Women and Slash

Slash fanworks originated with homosexual relationships between two men. In general, male/male pairings have been more prolific and popular than female/female femslash pairings. Women have been the main participants in slash fandom - slash has been described as "by women for women." The reasons why women are attracted to male slash has been discussed widely, as well as whether or not it is a problem.
==History==
===By Women, For Women===
Slash is often described as created by women for an audience of women. This is a historically accurate with regard to slash's origin in Star Trek: TOS fandom.
See:
* Pornography by Women, For Women, With Love (April 1985)
* Another Addict Raves About K/S (May 1985)
* Homosexuality has as much to do with Slash as Civil War history did with Gone With the Wind. (May 13, 1994)
* Slash & Realism (September 29, 1994)
==Slash and Female Sexuality==
* " slash as a way for women to explore sexuality and social expectations" - Two Men Are Better Than One: Why Women Like Slash
My first ever slash manifesto. (Also titled: A Comment Gone Horribly Awry) - The Good, The Bad, and The Conclusion:
* Silly little girls: Slash Fanfiction and Female Sexuality
Whether or not the majority of women who enjoy slash are straight is debated.Where exactly do people get this idea that fandom is dominated by straight women from?
===Straight Women and Slash===
Straight women may be explained as enjoying slash because they are attracted to men – thus they may be averse to femslash.
====Escapism of the Slash Fantasy====
Some say that the fantasy of sex between two men allows one to be liberated from the social issues that women face, and that taking on the male perspective is empowering.
In response to Why I Write Everything - ANGST! RECRIMINATION! BUTTSEX! by acadine in 2003, which was a response to Why I Write Slash by Ivy Blossom:
acadine asserted: "If you can't write het that's non-sexist or not based in sex roles, it is because you are a shitty writer, which usually boils down to the fact that you haven't been looking at life hard enough and haven't been listening to what it tells you."
==Male vs Female Characters==
Fandom at large's focus on male characters over female characters is highly controversial. This may be explained as there simply being more male characters in media, but there is evidence that fandoms focused on men and slash even if there are prominent women.
destinationtoast's April 2018 fandom stats on Gender representation in movies vs. movie fanworks shows that the average AO3 movie fandom has 32% female characters, compared to the average of 31% in all movies. However, analysis also showed that movie characters who became popular (having over a certain number of works) in fandom were 26% female. Testing of the hypothesis, "Does fandom pay less attention to female characters than movies do?," concluded that "M/M (which is relatively common on AO3) has fewer female characters than average." and "F/F (which is relatively rare on AO3) has more female characters than average."
destinationtoast also noted:
===Identifying With Masculinity===
A number of women explain that their focus on male characters is a reaction to misogyny in media. They argue that the more complex male characters are more fulfilling subjects than female characters, who are sidelined, underdeveloped, or mistreated in canon. Identifying with masculine privilege and strength through slash is appealing to many.
===Projecting Femininity Onto Men===
Women may want stories about men who are less traditionally masculine. Media created by and for women can free of the male gaze, and gay stories can remove the limits of heteronormativity. Men can be depicted as more in touch with their feelings and sensuality than in popular media.
Early Kirk/Spock stories were described as being written with female sensibilities. Joanna Russ's Pornography by Women, For Women, With Love, suggests that a women's perspective and be projected on Spock in particular:
===Removing Women From Narratives===
Deliberately removing (and the self) from stories in favor of focusing on slash may be an extension of the escapism of the slash fantasy.
In Yaoi communities, getting women out of the way in order to focus on boys is discussed openly.
From Why Is There So Much Slash Fic?: Some Analysis of the AO3 Census:
==Criticism==
===Slash & LGBT Culture===
Slash vs. Gay is the conversation about how slash relates to LGBT literature, culture, and the experiences of LGBT people. A good deal of the "slash vs. gay" question rests on female fans' perception of who a gay man is and what constitutes a gay identity, but also on how they depict the characters' perceptions of these things. Male characters who have same-sex relationships are usually straight in canon. Are they men who have sex with men without thinking of themselves as gay or bisexual? Or is the writer deviating from the canon source to depict a "what-if" where the characters are and perceive themselves to be gay? How does the writer handle these issues in fan fiction taking place in former times, e.g., Sherlock Holmes, when these cultural identities and perceptions were very different? How does the writer's own experience as a straight, bisexual or Lesbian woman affect her portrayals of gay male characters? How do male slash authors—gay, straight and bi—perceive these things?
===Appropriation of Gay Mens' Stories===
Some hold the belief that stories about marginalized people should be written by authors of the same identity group – this is known as OwnVoices fiction. Following this view, gay men should be the ones whose works should be most celebrated within the genre of M/M fiction.
====Marginalization of Gay Men====
Women, and particularly straight women, make hold homophobic beliefs or prejudices, which may be evident in their writing. Thus, slash created by women make reenforce such views, and thus exploit gay men while further marginalizing them.
The We're Not Gay; We Just Love Each Other trope, which involves straight, same-sex characters having a relationship, but not seeing their sexual relationship with each other as having implications for their sexual orientation, is considered by many to be homophobic. Critics argue that trope is used so that gay sex and be objectified and enjoyed, but shuns the actual label and the stigma of being gay.
====Inaccuracy====
Many people, gay men and otherwise, point out that slash and fandom are often inaccurate in their portrayal of gay male lives and sex. There are many conversations about lubrication and safe sex. This leads to questions about whether or not being inaccurate makes a slash story bad – exactly how much of slash is fantasy?
Erotica written by straight women can likely be expected to be based on a heteronormative understanding of sex.
In the 2012 meta How Can Gay Buttsex Be Heterosexist? Bendingsignpost said, "The fandom arc of slash sexual progression goes: kiss, hand/oral, anal. Meaning that if you don’t get to the anal bit, you don’t complete the arc, and there’s a sense of the narrative being incomplete. [...]I agree that to make anal penetration the culminating act in a fic can overvalue it, echoing the stereotypical arc of heterosexual experience: to fuck=to fuck like a man and a woman. In this light it’s heterosexist."
=====Realism=====
From Slash and the Ethics of Voice, discussing the misappropriation of gay men's culture and whether or realism in fiction required (or intended):
* Slash & Realism
===Fetishization===
In Welcome to Night Vale fans have observed that the hordes of delighted fans who emit deafening screams during live performances at any reference to the relationship between Cecil and Carlos amounts to objectifying gay men.Kiri Von Stanten, On the Fetishization of Gay Men by Women in the Slash Community. The Mary Sue, January 17, 2015.
In a 2015 article for The Mary Sue, Kiri Von Stanten observed that the deafening screams emitted by fans of Welcome To Night Vale during live performances at any reference to the relationship between Cecil and Carlos, or whenever Carlos appears or is mentioned, and the fandom's heavy focus on his relationship with Cecil, while their romance is a relatively minor plot point in the canon, amounts to fetishizing gay men.
A response from Night Vale fan Vio on Reddit:
==Meta & Further Reading==
* Pornography by Women, For Women, With Love by Joanna Russ (1985)
* Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth by Camille Bacon-Smith (1992)
* The Generic Slash Defense Letter (1995)
* Two Men Are Better Than One: Why Women Like Slash (1999)
* Slash & yearn (2000)
* Rewriting Society's Future: Women, Star Trek and Slash Writing (2000?)
* Women and Slash - Why, why, why? by Julad (2001)
* Slash and the Ethics of Voice by Thamiris (2002)
* What's so compelling about slash fiction? (2003)
* Slash fiction and human mating psychology (2004)
* The Joy of Slash: Why do women want it? (2005)
* Men On Men: Why Do Women Enjoy Slash? (2005)
* Silly little girls: Slash Fanfiction and Female Sexuality (2005)
* Does m/m slash empower women? (2005)
* Slash Fiction Makes Room for Gays (2006)
* Sexuality and slash fandom (2007 post) by Shoshanna
* The Slash Debate (2009-2010)
* Should (straight/lesbian/etc) women be 'allowed' to write slash? (2010)
* A Brief History of Slash by Morgan Leigh Davies (2013)
* Where exactly do people get this idea that fandom is dominated by straight women from? (2015)
* ("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.") + ("Hi everyone. I decided to make a more detailed amendment to an earlier meta post I made because there were some deep flaws in what I wrote and I don’t feel that it succeeded in communicating what I originally intended.") (2017)
-
* Slash - for and against
* Writing 'Slash' Fan Fiction: Power, Desire and Eye-Candy in a Never Ending Romance
* Thinking About Slash/Thinking About Women
* When Worlds Collide: Fandom and Male Privilege
* "One index finger on the mouse scroll bar and the other on my clit": slash writers' views on pornography, censorship, feminism and risk
* Women in packs
* The Weird, Wild World of Slash Fiction
* Why Is There So Much Slash Fic?: Some Analysis of the AO3 Census
* Normal Female Interest in Men Bonking: Selections from The Terra Nostra Underground and Strange Bedfellows
* Fandom As a Female Space
==Notes==
==References==
Category:Discussion
Category:Slash Fandom