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

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Because I think subversion is valuable and ought to be celebrated.

[scrollgirl.livejournal.com]

Oh, okay. Guess I missed your point then, sorry! I think subversion is important too, but I suppose my idea of what things are or aren't subversive have changed over time, and that's probably why I don't really agree that equating slash with homosexual relationships means we're saying homosexual relationships are subversive. This might just be me. My relationship with slash as a fandom and a genre is what led to my (better) understanding of homosexuality. And as homosexuality became less subversive/more the norm for me in real life, slash stopped being as subversive/became more the norm. Does that make sense?

[inamac.livejournal.com]

Absolutely! Cagney/Lacey = slash, Tara/Willow = adult content. Which is how we used to label canonical het relationships in my day (70s-80s), and also covered threesomes (Avon/Cally/Blake) and perversions too bizarre to name (Miss Piggy/Vitnery Herriot comes, reluctantly, to mind).

Of course, in writing the foregoing I’ve used the / to indicate a sexual relationship between the pairings - by turning a typographical convention into a spoken one all sorts of cans of worms have been opened. Perhaps we should refer to canonical same-sex partnership romantic fiction as ‘virgule’ relationships?

Or would that be too subversive?

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Miss Piggy/Vitnery Herriot comes, reluctantly, to mind).

You have scarred my frog.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

OMG.

I just realized that this is a Fozzie/Kermit slash icon.

*blinded*

Gratuitous Icon Comment

[castiron.livejournal.com]

Hee! (points to own icon)

(Though I think I'd have to stoutly fortify myself before reading an actual Fozzie/Kermit story. Ernie/Bert is subversive. Kermit/Fozzie borders on scaring the horses.)

Re: Gratuitous Icon Comment

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Man.

I totally did not mean to do that.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

On balance, I think I don't want to go looking for the Miss Piggy/Yoda story I heard mentioned a couple of years back in Cambridge.

[inamac.livejournal.com]

Oh.

Sorry.

(No, nothing is sacred...)

Slinks back into cupboard.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

*g* You've also caused me to flashback to that Herriot story where he's pushing the prolapsed uterus back inside the pig while the armer drops tobacco flakes all over the place....

[scrollgirl.livejournal.com]

Cagney/Lacey = slash, Tara/Willow = adult content. Which is how we used to label canonical het relationships in my day (70s-80s)

So how would you label non-canonical het relationships? Like Mulder/Scully? (Until, of course, they made it canon.)

[fitzcamel.livejournal.com]

Slash, I would presume. From elsewhere on this thread: "Slash is opposed to canon, not to heterosexual."

[scrollgirl.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I know there was a Buffy fic archive that used "conventional" (canon) vs "unconventional" (non-canon) to describe pairings, whether straight or gay. But of course such categories are messy to deal with when you've got an open canon (eg comic books).

I understand truepenny's argument is prescriptive rather than descriptive... I guess I just don't mind too much that "slash" is being used differently these days.

Perhaps instead of using the term "slash" (which I very much doubt could ever be reclaimed to only mean "opposed to canon, not to heterosexual") what we should do is simply list our pairings, or label fic with "m/f, f/f, f/f/m, etc," thus avoiding terms with any particular connotations.

[duskpeterson.livejournal.com]

That's exactly what I do when announcing my original fiction on fan fiction LJs. However, m/m is a bit hard to pronounce. We'd probably have to use an alternative like homoerotic, and then everyone would argue whether homoerotic stories have to be erotic . . . There's really no way to come up with a term that everyone likes.

[nancynomates.livejournal.com]

"Slash is opposed to canon, not to heterosexual."

I'm sorry, that is simply incorrect.

[fitzcamel.livejournal.com]

Care to elaborate?

[rachet.livejournal.com]

(Miss Piggy/Vitnery Herriot comes, reluctantly, to mind).


Ow...I think I hurt the innocent Muppet part of my brain.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

The story of which inamac speaks includes some other really bizarre partnerships, plus something like thirty which were regularly written at the time, plus a great many of the real life then-current British media slash writers... you get the picture.

It was also inamac who once announced she could name an 'impossible' pairing - to wit, Randall and Hopkirk(Deceased) aka My Partner, the Ghost. The response, called Somebody to Love arrived by post within two days...

[lastscorpion.livejournal.com]

Tara/Willow = adult content

Even if it is only equivalent to a G or PG rating? If they're just kissing, say.

[were-lemur.livejournal.com]

Which is exactly what I was going to ask. Because some of my favorite "slash stories" don't even go beyond Significant Looks -- but they're still slashy as all hell. I'd say that narrowing the term slash to refer only to stories in which explicit acts Of Gay Secks take place is no more correct than extending it to canon origfic.

(Sorry, pet peeve of mine.)

[were-lemur.livejournal.com]

Upon reflection, I decided that a second reply to explain precisely why it's a pet peeve of mine might be in order.

I've seen it happen a lot, in ratings -- not just in the Real World, but in fandom, where I (irrationally, I guess) expect better; an act that takes place between two people of the same sex is automatically rated as more "adult" than the same act taking place between two people of the same sex. So a kiss that would be PG-rated between Willow and OZ would automatically rate at least a PG-13 if it was taking place between Willow and Tara.

Whenever I see slash conflated with "gay sex" (as opposed to the non-canonical relationship) I see it as just a continuation of this trend wherein same-sex relationships can only be seen as adult content. And yeah, that's the way the Real World sees it and there's not much I can do about it -- but here in fandom, I can at least call people on that assumption.