Slash Theory

[permetaform]

Well, so I was thinking of putting off writing about this but trinityofone is doing a paper on slash (she needs help and she has interesting and different survey questions...) and she's doing it from a totally sympathetic viewpoint and that's just COOL yo.

So, my thoughts on why I slash (and it is a multi-part reason, this is just one of many) has recently dovetailed with fannish thoughts on gender in SGA and thoughts on Feminist representation of the female body in visual language and I wrote this paper where I'd addressed slash sideways, with some realizations that I'd come to over the course of a month of discussions here and there, online and off.

I'd wanted to post this as meta on LJ, but I'd written it out mostly for a class assignment and was wincing at translating into LJ-speak 'cause I haven't the time right now, but I ended up doing it anyways. ::shrugs::

But, long story short:

1) Male coding of Female bodies = pervasive, entrenched, and historic

2) Male codes Female body as The Other

a) The Other heavily features fears the Male has about himself, his role in life, what he is trying *not* to be, what he denys knowing about himself, and what he *doesn't* know about himself

b) Because the Male codes the Female body as The Other, the Male is constantly positioning the Female body relative to himself in *representational* media.

i) media = plural medium

ii) this includes various forms of visual arts such as painting and sculpture, some forms of literature and even some forms of dance.

c) Because the Male POV is so very pervasive in our culture, (ex. Fandom and Male Privilege by cereta), in mainstream media the Female body is constantly representing aspects of the Male

3) That last point is important so let me restate: The mainstream media normally codes Female bodies as fe-MALE.

a) This means that Female bodies are constantly, in mainstream media, posed in relation to the the Male body. As non-independant of Male.

b) Restated: The most media represents Female bodies as indivisible from and dependant on Male bodies. ("dependant" is here used in terms of math termionology rather than it's sociological meaning; ie. it's a variable "dependant" on the whims of another variable)

4) Because the Male POV is so pervasive, even feminist representations of the Female body becomes problematic.

a) Manichean dichotomy: where, no matter how good the qualities one might possess, if one is on the negative dichotomy the end balance will still be negative.

i) Example:
Men are logical, Women are illogical. But also! Men are intuitive, Women are mechanical and cold.
Logical = mechanical, except not. Illogical = intuitive, except not.
End result? Women get the short end of the stick no matter their representation.

ii) Example: The token female on a all male cast.

iii) Example: If Men Had Periods

b) Seeing the female body in a certain way has become so entrenched in our society that visual depictions of the female body, even if attempted to be displayed in a progressive manner, is STILL on display = is still objectified.

5) Simultaneous displacement of the female onto the male body and the male body onto the female (ie. a f/m reversal of m/f) is STILL PROBLEMATIC. (see 4a)

a) Their interactions will still be loaded with gendered power dynamics.

b) On the surface level, there's no visual change from the usual m/f. ie. Situation Normal

6) ...But what if one displaced the Female onto the male body, and have them interact with other male bodies?

a) ...like with Slash!

b) ...and to a lesser extent (reason why with link forthcoming perhaps), yaoi.

c) ...and perhaps explaining the popularity of Will and Grace, Oz, and Queer As Folk, amoung women? (a statistically significant portion of the audience, via viewer surveys, to people's great surprise)

Comments? Discussion?

(note: I WILL answer every comment to this post, I just can't do it today for OMGPAPERDUE reasons. _{I hate finals week. hateithateithateit...})


In other news I'm giving in and making SGA my default icon. (Holy shit, I sorta feel like I changed my username...)


Also?

World AIDS Day: http://www.lighttounite.com/

Light a "candle" on the their map and they'll donate $1 to charity for you.

Comments

[maymorning.livejournal.com]

I think that why I got so disillusioned with slash is that I saw it, eventually, as a denial of the feminine. Which is why there is very little f/f slash around and so much m/m. I also think it's a form of wishful thinking. Replacing a woman with a man, so as to avoid feelings in the writer and the reader of jealousy. The avoidance of Mary Sues having gone to the extremes in the opposite direction. I just don't care for it anymore. It actually makes me angry as there are so few good female roles in tv and the movies anyway, and slash writers remove even the few that there are. Just my opinion anyway.

[permetaform]

::hugs::

more later, but my personal feelings on "feminine" is that it's a male construct. Then again, I always did have a lot more yang than yin in my system. ::wry grin::

[winter]

I very much agree with you - the reason slash appeals to me is that it allows the discussion of a relationship without gender dynamics thrown in. Neither stereotypes or denying them, but just existing in an altogether different plane.

Then again, most of my characters are characterised as "cheerfully bisexual", so I really don't do gender dynamics in any form :/

[franzeska]

Just because a relationship is same-sex doesn't mean it's free from gender roles. Some slash seems to avoid dealing with questions of gender, some turns conventions on their heads, some uses extremely cliched, traditional roles.

[permetaform]

::nods:: I think with m/m though there's more leeway for the "cheerfully bisexual"?

ie. there's less chance of being twapped with the "you're writing a flat-stereotypical character!" thing as you might when writing f/f?

[anoel.livejournal.com]

Really, really interesting. And I agree. That's why it is so nice to take the gender issue out of it.

The Other heavily features fears the Male has about himself, his role in life, what he is trying *not* to be, what he denys knowing about himself, and what he *doesn't* know about himself

Could you explain more on that? Because it sounded true to me but I'm not sure of the specifics.

Good luck on your paper/finals :)

[permetaform]

=) thank you!

as for The Other, these things include stuff like being able to be scared, being able to be cowardly, being gentle, liking beauty, etc. etc. etc.

Basically, everything that's labeled as weak which becomes an inherent "feminine" character trait, because it is unacceptable as a self-descriptor. Culturally and historically these eventually becomes pushed onto the female body.

I use "weak" especially because it seems to be too often associated with "feminine". This is another form of manichean dichotomy; females are "weak", men are "sensitive" or "of low constitution". This, for instance, not only narrows the definition of "strong" down to being specifically male, but also it ignores other forms of strength. Also, if you think about it, wives of blue-collar workers were possibly stronger than their husbands because they did housework for most of the day while they had desk jobs, yet they are rarely considered physically strong.

[fan-this.livejournal.com]

You see, this is why I love my fandom.

[permetaform]

awww =D ::hugs::

[nightengale.livejournal.com]

I fangirl your brain SO HARD, you realize this?

More thoughts later if I make my sick, med-addled brain work right.

[permetaform]

::wry grin:: heee!

[kanzenhanzai.livejournal.com]

I'm with bwinter in that I enjoy slash because I can avoid the whole sense of "otherness" you mentioned.
And in response to franzeska's comment, I find my enjoyment of stories is pretty selective since a lot of writers *do* fall into cliches and gender roles and end up bringing otherness back into their fics even without opposite-sex relationships.

My only random thought is that I've come to find m/m slash a more welcoming place than f/f slash. I don't know if it's just that the fandoms I know are not exactly female-laden to begin with, and so f/f slash is just plain sparse, but the fics I have found have been just this side of awful.
Have I just been looking in the wrong places, or are there good f/f fics that have a good basis of friendship going on within them? Because I think that's what I really draws me to slash, you get to ignore the misconception that a difference in sexes means they can't *really* understand one another, that they couldn't possibly really be friends as well as lovers.

[permetaform]

With the cliches and the gender roles, I wonder if it's people unconsciously trying to bring it back together, bringing it back to the feminine. Like mpreg and genderswap fic, bridging the gap between the symbol and what they might sideways be trying to address in terms of the writer's personal issues.


My only random thought is that I've come to find m/m slash a more welcoming place than f/f slash. I don't know if it's just that the fandoms I know are not exactly female-laden to begin with, and so f/f slash is just plain sparse, but the fics I have found have been just this side of awful.

commodorified has written up a neat summary of her poll in her most recent post that speaks on f/f in comparison to m/m and how f/f and het has already pro-fic filling up the market while m/m is like a specialized niche.

you get to ignore the misconception that a difference in sexes means they can't *really* understand one another, that they couldn't possibly really be friends as well as lovers.

::nods:: again, you might try looking for book recs? I remember googlesearching up a page looking for pro-fic m/m but most of them came up f/f

[kanzenhanzai.livejournal.com]

I wonder if it's people unconsciously trying to bring it back together

I'm sure in at least some of those cases it's not an unconscious attempt - more of a misguided writing what you think you know kind of thing.


Thanks for the book/google tip^^

[guede-mazaka.livejournal.com]

Just a musing question--so how would this apply to something like Ranma 1/2 where there's genderswitch? I haven't caught a lot of Ranma 1/2 anime eps, but at least in the manga, girl-Ranma has a distinct carryover of personality, i. e. she keeps most of the same habits as a girl as when he's a boy. And the reader/watcher is repeatedly told she's a boy and hell, my pronouns are already getting confused. But anyway, there's an insistence on perceiving Ranma as a male no matter what his body looks like since that's how he started out (and thus apparently is what he considers his primary form).

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Girl!Ranma keeps not just some, but all of the same habits. The only thing that's changed is his physical body. His mind is still exactly the same, thus speech, habits, etc. are all unchanged as well.

[guede-mazaka.livejournal.com]

I didn't define habits v. well. Girl-Ranma's life and mannerisms do change slightly to accommodate the different form--she wears a bra, and she isn't averse to using her boobs to get what she wants. I agree that her mind stays the same, but if her mannerisms were also exactly the same, then she'd completely ignore the effect of her femininity on others, whereas she blatantly takes advantage of it on several occasions. That attention to others' perceptions is what I was (badly) trying to say when I said 'most of'.

[permetaform]

What I love about Ranma 1/2 in it's entirety was how much the show turned the whole unspoken notions of Japanese feminity inside-out. Ranma frequently "performs" femininity just as Shampoo frequently "performs" femininity; I find it hilarious how they're in some reguards similar if you get them both away from a context when they're required to act for others.

And the insistence on perceiving Ranma as male is interesting both as a distancing effect (ie. "ranma is not me") and in regards to how people might react towards a 'girl' provided they supposed she was actually originally male. Actually...that might be an interesting tidbit for a script. hmm!

[guede-mazaka.livejournal.com]

in regards to how people might react towards a 'girl' provided they supposed she was actually originally male

That's about where I was going. It's not exactly the same, but I know some mixed-race people that look white, and it's been interesting to see how people's attitudes change slightly once they've been told that this person is actually half-Chinese or half-Indian or whatever. Seems like there's this weird 'adjustment' period where it's like double vision, or so I've been told.

[permetaform]

::nods:: which highlights all the more how much the view and the performance are all social constructs...

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

You've got some really thought provoking points here that, but responding intelligently probably would require more knowledge of gender-theory and feminist-theory than I possess ^_^. I like slash, het, gen, poly, everything, as long as it seems "in-character" for the people concerned, so I put more thought into "why these two particular guys?" than I do "why two guys at all?"

The whole “male gaze” debate in media has always vaguely bothered me, though. As a bisexual woman, I can derive the same pleasure out of looking at those “eye-candy” magazine photos/camera angles/whatever that put women on display that men obviously do (obviously because if men didn’t find it attractive, it would be shown so prominently). Does that mean that I’m simply in touch with my sexuality, or that I’ve internalized the media’s male-privilege-inspired values to the point that I sympathize with them in order to vicariously enjoy the privileges my gender is denied. Because if you carry the second line of thought far enough, you can get a sort of Freudian penis-envy-type argument that completely invalidates bisexuality/lesbianism as simply a female attempt to obtain the privileges of the male by assuming his sexual role (i.e. “woman desire the penis so much that they want to possess it themselves and therefore pursue other woman as if they in fact possessed it, as a sort of sexual wish-fulfillment”).

[permetaform]

Does that mean that I’m simply in touch with my sexuality, or that I’ve internalized the media’s male-privilege-inspired values to the point that I sympathize with them in order to vicariously enjoy the privileges my gender is denied. Because if you carry the second line of thought far enough, you can get a sort of Freudian penis-envy-type argument that completely invalidates bisexuality/lesbianism as simply a female attempt to obtain the privileges of the male by assuming his sexual role (i.e. “woman desire the penis so much that they want to possess it themselves and therefore pursue other woman as if they in fact possessed it, as a sort of sexual wish-fulfillment”).

*Exactly*. I brought this up in class and argued several round with my professor until I realized to my heavy embarrassment that she was just trying to make sure we understood the founding article...there was an article the next week that argues against the "male gaze" concept. Part it was that there are multiple reading stances available to the audience; Mulvey (ie. "male gaze" original author) was postulation from an audience that is fully submerged with the text.

However, if the audience holds itself slightly 'away' from the text (such as reading it tongue-in-cheek or with a grain of salt) then there are several other possible positions to take. This is part of why I love pastiche so much because the text inherently doesn't take itself completely seriously; the text is in my usual audience position.

Going back to the taking pleasure from the text; I think it's completely valid to take pleasure from any visual representation, however there was a heavy slant towards female objectification without a simultaneous male objectification going on there that made the whole thing unbalanced. Not only is there slightly more balance going on (and not only do we, as fandom, help supply male objectification aplenty) but Mulvey herself has gone back and altered her article to include viewpoints from straight female and variously queer-identified audiences. =)

To some extent, feminist arguments always make me squint in dismay. I'm slowly coming to a conclusion that it's doing so because the debates and theory are SO wrapped up in the male POV that they forget finding a female POV. They forget to stake out their own place because they're so busy disavowing the patriarchy and being "different" from them that they're constantly pointing back at the penis and yelling in disgruntlement.

And dude, me?

I'm *okay* with the penis. I am at *one* with the ejaculation of the penis and various penis representations thereof; because I have balls myself, they just hang higher. I do not want to castrate the penis to destroy it, I do not want to remove the penis from my sight; rather, keep it nearby, as, say a cockring.

yes.

[guede-mazaka.livejournal.com]

I'm *okay* with the penis. I am at *one* with the ejaculation of the penis and various penis representations thereof; because I have balls myself, they just hang higher. I do not want to castrate the penis to destroy it, I do not want to remove the penis from my sight; rather, keep it nearby, as, say a cockring.

yes.

I don't think I've ever loved you so much. *glomps*

[permetaform]

=D ::glomps back::

[retrofit88.livejournal.com]

To some extent, feminist arguments always make me squint in dismay. I'm slowly coming to a conclusion that it's doing so because the debates and theory are SO wrapped up in the male POV that they forget finding a female POV. They forget to stake out their own place because they're so busy disavowing the patriarchy and being "different" from them that they're constantly pointing back at the penis and yelling in disgruntlement.

Very totally yes. And yet, I consider myself very much a feminist. I've gotten into heated arguments with other women about this - "you can't be a feminist unless you admit that all women are potential victims, all the time!" Screw that, no thanks. I'll kick 'em all in the head.

I read Robyn Roberts' Sexual generations : "Star trek, the next generation" and gender - only time I have literally thrown a book across a room. Wanted to like it. But couldn't, and couldn't exactly express why. You got it exactly right.

[permetaform]

::nods:: the victimization angle never much worked for me, 'cause then I'm all like, "good for you for realizing that. Now what?"

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

I do not want to castrate the penis to destroy it, I do not want to remove the penis from my sight; rather, keep it nearby, as, say a cockring.

*giggles* Yes, yes, I second that motion. Although Ann Bishop's Black Jewels trilogy has somewhat spoiled cockrings in fiction for me--I never realised until I read it that cockrings could be overused to the point of being boring.

[permetaform]

::blinks:: huh. I know someone's doing an SGA crossover to the Black Jewels...that makes more sense now actually!