Queerness in Fandom: Does it Matter?

[nos4a2no9]

brooklinegirl has an interesting post over here about fandom and sexuality. She brings up a lot of points that really struck home with me, and I think it's fascinating how the complex issues of gender and the sexual orientation of fanfic authors get worked out in various fandoms. Judging from both my own experience and having read anecdotes from others, I've

Comments

[executrix]

I started out as a Blakes7 slasher, now am a Firefly mostly-slasher. My assumption is that there will be a lot more lesbians and bisexual women in my writership and readership circle than in the population at large, but there will probably be more heterosexual than non-heterosexual women. OTOH, I usually write on the assumption that the characters I'm slashing have been out for several years (or a couple of decades) so lord, if it weren't for a queer-friendly audience, I wouldn't have no audience at all.

BTW have been to two slashcons and, like Xander's eighth-grade flugelhorn experience, got zero trim.

[victoria_wayne]

DC represent, woo! ::grin::

I've dated men in the past, but at this point, I identify myself as a lesbian. I write DC slash like it's going out of style. Almost entirely about men; I've only written one bit of femslash.

The majority of my fellow slashers and/or writers of the caped ones are, in the overwhelming majority, straight women, and my larger circle of friends in the fandom outside of slash are an even larger variety of people... still predominantly straight. That's how the world is, that's how it gets reflected as far as group dynamics.

I haven't gotten any sort of negative reception, or any really, I'll admit, most don't know I'm into girls unless they get to know me better, just because it doesn't come up. And I spend so much time oggling spandex-clad male tush that I'm not exactly obvious. ::laughs::

[ghostgecko]

>>>Those of you who identify yourselves as bi/gay/transgender: do you feel your fandom has provided a welcoming and supporting environment for you as a writer? Or do you feel it insists or assumes that you are a heterosexual author writing slash pairings for a largely het audience?<... )

[nos4a2no9]

"It's a straight woman's revenge for straight male's interest in lesbian porn" and "It empowers women by letting them explore sexulaity" which doesn't make a lot of sense to me as a gay gay, since I don't see how my orientation is anyone's punishment, and I don't see what is so special about gay men that a straight woman would need to use them like banging Ken dolls together to "explore" her sexuality.

Man, I hear you on this one. I've always found that justification for writing slash to be one of the most offensive and insulting reasons possible. Slash as revenge? C'mon! I'm sure that a lot of straight women do use slash to "explore" their sexuality, but I'm not sure that doing so gives any thought or credit (or consideration) to gay male sexuality and the political implications of what using slash to such an end actually does. You're exactly right - it's like banging Ken dolls together and ignoring the material consequences of orientation in real people's lives.

I think that's why I found brooklinegirl's post so interesting - she's arguing

[ghostgecko]

>>that's a pretty self-congratulatory evaluation... )

[blehmeh05]

You bring up some very interesting points and I appreciate your perspective. While I can't help but roll my eyes at the ultra self-congratulatory subvert the patriarchy attitude that one does occasionally run across in slash fandom, I also think it's a bit unfair to characterize straight women slash writers as thoughtless perverts. Just because I don't have a dick doesn't mean I can't write a thoughtful m/m story. By that logic, none of us who write in sci fi or fantasy genres would be able to do justice to half the characters the fandoms give us to work with because we're not telepathic warlock mutants. I think perhaps the problem is less about pushy straight women trying to tap dance around their perversions and more about amateur writers not necessarily being able to pursue a thoughtful interpretation of a character vastly different than themselves (whether it be a gay man or a telepathic vampire elf

[anotheranon]

Interesting topic!

FWIW, I can't speak about writing slash in "fandom" in general as I only share my writing with a very limited number of people. I'm also not strictly a slash writer - I've written m/f, f/f, m/m, comedy, tragedy, silly, angst, etc.

I can say that I've used my writing at times to explore aspects of my own sexuality.

I can also say that I've noticed that among my fellows slash writers are usually women, and I see a lot more het and m/m than I do f/f. I don't see a female monopoly on slash, however - if anything, it's kinda fun to see if you can prod guys into writing slash :P This has succeeded once or twice.

I think it's a worthy criticism that perhaps women (straight, lesbian, bi, whatever) write unrealistic m/m because - duh, we're not guys, and can't know what its really like between two men

[suzycat]

I'm coming round to the opinion that women (straight, bi, lesbian, whatever) who write m/m do it precisely *because* we don't and can't know what it's really like. It allows a level of fantasy into which our mundane sexual experience can't intrude

[alchemia]

Therefore, m/m written by a gay man or f/f written by a lesbian is... something else. Still slash, but not slash as it is generally accepted to be. Or rather, there is a set called "slash" and in it there is the subset "fantasy due to not having the bits" and the much smaller subset "fantasy with the bits".in my experience, most readers don't know who/what the author is. Someone did a 'test' in their lj a while back where they posted bits of fics written by men and women with the character names changed and most people couldn't accuratly guess which were written by which gender. People dont infrequently make incorrect assumptions about my gender/sex when mentioning my fics

[suzycat]

Ah, you're absolutely right from a reading perspective. From a writing perspective, obviously each individual writer creates for his or her own reasons, and I think a lot of energy has been given over as to *why* a given kind of person (stereotypically, white, straight, middle class, middle aged female) would want to *write* slash. I've been raised on a lot of academic material that asks what fans do and why they do it, and the default concept of "doing" is, I suppose, writing/vidding/making art - so I apologise for thinking about writing rather than reading

Re: Orientation Distribution.

[kkglinka]

Well, I'm female, queer and positively bored by m/m slash. I think, if you're coming at this from a statistical perspective, you need to take into account the "false positive". In this case, "coming out" is an almost exclusively queer behavior. Straight people generally do not "come out" and therefore may not register identifiably as readers/writers in the overall sample, if you're going by who is most vocal.