What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

melancholic romantic comic cynic. bi & genderqueer. fantasy writer. sysrae on ao3.

i can’t believe y’all made me write this

venusinversus:

fozmeadows:

poseysprostate:

There’s a piece of meta going around that’s basically saying that mlm should have greater authority on what kinds of content should be produced from the slash community and I think that’s such a huge load of bullshit?  Slash isn’t, and was never about mlm.  Mlm are not the subjects of slash and yaoi works, they’ve always been proxies for the expression of women’s sexual/romantic fantasies.

This is not a bad thing and isn’t a thing that should be changed.

Yes, increasing amounts of men are becoming content creators for slash and yes, there are more stories about healthy and realistic relationships between men but there will always be works that contain tropes that appeal to women?  The failings of individual women to make a distinction between a fictional mlm as a sexual proxy and a real mlm is not the responsibility of the slash fandom?

Take the case of male pornographers producing lesbian porn for straight male consumers.  Does the idea of wlw arguing that these works do not depict realistic wlw relationships make sense?  Clearly not because that genre is not about depicting actual wlw and actual wlw culture.  If wlw create pornography for wlw then they’re really shifting into a different genre.  Although the subjects are technically the same (as in women are portraying these proxies) they are participating in conceptually distinct genres with different audiences.

And with increasing amounts of women consuming works relating to mlm sex, there’s been financial incentive for gay pornography studios to produce more naturalistic, relationship focused movies.  Certain JGV works and Western studios like Cockyboys have increasing numbers of female fans.  If you imagine a progression on this theme and we eventually have a pornography studio produced by women, producing content for women, using men having m-m sex, would and should women be given authority over the content and themes of all gay pornography?

In the fantasy industry, there are creators, there are consumers, and there are the characters and entities that mediate the fantasy - the subjects.  In BL, yaoi, and most slash, these aren’t mlm.  They’re proxies.  There is no genre requirement that they know anything about a mlm lifestyle or mlm culture or anything like that.  In bara, gay interest films, and in an increasing amount of general works, yeah they’re mlm.  They’re created for mlm to identify with.  That’s great!  There is no reasonable need to demand for the former genres to change because they aren’t about mlm.  A misunderstanding of this point only serves to further demonize women in their own spaces.

So basically, it’s okay for straight women to fetishise queer men with zero concern for their feelings because they’re doing it on purpose, and that somehow makes it… not fetishistic? 

What the actual fuck.

Like. I have written a metric fucktonne about the importance of female desire expressing itself through fanfic/slash, do not for a second think that I don’t understand this point. Hell, I write slash myself! I am kind of known for doing so. But, Jesus Christ, the fact that women are currently the driving force in creating and consuming written content about mlm does not mean those creators have zero responsibility to treat queer men with respect or to deny them any right of response, and especially not when said women are straight and cis. 

This is such a White Feminist argument you’re making here, like “oh queer men are still MEN so WOMEN don’t need to give a FUCK about their feelings” as though queer dudes aren’t in any way negatively impacted by being fetishised in real life, as though wlw have never objected with good fucking reason to how lesbian porn depicts them as fetish objects for straight men; as though intersectionality isn’t a thing that actually exists - as though you can draw a neat dividing line between “stuff made about mlm” and “stuff made for mlm” with zero expectation of meaningful overlap to justify why, in this instance, female creators can Do No Wrong because they’re women writing about men. 

Listen: the way in which porn studios produce and market wlw stuff for straight men is not actually awesome, do I really have to explain this? Like, no, this is not a double standard thing: sexism and misogyny (and, holy fuck, racism) in the porn industry, to say nothing of trans exploitation for cis audiences, are really fucking important factors to consider here. Female pornstars are frequently subject to a level of dehumanisation, brutality and discrimination that male pornstars are not, and in any case, porn of all flavours is more routinely produced by men than women because - surprise! - it’s a goddamn male-dominated industry. So no, the fact that women are now a respectable portion of the audience for sites like Cockyboys doesn’t change the fact that it’s primarily male-created content for a queer male audience, which makes comparing it to wlw porn - which is ALSO created predominantly by and for men, oh shock - a deeply false equivalence. 

And to then compare it to fanfic and mlm erotica, which deals with written content about (largely) fictional people, not actual physical humans having sex IRL? Like. What you’re saying here is that queer men have no right to complain about how they’re depicted on paper, because queer women have no right to complain about how they’re treated in reality, in both cases because the feelings of actual queer humans of any gender matter less than the predominantly straight people watching them. And that, my dude, is deeply fucked up.

You know what’s also a porn category? Interracial - as, for that matter, is porn content categorised by the race of the participants (who are overwhelmingly paid way less than their white counterparts). You know who mostly runs the porn industry? Straight white dudes creating content meant for other straight white dudes. You want to take a moment to look up all the degrading, hyper-racist, hyper-fetishised tropes that porn plays into, and then tell me that it’s okay because the POC subjects aren’t the intended audience - that they’re proxies for the fantasies of straight white men who want to get off on the idea of black dudes with big dicks fucking virginal white women? You want to do some reading into the overrepresentation of skinny cis white boys in both porn and fanfic and correlate that to the marginalisation of anyone who’s chubby or trans/NB or POC in those narratives, and then tell me it’s okay because the latter group aren’t the intended audience? 

The fact that women are subject to oppression along the axis of gender does not prevent them from being oppressive along other axes; especially given the fact that, after straight white cismen, straight white ciswomen are the largest beneficiaries of social privilege. I am a massive supporter of fanfic and its contextual importance as a vehicle for female desire, both queer and straight - which is another bone to pick, here, by the way: do you realise that queer women/NB/genderqueer folx are a major part of the fanfic community, and that we object to the fetishisation of queer men by straight people? - but goddamn, that does not mean women get to say that mlm have no fucking business discussing content that’s about them. You might as well argue that women have no right to criticise how they’re portrayed in classic films and literature - or, hell, in like ninety fucking percent of modern films and literature - because it’s male-authored content intended for a male audience, or that POC don’t get to criticise their depiction in stories written by and for white people. 

Because that’s literally your logic here: that if X person is present in a narrative but isn’t the intended audience, then they don’t get to discuss it. And that is absolute bullshit.

@fozmeadows Wow so this is a lot to dissect/digest!

First things first, you equating the viewpoints of a qmoc with a white feminist really rubs me the wrong way, and I’d appreciate it if you’d edit your original reply to reflect that your comment was inappropriate. POC involved in discourse conversations have enough to deal with without anything they say being attributed, likened to, or compared to anything white - especially one that involves a negative stereotype about white women and feminism. That is essentially a microaggression, and whether you knew about his race and sexuality or not it would be best to ofc NOT start any dialogue with (hopefully unintentional) racial undertones. That’s no way to discourse, regardless of which party is “right” or “wrong”.

Now to the discourse!!!

Keep reading

I apologise for the comment about White Feminism; I reblogged from my dash and didn’t know who the OP was. Ditto lecturing him about race, which is obviously not my place to do.

That being said, I do take issue with the idea that there’s no correlation between fetish and fantasy, or that we shouldn’t be worried about its presence here. As I’ve said, I have every respect for fanfic as a source of fantasies for women in particular and the value that can have, but I don’t believe that excuses the medium its failings. No, an individual thing written as personal fantasy should not be held to the same high critical standards as, say, a Hollywood film (to use your example) but at some point the collective weight of shared fantasies in any public forum is going to merit criticism as a body of work, and particularly from the people who are its subjects. I’m not saying individual women are doing fantasies wrong; I’m saying collective fantasies have an impact beyond the individual which needs to be acknowledged, and telling mlm they have no place in that conversation feels really fucked up to me.

(via greenapplezollyrancher)

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