Why do we femslash?
First off, the title is deliberately misleading, this is definitely about why I like femslash. But hey, I think that's a problem with most of these sorts of essays :)
Every time I've seen femslash and yuri brought up in discussions/meta, it's generally quite quickly dismissed as not that interesting (or is theoretically interesting but the author knows nothing about it and isn't going to research), and the assumption is that the only people who read it are (a)Lesbian or bisexual women or (b) Straight men. (I've never heard anyone bring up bisexual male femslashers but they would presumably be explained the same way)
Since I am neither of those things (which is to say, I'm a straight woman, not a gay man. The thoughts of a gay male femslasher would be interesting too :)) and there has recently been angst over the lack of femslash meta I thought I'd think about why I like it, and what being a straight-girl girlslasher means. VERY much about my personal experiences since I don't know enough to generalise!
I should say first: I am VERY new to femslash fandom, so this may all be bunk. I've liked the idea since I first encountered the idea of fanfic but had real trouble finding any I liked. Some time last year I was pushed in the direction of comms like ffslashrecs and got more into it, and late last year started writing my first fanfic, which turned out to be femslash (still working on it, 9th chapter is on it's way :)) Also I do read slash, gen, and het as well, but have a special soft spot for femslash.
And of course not all people fit into any of the gay/straight/lesbian/bi boxes, and I haven't seen any related femslash meta on that score beyond questions about genderswap fic.
Why I like femslash
A frequently repeated truism of fanfic is that everyone is here for the porn.
But, well...I don't like porn. The sex part of my brain and fiction part of my brain are not really on speaking terms and prefer to live separate lives. Unless they're important to the plot I just skip sex scenes and they're certainly not why I read fic.
Sometimes when people say "porn" they mean "stuff that hits your id without bothering with your conscious brain". But even by that definition that's not the only thing I want from fanfic, I seek out (and very occasionally find) stories which play around with canon, poke holes in it's inconsistencies and explore the characters, make my brain work, or at least keep it happy, rather than turning it off. This is why I enjoy a lot of gen. And anyway, some of my favourite varieties of "porn" are femslashy.
Now the romance part of my brain and the fiction part of my brain are on pretty good terms, and while I can enjoy romance about people of any gender/combination since I'm straight there is a certain satisfaction that can only be found in long plotty het stories. But there's a LOT of heterosexual love stories in the world, especially since my tastes are pretty mainstream (eg "Pride and Prejudice"). I do not need to read fanfic to find them. What I look for in fanfic is stuff I can't find in the real world(*).
And what I can't find in the real world are decent stories about female characters. I might find men attractive but I also find them relatively hard to identify with.
Reading "Why we (boy)slash" meta I resonate with the arguments about challenging heteronormativity and subverting canon etc. I like reading romances between equals, and it's hard to really achieve that in a straight relationship (real or fictional :/) But since I prefer stories about women, and in particular am usually more annoyed about the way canon treats it's women, while I can enjoy that aspect of m/m slash I prefer seeing it in femslash.
I think in general (maybe?) most people tend to identify with the protagonists of a story, while I also tend to imagine myself in a story and think about how I would fare (thus my dislike for fantasy which only cares about the aristocracy) If women in that setting are badly treated, I don't want to imagine myself as a man, I want to see the women kick arse and take back their power :)
Also I think femslash taps into the part of my brain that still sees intense friendships with other girls as the most significant form of relationship (Anne/Diana from "Anne of Green gables" was a major OTP when I was a kid though I didn't think of it that way). Even now, while I have plenty of male friends (including my husband) there is something unique about friendships with women.
Issues around being a straight-girl girlslasher
Every now and then I come across discussions about the ethics of women (m/m slashers) writing stories about gay male characters despite not being gay men. A common (but not universally agreed upon) response is that this is ok since everyone knows it's not about real gay men, and the power dynamic is balanced out by the gendered power men have over women in society at large.
Rather more problematic are straight men writing about lesbian relationships ie femslash. There's been some discussion about this and the issues surrounding it but not a lot I'm aware of. Not something I have much to say about myself. Aside: There's also been discussion of the relationship between genderswap fanfic and actual trans* people. This stuff can get complicated.
Something I've never seen discussed specifically, though, is the issues around straight women writing femslash. According to this poll 14% of respondents are straight women so it's not so rare as to not be worth considering.
Now there isn't the same history of straight women creating exploitative "lesbian" porn etc as there is with straight men, and I think there's less danger of objectifying the women into sex objects etc.
But in the same way that (based on meta I've read) many m/m slashers don't imagine their characters as actual gay men but as two male bodies to be attracted to, and/or stand-ins for themselves, I tend to see women in a fictional lesbian relationship as two female personalities I can imagine myself as(**), and this may give me a different perspective on what makes "good" femslash to lesbian and bisexual women. Having read a bunch of femslash I was struck by certain patterns I didn't really like (lots of finding love and then being torn apart by circumstances for example, I want to see the women overcome canon not be beaten down by it) and had to remind myself that I may dislike them because what I want from these stories is not what the rest of the community is interested in. (Of course there's lots of repeated motifs I don't like in other fanfic, so my straightness may be coincidental :))
There are a whole lot of issues around writing femslash that I haven't really hit yet in my own story but am aware of. I have a lot of lesbian and bisexual female friends and have some mild attraction to women myself, but still don't know what it's like not to be straight (both in terms of attraction and relationships, and all the issues around identity, homophobia etc), and am probably going to get some details wrong. Luckily some of these friends have offered to beta so that'll hopefully help :) Of course all writing requires a certain amount of "imagining yourself in someone else's shoes" but if there's one thing I've learned from all these Cultural Appropriation Debates of DOOM is that not all situations are equivalent and it behooves us who are unfairly privileged by an unbalanced society to consider the effect of our actions.
Anyway, I'm not horribly stymied by these worries but I think it's important I keep this stuff in mind.
So, any other straight girl femslashers want to compare notes on why they like the genre? Anyone else with opinions? I'm just rambling out loud really, so welcome people explaining why I'm All Wrong :)
EDIT: Opinions of random strangers very much welcome! Especially if it's to agree with me, but even if it's not :) I've made a lot of changes based on people's comments, I eventually removed all the "edit" marks because it got confusing.
A note about m/m slash (which I do NOT want dominating the conversation except maybe as it relates to femslash :P): When I have made generalisations about m/m slash these have been things I've heard repeatedly said by m/m slashers in meta. I make no claim to them actually being true in general (what would I know?), but they seemed as good a place to start thinking about femslash as any. A subtext to this post which I guess I should make explicit is that I think any generalisation about "What X genre is" or "Why people write X genre" is going to be wrong for a lot of people, people do similar things for wildly different reasons. The title of this post is a dig at all the "Why We Slash" posts which always end up with lots of slashers saying "That may be true for you but it's not why I slash" etc. Noticing patterns of behaviours and motivations is good and interesting, saying "Everyone does X for Y reason" is bad.
(*)...ok, I admit it, when I'm feeling REALLY down I read Elizabeth/Darcy AUS which put new obstacles on their path which they overcome and then they find true love. But mostly :)
(**)I also see them as actual lesbian or bisexual women and if anything can be thrown out of the story if the issues around this aren't addressed, but not in a "that's me!" way.
Every time I've seen femslash and yuri brought up in discussions/meta, it's generally quite quickly dismissed as not that interesting (or is theoretically interesting but the author knows nothing about it and isn't going to research), and the assumption is that the only people who read it are (a)Lesbian or bisexual women or (b) Straight men. (I've never heard anyone bring up bisexual male femslashers but they would presumably be explained the same way)
Since I am neither of those things (which is to say, I'm a straight woman, not a gay man. The thoughts of a gay male femslasher would be interesting too :)) and there has recently been angst over the lack of femslash meta I thought I'd think about why I like it, and what being a straight-girl girlslasher means. VERY much about my personal experiences since I don't know enough to generalise!
I should say first: I am VERY new to femslash fandom, so this may all be bunk. I've liked the idea since I first encountered the idea of fanfic but had real trouble finding any I liked. Some time last year I was pushed in the direction of comms like ffslashrecs and got more into it, and late last year started writing my first fanfic, which turned out to be femslash (still working on it, 9th chapter is on it's way :)) Also I do read slash, gen, and het as well, but have a special soft spot for femslash.
And of course not all people fit into any of the gay/straight/lesbian/bi boxes, and I haven't seen any related femslash meta on that score beyond questions about genderswap fic.
Why I like femslash
A frequently repeated truism of fanfic is that everyone is here for the porn.
But, well...I don't like porn. The sex part of my brain and fiction part of my brain are not really on speaking terms and prefer to live separate lives. Unless they're important to the plot I just skip sex scenes and they're certainly not why I read fic.
Sometimes when people say "porn" they mean "stuff that hits your id without bothering with your conscious brain". But even by that definition that's not the only thing I want from fanfic, I seek out (and very occasionally find) stories which play around with canon, poke holes in it's inconsistencies and explore the characters, make my brain work, or at least keep it happy, rather than turning it off. This is why I enjoy a lot of gen. And anyway, some of my favourite varieties of "porn" are femslashy.
Now the romance part of my brain and the fiction part of my brain are on pretty good terms, and while I can enjoy romance about people of any gender/combination since I'm straight there is a certain satisfaction that can only be found in long plotty het stories. But there's a LOT of heterosexual love stories in the world, especially since my tastes are pretty mainstream (eg "Pride and Prejudice"). I do not need to read fanfic to find them. What I look for in fanfic is stuff I can't find in the real world(*).
And what I can't find in the real world are decent stories about female characters. I might find men attractive but I also find them relatively hard to identify with.
Reading "Why we (boy)slash" meta I resonate with the arguments about challenging heteronormativity and subverting canon etc. I like reading romances between equals, and it's hard to really achieve that in a straight relationship (real or fictional :/) But since I prefer stories about women, and in particular am usually more annoyed about the way canon treats it's women, while I can enjoy that aspect of m/m slash I prefer seeing it in femslash.
I think in general (maybe?) most people tend to identify with the protagonists of a story, while I also tend to imagine myself in a story and think about how I would fare (thus my dislike for fantasy which only cares about the aristocracy) If women in that setting are badly treated, I don't want to imagine myself as a man, I want to see the women kick arse and take back their power :)
Also I think femslash taps into the part of my brain that still sees intense friendships with other girls as the most significant form of relationship (Anne/Diana from "Anne of Green gables" was a major OTP when I was a kid though I didn't think of it that way). Even now, while I have plenty of male friends (including my husband) there is something unique about friendships with women.
Issues around being a straight-girl girlslasher
Every now and then I come across discussions about the ethics of women (m/m slashers) writing stories about gay male characters despite not being gay men. A common (but not universally agreed upon) response is that this is ok since everyone knows it's not about real gay men, and the power dynamic is balanced out by the gendered power men have over women in society at large.
Rather more problematic are straight men writing about lesbian relationships ie femslash. There's been some discussion about this and the issues surrounding it but not a lot I'm aware of. Not something I have much to say about myself. Aside: There's also been discussion of the relationship between genderswap fanfic and actual trans* people. This stuff can get complicated.
Something I've never seen discussed specifically, though, is the issues around straight women writing femslash. According to this poll 14% of respondents are straight women so it's not so rare as to not be worth considering.
Now there isn't the same history of straight women creating exploitative "lesbian" porn etc as there is with straight men, and I think there's less danger of objectifying the women into sex objects etc.
But in the same way that (based on meta I've read) many m/m slashers don't imagine their characters as actual gay men but as two male bodies to be attracted to, and/or stand-ins for themselves, I tend to see women in a fictional lesbian relationship as two female personalities I can imagine myself as(**), and this may give me a different perspective on what makes "good" femslash to lesbian and bisexual women. Having read a bunch of femslash I was struck by certain patterns I didn't really like (lots of finding love and then being torn apart by circumstances for example, I want to see the women overcome canon not be beaten down by it) and had to remind myself that I may dislike them because what I want from these stories is not what the rest of the community is interested in. (Of course there's lots of repeated motifs I don't like in other fanfic, so my straightness may be coincidental :))
There are a whole lot of issues around writing femslash that I haven't really hit yet in my own story but am aware of. I have a lot of lesbian and bisexual female friends and have some mild attraction to women myself, but still don't know what it's like not to be straight (both in terms of attraction and relationships, and all the issues around identity, homophobia etc), and am probably going to get some details wrong. Luckily some of these friends have offered to beta so that'll hopefully help :) Of course all writing requires a certain amount of "imagining yourself in someone else's shoes" but if there's one thing I've learned from all these Cultural Appropriation Debates of DOOM is that not all situations are equivalent and it behooves us who are unfairly privileged by an unbalanced society to consider the effect of our actions.
Anyway, I'm not horribly stymied by these worries but I think it's important I keep this stuff in mind.
So, any other straight girl femslashers want to compare notes on why they like the genre? Anyone else with opinions? I'm just rambling out loud really, so welcome people explaining why I'm All Wrong :)
EDIT: Opinions of random strangers very much welcome! Especially if it's to agree with me, but even if it's not :) I've made a lot of changes based on people's comments, I eventually removed all the "edit" marks because it got confusing.
A note about m/m slash (which I do NOT want dominating the conversation except maybe as it relates to femslash :P): When I have made generalisations about m/m slash these have been things I've heard repeatedly said by m/m slashers in meta. I make no claim to them actually being true in general (what would I know?), but they seemed as good a place to start thinking about femslash as any. A subtext to this post which I guess I should make explicit is that I think any generalisation about "What X genre is" or "Why people write X genre" is going to be wrong for a lot of people, people do similar things for wildly different reasons. The title of this post is a dig at all the "Why We Slash" posts which always end up with lots of slashers saying "That may be true for you but it's not why I slash" etc. Noticing patterns of behaviours and motivations is good and interesting, saying "Everyone does X for Y reason" is bad.
(*)...ok, I admit it, when I'm feeling REALLY down I read Elizabeth/Darcy AUS which put new obstacles on their path which they overcome and then they find true love. But mostly :)
(**)I also see them as actual lesbian or bisexual women and if anything can be thrown out of the story if the issues around this aren't addressed, but not in a "that's me!" way.