Fuck It. Deal Me In.
I know I said I wasn't going to get involved in this round of the slash vs. het debate. But I got up this morning and looked out of curiosity and found myself getting pissed off at the privilege-calling, identity-policing, derailing-claiming bullshit that has been used to silence people who don't agree with the notion that slash is the great evil that erases women.
Seriously? For every character female character who is killed off, turned evil, or just plain not mentioned to make way for the mansex, there's one who is warped out of character so that she's incomplete without a man or gives up her badassitude for babies for no other reason that she's found her one true (male) love. Just because het centers on women doesn't make it automatically feminist, and there is slash with strong female characters in supporting roles.
Theodore Sturgeon said that 90% of everything is crap -- that applies equally to het and slash. Contrasting the best of het (equal relationships, strong female characters) with the worst of slash (female characters killed, warped, or erased) in order to prove het's superiority is intellectually dishonest. It's the equivalent of using the Ford Pinto and Mercedes Benz to debate the relative merits of American and European cars. It's a rigged game from the start, and anyone who knows anything about cars will call you on it.
Seriously? For every character female character who is killed off, turned evil, or just plain not mentioned to make way for the mansex, there's one who is warped out of character so that she's incomplete without a man or gives up her badassitude for babies for no other reason that she's found her one true (male) love. Just because het centers on women doesn't make it automatically feminist, and there is slash with strong female characters in supporting roles.
Theodore Sturgeon said that 90% of everything is crap -- that applies equally to het and slash. Contrasting the best of het (equal relationships, strong female characters) with the worst of slash (female characters killed, warped, or erased) in order to prove het's superiority is intellectually dishonest. It's the equivalent of using the Ford Pinto and Mercedes Benz to debate the relative merits of American and European cars. It's a rigged game from the start, and anyone who knows anything about cars will call you on it.