Comments | feminist_fandom: Slash Fiction and Human Mating Psychology

pica_scribit in feminist_fandom

Slash Fiction and Human Mating Psychology

Jan 21, 2012 07:05

Below is an article on women and slashfic that one of my friends sent me a while back. It was written several years ago (2004), so some aspects of it may be out of date, and the authors are evolutionary psychologists, so that's the perspective they are coming from. I think the article is pure and unrelenting bullshit, but I thought I would share it ( Read more... )

theme: slash, theme: fanfic

Comments 6

kita_malice January 21 2012, 20:12:21 UTC

Oh, I remember that one from when it made it's round on metafandom back in the day.

aphephobia January 23 2012, 14:21:14 UTC

Same here. A number of pissed off female slash fans then wrote slashfic about the "researchers" (who actually had no credentials to begin with).

I didn't know they actually got the deal. I heard through someone that their publisher dropped it like a hotcake when it was revealed that one of them fraudulently claimed to have gone to an Ivy League university.

korenap January 21 2012, 22:06:05 UTC

The excerpts were enough to convince me to stick to reading fic. Though as a femslash lover and reader in a fandom that is mostly het women writing slash, I find the slim volume of femslash more telling. When they venture into femslash have the characters use an appliance. The only explicit het sex one writer wrote was a het woman ( who strongly subtexted lesbian) strapping one on to have at it with a gay man.

While the slash stories run the gamut from romantic to abusive, consensual to non con, the femslash is almost never romantic. I can only think of one that was and it ended with one of the pairing being killed. And yes, the use of a dildo is linked to power more than pleasure. Woman was texted/subtexted bi or lesbian do not get happy endings. The women are generally depicted as using each other for sex or seeing to some dark desperate situational need.

pica_scribit January 21 2012, 22:16:46 UTC

Femslash isn't really my thing (and good lord, I would love to have a discussion here on the reasons why it doesn't get the webspace that slash and het enjoy), but I have seen some romantic femslash stories in the Harry Potter fandom that did not involve dildos or end in death. Maybe it varies by fandom?

korenap January 22 2012, 00:06:32 UTC

I'm talking about femslash that I know is written by women who usually write slash. The community which I spoke of is het women in writing predominantly het and slash. It's a community where gender and sexuality are known because of meeting at conventions. So I feel comfortable making the statement above ( ... )

aphephobia January 23 2012, 14:27:14 UTC

Um, in my fandom, we often (as often as we get femmeslash, which sadly isn't as much as it could be) get really sweet femmeslash without the weird power issues. And happy endings! And sometimes just hot smutty (and completely consensual) sexytimes. Seriously, Franziska (in my icon)/Adrian (yes, Adrian is female despite the apparently male name) is a fairly popular pairing, and people like the romance there. :)

It's sad: there are a heap of awesome female characters in said fandom, and there are plenty of subtexty moments. ("Intellectually attracted to her"? Yeah, right.)