Romance, porn and gendered power dynamics
This is a rather hurried and consequently half-assed opinion piece without any kind of theoretical backup which is the direct result of perusing the latest GLBTQ linkspams on this issue - I'll try to get to the backup later, but right now, I don't have the time.
Sexuality, power, and female sexuality
Maybe it's because I am a domme and for me, sex is always to some degree about control and power, but it makes sense to me that those scenarios favoured by many of my romance-loving friends are porn for them. My idea of porn is that it is about possession and altering a character's behaviour in a way that affords sexual gratification for the viewer or reader. In comparison to that, romance is also possession and altering a person's behaviour, in a way that affords another sort of gratification to the viewer or reader, which, to my mind, also has a strong sexual component.
One of my main premises is firstly that it seems as though sexuality is much more complex than what porn makes it out to be, and secondly that female sexuality in specific evolved around cultural constrictions and is thus more difficult to characterise. It is not culturally acceptable for many women to discuss their sexuality without experiencing some sort of negative backlash, either from their peers, or their internalised view of what sexual morality for women should encompass. This often seems to mean to look, but not to touch, to be stimulated, but not to stimulate for own gratification. This means that I expect many women can identify with a submissive viewpoint of sexuality, because cultural output at least in the western cultures suggests that female sexuality must be in some way submissive and concentrate on either pleasing and being pleasured by a partner, anyway.
Due to these constrictions, romance makes more sense as a genre by women for women to deal with female sexuality and female domestic problems. It is not directly sexual, which would make it unfit to be socially acceptable for women to read, but it does permit a lot of situations which I perceive to be very much sexualised. I'll offer a few examples of tropes that I see as sexual below, with a focus on female sexual agency and power.
The wolf in romance clothing: H/C and fetishized emotions
An incredibly popular scenario is hurt/comfort, with one character being the gloriously injured party, often suffering silently for a while for added potency, the other coming to their rescue, providing medical help and often an emotional outlet instead or in addition to that. Now, considering the rather limited agency of women in relationships in heterosexual power dynamics, gaining and exercising power over the emotional state of a person is a way of getting in control and making use of another person's vulnerability. In romance novels as well as porn, sexual relationships seem to focus heavily on getting the partner into a position in which they are at the other person's mercy - in porn as a willing sperm receptacle and being a slave to their own emotions and whatnot, in romance at the mercy of a loving woman to bring the man out of their emotional shell.
What makes this interesting for me is that while porn is obviously more emotionally detached from the characters involved than romance, similar power dynamics seem to be in place. Male characters are gaining control over a female character to screw her lights out in various uncomfortable looking ways, causing her to half-close her eyes and emit grunting noises. The focaliser of the movie, the male character, is clearly affirmed as being the dominant party and in control of his object of desire, the female character. In romance novels, female character exert power over male characters too, usually, with different ends, but I'm proposing that their power has an effect which might be less directly arousing, but serves the purpose of arousal nonetheless.
Character alteration stories and power
One particularly popular motif seems to be the conversion of the asshole character. This is a trope that has been forever popular and can most famously be encountered in the Beauty and the Beast. Bella manages to change the Beasts monstrous, abusive ways and is rewarded with a handsome prince and through him a castle as well as apparently a financially sound future and a social standing above the people in her village rather than below them. Needless to say, in reality, this does not work like that, and yet, even in romance novels, this tradition lives on. This, too, in my opinion, shows a desire for control - in plots to which this motif is central, it affirms the power of the heroine to work miracles and turn the abusive character into a perfect lover.
It is deeply tragic that this fantasy speaks to so many women. The only person who can change an abusive bastard is the abusive bastard himself, after realising that s/he needs therapy, and I'd like more women using their control to get up and go off to find someone more worthy of their attention. Still, it does show a level of female agency and power that is left to be desired in many real-life relationships and the same kind of unrealistic, intrusive character manipulation that are so characteristic for porn movies. A chaste schoolgirl will not suddenly become a lusty vixen at the entrance of the most alluring male actor, and an asshole character will not suddenly change his ways just because his love says so. Still, both scenarios seem to be deeply satisfying on the level of a power Fantasy. In character-alteration stories, this also creates a special emotional bond between the heroine and her asshole, which I'd say serves a similar purpose as the dependency that a sexually satisfied female character has on the stud in porn movies.
In porn movies, the main discourse revolves aorund sexual practices and sexual gratification - male sexual gratification being the main purpose, female sexual gratification a prise for the studly hero. The focus of romance novels seems to be the obtaining of a stable romantic relationship in which the heroine has agency and emotional power over the male hero. Once the heroine has altered the character of the male hero, her goal is met - she has reached power.
Depressingly and obviously, the agency and power that the heroine has still does not leave the rather tight and limiting box of a stereotypical heterosexual relationship, which is still maintained as the ideal relationship. Female power is limited automatically by and in this setting, and yet, both reader and author apparently choose to adhere to it and buy into the notion of traditional heterosexual relationships being an ideal instead of exploring new modes of relationships. Still, within these limiting structures, women can subvert the official power structures in place by exerting indirect control over a part of the main prise, the dominant male - his emotions and his character. For this to be a successful read, it seems to me that the reader has to be steeped in rather traditional ideas of a rigid gender binary that allows only a certain set of behaviours to members of the two genders respectively, and a very traditional view of relationships.
All exploration of female agency and power therefore has to be done within the confines of these premises - heterosexual monogamous relationships are desireable, and there is a definite set of behavioural and physical traits that make a character "female", being female defines the role a person has in a heterosexual relationship.
M/M, gender subversiveness and fetishised emotions
With the above in mind, it makes sense why women, especially from older generations, would see M/M as liberating. In spite of the fact that many slashers are my age and younger, from what I can see, the staunchest supporters of M/M are the generation of my parents or between me and the younger slashers.
Male-on-male romance allows a woman who was raised to buy into the premises detailed above therefore would find a m/m setting liberating and emotionally enticing for several reasons. On the one hand, the fetishised emotional vulnerability of male characters is doubled because of the two participating partners. It is possible to explore overtly sexual practices without having to fear negative responses because there are no female characters that might be identified with the author by readers or the author herself. Thirdly, it is possible to circumvent the expected paradigm of relationship roles the author has bought into because of the presence of two active characters with greater agency than female characters even in romance novels.
What this means for me for M/M- female sexual agency, repression, and romance
With those reasons in mind, I don't see why anyone should condemn M/M, even though I see the obvious problem of the fetishisation not only of gay men as a whole, but also of male emotions. It seems to be a very necessary step for many women to come to grips with their own sexuality, exploring what comprises that sexuality and what they desire in a relationship outside of gendered expectations. Of course the feelings of fetishised gay men should be taken into consideration, but since it is very obvious that M/M is written mostly for women by women, I don't see how actual gay men should be harmed, especially since their own real-life concerns are so far from the ones detailed in the books, just like male stories of lesbian women are far from realistic.
The purpose of both genres is to entice, to arouse, to explore fantasies. They are offensive for those whose minorities are depicted, but at this point, I feel that it is very necessary for women to find out what arouses them, what sexuality and relationship mean to them, even if it is damaging individual gay men. This is not ideal, but discouraging even more women from exploring gender, relationships and sexuality is not right, either.
How deep the urge to disassociate yourself from the female gender in any open discussions about sex is also quite apparent in the numbers of queer women who write male-on-male sex, even though nothing could be further form their own lived experience. It is apparently bad enough for women to address sexuality openly at all, but deviant sexuality is still impossible, especially for women whose gender presentation is not the norm in addition to their queerness. While there is not really a space that caters to them, nor a genre, M/M is a natural outlet for their self-exploration. Femmeslash exists in fandom, and there is lesbian literature, but it is obvious that for many, it is much more satisfying to join the social writing going on in the fanfic communities in many fandoms and discuss issues relevant to their lives through the guises of male characters, or pre-existing characters. If this is empowering to women anywhere, I have to say that while I genuinely understand the pain of gay men who see yet another fetishised, horrid version of themselves, I have to side with these women.
Slash fanficwriting is a forum which makes it broadly acceptible for women to talk about sexuality in a frank and free manner which has been unknown (at least to me) before. This of course becomes problematic because it once again highlights the sexual nature of samesex relationships, and I understand the misgivings people may have with . It does not only focus on the traditional sexualities presented by porn movies, it also allows for the exploration of other sexualised situations explored in romance stories, like h/c, which highlight agency in a romantic relationship more known to women, with the added benefit of being able to voyeuristically enjoy the emotional opennes and vulnerability of two men instead of one.
Of course, writing yourself completely out of the picture while exploring yourself is not an ideal solution, and it alarms me. Still, if this is a step that needs to be taken, I can't blame anyone for taking it.
Sexuality, power, and female sexuality
Maybe it's because I am a domme and for me, sex is always to some degree about control and power, but it makes sense to me that those scenarios favoured by many of my romance-loving friends are porn for them. My idea of porn is that it is about possession and altering a character's behaviour in a way that affords sexual gratification for the viewer or reader. In comparison to that, romance is also possession and altering a person's behaviour, in a way that affords another sort of gratification to the viewer or reader, which, to my mind, also has a strong sexual component.
One of my main premises is firstly that it seems as though sexuality is much more complex than what porn makes it out to be, and secondly that female sexuality in specific evolved around cultural constrictions and is thus more difficult to characterise. It is not culturally acceptable for many women to discuss their sexuality without experiencing some sort of negative backlash, either from their peers, or their internalised view of what sexual morality for women should encompass. This often seems to mean to look, but not to touch, to be stimulated, but not to stimulate for own gratification. This means that I expect many women can identify with a submissive viewpoint of sexuality, because cultural output at least in the western cultures suggests that female sexuality must be in some way submissive and concentrate on either pleasing and being pleasured by a partner, anyway.
Due to these constrictions, romance makes more sense as a genre by women for women to deal with female sexuality and female domestic problems. It is not directly sexual, which would make it unfit to be socially acceptable for women to read, but it does permit a lot of situations which I perceive to be very much sexualised. I'll offer a few examples of tropes that I see as sexual below, with a focus on female sexual agency and power.
The wolf in romance clothing: H/C and fetishized emotions
An incredibly popular scenario is hurt/comfort, with one character being the gloriously injured party, often suffering silently for a while for added potency, the other coming to their rescue, providing medical help and often an emotional outlet instead or in addition to that. Now, considering the rather limited agency of women in relationships in heterosexual power dynamics, gaining and exercising power over the emotional state of a person is a way of getting in control and making use of another person's vulnerability. In romance novels as well as porn, sexual relationships seem to focus heavily on getting the partner into a position in which they are at the other person's mercy - in porn as a willing sperm receptacle and being a slave to their own emotions and whatnot, in romance at the mercy of a loving woman to bring the man out of their emotional shell.
What makes this interesting for me is that while porn is obviously more emotionally detached from the characters involved than romance, similar power dynamics seem to be in place. Male characters are gaining control over a female character to screw her lights out in various uncomfortable looking ways, causing her to half-close her eyes and emit grunting noises. The focaliser of the movie, the male character, is clearly affirmed as being the dominant party and in control of his object of desire, the female character. In romance novels, female character exert power over male characters too, usually, with different ends, but I'm proposing that their power has an effect which might be less directly arousing, but serves the purpose of arousal nonetheless.
Character alteration stories and power
One particularly popular motif seems to be the conversion of the asshole character. This is a trope that has been forever popular and can most famously be encountered in the Beauty and the Beast. Bella manages to change the Beasts monstrous, abusive ways and is rewarded with a handsome prince and through him a castle as well as apparently a financially sound future and a social standing above the people in her village rather than below them. Needless to say, in reality, this does not work like that, and yet, even in romance novels, this tradition lives on. This, too, in my opinion, shows a desire for control - in plots to which this motif is central, it affirms the power of the heroine to work miracles and turn the abusive character into a perfect lover.
It is deeply tragic that this fantasy speaks to so many women. The only person who can change an abusive bastard is the abusive bastard himself, after realising that s/he needs therapy, and I'd like more women using their control to get up and go off to find someone more worthy of their attention. Still, it does show a level of female agency and power that is left to be desired in many real-life relationships and the same kind of unrealistic, intrusive character manipulation that are so characteristic for porn movies. A chaste schoolgirl will not suddenly become a lusty vixen at the entrance of the most alluring male actor, and an asshole character will not suddenly change his ways just because his love says so. Still, both scenarios seem to be deeply satisfying on the level of a power Fantasy. In character-alteration stories, this also creates a special emotional bond between the heroine and her asshole, which I'd say serves a similar purpose as the dependency that a sexually satisfied female character has on the stud in porn movies.
In porn movies, the main discourse revolves aorund sexual practices and sexual gratification - male sexual gratification being the main purpose, female sexual gratification a prise for the studly hero. The focus of romance novels seems to be the obtaining of a stable romantic relationship in which the heroine has agency and emotional power over the male hero. Once the heroine has altered the character of the male hero, her goal is met - she has reached power.
Depressingly and obviously, the agency and power that the heroine has still does not leave the rather tight and limiting box of a stereotypical heterosexual relationship, which is still maintained as the ideal relationship. Female power is limited automatically by and in this setting, and yet, both reader and author apparently choose to adhere to it and buy into the notion of traditional heterosexual relationships being an ideal instead of exploring new modes of relationships. Still, within these limiting structures, women can subvert the official power structures in place by exerting indirect control over a part of the main prise, the dominant male - his emotions and his character. For this to be a successful read, it seems to me that the reader has to be steeped in rather traditional ideas of a rigid gender binary that allows only a certain set of behaviours to members of the two genders respectively, and a very traditional view of relationships.
All exploration of female agency and power therefore has to be done within the confines of these premises - heterosexual monogamous relationships are desireable, and there is a definite set of behavioural and physical traits that make a character "female", being female defines the role a person has in a heterosexual relationship.
M/M, gender subversiveness and fetishised emotions
With the above in mind, it makes sense why women, especially from older generations, would see M/M as liberating. In spite of the fact that many slashers are my age and younger, from what I can see, the staunchest supporters of M/M are the generation of my parents or between me and the younger slashers.
Male-on-male romance allows a woman who was raised to buy into the premises detailed above therefore would find a m/m setting liberating and emotionally enticing for several reasons. On the one hand, the fetishised emotional vulnerability of male characters is doubled because of the two participating partners. It is possible to explore overtly sexual practices without having to fear negative responses because there are no female characters that might be identified with the author by readers or the author herself. Thirdly, it is possible to circumvent the expected paradigm of relationship roles the author has bought into because of the presence of two active characters with greater agency than female characters even in romance novels.
What this means for me for M/M- female sexual agency, repression, and romance
With those reasons in mind, I don't see why anyone should condemn M/M, even though I see the obvious problem of the fetishisation not only of gay men as a whole, but also of male emotions. It seems to be a very necessary step for many women to come to grips with their own sexuality, exploring what comprises that sexuality and what they desire in a relationship outside of gendered expectations. Of course the feelings of fetishised gay men should be taken into consideration, but since it is very obvious that M/M is written mostly for women by women, I don't see how actual gay men should be harmed, especially since their own real-life concerns are so far from the ones detailed in the books, just like male stories of lesbian women are far from realistic.
The purpose of both genres is to entice, to arouse, to explore fantasies. They are offensive for those whose minorities are depicted, but at this point, I feel that it is very necessary for women to find out what arouses them, what sexuality and relationship mean to them, even if it is damaging individual gay men. This is not ideal, but discouraging even more women from exploring gender, relationships and sexuality is not right, either.
How deep the urge to disassociate yourself from the female gender in any open discussions about sex is also quite apparent in the numbers of queer women who write male-on-male sex, even though nothing could be further form their own lived experience. It is apparently bad enough for women to address sexuality openly at all, but deviant sexuality is still impossible, especially for women whose gender presentation is not the norm in addition to their queerness. While there is not really a space that caters to them, nor a genre, M/M is a natural outlet for their self-exploration. Femmeslash exists in fandom, and there is lesbian literature, but it is obvious that for many, it is much more satisfying to join the social writing going on in the fanfic communities in many fandoms and discuss issues relevant to their lives through the guises of male characters, or pre-existing characters. If this is empowering to women anywhere, I have to say that while I genuinely understand the pain of gay men who see yet another fetishised, horrid version of themselves, I have to side with these women.
Slash fanficwriting is a forum which makes it broadly acceptible for women to talk about sexuality in a frank and free manner which has been unknown (at least to me) before. This of course becomes problematic because it once again highlights the sexual nature of samesex relationships, and I understand the misgivings people may have with . It does not only focus on the traditional sexualities presented by porn movies, it also allows for the exploration of other sexualised situations explored in romance stories, like h/c, which highlight agency in a romantic relationship more known to women, with the added benefit of being able to voyeuristically enjoy the emotional opennes and vulnerability of two men instead of one.
Of course, writing yourself completely out of the picture while exploring yourself is not an ideal solution, and it alarms me. Still, if this is a step that needs to be taken, I can't blame anyone for taking it.