slash is a many splendoured thing
some days I think that one of the main reasons why straight/bi/pan women invest so much in gay male slashfic is because it gives us a way to negotiate our feelings around sexual fantasies of dominance, submission and kink in a context where the object of the fantasy is still…
Bullshit.
Women who are attracted to men like hot man on man action for the same reason lesbian porn is hugely successful when aimed at men. I’m sick of seeing it dressed up as subversive or feminist or activist (yep, I’ve seen people claim wanking over slash fanfic is about equality).
And finding two (or more) hot people of any gender together is absolutely fine, but if you think the extremely unrealistic and highly fetishized way that gay men are portrayed in erotica for women is acceptable “because feminism” then you’re really fucking wrong. These kind of posts trying to deflect criticism of the harmful tropes in m/m make me really angry. Women have created an area of erotic writing which is almost exclusively enjoyed by other women, is not accurate or respectful, and is held up as being above criticism.
If you aren’t a gay or bisexual man and you want to write characters that are then you have a responsibility to do research and approach respectfully, the same way you would for any other minority/oppressed group.
Firstly: I completely agree that there are problematic, fetishising portrayals of gay/bi men in slash, and that the use of negative tropes and stereotyping needs to be addressed - they are not just OK “because feminism”. But given the cultural primacy of the male gaze and the now-routine practice of sexualising women, not just in porn, but everywhere, I’m going to contend that yes, there is something subversive in having a subgenre focus on the female gaze and the sexualisation of men. Which isn’t the same as giving slash a free pass when it fucks up. But if we’re comparing slash’s treatment of gay men with mainstream porn’s treatment of women generally and lesbians in particular, it seems pertinent to acknowledge that the latter is endorsed by and reflected in any number of wider cultural narratives, practices and biases that the former is not (or at least, to nowhere near the same extent) and that this is of some relevance to how we should analyse their respective bases of appeal.
Secondly: While I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a false equivalence to compare the treatment of lesbians in mainstream, male-oriented porn with the treatment of gay men in female-oriented slash or m/m erotica, I do think there are enough significant, contextual differences that making such a blanket comparison is potentially reductive. For instance: lesbians in mainstream porn are seldom granted any sense of narrative agency or individuality, instead being portrayed purely as sexual objects or conquests. Partly, this is down to a difference in medium - mainstream porn tends to be visual, photos or video, whereas slash/erotica is written - but is also reflective of a difference in how the respective audiences react and relate to the characters, and the extent to which those reactions are encouraged by the content itself.
Male-oriented lesbian porn encourages viewers to objectify, rather than identify with, the participants, whereas female-oriented slash/erotica, while still ultimately sexualising the participants, overwhelmingly encourages identification from the audience. Mainstream porn is not concerned at all with romance; slash and erotica are. And in the case of slashfic based on visual narratives like TV shows or films, a large part of the appeal is the audience’s pre-existing emotional connection to the characters: an active disinterest in the sort of porn that treats the participants only as bodies, rather than individuals whose value extends beyond the bedroom. There’s a reason why, in addition to graphic slash, there are whole categories of fanfiction devoted to portraying various pairings in domestic, romantic settings - there’s no mainstream porn equivalent to fluff.
So, yes: men watch lesbian porn because they find it hot, and women read slash because they find it hot - that’s not in contention. But one medium at least attempts to treat its subjects as individuals with motives, agency and personality beyond the sexual, and the other does not. Which, again, doesn’t magically exempt slash from criticism. It just changes the nature of the analysis. And by the same token, reading slash because you think it’s hot and reading slash from a feminist perspective (for instance) aren’t mutually exclusive propositions. We can be aroused by something and still analyse it; hell, we can even analyse our arousal! And that’s OK.
Thirdly: I’m wary of the assertion that slash/erotica, as a genre, “is not accurate or respectful”, as this would seem to conflate the existence of problems within a genre with the entirety of the genre itself. Taking a step back, romance/erotica as a whole is often maligned as being inherently sexist (not to say lacking in literary merit), so while it’s important to recognise and address the existence of toxic tropes specific to the m/m subgenre, let’s not pretend that similar criticisms aren’t also levelled at romance as a whole on a regular basis; nor, indeed, that romance isn’t also criticised on feminist grounds. Mainstream romance/erotica has more than its fare share of sexist tropes, rape apologia and internalised misogyny, and feminism is correct to call these things out. But this doesn’t render the entire genre beyond interest or redemption, and nor does it mean that it’s impossible or hypocritical to advocate for feminist interpretations of romance, or to assert that other aspects of the genre and its communities are arguably feminist. So it goes with slash and m/m erotica, too: we absolutely should address issues such as fetishising and bad tropes, but this doesn’t mean that the genre as a whole is unfeminist, or that the presence of problems negates the existence of more positive or subversive elements.
Which is another area in which I think the comparison between slash and male-oriented lesbian porn falls down: because significant portions of the slash and erotica communities, at least, are actively engaging with these questions and attempting to improve their content through meta-analysis and trope dissection, whereas the dudes making mainstream porn about lesbians who really just want a good dicking? Not so much.
In conclusion: slash has problems and we need to address them, but this doesn’t mean the entire genre is bankrupt.
(via felixbug-previous-deactivated20)
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In light of that current Mary Sue article.
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*strokes non-existent beard* Now that I’ve thought about this more…for me, fic-y fantasies, whose direct participants...
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As a submissive female I find this an interesting theory. On the whole, when I fantasise about men, I fantasise about...
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