The more things change.... ALL OF THIS HAS HAPPENED BEFORE.

[lyssie]

Snark ahoy.
eta: I'm exceedingly busy right now, so I'm not replying at ALL. Leverage takes precedence, sorry.
Navel-gazing 101: Boyslash is So Deep and Transformative

Step 1. Write a m/m slash fic, with or without butt-sex. Make certain to worship the penis and deride the vagina as much as possible.

Step 2. Rake in the feedback and wait for the one that may, possibly, wonder where the women are or think you got them OOC or is mildly curious how x-y-z is possible.

Step 3. Ignore the intent of the feedback and rant about it in your journal/blog about some homophobic asshole came and stomped on your parade and how it's NOT FAIR that gay men at so stigmatised and how your fic was just trying to help.

Step 4. Rake in the condolences and anti-homophobic rage from your friends. Bonus: if you're linked on metafandom, complete strangers will tell you how crusading you are for having the strength to continue to write about two men fucking.

Step 5. Post about how you have calmed down and maybe examined your privilege, and how you're sorry people who don't like gays exist in the world. Go off about how boyslash is helping to narrow the gap in fiction and how no one is straight (least of all, hot white dudes). Make sure to throw in lots of words like 'heteronormative' and 'cis-gendered' so your audience thinks you're deep and smart. Remember not to mention femslash or the idea that m/m fic excludes women.

Step 6. Notice that this activity has caused some, "Uh, but... " from the person who might have given you the original crit. Condescendingly tell them they just don't understand oppression.

Step 7. Explain to your friends list how you like this one movie/show and the woman (possibly plural) in it because it subverts gender types and tropes, and how AWESOME it is, but how sad you are that you can never talk about it (or women) because everyone you know is a boyslasher. And you wouldn't want to dare harsh their squee by talking about vaginas.

Step 8. Be comforted that all of your comments will be replies telling you that there are only a few well-written women, and they're the only ones anyone can like. Badly-written women are so common, after all, and even if the men are badly-written, they're easier to understand (boys are so awesome, squee, did you know about that minor male character/male character in two seconds of that one episode Big Bang? Wasn't it wonderful?).

Step 9. By now, the female character fans will probably be going, "dude..." Take everything they say out of context and wrong, accuse them of wanting only submissive/heteronormative women and dismiss their comments as "haters" and "people who don't liek* gays in media".

Step 10. Write one fic about a woman.

Step 11. Talk about how it was so hard, because women are so boring... You may need to go back to step 6 or 7, at this point.

Step 12. Repeat in a years' time, sure in the knowledge that the female characters will have dwindled even more in the media as the boyslashers continue to dominate fandoms and produce trends that advertisers/producers use to gauge their audience.

* a typo, but it was perfect, so I'm leaving it.

Comments

[inalasahl]

femslash_today links every single femslash fanac posted daily on lj in most fandoms (anime/manga/cartoon/video fandoms are excluded). Today's post had 22 links. If they were linking to boyslash instead, they could get that many links from a single fandom. A boyslash newsletter that covered all of lj would be an impossible task, imo. There's no equivalency.

[ladielazarus.livejournal.com]

Like I said, I see your point that femslash is the minority.

I guess that the part of this that doesn't sit right with me is the part where I feel like people are being told that what they want to write, or what 'does it for them' is wrong and invalid just because it might contain men and not women.

I'm a bisexual woman, who has dated women, but femslash, in general, doesn't do it for me. Slash, however, has been known to. I don't write it, but I do occasionally enjoy reading it. I don't feel like I should be expected to apologize for that.

The point of fanfic, imo, is to explore the stuff that you want to see happen. If slash writers want to see male characters together, then that's their perrogative. Like I told lyssie the other night, I resent being told that I should care about an issue or feel a certain way about something because I'm a woman or because it's the feminist perspective.

I'm not arguing that women aren't marginalized in media. I'm just saying that maybe slash isn't the root of that. None of us are canon anyway. That's why it's fanfic.

I guess I feel like the whole thing is being taken way too seriously. *shrug*

EDIT: I think that in my above comment, I made it look as though I was a rabid slash writer defending my ilk. I'm not. I'm just trying to understand both sides of the issue.

[havocthecat]

Boyslash isn't the root of women being marginalized in media. What many of us are saying is that the marginalization of women in the media is being reflected in boyslash.

And if you're saying those of us bringing this up are telling people what they want to write, and that we're telling people what is or is not wrong about them, then you're being defensive, because those of us making posts on the marginalization of women in fiction haven't told anyone any of those things.

No one is asking you to apologize for liking boyslash. Most of the people talking about this also like boyslash, as well as het, gen, femslash, and poly fic. So why would we ask people to apologize for liking things that many of us also like?

And this is a serious issue to us. Telling us to lighten up because we're taking things "way too seriously" is a classic silencing technique.

Your defensiveness says to me that you need to examine your attitudes and your reactions before you speak up, instead of leaping up and attacking those of us discussing the marginalization of women in boyslash. You may say you're "just trying to understand both sides of the issue," but what you've done repeatedly is attacked my "side" of the issue with defensiveness and silencing techniques. That's not attempting to understand. That's lashing out.

[ladielazarus.livejournal.com]

Whoa... I'm sorry if you feel attacked. I genuinely wasn't trying to do that.

I wasn't accusing anyone here of anything. I was just observing what I've seen in fandom at large. Like I said, I was just questioning because I've heard this issue debated before, and I wasn't sure what the argument was.

I feel like I've learned a lot from what's been posted here, and I've learned about issues that I didn't know existed.

I didn't mean that I felt that the issue of women being marginalized was being taken too seriously. I just meant that I felt attacked, was all, and it wasn't my intention at all to attack anyone.

I wasn't trying to silence you. Honest. If you feel that something is wrong or unfair, then you have every right to complain about it. That's what the internet is for.

I really honestly wasn't trying to 'leap up and attack' anyone. I swear. I just was genuinely confused.

Sorry that I didn't articulate my point well. *shrug* I just really was trying to understand.

[inalasahl]

Sorry that I didn't articulate my point well. *shrug* I just really was trying to understand.
Trying to understand and making a point are difficult tasks to do at the same time.

[ladielazarus.livejournal.com]

I see your point.

I guess I wasn't trying to actually make a point so much as I was just trying to understand all the arguments and how everything fit together.

I do feel really bad that it looked like an attack. Believe me, that is the last thing I intended.

I'm really sorry.

[miera-c.livejournal.com]

Trying to understand and making a point are difficult tasks to do at the same time.

Man, I think I need to make an icon of that, because DAMN SKIPPY.

[swordygardener.livejournal.com]

(anime/manga fandoms are excluded

This always surprised me, considering the sheer volume of femmeslash in these fandoms. It'd sure make the list a lot bigger.

[havocthecat]

I think it's because there's less crossover between the two fandoms. There was talk for a while of doing some kind of yuri_today newsletter as well, but I think that was shelved because there weren't enough volunteers. (IIRC. It's been a while since that came up.)

ETA: Fandoms. Hah! I meant "between Western media fandom and anime fandom." Fail, self.

[miss_prince.livejournal.com]

I understood that the folks who got it up and running weren't particularly interested in animanga (and video games! Always with the video game forgetting...) fandoms and thus didn't 1. know where to look for those fics and 2. think it was worth the effort. Over time, like draws to like -- the list focuses on Western media fandom, so it draws people into Western media fandom and doesn't hold the interest of people into other types of fandom -- so the "no one here knows enough to compile animanga/video game femslash" problem never got solved.

I'd personally love to see a comm that filled that gap.

[lyssie.livejournal.com]

So, belatedly, do you think the anime/manga fandoms would welcome a newsletter? Because I'd be willing to email thenewhope and offer to take it on.

I'd always been under the impression that it was mostly 1, with people uncertain where to find what they were looking for (I'm not in any of the fandoms, so I'd have not clue one, but there have to be starting points)

[miss_prince.livejournal.com]

I think they would, provided you got the word out into animanga yuri/shoujo-ai comms! I know I would, particularly if you included video games. Generate an interest from a new base, get more suggestions for comms to follow and maybe some volunteers...

If you do decide to go ahead with it, I could scrounge up a few links for comms to watch. I think it'd be pretty awesome if you did.

[inalasahl]

I don't know the people behind femslash_today or their reasons, but one thing I've noticed in general when following multi-fandom comms: It's difficult to tell by glancing whether a particular pairing is f/f, if you are not familiar with the fandom, especially if the fandom uses names from cultures you're not familiar with. Authors don't usually include that information. I can imagine that would make link-gathering difficult.