Fannish spaces, girls, and the culture of silence.

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I've been thinking about this post for months, and there's no easy way to say it. It's born out of a lot of thinky thoughts on women, fandom, rape culture, and basically all the things I've been posting about lately.

In January, I made this post about gay subtext, and I was overwhelmed at the response it had. Then I made another post about

Comments

[amy34]

Oh, heck yeah, go for it! I had the same experience as you; I simply perceived m/m as sexier, without realizing that part of the reason for that was that I had some issues about female sexuality.

Part of my problem was, I think, based in (deeply) internalized misogyny, but another part of it was, I think, kind of a legitimate issue. I liked erotic fiction with a dom/sub element, and as a feminist I wasn't comfortable writing that in a m/f relationship. Because either I make the man dominant, and then I'm reinforcing gender roles I don't support, or I make the woman dominant, and then I don't find the man appealing. By writing m/m, I could write dom/sub without it being a statement of any kind on gender roles; it was simply a story about two individuals.

In my current and previous novels, I've found a way to indulge my dom/sub kink without creating an unequal relationship. I simply have the power shift back and forth between the man and the woman, as story circumstances change. So one is in power, then the other is in power, etc., and by the end of the novel, they've resolved everything and are in a relationship of equals. So I have my cake and eat it too; I get to play with power dynamics, but also keep the novel consistent with my feminist values.