fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #456 ]

⌈ Secret Post #456 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 18 pages, 439 secrets from Secret Submission Post #066.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 2 3 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 - too big ], [ 1 2 3 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There are a variety of things. Much of it leads back to insecurity, regardless of age, the preconception that men are, by default, more interesting than women, and the fact that, whether we realize it or not, most women are taught to view other women as competition. We're also taught that female characters have to "prove" themselves, and should be viewed in the context of their men.

Most slash is extremely gender typecast, and pure fantasy, both canon and fanon. The males are cast into very specific male/female roles(you'll note that most slashers are EXTREMELY specific about the seme/uke roles), but by changing the actual GENDER of one character, you still have the typical romantic fantasy, without having to actually deal with the presence of a female.

I'm not interested in slash myself(I'm pretty canon centric and usually gen first, and if something DOES strike my fancy, it's usually het)...most of it bores me, and if I'm going to read typical male/female alpha/beta romance stuff, which most slash is, I might as well just read about a male and a female in the first place. I've been trying to figure it out myself since my first fandom, though, and as near as I can tell, it just boils down to a way to avoid something(female characters, het romance, female power and control, etc.) that you aren't comfortable with, for one reason or another. Most of it isn't deliberate, but it is there.

There are people who like both slash and het, and slashers who genuinely like female characters as much as male, and many who are responding to actual coding, but with no intention of denying the canon het(the coding, though, gets used as an excuse a lot more than it's actually there) but in my experience, they're the minority of slash fans, not the majority.

Edited 2008-04-05 22:45 (UTC)

On the one hand, I do agree with your first paragraph. However, I don't think any of those things are wrong. I don't self-identify as female(I prefer to think of myself as genderless) and find it very hard to identify with female characters unless they have taken on the mannerisms or appearance of men, so I'm probably not the best person to talk to about that.

Your second paragraph, though, is at best an enormous generalization of slash fans and what the prefer. Seme/uke roles, such as they are, are generally prevalent in anime fandom far more than other fandoms, and are not followed by most good writers. There may also be people out there who are interested in exploring the various degrees of masculinity/femininity that men can or cannot express, but I will agree that at times people shoehorn characters into a role.(Admittedly I maintain that those roles are not actually the molding of a homosexual relationship into a pseudo-heterosexual one, but instead represent a relationship with a great power imbalance, which is expressed via the appearance and behavior of the characters.)

Most slash is not "typical male/female alpha/beta romance stuff", as you put it. There has been a great trend toward "men who act like men" and other such things. Overall, with good writers character integrity is more important than anything else. Therefore, instances where the characters are described in this supposed male/female binary are the result of bad writing, unless the original characters act in such ways.

There are other things I could say, but in all honesty I cannot continue without coming off as highly condescending or mocking. In short: Please do more research before commenting on a particular subset of people.

I didn't say that was wrong(first paragraph), simply that that's where most seems to come from. And as I said "most." Not all. I am very well aware that there are good slashwriters, and people who don't do gender typecasting. However, the majority of the slashfic you will find online, and the majority of the vocal slashfans, do typecast, at least partly because most of the vocal and most prolific ones are young. It also applies to the slash in most fandoms I've encountered, not just anime and manga(though I suspect that that is the dominant fandom of the person who posted the secret) the anime and manga fandom is just a little...louder. I'm well aware that the non-typecast fic is catching on, but...really, it's nowhere near catching up with the rest. The gap is wider in anime and manga because there's more of an attraction for younger fans(who, in theory, become older and wiser fans in time) but it's present in every fandom I've ever encounter. (Well...maybe not Avatar.)

1st paragraph:

nope. 2 guys are better than one. i see enough naked women on tv and need a break. very simple.

[ SECRET POST #456 ]

#59

Re: #59

Re: #59

Re: #59