beccaelizabeth | (Reply)

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I just saw this great quote on tumblr about feminism. It perfectly encapsulates my thoughts about the current state of affairs in slash:

I also started realising that I’ve been a female misogynist my whole life, and had a lot of unlearning to do too. Change starts with eliminating the noxious parts of yourself you have internalised during socialisation in a misogynistic culture. Feminism isn’t just about stopping the abuse of women by men, it’s about stopping the abuse we do to ourselves and others by genuinely beginning to believe we deserve to be treated as less than human.

And internalized misogyny doesn't even have to be active hatred. It can just be an awareness that femininity is valued less than masculinity--so if you're a feminine person, you're anxious to divorce yourself from the perceived taint of femininity.

I think part of the prevalence of slash pairings is due to the fact that by having one character act as woman-proxy (fandom's little black dress characters, typically) women can read stories where two equals meet and fall in love and save the world. Whether or not we are aware of it, we've absorbed the message that women are for saving. In the overly simple binary construction, men are the heroes; women are mostly decorative.

And even though we know we are strong and independent, heroic maybe, even, I think we tend to feel isolated, like we're freaks or worse: we're failing at performing femininity by being strong and capable. So there's a touch of guilt there, as well. (Damned if we do, damned if we don't.)

By stripping all of that out of a character, there's like, an ideal fantasy that we can project ourselves onto? Obviously not totally consciously--this doesn't mean all fanfic is Mary Sue insert fic or anything. Just that the gender politics are nullified, or transmuted into sexual identity politics, which are easier to deal with. (and equally therapeutic, if the number of queer women in fandom is as large as it seems to be.)

Since the women on the tv share, to some degree, the 'taint' of femininity, it's pure escapist fantasy to erase them.

(here via