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caras_galadhon gives us more news about the on-going flayme werre between Chaucer and Gower, and how Lego minifigurs and the SIMS have been used to support and represent both by loyal followers!Click here and have a giggle!
Mar. 31st, 2006
caras_galadhon gives us more news about the on-going flayme werre between Chaucer and Gower, and how Lego minifigurs and the SIMS have been used to support and represent both by loyal followers!Click here and have a giggle!
I've read and followed the various entries and discussions about 'slash being/not being gay' and I feel like giving my opinion, having thought about it for a long while now. *
I support the notion that slash is not gay, but I'd like to clarify that slash can be gay, and gay can be slash. They are not simply synonims of each other - I believe that the two terms still do and should retain their specific identity.
I think that the problem lies in the crossing of the fluidity of language and the historical and social contest both within and outside fandom. When slash was truly an underground movement and not as openly 'out' there (and we could trace here a parallel between the coming out of 'gay' and the coming out of 'slash', which however doesn't make them the same, but similar), it was in a social/historical context of gay-awareness; there is no pointing at a specific year, but a more general decade (end of 60s, beginning of 70s).
However, how many slash fans, writers, readers were actively, politically involved in gay movements? Some certainly were. Some were not. A few stories in different fandoms (though I personally can only mention Nina Boal's and Mfae Glasgow' s somewhat later stories in Pros) certainly dealt with the slash between the characters in a politically involved way, mentioning AIDS and politically active movements and associations of the times.
As far as I can see/have read, earlier slash stories dealt with gay issues mostly in the WANGWJLEO way (we are not gay we just love each other). Homophobia - probably just as much as mysogeny if we want to expand there - was/is very much entwined with these fictions, wheter as from within the author's pov or within the characters' pov.
So, there's social/historical context on one side.
On the other side, there's the CANON context. For shows like Starsky & Hutch or The Professionals it makes sense that being gay could be a problem/issue that the protagonists might want to consider and deal with. With shows like the Star Trek franchise, how much is it feasible that being gay, bi or anything in between and around that should be an issue in the series? Yes, homosexuals in need (and rightly so) of representation have lamented the practically total absence of gay characters in the series, but their lamentation comes from the necessity of being represented in their contemporary historical/social setting. It makes sense for the ST series, being set in a far away future, that the issue of homosexuality should be not an issue anymore, and it's the short-sight of producers in our contemporary setting that the situation has not been addressed.
And that's the historical/social context of the series CANON on the other side.
Now, I've read in several entries that fans agree that if there's m/m - f/f sex, hell that's GAY. Uhm. Yes. And NO. Meaning...those are the terms, the labels that we are used to deploy in order to identify this or that type of sex acts. Terminology and labels based on heteronormativity that permeates fully the language we have, both in academia and fandom and society in general.
I personally rather identify GAY with a political agenda that means to undermine and deconstruct the heteronormativity we're surrounded and inbued with, and use the term QUEER to identify Slash with, instead of gay. I see slash as fluid, a relational situation between characters explored in fanfiction, motivated by physical attraction just as much temperamental opposition, against social mores that dictate, or try to, whom we should be attracted to and how to deploy our own sexual desires and fantasies as women.
*For a recap of the discussion, see![[livejournal.com profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
metafandom : here and here. I think this is the post most of the entries in metafandom referred to/took issues with.
ETA: to specify: I'm using 'QUEER' as in queer studies, ie. academikese
I support the notion that slash is not gay, but I'd like to clarify that slash can be gay, and gay can be slash. They are not simply synonims of each other - I believe that the two terms still do and should retain their specific identity.
I think that the problem lies in the crossing of the fluidity of language and the historical and social contest both within and outside fandom. When slash was truly an underground movement and not as openly 'out' there (and we could trace here a parallel between the coming out of 'gay' and the coming out of 'slash', which however doesn't make them the same, but similar), it was in a social/historical context of gay-awareness; there is no pointing at a specific year, but a more general decade (end of 60s, beginning of 70s).
However, how many slash fans, writers, readers were actively, politically involved in gay movements? Some certainly were. Some were not. A few stories in different fandoms (though I personally can only mention Nina Boal's and Mfae Glasgow' s somewhat later stories in Pros) certainly dealt with the slash between the characters in a politically involved way, mentioning AIDS and politically active movements and associations of the times.
As far as I can see/have read, earlier slash stories dealt with gay issues mostly in the WANGWJLEO way (we are not gay we just love each other). Homophobia - probably just as much as mysogeny if we want to expand there - was/is very much entwined with these fictions, wheter as from within the author's pov or within the characters' pov.
So, there's social/historical context on one side.
On the other side, there's the CANON context. For shows like Starsky & Hutch or The Professionals it makes sense that being gay could be a problem/issue that the protagonists might want to consider and deal with. With shows like the Star Trek franchise, how much is it feasible that being gay, bi or anything in between and around that should be an issue in the series? Yes, homosexuals in need (and rightly so) of representation have lamented the practically total absence of gay characters in the series, but their lamentation comes from the necessity of being represented in their contemporary historical/social setting. It makes sense for the ST series, being set in a far away future, that the issue of homosexuality should be not an issue anymore, and it's the short-sight of producers in our contemporary setting that the situation has not been addressed.
And that's the historical/social context of the series CANON on the other side.
Now, I've read in several entries that fans agree that if there's m/m - f/f sex, hell that's GAY. Uhm. Yes. And NO. Meaning...those are the terms, the labels that we are used to deploy in order to identify this or that type of sex acts. Terminology and labels based on heteronormativity that permeates fully the language we have, both in academia and fandom and society in general.
I personally rather identify GAY with a political agenda that means to undermine and deconstruct the heteronormativity we're surrounded and inbued with, and use the term QUEER to identify Slash with, instead of gay. I see slash as fluid, a relational situation between characters explored in fanfiction, motivated by physical attraction just as much temperamental opposition, against social mores that dictate, or try to, whom we should be attracted to and how to deploy our own sexual desires and fantasies as women.
*For a recap of the discussion, see
metafandom : here and here. I think this is the post most of the entries in metafandom referred to/took issues with.ETA: to specify: I'm using 'QUEER' as in queer studies, ie. academikese