Let's talk about sex.

[truepenny]

ETA: since 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.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Might be useful to ask someone who labels a m/m relationship in a piece of fiction as slash why they perceive it is so. At least for some older fans, slash denotes not just m/m, but a type of story, in which the emotional component takes priority in the story. The story might even be about the emotional component in the relationship, and the action (such as hurt comfort) arranged to keep the reader's attention squarely on it, adumbrating all other story aspects.

A story in which a pair (m/m, f/f) are romantically involved but that is just a data point in a work whose main thrust is elsewhere won't "read slashy" by that definition. So one could say that Billy Budd by Herman Melville "reads slashy" because there is a strong focus on the emotional state of the characters, the physical descriptions keep the readerly eye squarely on those emotional tensions, and not on the ship or the sea or even the event that prompts the captain's action. An even stronger example might be Horace Vachell's The Hill, which is specifically about the emotional relationships of the boys, with no (overt) reference to sex. I've seen it referred to as the slashiest school story ever written. Contrast that to Jo Walton's recent book Farthing which includes a major m/m pair, and some f/f relationships, but the story is about murder, and about serious political threat, not about the emotions of the pairs. I have seen this aspect discussed, but have not seen anyone label it slashy.

Another thought: there are plenty of stories with gay pairs that are not "about" the emotions of gay sex in gay literature, but my strong wish is that the label "gay literature" be dropped and these works be regarded as and discussed as literature. With more characters partnering away from the old standard one m/one f popping up in all genres, I'm hoping that that label vanishes as useless.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Tom Brown and Arthur in Tom Brown's Schooldays - poss not quite as slashy? but see EF Benson's David Blaise for sheer swooniness.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Benson has "code" all over the David books, indeed.

I dunno about Tom and Arthur--I see Hughes idealizing friendship in that one; but of course that line between the emotional attachment and a sexual one could be impossible to draw, there was so much smoke being blown over the subject in print.

[marith.livejournal.com]

So one could say that Billy Budd by Herman Melville "reads slashy" because there is a strong focus on the emotional state of the characters, the physical descriptions keep the readerly eye squarely on those emotional tensions, and not on the ship or the sea or even the event that prompts the captain's action.

Yes! That's what I wanted to say; thank you for expressing it well. I believe that is the sense of the word that the person originally reviewing Carnival was using, too.

If "slash" is to be reclaimed as a word that means only subversive and/or noncanon relationships, then perhaps we need another word for this other quality. A story that focuses strongly on the emotions and the emotional relationships between the characters, rather than on the 'outside' plot they're moving through, is...what?

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

We call it a love story, or a story with a strong internal arc, or a character-driven story. *g*

It's also perfectly possible to have a strong internal arc *and* a strong external arc.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I'm with Bear. Character-driven.

It's how I describe everything I write, and has nothing to do with sex. Sex can be part of it, but "character-driven" is the big circle on the Venn diagram.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

But you can have things described as character-driven where it isn't all about the angst and the love. Like your books, for instance.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Well, yanno, I don't think my book is all about the angst and the love....

(yeah, I'm all about me. *g* I've personalized. Forgive me. :-P)

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Well, there's 'romance'--or rather Romance. The term became a marketing label specifically to denote books whose main thrust was an emotional relationship that may or may not include sex, ending with partnership. Of course the rest of the definition rigidly adhereed to het, marriage, and for many years the heroine had to be a virgin until she got the ring on her finger. (This marked her off from the Other Woman, whose evile wiles included promiscuity.) That stupidity got dumped in the eighties--maybe it's time for the het/marriage part to get dumped too. As for Romance novels as a category, the women over at Smart Bithces (http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/weblog/index/) have some interesting stuff to say.

[marith.livejournal.com]

Yeeees, but... you wouldn't call Billy Budd a romance, would you? and from the sound of it probably not The Hill either. Character-driven, certainly. (Would it be fair to say that Billy Budd may be romance in the same sense that The Three Musketeers is, but one is character-driven and the other plot-driven?) I still think there's a more specific thing people are trying to point to with the "slashy" term, even if it's just a matter of finding stories that are likely to appeal to their kink. And whatever it is, Melusine and The Virtu have it in spades. I haven't read Carnival, so can't express an opinion there. Perhaps now I should sit down and reflect about what other stories and relationships, both straight and gay, seem to me to have that quality, and then look for similarities. Or, um, do actual work. That might be good. *whistles*

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

LOL! Billy Budd isn't a romance because in effect it's a Marty Sue tragedy--everybody is obsessed with Billy, they all talk about him, eithe rpro or con, everything on board seems to center around him, until his apotheosis--er, I mean, tragic death. But The Hill is definitely a romance--a tragic one, but a romance. Everything is all about the two boys' relationship. There's even a pretty, girlish young lord love object as third wheel, firmly set aside for the right and true relationship...until Our Hero in the very past pages chooses Manly Duty over love.

[marith.livejournal.com]

*frowns* There were paragraph breaks in my last comment. Really there were. LJ, I do not love some of your innovations.

[watergarden.livejournal.com]

Right. There's this definition of slashy (which seems to be at use in our social circle but perhaps no where else upon this green earth) which is an aesthetic definition -- I said genre definition before, but that was wrong. Anyway, there's some aesthetic quality that we identify as being present in some books & not in others, which is *not* present in every romance novel, or every character-driven novel, or every novel with a strong internal arc. This aesthetic quality seems most often found when women write about male/male relationships, but it isn't always there, and can be found in lots of other places. truepenny's novels have it, and so does Laura Agiri's The God in Flight, and so do many Mary Renault novels (Promise of Love has it in spades). And I would even go so far as to say that the C. S. Friedman novel about the two people who are obsessed with destroying one another (In Conquest Born) has this quality, despite the people being opposite-gender and it not being remotely a romance.

As I've been writing this, I remembered the mailing list I was on many years ago (1999?) called slashy-pronovels, the focus of which was to recommend novels that had this particular aesthetic. I think that's where I acquired this use of the words 'slash' and 'slashy'.

Anyway, this is clearly not how truepenny et al are using the term.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

"Slashy," as an adjective signifying something has qualities of slash, I got no problem with.

Saying something is, in some respects, like slash, is not the same as saying it is slash.

Consider, as a comparison, the difference between "child" and "childlike."

Whos' afraid of Virinia Woolf?

[muneraven.livejournal.com]

" A story that focuses strongly on the emotions and the emotional relationships between the characters, rather than on the 'outside' plot they're moving through, is...what?"

Er. . . it's literature. No really, it is.

This sort of emphasis on the interior life of characters only seems unusual because it is cropping up in genre fiction. The thing is that really well-read and smart writers are invading various genres and they aren't afraid to bring the good tools from the literary toolbox along with them.

Re: Whos' afraid of Virinia Woolf?

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

God, I love you.

Re: Whos' afraid of Virinia Woolf?

[marith.livejournal.com]

That's not a definition, though. There is literature that focuses strongly on the inner life of the characters, and literature that is all about the plot and swoops the characters along for the ride, and everything in between.

And yes, talented and well-read writers with all kinds of tools are now writing in all genres, and it's delicious and leads to the cross-breeding and exploding of literary conventions. And, inevitably, to new definitions and conventions and arguments about them. :)

Re: Whos' afraid of Virinia Woolf?

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

" A story that focuses strongly on the emotions and the emotional relationships between the characters, rather than on the 'outside' plot they're moving through, is...what?"

Er. . . it's literature. No really, it is.

If you're good and lucky, yes. It can as easily tend in the direction of melodramatic angstmuffinery; Anne Rice appears to think she's focusing strongly on emotions and emotionnal relationships between her characters, and I'd hate to think that qualifies her work as "literature".

I'd be less twitchy about this subject if there were many characters in literature who felt a value of emotionally wired that was actually identifiable to me as like my own emotional wiring; Rosie Gann in Cakes and Ale is the only example to come to mind.

[seajules]

If "slash" is to be reclaimed as a word that means only subversive and/or noncanon relationships, then perhaps we need another word for this other quality.

Err, perhaps no such "reclaiming" should take place by outsiders to the slash community while the term is still in viable use by those within the community. This is, I think, part of the problem in the first place; reviewers who aren't part of the slash community have applied the term to a book it may or may not actually fit, but their usage seems suspect. So the usage is protested, but the definitions of slash I'm seeing put forward by pro authors outside the community don't actually fit the definitions of slash I've seen in practice within the community, and the fans who are asserting that the book is slash, or might be slash, are using the practical definitions.

More, while a lot is being said about the subversiveness of the genre, and how that reflects on the homoerotic nature of the relationships therein, what's always struck me as the most subversive aspect of the genre is how it explicates female desires. And possibly one reason some fans are protesting with such fervor that the book in question is slash is that each pro piece that not only allows for the slash aesthetic, but seems to make deliberate use of it, is another step toward legitimization (probably not a word) of open discussion of, and catering to, female desire as a general concept.

All that said, I haven't read the book, nor the reviews, so I don't know which side I'd come down on. Just that slash hardly needs to be "reclaimed," and the attempt to do so will only lead to more confusion.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think the problem there is, among other things, if you start applying the word "slash" willy nilly to everything in sight that might have teh gay on it, you are pretty much removing the element of slash-as-crystallization-of-female-desire. As if with spot remover.

[seajules]

Heh. There's definitely that aspect too, which I touched on in another comment, though in a different direction. That is, are the reviewers calling it slash because it's a female author writing m/m, and therefore she must be writing specifically to the slash sensibility? In which case.... Well, I saw you mention somewhere you had the feeling of being called "lady authoress," and if that was the reasoning behind calling the book slash, then I'd say your feeling was spot-on.

I'll be honest. I'm all for the mainstreaming of the expression of female desire as Okay, and I get the concern I've seen expressed that aspects of this discussion might run counter to that wish. However, I agree that it's not useful to take the term out of context and apply it as short-hand for, "There is an homosexual relationship portrayed in this source, full stop." There are several reasons (not all of them applicable for every slasher, as evidenced in this discussion) that the term "slash" differs from "homoerotica" and "gay fiction." My point has been, the noncanonical aspect is not the reason for all of us, but that doesn't mean we don't still regard slash as a different beast from homoerotica or gay fiction, otherwise we wouldn't continue to use the term in a specialized way.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

yes, yes, yes.

[daisakura.livejournal.com]

That's a really interesting perspective!

I must say that whenever I read a book with a male/male relationship in it I (and my friends) refer to it as 'canon slash' at times. I think it's just because we're so used to talking about slash fanfiction that 'slash' is a term we're more accustomed used to using.

I also use 'slash' to refer to male/male relationships in books that are only one-sided. E.g. Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy in which one male loved the other but the other male was straight. So for them actually to be in a relationship you have to grasp at straws, invent sub-text etc.

Oh, and I think you raised a really great point in your 'other thought' by the way. I thoroughly agree!

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I like that distinction between canon and slash--hadn't thought about that aspect. I've tended to look at slash as being the writerly approach, not the actual relationships, if that makes any sense.