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Let's talk about sex.
ETA: since ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
metafandom has apparently linked to this post sans context, let me state explicitly that I'm talking about the MISLABELING of original fiction featuring a same-sex relationship--as for example, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
matociquala's Carnival--as slash in reviews and commentary by people who are not slash writers themselves. I'm not trying to talk about what slash writers choose to do within their fandoms and communities. Not a slasher. Don't play one on TV. I'm arguing that slash, as a term, belongs to fanfiction, and should not be applied to works that are not fanfiction. My reasons for feeling as I do, explained in the following post, stem partly from my own career as a pro writer whose work features a lot of same-sex relationships, and partly from my appreciation, as a genre theorist, of the intertextual subversion inherent in what slash does.
The subtext, as Giles says to Buffy in "Ted," is rapidly becoming text.
hth
More specifically, let's talk about slash and why it is offensive and heteronormatizing to equate it with homosexual relationships.
The subversion/containment model (proposed by Foucault and applied by a bunch of New Historicist critics in the 1980s) has buried somewhere in the unexamined assumptions of its premise the notion that somehow subversion is bad. Or nonsustainable. Conservation of energy. A society tends to conserve the status quo.
This may be descriptively true (she says, looking dourly at her own society), but prescriptively, it sucks major moose cock, because it assumes that subversion exists to be contained. Hence Natalie Zemon Davis's elaboration of Foucault with her "pressure-valve" idea. (Which, btw, I think is incredibly helpful for understanding extremely conservative societies--like I said, descriptively the idea can be very helpful.)
Slash is subversion.
(For those of you who are still wondering what on earth I'm talking about, slash is a kind of fanfiction which posits a romantic/sexual relationship between two characters who in canon have no such thing. You might also describe it as an underground movement. It's named for the labelling convention that marks it; the first slash was K/S: Kirk-slash-Spock.)
Slash says, "These two canonically romantically-uninvolved characters have a close, intense, and obviously loving relationship. Our society--as inscribed on these characters by censorship and other kinds of normatizing pressure--does not allow that relationship to be developed in a sexual way. Let's transgress the taboo."
Now, obviously, that transgression can be done mindfully or otherwise, but the key component to slash is the overt sexualization of a non-sexual, or only subtextually sexual, relationship.
That relationship is, 9 times out of 10, between two men. Because, 9 times out of 10, the most intense and interesting relationship in any given canon is--wait for it--between two men. (And that has to do with a whole bunch of other factors and influences including, you know, four or five millennia worth of patriarchy.)
Now, why am I so adamant that slash is not the same as homosexual relationships?
Because I insist that homosexual relationships ought not to be categorized as subversive.
(Okay, yes, leftist liberal commie bitch, that would be me. Please don't tell me you're surprised.)
Labelling a homosexual relationship in a work of fiction as slash is wrong for a couple of reasons. One is that it's eliding the line between a work of fiction and commentary ON that work of fiction. I think it's inherent to slash that it is subverting and deconstructing and undercutting a canon text's assumptions about sexuality and love (using "text" here in a broad and metaphorical sense, rather than the literal one of words-printed-on-a-page). Slash is a game played with canon, and part of its value is in the tension it both creates and illuminates between canon text and subtext.
The other reason that it's wrong to label homosexual relationships, whether in or out of fiction, as slash is that it is reinscribing heteronormativity on our society and our discourse. It's a syllogism. Slash is gay sex. Slash is subversive. Therefore, gay sex is subversive. The subversion/containment model is a BOX, and as long as we keep putting homosexual relationships in that box, we are reinforcing the idea that heterosexuality is the standard by which all other sexualities will and ought to be judged. The same idea that is powering the (often hysterical) attempts to define marriage in such a way that gay and lesbian people cannot have it. Because their committed monogamous relationships are being judged as subversive.
And that's so horribly wrong that it's eaten all my words.
metafandom has apparently linked to this post sans context, let me state explicitly that I'm talking about the MISLABELING of original fiction featuring a same-sex relationship--as for example, matociquala's Carnival--as slash in reviews and commentary by people who are not slash writers themselves. I'm not trying to talk about what slash writers choose to do within their fandoms and communities. Not a slasher. Don't play one on TV. I'm arguing that slash, as a term, belongs to fanfiction, and should not be applied to works that are not fanfiction. My reasons for feeling as I do, explained in the following post, stem partly from my own career as a pro writer whose work features a lot of same-sex relationships, and partly from my appreciation, as a genre theorist, of the intertextual subversion inherent in what slash does.The subtext, as Giles says to Buffy in "Ted," is rapidly becoming text.
hth
More specifically, let's talk about slash and why it is offensive and heteronormatizing to equate it with homosexual relationships.
The subversion/containment model (proposed by Foucault and applied by a bunch of New Historicist critics in the 1980s) has buried somewhere in the unexamined assumptions of its premise the notion that somehow subversion is bad. Or nonsustainable. Conservation of energy. A society tends to conserve the status quo.
This may be descriptively true (she says, looking dourly at her own society), but prescriptively, it sucks major moose cock, because it assumes that subversion exists to be contained. Hence Natalie Zemon Davis's elaboration of Foucault with her "pressure-valve" idea. (Which, btw, I think is incredibly helpful for understanding extremely conservative societies--like I said, descriptively the idea can be very helpful.)
Slash is subversion.
(For those of you who are still wondering what on earth I'm talking about, slash is a kind of fanfiction which posits a romantic/sexual relationship between two characters who in canon have no such thing. You might also describe it as an underground movement. It's named for the labelling convention that marks it; the first slash was K/S: Kirk-slash-Spock.)
Slash says, "These two canonically romantically-uninvolved characters have a close, intense, and obviously loving relationship. Our society--as inscribed on these characters by censorship and other kinds of normatizing pressure--does not allow that relationship to be developed in a sexual way. Let's transgress the taboo."
Now, obviously, that transgression can be done mindfully or otherwise, but the key component to slash is the overt sexualization of a non-sexual, or only subtextually sexual, relationship.
That relationship is, 9 times out of 10, between two men. Because, 9 times out of 10, the most intense and interesting relationship in any given canon is--wait for it--between two men. (And that has to do with a whole bunch of other factors and influences including, you know, four or five millennia worth of patriarchy.)
Now, why am I so adamant that slash is not the same as homosexual relationships?
Because I insist that homosexual relationships ought not to be categorized as subversive.
(Okay, yes, leftist liberal commie bitch, that would be me. Please don't tell me you're surprised.)
Labelling a homosexual relationship in a work of fiction as slash is wrong for a couple of reasons. One is that it's eliding the line between a work of fiction and commentary ON that work of fiction. I think it's inherent to slash that it is subverting and deconstructing and undercutting a canon text's assumptions about sexuality and love (using "text" here in a broad and metaphorical sense, rather than the literal one of words-printed-on-a-page). Slash is a game played with canon, and part of its value is in the tension it both creates and illuminates between canon text and subtext.
The other reason that it's wrong to label homosexual relationships, whether in or out of fiction, as slash is that it is reinscribing heteronormativity on our society and our discourse. It's a syllogism. Slash is gay sex. Slash is subversive. Therefore, gay sex is subversive. The subversion/containment model is a BOX, and as long as we keep putting homosexual relationships in that box, we are reinforcing the idea that heterosexuality is the standard by which all other sexualities will and ought to be judged. The same idea that is powering the (often hysterical) attempts to define marriage in such a way that gay and lesbian people cannot have it. Because their committed monogamous relationships are being judged as subversive.
And that's so horribly wrong that it's eaten all my words.
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Where I disagree, at least in part, is in the notion that slash is subversive. The TV producers would probably like to think so. Some slash writers and readers probably think so. But to others, slash is a natural extrapolation of what we see on the screen - implications of sexual attraction or affection between characters. Any notion of 'subversion' is irrelevant at best; beside the point. And often, slash is written about characters who are canonically lovers: cf. Brokeback Mountain, Queer as Folk (both versions), Torchwood, Oz, and so on - a growing number. I think the 'subversion' aspect of slash is an accident of sociology, not a raison d'etre; and it's more noticeable to those outside the actual slash community, while within the slash community, it seems so normal that we tend to forget (or dismiss) that it isn't part of the original text.
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This is a definitional problem. You will note that
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Right, and it's basically an unresolved/continuing one.
There came a moment, about 7 years ago, when the slash community as a whole started having to ask, "Wait, if it's canon, is it still slash?" Because, that had never happened before, and then it started happening. People write fanfiction about canon gay couples, and they write these stories in the exact same style that they write stories of same-sex characters who are neither canonically gay nor together. My chief memory of the question/debate seven years ago was that the general outcome turned up, "I have no idea what to call it and nobody has come up with a catchy name. Mostly, it will still be called slash." So I can see how the waters get muddy, although as a classification nerd I decry it.
In the early years of the X-Files fandom, a discussion did not occur over whether writing the two main characters into a couple was slash. I'm sorry the conversation didn't happen, because during those early years I think the case could have been made, despite the fact that the two characters were of different sexes. If that case had been made successfully, then slash would be much more firmly defined as "canon-transgressive coupling-off of the uncoupled" and the question of same/different sex would be a separate one. (See above.)
Since that didn't happen, slash remains, operationally, a really unfortunately large tent. I prefer the narrower definition I've typed above, but I don't know any slashers who actually use it.
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Slash is opposed to canon, not to heterosexual.
I realize that this isn't everyone's definition, and I'm probably going to get righteously flamed for arguing that not all m/m fanfiction should call itself slash, but I think the concept of slash is useful and valuable precisely BECAUSE it isn't synonymous with gay romance/erotica.
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Catchy names = everybody wins!
Lack of catchy names = lumpy, amorphous categories and bimonthy arguments about "Wait, what's slash?" and general classificatory sorrow.
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I think you've got it.
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briberya test-case mega-popular story, some serious hobbyhorsing by in-fandom voices, possibly a flamewar over somebody's OTP, and definitely recourse to that great circular caucus in the sky, Metafandom.It might actually be easier to just invent a new word to mean "canon-transgressive coupling."
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It could go in the warnings.
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In the Roswell fandom, the accepted term for any non-canon romantic/sexual pairing (het or non-het) was 'unconventional' which was shortened to UC. Romantic/sexual canon pairings were 'conventional'.
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(Here via
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Furthermore, after seeing discussion on both sides of this debate yesterday, I suspect there's more than a little working at cross-purposes here. An author doesn't wish her work to be labelled slash because she's stated she feels it's Othering. Fans of the work wish to label it slash because they feel it's encompassing, and the denial of the label is, once more, Othering us. "Lady authoress" on the one side, "unnatural women" on the other. None of the fans mean to insult the author or the work with the label (I can't speak for the reviewers using the label, and it's possible they're using it with an incomplete understanding what it actually means), rather it's a way of recommending the work to each other as being inclusive of their (our) viewpoint (I've hesitated to use "our," because I haven't read the work, so I don't know if I'd consider it slash).
And I'll note here that one reason it's not considered Othering by fans to label a work slash is because there's a separate fannish label for the same story type featuring an opposite-sex relationship: het.
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By calling all same-sex relationships in fiction "slash," we're allowing an implicit assumption that all same-sex relationships are fictional, that fiction stands in the same relationship to its "canon" '(i.e., real life) that slash fanfiction stands in relationship to canon fiction. And that therefore same-sex relationships in fiction have no "canonical" validity.
I know that's not the intent of slash fans, but I'm suspicious and worried that reviewers using the word sloppily may be encouraging that kind of conflatory doublethink.
Ignore my previous comments!
Oooooh. I finally get what you're talking about! Yes, I agree. Joss Whedon didn't write a SLAHS relationship between Willow and Tara, he wrote a lesbian relationship. What we call it in fanfic should not, imho, have anything to do with what he did.
Re: Ignore my previous comments!
Re: Ignore my previous comments!
By calling all same-sex relationships in fiction "slash," we're allowing an implicit assumption that all same-sex relationships are fictional
I can't agree with this. I realise we can't always control doublethink, but IMHO the opposite is happening, and that the more gay relationships are being written about in canon, the more slash is "proved" as equal to any subtextual het relationship that may or may not become canon. Pairing A/B becomes just as likely as Pairing A/C to happen, and we approach the text as such.
Huh?
Re: Huh?
Re: Ignore my previous comments!
Does it need a more specific label? What is it being distinguished from?
Sexual behavior outside of canon is being defined here as "slash", which suits me well enough (I don't read either much at all, so I probably don't really get a vote, but I'm a categories freak).
The obvious other category is stories that take some *non-sexual* aspect of the characters wildly outside canon. One way this happens, of course, is "bad writing". Does it happen deliberately and successfully often enough to need its own label? It could be called -slash; if it's about characters with major food issues, and that's the piece you're taking wildly outside canon, then it could be food-slash. But maybe there isn't enough of it to need a label.
Re: Ignore my previous comments!
Heh. Yeah, we can go overboard labelling our fic, it's true. We like our categories, subcategories, genres, subgenres, pairing labels, warnings, etc. But I appreciate that the library keeps the teen angst on one bookshelf and murder mysteries on another, so I don't have to wade through one to get to the other.
Sexual behavior outside of canon is being defined here as "slash", which suits me well enough
When you're talking about source material produced in serial form, what is "outside of canon" can change from week to week. Categories need to be somewhat static, and so we have to choose the element that doesn't change (much), which is gender. A male character is most likely going to stay a male (unless we're talking genderbender) whereas who he's going to be paired off with may change from episode to episode, from Book 1 to Book 7.
When you're dealing with something as massive as fandom, you can't rely on "canonical nooky" to describe Pairing A/B -- instead you say Pairing A/B is "slash" or "het" whether or not it's canon (because it could become canon next year, or it was canon but was ret-conned, or there's controversy whether it's canon or not, etc).
There are definitely a lot of flaws in our system, but for the most part it works and is sufficient for our needs. And as
One way this happens, of course, is "bad writing". Does it happen deliberately and successfully often enough to need its own label?
This label already exists, believe it or not! It's called badfic. There's unintentional badfic, which can be cringe-inducing or a guilty pleasure, and intentional badfic, which when done well can be fantastic.
Re: Ignore my previous comments!
Re: Ignore my previous comments!
Re: Ignore my previous comments!
And now I'll stop spamming True Penny's journal.
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I do get your concern, though, and I do feel the reviewers should be called on their usage. While there are a number of definitions at work in the fannish community, there are some baselines, and I'm not sure the reviewers are using the term with awareness of that fact. I don't want to read the reviews and spoil myself for the book, so I've probably participated in this discussion about as far as I can. Thank you for tolerating me.
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By calling all same-sex relationships in fiction "slash," we're allowing an implicit assumption that all same-sex relationships are fictional,
You are aware that all same-sex relationships in fiction are fictional, right?
I think it's useful to use fandom labels specifically to describe fandom, but a lot of non-fannish fiction is still intertextual in a way that resembles fanfic: Brokeback Mountain is intertextual to the cowboy genre, DEBS to the spy genre, But I'm a Cheerleader to the cheerleader stereotype, and to use a het example, The Time-Traveler's Wife to superheroes and/or scifi. They're even subverting the "text" in the way you argue in your original post. (Which, as I've stated elsewhere, slash definitely doesn't have to do.) I wouldn't necessarily use "slash" about these stories (though I did use "het" right there), but I don't think it's inherently offensive any more than calling an original character a "Mary Sue" is offensive. (Well, it kind of is to the author. Still.)
Once a work of fiction is written, it will be compared to other works of fictions, and seen in a fictional context. Even if you write a roman a clef, it will only be "real" to you; to everyone else it will be fiction. To assume that slash is such a different creature from other gay-centric fiction that no comparison can be made strikes me as rather strange.
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Also, while I realize that you disagree with me passionately, and I don't deny your right to do so, kindly refrain from patronizing me.
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Yes, but they're overlapping, in the sense that in both cases, "canon" assumes something besides real life. I do think "Brokeback Mountain is slashing the cowboy myth" is a perfectly valid statement if used in a context where people know what slash means. (It's not even all that different from what non-fannish reviewers are saying, using different words.)
Also, while I realize that you disagree with me passionately, and I don't deny your right to do so, kindly refrain from patronizing me.
You're right, I was unnecessarily snarky. There used to be a time when I could participate in online discussions without taking things to heart, but somehow it seems I can't, lately. I'm sorry.
OTOH, even back then I was a bit of a bitch, so maybe the difference is just that now I sometimes feel guilty about it.
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Jesus Christ, yes. That's where this post rubs me the wrong way. I don't go out there saying "ooh, I'm gonna be edgy and write myself some slash."
Sure, one can use the definition that slash=non-canon, but in that case Modesty/Willie is slash and the whole slash/het/gen breakdown (which is actually understandable 95% of the time) is pointless and wrong. I'm not wild about this idea.
The way I see it, I write fanfic. Sometimes that fanfic involved non-canon pairings. Sometimes it involves same-sex pairings. The fact that I use the term "slash" for the second category rather than the first doesn't in any way mean I want to "fictionalize" real same-sex relationships, any way than my use of the word "het" means I want to fictionalize real opposite-sex relationships. And I'm really, really not keen on the idea of trying to determine people's views on sexual politics by their use of one frickin' word.
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Basically, I think the word "slash" works best in the fandom world where it lives (but hell, if it wants to migrate, I'm not going to oppose it on principle), while the word "slashy" is more aimed at source material, and that trying to impose some sort of line in the sand where "slashy" stops and "homoerotic" begins is bound to fail.