Female Gaze
(This month, I'm contributing to #femslash february by highlighting female character-centric and femslash-centric tags at AO3.)
One way that Femslash February is so, so awesome is that it focuses on the female gaze, both the gaze of female characters and the gaze of female creators.
This isn't to say men don't or shouldn't participate in femslash challenges - not at all! But one of the long-time complaints of LGBTQ+ women is the way in which our bodies and our sexualities are often objectified and appropriated for the entertainment of men. There is a profound difference in presentation between what I've seen on this tag in the past three weeks (and in femslash in general) and what I see in mainstream lesbian porn or yuri hentai. The women here on this tag are human beings celebrating relationships and their own sexuality - they are not boobs with legs.
Again, this isn't to say women can't objectify women, or that men can't create works that celebrate female sexuality in a positive way. Both of these happen! What I like about this tag is that the community as a whole rejects the primacy of the particular forms of male gaze that are catered to by most established entertainment industries. In its place, we have a variety of female gazes, non-monolithic, and all rooted in the basic idea of "yay, women!"
So yay, everyone on this tag! And to finish the post off right, here are some tags about the female gaze:
Freeforms of the day: Female Gaze and POV Female Character
Originally posted to Dreamwidth. Current replies:
One way that Femslash February is so, so awesome is that it focuses on the female gaze, both the gaze of female characters and the gaze of female creators.
This isn't to say men don't or shouldn't participate in femslash challenges - not at all! But one of the long-time complaints of LGBTQ+ women is the way in which our bodies and our sexualities are often objectified and appropriated for the entertainment of men. There is a profound difference in presentation between what I've seen on this tag in the past three weeks (and in femslash in general) and what I see in mainstream lesbian porn or yuri hentai. The women here on this tag are human beings celebrating relationships and their own sexuality - they are not boobs with legs.
Again, this isn't to say women can't objectify women, or that men can't create works that celebrate female sexuality in a positive way. Both of these happen! What I like about this tag is that the community as a whole rejects the primacy of the particular forms of male gaze that are catered to by most established entertainment industries. In its place, we have a variety of female gazes, non-monolithic, and all rooted in the basic idea of "yay, women!"
So yay, everyone on this tag! And to finish the post off right, here are some tags about the female gaze:
Freeforms of the day: Female Gaze and POV Female Character
Originally posted to Dreamwidth. Current replies: