swatkat

I saw that post, too. (We must all sub to the same comms and lists, eh? LOL.) It's a handy way of looking at people's tastes/approaches -- especially when phrased in terms of a sliding scale and not a binary, as a few people pointed out in comments.

One thing I find I sometimes like is the deliberate use of contrast in types within a single piece -- that is, the characters' dialogue and behavior conforming to the more restrained, Cold Prickly standard, but diving into internal thoughts to see the full intensity of the emotion that's being controlled. You might even call that a kink of mine. I'm not sure what to call it in this lexicon, though -- Suppressed Warm Fuzzy?

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Heh - I just finished reading through today's meta - and this post in particular made me think of you!

And, yes, as a sliding scale it is interesting. I would have said, at first that I was a warm fuzzy - and yet, in truth I don't think I am.

I can't stand darkly angsting Michael or weepy, whiny Nikita - and now I think that might just be because all that angst is text in those stories, when I actually do prefer it to be subext. Hmmm. Interesting.

Also, did you see the rant about slash being a feminist project? I had a few go rounds with the OP a while back, out of a need for RL distractions, where she was making the same sort of claim. (I was trying to explain why I did think that some fanfiction was misogynist, including some slash - and much het.....thinking here of all the mad Maddies and whiny, bitchy Nikitas that fill our archives.....)

I don't think she's wrong, exactly - but what troubles me is that *if* some slash can be described as a feminist project, it's like the world's greatest stealth feminist project, right up there with the tinhats supporting gay Domlijah through sekrit message boards. Because you have to know that the author and the intended audience are het women *first* before you can decode the politics....and if you need those bios, you know, maybe the critics do have some points?

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I saw that post, and I also happen to know what prompted it -- a clash between the OP and another poster on another LJ comm. where I regularly read. (I even dipped my toe into the discussion, God help me.)

Here's the thing. I think that virtually *all* fanfic -- still predominantly a female activity -- can legitimately be described the same way. Fan fiction, just in and of itself, is a type of public discourse (direct or indirect, conscious or subconscious) about women and their attitudes toward sexuality. The mere fact that such a discourse is going on -- publicly -- is a type of feminist project.

But what that means is that all genres of fanfic qualify as parts of that discourse: het, slash, RPF, chan, mpreg, whatever. But all of these genres also contain contradictory and negative elements that could justifiably be called anti-feminist as well -- and those elements often make certain groups of fen quite reasonably uncomfortable.

The problem is that we all, as humans, tend to overgeneralize in self-serving ways: we see the virtues of our own preferred activities and minimize/gloss over/explain away the faults, and we do the opposite to activities that don't happen to be our "thing." I believe this is what's going on here with respect to slash versus het, or RPF versus anti-RPF, or m/m slash versus f/f, etc.

So is slash (and "slash" means exclusively m/m, for purposes of this discussion -- that's another part of the original dispute, btw, but I won't veer off into that tangent) a feminist project? Sure -- it can be, and often is. But it's not the *only* feminist project going on in fandom, nor, despite its visibility, is it necessarily the most important one. (I would argue there *is* no "most important" one.) Sometimes m/m slash fen forget that and come across as a bit patronizing or dismissive of critics, and sometimes critics -- no doubt reacting to that very same visibility -- focus exclusively on slash's negatives and come across as overly accusatory. This is complicated by the fact that sometimes the criticisms raised by one side or another are valid, and sometimes not, and sometimes -- messier yet -- partially valid and partially not.

I've been reading enormous amounts of meta lately, to the point where I almost feel like I'm drowning in it sometimes, and I have to say that I'm starting to cast off a lot of my assumptions about all of these various fanfic genres and their relative merits, as well as the motivations of the people who read/write them. In some ways it's a mind-opening experience, but that also makes it very disorienting. At the moment, I'm not quite sure where I'm headed anymore in terms of my fannish belief-system, but I guess I'll find out when I bump into something.

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You might be referring to a different rant on the same subject, by a different poster. I think the one you mean was still probably prompted by the recent LJ clash I mentioned above, but the OP was not one of the combatants. Not that it matters to my main points.

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I was refering to this one:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/carenejeans/59995.html?style=mine

Which one were you thinking of?

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I realized after I posted that that was probably the post you meant. Some of the original posters in the

fanthropology thread that

carenejeans refers to also made posts in their own LJs.

The Subthread O' Doom that prompted

carenejeans's rebuttal actually jumped off from a post I made -- please remind me that I'm a stoopid n00b in the larger fandom realm and should stay out of these things, k?

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Well - dipping into the meta is a hard thing to resist. Lord knows I've fallen to the siren song more than once....

Though I have safely avoided it this time! Woohooo!.....(as if spending the last three hours reading it instead of grading was virtuous....*eg*)

Here's the thing. I think that virtually *all* fanfic -- still predominantly a female activity -- can legitimately be described the same way. Fan fiction, just in and of itself, is a type of public discourse (direct or indirect, conscious or subconscious) about women and their attitudes toward sexuality. The mere fact that such a discourse is going on -- publicly -- is a type of feminist project.

I think you're right, and I will ponder more on this point (though I have seen it other places in more general 'what is fanfic' discussions - like the one Nestra pointed to the other day) - and I think some of the divides between slash and het make it harder to see just how much in common they have, especially when viewed from this perspective. Because it isn't that her m/m project isn't feminist - but her impliction seems to be that het fic that features rapturous descriptions of male bodies and what they look like and feel like and taste like to do is *not* a feminist project celebrating female desire for men. That may or may not be her intention, but I think it could be read that way. Which definitely leads to the irksomeness of the layers of the discussions.....

But what that means is that all genres of fanfic qualify as parts of that discourse: het, slash, RPF, chan, mpreg, whatever. But all of these genres also contain contradictory and negative elements that could justifiably be called anti-feminist as well -- and those elements often make certain groups of fen quite reasonably uncomfortable.

And it's especially hard when the feminist and anti-feminist elements get all mixed up in a single story, or the body of work of a particular author or the quirks of a particular fandom universe......I would even argue that it's freaking hard to avoid having those negative and contradictory elements creep into your stories, even when you are consciously trying to avoid them, much less when you aren't because you didn't think you had too.

I'm still floundering my way toward an understanding of myself as a fannish person (who would like to once again, someday, be an actual fannish author....sigh) and with this latest explosion (or at least it feels that way to me....) of meta it is even more complicated. I've been particularly interested in the slash/het thing - partially because of discovering how out of step LFN is in that regard, and then my own discomfort with the first slash I read much of, which surpriesd the hell out of me and threw me for quite the period of inner searching, and my own continuing preference for het or f/f.

My feminist politics tell me that just becuase there are not a plethora of popular templates in fiction or media for women characters, and that male PTB *will* fall back on the perils of Pauline and catfights when they run out of other plotlines, is no reason for *me* to toss in the towel and avoid trying to write women the way I want to see them written. And so I see some m/m slash as a conscious retreat from the good fight.....but, who am I to impose my reading on others?

I think there are almost too many motivations to keep track of, much less sort out into some sort of sensible pattern. And that's just mine and those of the fannish friends I know best - and incompletely. And then the question of where motivation matters vs. what was actually accomplished and where critical judgement should be tempered and where it should not - - more tricksiness. Lord knows that I don't change a grade because a student comes and tells me what they intended, or what they meant to say.....or that they really do know all this stuff but just got confused when it was time to write it down.....

and I've blithered off into confusion. So I'll stop now.

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Because it isn't that her m/m project isn't feminist - but her impliction seems to be that het fic that features rapturous descriptions of male bodies and what they look like and feel like and taste like to do is *not* a feminist project celebrating female desire for men.

Not just that, but that criticisms of m/m slash from an f/f fic perspective are based on some misguided lesbian separatist ideology. (The

fanthropology thread she was reacting to was much more a m/m versus f/f one than slash versus het, you see -- mostly about fannish terminology and whether it tends to marginalize f/f -- which I believe it does in some ways.) Speaking as someone whose slash lens *is* colored more toward seeing f/f than m/m, I believe that the f/f-oriented critics of m/m *do* raise concerns that are entitled to be treated with respect instead of dismissed in such a manner. The f/f camp may be overgeneralizing their critique, but it doesn't help when you do the same thing in response.

My feminist politics tell me that just becuase there are not a plethora of popular templates in fiction or media for women characters, and that male PTB *will* fall back on the perils of Pauline and catfights when they run out of other plotlines, is no reason for *me* to toss in the towel and avoid trying to write women the way I want to see them written. And so I see some m/m slash as a conscious retreat from the good fight.....but, who am I to impose my reading on others?

Yep. Especially when it might turn out that instead of retreating from the fight, maybe they were just fighting on a completely different front in the first place.

I'm still floundering my way toward an understanding of myself as a fannish person (who would like to once again, someday, be an actual fannish author....sigh) and with this latest explosion (or at least it feels that way to me....) of meta it is even more complicated. I've been particularly interested in the slash/het thing - partially because of discovering how out of step LFN is in that regard, and then my own discomfort with the first slash I read much of, which surpriesd the hell out of me and threw me for quite the period of inner searching, and my own continuing preference for het or f/f.

Yep. I've been floundering a LOT lately, over some of the same issues, but I think out of somewhat different impulses. I'm only now becoming more comfortable with my fanfic preferences being what they are without feeling defensive or as if I'm a weirdo: I'm a female-character-centric fan, without regard to whether it's gen, het, or slash (or even RPF, which I've started taking open-minded peeks at...gah!). That doesn't make me more or less feminist than anyone else, or more or less cool -- but it *does* make me a minority, through neither my fault nor the fault of the majority, and there are issues that come with that that I have to learn to deal with.

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Not just that, but that criticisms of m/m slash from an f/f fic perspective are based on some misguided lesbian separatist ideology. (The fanthropology thread she was reacting to was much more a m/m versus f/f one than slash versus het, you see -- mostly about fannish terminology and whether it tends to marginalize f/f -- which I believe it does in some ways.) Speaking as someone whose slash lens *is* colored more toward seeing f/f than m/m, I believe that the f/f-oriented critics of m/m *do* raise concerns that are entitled to be treated with respect instead of dismissed in such a manner. The f/f camp may be overgeneralizing their critique, but it doesn't help when you do the same thing in response.

I poked around until I found the thread - her response was definitely weird, because I have no idea how she got from femslash as a term reduces f/f to a modified subset of slash to lesbian separatism - though I think I could trace some of it back to another thread from last week or so where she was complaining about that "old, tired anti porn stance."

The thing is - for me - I don't know that I'm ready to quickly so dismiss the antiporn position. BEcause a lot of porn does encourage horrible ideas about sex, sexuality and especially women's place in male sexuality. Which I firmly believe is bad for everyone involved - almost especially the young people I work with everyday who have to combat this sludge to find a route to a healthy life.

It's sort of similar to the problem I have with reconciling an embrace of sex workers' independence and dignity with the horrifying reality of sexual slavery. Because slavery *is* already illegal in the places that the sex trade flourishes using slaves - so, since going after slavery itself hasn't been enough, how else should we tackle the problem? I'm not looking for that discussion by the way, just pointing to it as a similar and related intellectual problem that I haven't been able to resolve in my own head.

but it *does* make me a minority, through neither my fault nor the fault of the majority, and there are issues that come with that that I have to learn to deal with.

I spent so many years assuming, blithely, in ways that even now bug my spouse, that I was in the 'majority' (whatever that is) that I still reel abit whenever I'm confronted, again, with just who much I'm not. Especially because on the surface - I am. Take LFN, I'm a total and completely soppy HR. Michael and Nikita are my OTP. How much more part of mainstream LFN could I get?

And yet - the more we (the big blue board we, here) chat - the clearer it becomes that my take on my OTP and on the show itself was - to say the least - idosyncratic.

I'm clearly more female character centric than most, and yet part of what has been such a hurdle for me in reading the slash - and fic in general - for source material I know well is that I find the men largely unfamiliar - as men, much less as the male characters that took root in my imagination. I mean, weepy melodramatic Michael? Who is that and could I have the reserved, cocky, confident guy I saw on the screen back? Please?

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I poked around until I found the thread - her response was definitely weird, because I have no idea how she got from femslash as a term reduces f/f to a modified subset of slash to lesbian separatism

I think it comes from a discussion on the original thread about people's motivations in writing. One person took the position that the urge to write slash, both m/m and f/f, comes from the same place, and another countered that no, that's not necessarily so: some f/f fans are interested in exploring specifically female characters/perspectives/relationships. Perhaps this is being interpreted as some sort of separatist position, although I think that's very mistaken. Having one's primary fannish (or even fiction-reading) interest be the exploration of female identity via female characters does not translate into separatism. Or else I'm a separatist myself, and I think my male partner would be rather surprised to hear it.

I spent so many years assuming, blithely, in ways that even now bug my spouse, that I was in the 'majority' (whatever that is) that I still reel abit whenever I'm confronted, again, with just who much I'm not. Especially because on the surface - I am. Take LFN, I'm a total and completely soppy HR. Michael and Nikita are my OTP. How much more part of mainstream LFN could I get?

I didn't have that problem in LFN -- I felt very much the oddball there, even though what I was doing was, in the metafannish scheme of things, really pretty mainstream, at least on the surface. And yet now I feel like an oddball after all.

I'm clearly more female character centric than most, and yet part of what has been such a hurdle for me in reading the slash - and fic in general - for source material I know well is that I find the men largely unfamiliar - as men, much less as the male characters that took root in my imagination. I mean, weepy melodramatic Michael? Who is that and could I have the reserved, cocky, confident guy I saw on the screen back? Please?

Here's where our differences kick in. My issue is that I'm just not all that interested in reading about men. I'm not saying I'm not interested at *all*, but the male characters aren't the first thing I look for. Which I freely admit is just a personal preference and don't try to ascribe any political significance to.

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I think it comes from a discussion on the original thread about people's motivations in writing. One person took the position that the urge to write slash, both m/m and f/f, comes from the same place, and another countered that no, that's not necessarily so: some f/f fans are interested in exploring specifically female characters/perspectives/relationships. Perhaps this is being interpreted as some sort of separatist position, although I think that's very mistaken. Having one's primary fannish (or even fiction-reading) interest be the exploration of female identity via female characters does not translate into separatism. Or else I'm a separatist myself, and I think my male partner would be rather surprised to hear it.

There is a thread running through some of these discussions which, however feminist the agendas and identities involved, opperates on the human default=male model. In this light m/m is then 'free' of gender politics - as though this was either a desirable or admirable or even tenable position. In this context, then, to express a desire to focus on female identity/characters/issues gets read as a rejection of human identity. Which is, you know, gag inducing.

My issue is that I'm just not all that interested in reading about men. I'm not saying I'm not interested at *all*, but the male characters aren't the first thing I look for. Which I freely admit is just a personal preference and don't try to ascribe any political significance to.

I'm more interested in reading and writing about men than you are, that is true, but I'm not especially interested in reading about men without women. I've realized that this is one of the reasons I don't much care for slash across the board, even granting some of my other problems with it - identifying with Aragorn or Hornoblower as straight men when I was quite young, for example. (And what that might say about my sexuality, I have no bloody idea.) Men without women, well, I find them a little dull. IMO, gender politics in action is what makes men interesting. *g* To each there own, you know.

The OP in the thread, whom I've engaged with before (I'd do the little linky thingy, but I don't know how and am too lazy to look it up), when I said this, responded that my preference for reading about women, and lack of interest in reading about men with men, could be read as misandric. I cheerfully agreed. I could very well be misandric when I say that boys being boys together interests me not at all. (I could even be exaggerating, though, not by much. ;-) The interesting thing, though, was that I didn't say I didn't like men, or respect them, or that I hated them - I just said I found m/m centered fic and stories dull.

There is so much going on in these discussions, trying to parse it is like a rubric's cube puzzle. And I never did learn to solve those, though not for lack of trying.

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swatkat24.livejournal.com - Date: 2005-05-13 03:47 am (UTC) - Expand

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yet part of what has been such a hurdle for me in reading the slash - and fic in general - for source material I know well is that I find the men largely unfamiliar - as men, much less as the male characters that took root in my imagination

Weepy!Michael aside (because really, that's just bleurgh)- could you clarify this a bit more? Because I read a lot of maleslash, and while there are many different characterisations of most of the characters out there, most of the characterisations make sense in the context of the story and canon in general, even though I don't see the character that way. Which fandoms throw up this problem for you? Have you encountered this in HP? (because then I will make amends with recs)

Swatkat

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In HP I've only read a very few things - mostly MsGen's story, plus a handful of black recs you've tossed off for Jaybee.

could you clarify this a bit more?

I can try! Okay, there are *at least* two components of how I got to this observation.

The first was confronting my inner 12 year old's heel dragging, kicking and squirming reaction of "nononononono!" to a lot of the (most? 98%?) m/m slash in LOTR and Horatio Hornblower fic. I turned to these to fandoms after LFN, on the seemingly sensible position that these are two canon sources, books and movies, that I know well and love (well, the books more than the movies, but anyway). I know them well, in part, because I read both, repeatedly, in my childhood, tweens and teens. (This is important, I realized).

The second is that my one of my main RL subjects of study, for two decades now, is the history of masculinity and manhood.

So - okay, there I was, wanting desperately to grok the cool kids and their love for the m/m. I turned to fandoms where I believed I knew the source well and would be receptive, read the most highly rec'ced stuff I could find - and disliked almost all of it, even though, highly rec'ced as they were, these were for the most part very well written pieces that made excellent use of the canon source material and relied on characterizations that did make sense in the context of the story and canon in general.

So - was the problem me and my latent homophobia at last coming to the surface? Since that is often the first charge hurled at those who voiced the same cringing reaction I had to the m/m - I wrestled with the possibility that this was indeed my problem. For a long time. But as I read more widely, and further abroad, I realized that I did not have the same cringing reaction to m/m outside of these two fandoms. I'm not sure I could call myself a true fan, but not only did I not cringe, I think a lot of the stories are good and I enjoy reading them. Which narrowed the initial problem, at least in part, to my attachment to certain personal canon readings of LOTR and HH. I'm now pretty satisfied with this - afterall, my base line for 'good' LFN fic is how the fic treats Nikita. Why shouldn't it be the same for other fandoms? And, why shouldn't sexuality and sexual choices be a part of how you/I see a character? It doesn't make the others wrong, just, not my cup of tea.

However, on the way to this understanding and highly personalized framing, I spent a lot of time at the more general level of "why don't I like m/m stories?" on theory that I had to come to terms with and then excise my latent homophobia. Which took me deep into the stories, as I tried to pinpoint what it was about these well-written stories that had me shaking my head in silent opposition throughout. The answer I came too was a combination of characterization and fidelity to the fictional universes - which rolled into my understanding of manhood and masculinity as specific historical constructs that change over time, just as our understanding of womanhood and femininity change over time.

The upshot of this was my sense that - in those fictional universes and given the characters as I saw/read/understood them - the choice to love another man in the same way that one might love a woman would be a deeply fraught and tension producing choice on the part of men who wished to see and understand themselves as men in their worlds. The stories don't have that tension.....and then I realized that there are other stories, notably in the LFN universe, where weepy Michael is also free of this concern......that he is presumed to take his manhood so for granted that he can turn into a puddle of self-hating goo at the drop of a hat with no stress about his identity as a man. This doesn't ring 'true' for me, any more than Boromir weeping at Aragorn's feet at any time up until the ring nearly broke him - and the weeping itself as a sign that the ring had indeed been at work and that his manhood had been damaged as a result.......

So - on to part two because I'm a wordy bitch today......

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At the moment, I'm not quite sure where I'm headed anymore in terms of my fannish belief-system, but I guess I'll find out when I bump into something.

Oh word. I'm going through this period of tremendous growth and development in my fannish tastes and such, and I don't where I'm going. But I'm definitely enjoying the ride. *g*

Swatkat

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Yeah. It's been sort of an identity crisis, even, but I think I'm finally resolving some of the questions that have been bothering me so much, finding my own "place" in fandom, and being comfortable with where that place is. In turn, it makes me more comfortable being around people who find themselves in a different place, because I'm no longer worried about why I'm not like them.

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Internal thought can be very tricky thing, because there's always the danger of the author over-telling things and making the situation very... Warm Fuzzy instead of intense. My favourite kink is probably Things Left Unsaid. Deceptively simple descriptions, subtle statements that don't appear to mean much until the meaning hits you on the head like a sledgehammer... gah.

but diving into internal thoughts to see the full intensity of the emotion that's being controlled.

You know, I can't think of any example of this right now (yes, way past bedtime, brain not working) - could you just give me an example, if possible?

Swatkat

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Examples? Eek. I can't thin now, but I'll come back.

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Oh, whenever you have time! *g* Just a fic; or a line or two, even. Maybe it will make more sense when I'm actually awake?

Swatkat, definitely going to bed

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