Slash vs women

[beccaelizabeth]

I used to be in fandoms where there were mostly Babes of the Week. They existed solely to have UST with one of the guys, and then at the end of the episode the women went away and the guys went home together. So we ignored the women, because the only real relationship was these two guys who cared about each other more than anything else in their lives. Hence, slash.

But that was a while ago, and there are TV shows with actual women in. Persistent characters with agendas of their own. People as well rounded as the guys ever were. And some of them are dating guys. But TV being TV, they usually break up eventually, or someone gets fridged, or they leave for a spin off show. So I guess I felt like, okay, looking at this, the key relationship? Still two guys. So, more slash.

But now it’s creeping me out: There are women who never break up with their guys, who maybe get married to their guys, who have rings and commitment and stick by them through thick and thin and the world exploding. But we’re in the habit now. We go looking for the two guys. And way too much of the time, we’re the ones who break them up, or fridge them, or figure someone else will write their spin off show. Sometimes we even rewrite whole episodes so the guy gets the girl’s role. And I’ve been reading it, because hey, still slash.

But seriously, what the hell?

I know a lot of good reasons to write slash. I’d dearly love it if more canonical media wrote a wider range of sexualities and relationships. I like this aesthetic we’ve got in slash where working out your relationships and sex life and saving the world a lot are all just part of the one life story, all different parts of being a person, all interesting.

But it’s creeping me out, how much easier it is to find fic where the women are erased than fic where we’re celebrated.

My favourite fanfics now are poly. Because the fandoms have actually already got great het relationships with great female characters, so instead of erasing anything, we just add a little. Or a lot. It’s all good.

But it creeps me out on TV when there’s a show that kills off all the women, silences them, makes them serve the guys’ plots. And it double creeps me out in fanfic, where we’re pleasing no one but ourselves, and the same damn problems crop up.

I want to exist in my stories. Why so difficult?

Comments

Re: here via metanews

[havocthecat]

probably the majority of the fandoms in existence are het-focused.

That used to be the case! As beccaelizabeth pointed out, with graphics, it is no longer the case. It hasn't for a while. And while there are "many femslash fandoms," as you say, femslash ships still tend to be the minority compared to both het and m/m slash. If you write to get dozens of comments and kudos, honestly, femslash is not the place for you. That said, femslashers are a pretty welcoming bunch, for the most part, and do not tend to require that one is Only Ever A Femslasher, No Writing Dudes Allowed in order to call oneself a femslasher.

(Some of us just had this discussion recently. If you want to check out femslash, I can point in some of the directions on LJ and DW. Tumblr, not so much.)

Personally, I tend to write and read about the female characters, with a few exceptions to that rule. So I'm all for anyone who wants to do more of that, whether they continue to primarily write about men or not. And thank you to beccaelizabeth for examining and noting tendencies in a fandom type I'm not a part of.

Haven is a lovely series and absolutely wonderful when it comes to its treatment of Audrey Parker! I'm afraid it suffers terribly from a case of One Girl In All The World syndrome, however, as all the other women have either been put on a bus or killed off (or had their minds wiped) for one reason or another - and the only woman left on the series who isn't Audrey has become a villain and is being written as hating/jealous of Audrey due to a romantic rivalry with another man. Which. Very frustrating. Again, I love Haven and I've watched every episode of every season. But it absolutely makes my skin crawl when I see another woman brought onto the show, because I know exactly what's going to happen to her in the end.

If you want to watch a show that has one woman who makes friendships with other women and then loses them, but maintains her relationships with a bunch of men - all while investigating psychic abilities that are more curse than blessing and her own mysterious background - then Haven is the series for you. It definitely has a nice X-Files vibe to it; I know that I started watching it specifically because it reminded me of XF and had a lot of the things I liked, without the things about XF I didn't like.

I will say, the poly writers for Haven are, by and large, excellent and the fic tends to be well-balanced and doesn't shove one-third of the trio off to the side for a 'preferred' two-thirds.

(Hi, here from metanews. The volubility is all mine, though.)