless you are queer. In fact I’ll go further and say you can’t FULLY understand what it’s like to be a certain KIND of queer in a certain society unless you are that kind of queer in that kind of society, but that’s parsing it down a little much. Still, to return to the main point, unless you are queer you will never 100% understand what it is like to be queer any more than I could ever 100% understand what it is to be a woman or black or Jewish etc. I have seen even extremely respectful, alert and queer-knowledgable heterosexuals miss things that have leaped out and smacked me in the eye.
On the no side - well, you don’t NEED 100% understand what it means to be queer to identify queer themes, plots, issues, subtexts etc etc. No more than I need to have a uterus to comment on sexism, feminism etc and their plots, issues, subtexts etc. Sure, I don’t have the same ideal grounding as a woman would have, but that doesn’t mean I can’t comment intelligently and add to the discussion.
Back to the side yes again - you DO need a “queer experience” if we mean less in the sense of BEING queer so much as we mean awareness and knowledge of queerness. You can’t extract, relate to and comment intelligently on queer themes, subtexts etc etc etc if you at Pat Robertson. You just can’t, you have no insight, no knowledge, no experience and no concept to start from. It’d be like a neanderthal trying to extract meaning from a scientific journal.
Ok now as to who is an arbiter of what is “gay” or not well, um, mixed signals and understandings here. On the level of who gets to use the label - well, it’s a label. And if random straight person applies that label to someone/thing I don’t agree with then just because I AM gay doesn’t mean my labelling automatically trumps theirs. What they are describing may indeed be very very gay and I may not see it through my definition lens. Now, if they are calling something gay because of some offensive stereotyping, then I am THERE, both barrels blazing. But just because their gaydar pings and mine doesn’t? Not so much.
However, if we mean in a sense of heterosexuals claiming to know more about homosexuals/homosexuality/what it means to be homosexual etc then yes I have to agree with her. It’s wrong. It’s condescending. It’s insulting, annoying and belittling. My cousin once said in a rather badly worded attempt to connect and discuss why I was unhappy “I understand about homophobia.” No. She didn’t. She still doesn’t. She can’t, not truly. And the same applies to any heterosexual pretending to be any kind of grand oracle of gayness. I don’t mean that all heterosexuals are inherently ignorant of gayness - far far far from it - but they AREN’T experts and they don’t/can’t know more than homosexuals themselves.
In a way it is similar to a discussion we had here a while back about band members pretending to be gay or authors pretending to be gay men for publicity. It is arrogant and insulting and annoying to assume the mantle of “gayness” whether by pretending to be gay or by claiming insider gay knowledge without having to live gay and put up with what we have to put up with.
To use an analogy: playing in our river is fine and cool, we like lots of people to get in here and get wet. We can have a great party, the more the merrier. But we have to stay here even when there are rapids and crocodiles. Don’t pretend you’re swimming along with us when you have dinghies and life jackets and you can get out when the water gets cold. Don’t sit on the bank trailing your toes in the stream and tell us how much you know about the deep water
I don’t know if that was very clear but I think you can kind of understand what I mean.
That's so 'Jewish'; Anti-semetic language and bigotry
Date: 2008-02-15 10:13 pm (UTC)From:That answer shocked me. 'Because it's wrong' I said, 'And if you have to be Jewish to find that language offensive then consider me to be an adopted Jew.'
The boy made another anti-semetic comment and I left class. I didn't care if I was suspended, I would not remain in the same room with that boy another minute. To my utter amazement, every student filed out of the class behind me including my teacher leaving the boy alone. He apologized and stopped making those types of remarks.
I write slash because I saw that the gay community was not being corrected portrayed in literature. I am not gay, but I had gay friends and I saw what they went through. You know, there's this sense that it's okay to hate gay people these days. It's wrong to hate black people or jews, but if you hate gays you're somehow more moral than those who accept them. Hate is hate and isn't it so ironic that prejudice and bigotry are truly colorblind? A black man can be just as racist as a white man, a woman can hate her own sex, a man can both love his mother and beat his wife. I find that to be very sad.
I've also heard that some slashers think there is a certain amount of homophobia in slash. I remember one woman stating that men shouldn't be allowed to write m/m because they didn't understand it. I've seen far too many stories with an over feminized male character playing the damsel in distress, but that does not strike me as homophobia as much as it smacks of juvenile hero fantasy.
The only slash that really disturbs me are stories that glorify rape. Recently a woman published several long Chakotay/Paris stories in which Paris was repeatedly raped and saved, raped and saved turning rape into a type of romantic device. Paris would get raped and Chak would fuck him all better. Obviously this woman had never been the victim of sexual abuse or knew someone who was.
It angered me intensely, but I accept that there are bad writers out there and this was very bad writing. I think it revealed a lot about the author and that she has some serious issues, but she's not homophobic nor was she even suggesting that rape is a great way to find a boyfriend. She was immature and most of what we see as homophobia is actually the author projecting her own issues onto the characters.
So, yes, in a way slash for those writers is masturbation, or exhibitionism, or even voyeurism, but to call all slashers exhibitionists or to express the opinion that when straight people write homoerotica they are either denying their own latent tendencies or being homophobic is incorrect.
We're all different. IDIC.
Re: That's so 'Jewish'; Anti-semetic language and bigotry
From:here via metafandom
Date: 2008-02-15 01:45 am (UTC)From:1. The feeling that I am somehow fetishizing gayness. Like, would I ever tell a gay friend that I read slash and get off on it? I don't think so.
2. The feeling that I am somehow implying that straight men can't be close friends (because it's always displays of closeness that cause the fangirls to scream, "So gay!" or "So slashy!").
Re: here via metafandom
Date: 2008-02-15 07:26 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2008-02-15 02:01 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2008-02-15 04:22 am (UTC)From:In the short time that I've been watching/participating in/reading about slash fandom, I've come to wonder if, for many het women, participating in slash is a way of seeking out some sort of pseudo-queer identity, simply because heteronormative models of sexual identity have, frankly, sucked for women throughout much of Western history. This is not to say that het women should be able to have a defining role in what consititues "queer" or "gay"-- as you so rightly point out, heterosexual women come from a position of privilege that just can't be erased. But I think that, for a lot of het slashers (and I'm not trying to speak for everyone, by any means!) it's a matter of striving for some form of queer identity, even if it's not a homosexual-queer identity, if that makes sense. The process of slashing is more like a metaphor for that striving-for-queerness, rather than a representation of homosexuality.
That's not to say that slash allows het women to escape from the baggage that heteronormative sex holds for us-- just that it at least represents an attempt to interrogate and reject that baggage.
You also talk about the intersection of slash and queer media, and I was wondering if you had any thoughts on, not only how they overlap, but the way that they might bleed into each other. I'm thinking in particular of Torchwood, where very few major characters are completely straight (and of course, there's the gay series creator, the gay main star), but, from my perspective, it doesn't really feel like they deal with queerness as an identity issue. To me, Torchwood feels like slash. Of course, this doesn't mean it can't be gay or queer-- it's just that as you so rightly point out, as a het woman, I have no business trying to push those labels on it. It just brings up questions of how I should react to it, as opposed to how I react to texts in which the distinction between slash and gay is much more clearly defined. Is there an element there of slash-gone-mainstream, slashiness bleeding into notions of queer identity? Ultimately, I'm not really in a position to answer those questions, but I'd be interested to hear what you and others think of that.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-15 05:20 am (UTC)From:They're trying to show sexuality in that universe as fluid and accepted and not important or something that's a huge deal. I don't think that makes it slash, exactly, but it is, IMO, a very deliberate rejection of the social baggage brought about by our real world current society, and in that respect is actually fairly sad - as in heart wrenching, not pathetic.
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Date: 2008-02-15 05:49 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2008-02-15 11:27 am (UTC)From:The people affected care.
The people who aren't so busy earning 'internet cool points' by showing how OMG!APATHETIC they are, dismissive and disrespectful of others? And showing how little they care by taking the time to comment? They care.
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From:here via metafandom
Date: 2008-02-15 02:05 pm (UTC)From:I'd like to think that most people in fandom realise that slash overall has very little to do with the gay male experience but then again, I might be giving fandom just a little bit too much credit.
I've been known in the past to make statements about how 'gay' a character secretely is (ie "Harry Potter is in denial, he only ever notices the attractiveness of males") or make jokes about the 'fannish closet', which come mostly from not thinking about what I'm saying. I need to watch that.
But even I, as a Clueless Straight Gil find myself *cringing* when straight slashers start talking about LGBT issues from a position of false authority or, gods forbid, actually compare writing slash to *gay activism* or being a slasher to being part of an oppressed minority. Because, um, NO.
I realise most of that comes from ignorance and overeagerness as opposed to conscious homophobia but, well. The road to hell, paved with, etc.
Back in University I took a module called "Queering Popular Culture". It was certainly an eye-opening experience as to the difference between 'queer' (and I realise the word is very problematic for a straight person to use, I'm just using it here because in the context of the course, both gay and straight students were encouraged to use it) readings of the text and slash readings. I did actually meet another slasher in RL for the first time in that course-she was into Star Trek and there was much bonding over fannish activities. We occasionally chatted about fandom in the University pub after classes, while the other course members mostly teased us or looked on indulgently. She was also bi, and sometimes what occurred was that there would be several discussions around the table at once and she, for lack of a better word, did switch modes when the conversation switched to actual LGBT issues/reading of the text (I tended to shut up and listen during those). Juxtaposing both of those conversations really drove home to me that while there might be some thematic similarities, they really weren't about the same thing.
Re: here via metafandom
Date: 2008-02-15 07:02 pm (UTC)From:Re: here via metafandom
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From:no subject
Date: 2008-02-17 03:15 am (UTC)From:and so now I'm a lesbian, and a slasher, *and* into fandom and fanfic and vidding in all other sorts of ways--I love hetfic and femslash and genfic, all of which has grown out of my original love for slash but is actually, in some ways, completely separate. And then there's the fact that this hobby that takes up nearly all my free time in some way or another is shared largely with straight women, and with bisexual women in hetero relationships, and how different fandoms I've been in have been queer to different degrees--it was a shock coming out of comics fandom and finding myself back in a social space where everyone else *wasn't* gay--
well, as noted, none of this is coherent, but it's all churning around up there, and I appreciated your awesome essay. *g*
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Date: 2008-02-18 06:26 pm (UTC)From:Thank you for putting these thoughts together! I'm adding this to memories.
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Date: 2008-02-18 08:30 pm (UTC)From:yes yes yes YES
thank you for this.
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Date: 2008-02-20 02:22 am (UTC)From:I especially appreciate this:
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.
Because that resonates for me a lot, and I really appreciate your drawing this out in this way. I'm hugely invested in the notion of slash as a celebration of women's desires, and in the inherent goodness of the fact that we have desires and articulate them in a world that's so often not sex-positive or woman-positive or what-have-you. But I'm also absolutely with you that slash fandom (in its many forms) and the queer community (in its many forms) make up a Venn diagram where the circles overlap but aren't the same. Yes, of course, slash fandom has the authority to parse what is slashy but not what is gay.
I feel like I ought to have more to say here, but -- maybe that's it. :-)