Hi. I don't think we've spoken before, but I'm here via havoc, and if I had any skill at math I'd be offering to do your taxes right now.
I agree that it's awesome that slash allows some women (and also some people who aren't women) to express their sexuality in a world that represses female sexuality. But romance novels and het do that for others with different tastes. They are usually more heteronormative (and I can see why that's more of a big deal for LBGT people than me), but they also have actual women in them, and like slash het fanfic creates a space for women with non-socially-accepted sexual tastes like BDSM
Amen. There was a discussion on some blogs I read this week about a rape trial in the UK (I think) where because the woman who was raped had expressed fantasies about group sex, the judge basically threw out the case saying she therefore couldn't have been gang raped. Obvious problems aside, the issue of what fantasies women are allowed, what kind of sexuality is deemed appropriate for them to express, a lot of that comes up in my het!fic and multi!fic writing, and I've seen strains of dealing with this kind of cultural repressiveness even in published romance novels.
I wrote a post myself branching off ithiliana's discussion because I didn't want to bring it up there and seem like I was derailing the legitimate conversations going on. But I have concerns about m/m slash and the attention it gets too, from fandom and from academics (and I am one) and the media producers. And that's aside from the representation issues! *facepalm*
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I agree that it's awesome that slash allows some women (and also some people who aren't women) to express their sexuality in a world that represses female sexuality. But romance novels and het do that for others with different tastes. They are usually more heteronormative (and I can see why that's more of a big deal for LBGT people than me), but they also have actual women in them, and like slash het fanfic creates a space for women with non-socially-accepted sexual tastes like BDSM
Amen. There was a discussion on some blogs I read this week about a rape trial in the UK (I think) where because the woman who was raped had expressed fantasies about group sex, the judge basically threw out the case saying she therefore couldn't have been gang raped. Obvious problems aside, the issue of what fantasies women are allowed, what kind of sexuality is deemed appropriate for them to express, a lot of that comes up in my het!fic and multi!fic writing, and I've seen strains of dealing with this kind of cultural repressiveness even in published romance novels.
I wrote a post myself branching off ithiliana's discussion because I didn't want to bring it up there and seem like I was derailing the legitimate conversations going on. But I have concerns about m/m slash and the attention it gets too, from fandom and from academics (and I am one) and the media producers. And that's aside from the representation issues! *facepalm*