In conclusion, I like slash.
(This entry is mostly about boyslash, and not so much femslash or het, which I've read less and not noticed the issues as much.)
A conversation over in kalpurna's journal about power dynamics and ass-fucking here -- while pretty interesting on its own! -- has sent my thoughts on a vaguely related tangent. If you've talked to me on AIM when I've been in a babbling about fanfiction mood, you might have heard me talk about the sort of fetishization of equality that seems to inform a lot of people's experience with slash.
(Which can be relatively subtle, and as just a sort of "fixing" of what's perceived as inequalities in canon, but can also in some cases kind of freak me out when it goes to the point of trying to make up pretty much every single difference between the people to somehow make an exactly level playing field, with neither better or higher or greater than the other, and which often goes beyond anything about the actual characters.)
So. In Kalpurna's entry, she mentions that the whole conception of top and bottom as really fixed positions written into everything about the relationship can often be with really disturbing overtones. Which I think a lot of us would totally agree with! Sexual position does not equal the power dynamics in a relationship; the person being penetrated isn't necessarily inferior or submissive. (Like, hi, see the vast majority of heterosexual relationships; in couples that don't do pegging, the woman might also be the one getting penetrated, but that doesn't define the relationship as the woman being powerless and the man being totally in charge of everything.)
Sex is part of character, like anything else. But it doesn't define *everything* in someone's life, and it's not a direct correlation with other things.
So, okay. On the one hand, it seems like a lot of boyslash fandom reacts to that false top/bottom fixed dichotomy in the same way, which is ... trading off. It gets to the point where the reader expects and is really disappointed in a story if they don't get both the boys pitching and both catching (and to a certain degree, both receiving and giving oral sex, but not as much). I've seen on several occasions people name one of the awesome things about their fandoms that the boys do always switch off, because they're just so equal and awesome that way.
And I totally get where that drive comes from, but I guess what confuses me is why the other option in responding to the false generalizations is so much less common -- almost taboo, it seems sometimes. Because if we mostly agree that being the receiving partner in anal sex doesn't make you the "woman" or the "sub" or the weaker person, then doesn't it follow that it's still true even if you always prefer to be the receiving partner? It's totally possible to write a relationship where one guy is always pitching and one is always catching without that becoming the false power issues Kalpurna talks about in her entry. (I've read a few really good stories that just feature a guy who doesn't like to top -- mosca's ice skating RPS comes to mind.) But sometimes it seems like a kind of unspoken rule that the "sharing" I mentioned above has to occur.
I don't know; in some ways I think the latter type of relationship might be more subversive in some ways than the taking-turns-type model. If taking turns is a necessity in the relationship to achieve equality and comfort, then we're still in an environment where sex does define the power, and the equality is only coming from both guys taking the inferior position. (Also, het girls? You're screwed forever by biology. Sucks to be you!)
But if the power dynamics of a relationship can still be maintained through a whole continuum of sex -- everywhere from the taking-turns all the way to guy-who-likes-to-fuck-always/guy-who-always-likes-to-be-fucked -- than that seems to me to be saying much more of a "fuck no" to the entire patriarchal concept of worthless-submissive-inferior-powerless-penetrated-object and powerful-virile-superior-dominant-penetrator-subject.
(...Of course, obviously all of this is complicated by the fact that our characters don't necessarily share any like my/your/our concepts of sexual politics, especially when from a different age, generation or political stance. They're ornery that way.)
So, honestly, if Ray Kowalski spend 25 years fucking Stella and she still totally wore the pants in their relationship, who's to say Fraser couldn't do the same thing without ever doing the penetrating?
Hi, I just wrote yet another essay about reading about boys having sex for our entertainment. You would think I was some sort of geek or something.
A conversation over in kalpurna's journal about power dynamics and ass-fucking here -- while pretty interesting on its own! -- has sent my thoughts on a vaguely related tangent. If you've talked to me on AIM when I've been in a babbling about fanfiction mood, you might have heard me talk about the sort of fetishization of equality that seems to inform a lot of people's experience with slash.
(Which can be relatively subtle, and as just a sort of "fixing" of what's perceived as inequalities in canon, but can also in some cases kind of freak me out when it goes to the point of trying to make up pretty much every single difference between the people to somehow make an exactly level playing field, with neither better or higher or greater than the other, and which often goes beyond anything about the actual characters.)
So. In Kalpurna's entry, she mentions that the whole conception of top and bottom as really fixed positions written into everything about the relationship can often be with really disturbing overtones. Which I think a lot of us would totally agree with! Sexual position does not equal the power dynamics in a relationship; the person being penetrated isn't necessarily inferior or submissive. (Like, hi, see the vast majority of heterosexual relationships; in couples that don't do pegging, the woman might also be the one getting penetrated, but that doesn't define the relationship as the woman being powerless and the man being totally in charge of everything.)
Sex is part of character, like anything else. But it doesn't define *everything* in someone's life, and it's not a direct correlation with other things.
So, okay. On the one hand, it seems like a lot of boyslash fandom reacts to that false top/bottom fixed dichotomy in the same way, which is ... trading off. It gets to the point where the reader expects and is really disappointed in a story if they don't get both the boys pitching and both catching (and to a certain degree, both receiving and giving oral sex, but not as much). I've seen on several occasions people name one of the awesome things about their fandoms that the boys do always switch off, because they're just so equal and awesome that way.
And I totally get where that drive comes from, but I guess what confuses me is why the other option in responding to the false generalizations is so much less common -- almost taboo, it seems sometimes. Because if we mostly agree that being the receiving partner in anal sex doesn't make you the "woman" or the "sub" or the weaker person, then doesn't it follow that it's still true even if you always prefer to be the receiving partner? It's totally possible to write a relationship where one guy is always pitching and one is always catching without that becoming the false power issues Kalpurna talks about in her entry. (I've read a few really good stories that just feature a guy who doesn't like to top -- mosca's ice skating RPS comes to mind.) But sometimes it seems like a kind of unspoken rule that the "sharing" I mentioned above has to occur.
I don't know; in some ways I think the latter type of relationship might be more subversive in some ways than the taking-turns-type model. If taking turns is a necessity in the relationship to achieve equality and comfort, then we're still in an environment where sex does define the power, and the equality is only coming from both guys taking the inferior position. (Also, het girls? You're screwed forever by biology. Sucks to be you!)
But if the power dynamics of a relationship can still be maintained through a whole continuum of sex -- everywhere from the taking-turns all the way to guy-who-likes-to-fuck-always/guy-who-always-likes-to-be-fucked -- than that seems to me to be saying much more of a "fuck no" to the entire patriarchal concept of worthless-submissive-inferior-powerless-penetrated-object and powerful-virile-superior-dominant-penetrator-subject.
(...Of course, obviously all of this is complicated by the fact that our characters don't necessarily share any like my/your/our concepts of sexual politics, especially when from a different age, generation or political stance. They're ornery that way.)
So, honestly, if Ray Kowalski spend 25 years fucking Stella and she still totally wore the pants in their relationship, who's to say Fraser couldn't do the same thing without ever doing the penetrating?
Hi, I just wrote yet another essay about reading about boys having sex for our entertainment. You would think I was some sort of geek or something.