Het vs. Slash, round 3,482

[vaznetti]

The title of this post is fair warning, I think.

There have been a number of thoughtful and interesting posts on the meaning of both "het" and "slash" recently (all linked via metafandom), mostly spinning off a post a few days back which postulated a category of "queer het." Which I kind of get, but also find insulting, because hello? The fact that you feel that you are a member of a politically marginalized group does not give you carte blanche to make reductionist arguments about everyone else.

But instead, I thought I'd try for "dull" rather than "offensive." What follows is more about me, and what interests me as a reader of fanfiction, especially erotic fanfiction, which is unlikely to be wildly fascinating to anyone else.

Once upon a time, I used to read a lot slash; these days, nothing makes me quicker to delete a story than an m/m NC-17 categorization. Well, OK, poor formatting and spelling errors, but those are quality-related issues, rather than category-related issues. Granted, I'm not reading very much fanfiction at all, due to time constraints--but my own lack on interest in m/m slash is strange, because as reader I know I do sometimes subscribe to the notion that slash stories are slightly more likely to be better written than het stories. (Whereas as a writer, I'd disagree strenuously.) The thing is, it isn't all slash that I delete, only m/m. If the story is f/f or het, I'll give it a try, at least.

So it occurs to me: there are people who read m/m slash nearly exclusively because they find it easier to read sex-scenes without a female body with which to compare themselves. I must be the opposite--I need there to be at least one female body in the scene to find it exciting. I think male bodies are just too alien to me--I have no idea how it feels to experience sex in a male body, and I'm not entirely sure that it can be explained to me, or that I really want it to be. (What I mean is, I care on a personal level in the "does this feel good?" kind of way, but that's about giving someone else pleasure, and not about feeling pleasure in a different body. When I'm reading fanfic, as twinkeldru just said, I'm really thinking about my own pleasure, and that happens in this body, not some other body with different equipment.)

I think I've become more prudish, as well: these days, detailed descriptions of anal sex just make me roll my eyes, and not in the good "yes! yes! yes!" kind of way. In fact, most explicit erotica leaves me cold. I like stories for characterization and emotion, which I suspect is a typically feminine point of view--or at least I've been told it is. And it occurs to me that if there is such a category as "queer het" than the slash I prefer to read is "het slash." Not in the sense that it's hetero-normative, because very little is more off-putting than seeing a slash relationship squeezed into some kind of "butch/femme" stereotype (let us all pause, think of stories like this, and say as one, "yuck"), but rather that the focus is on emotion rather than physicality. The focus isn't on how the two characters would get together, but why this particular character and that particular character (who happen to be men) would become lovers. And this is the kind of piece I tend to find in het writers who have turned to slash, or authors who write both het and slash--they're interested in human beings rather than men.


To be honest, I suspect that, as one of the commenters to the "queer het" post pointed out, our prejudices are shaped by the circles in which we read -- that is, I have a high opinion of authors who write both het and slash because that's the circle I've been reading in for years now, and I've figured out what and whom I like.

Also, I think it's amusing that twinkledru has commented on the matter just now as well, although with a slightly different focus.

Comments

[reginaspina.livejournal.com]

In fact, most explicit erotica leaves me cold. I like stories for characterization and emotion

Heh! I posted something to this effect earlier today - we must all be thinking of much the same things these days ...

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

My very earliest exposure to genre prejudice was "If it's science fiction, it can't be good; if it's good, it can't be sf." And the whole "queer het" thing just strikes me as one more example of the same.

I love genderfuck as much as the next cranky feminist, and I love how butch Kara on BSG is, but I'm not seeing why that disqualifies Kara/Lee from being het except that some slashers are really convinced they don't like het, even when they do. Which showed up with Buffy/Spike, too.

And:

To be honest, I suspect that, as one of the commenters to the "queer het" post pointed out, our prejudices are shaped by the circles in which we read -- that is, I have a high opinion of authors who write both het and slash because that's the circle I've been reading in for years now, and I've figured out what and whom I like.

Yeah.

[vaznetti]

My very earliest exposure to genre prejudice was "If it's science fiction, it can't be good; if it's good, it can't be sf." And the whole "queer het" thing just strikes me as one more example of the same.

I agree entirely. The logic seems to be, "I don't like het. I like this. Therefore, this is not het."

[aceofkittens.livejournal.com]

All I can say on this topic is: "The mercurial essence of his climax churned in Skinner's nuts."

[jood.livejournal.com]

Don't make me come over there and hurt you.

[aceofkittens.livejournal.com]

"Damnit, Skinner — I've been shot at, poisoned... hell, I've even been wrapped in a cocoon by a giant prehistoric bug. I think I can take your cock up my ass!"

(You'll have to catch me first! :)

[jood.livejournal.com]

Not in the sense that it's hetero-normative, because very little is more off-putting than seeing a slash relationship squeezed into some kind of "butch/femme" stereotype (let us all pause, think of stories like this, and say as one, "yuck"), but rather that the focus is on emotion rather than physicality. The focus isn't on how the two characters would get together, but why this particular character and that particular character (who happen to be men) would become lovers.

This is entirely what it's about to me. I just read a Snape/Hagrid that worked because of this. I remember a really decent Mulder/Frohike that got me for the same reason, and the same for countless other anti-canon pairings (Jayne/Simon, Fezzik/Inigo, Skinner/Swamp Thing). Draw it well - help me understand why they'd want each other and what circumstances would push them together - and I'll go along for the ride. [insert adolescent giggle @ double entendre]

Somebody in my enclave of brilliant fannish pals has a theory about Mulder/Scully being a slash pairing. (Was it you, mayhap?) I buy this, because the best M/S fic went the extra mile to make it clear why they were together.

It's why I won't read PWP, even if it's a story in a universe I've read and appreciated. I don't accept shortcuts like "they've been lovers for three years by now". That's lazy bullshit. Sex without soul is empty and icky, and it puts me in mind of Trixie from "Deadwood". Feh.

[vaznetti]

Somebody in my enclave of brilliant fannish pals has a theory about Mulder/Scully being a slash pairing. (Was it you, mayhap?) I buy this, because the best M/S fic went the extra mile to make it clear why they were together.

I didn't originate this idea, but I have a vague memory of encountering it toward the end of my in-person fannish involvement, which would have been around 1995 or 1996. In retrospect, I don't really buy it, and I think it was a byproduct of a view that women were only on TV shows to play love-interest, so relationships were either canon or slash. I find it simpler to use slash for same-sex and het for m/f, so that I don't have to come up for some other term for canon same-sex relationships. Then I can have canon and non-canon as my second set of reference points.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I've seen the argument made that M/S is queer because M and S don't fit standard gender roles; I disagree. I've occasionally made the argument that M/S in early seasons is *slashy*, as are nonsexual elements of the show like the mytharc, because making sense of them requires interpreting subtext as texual, which I take to be the basic reading protocol that enables slash. But I'm not particularly wedded to this argument even when I'm making it.

[jennyo.livejournal.com]

I...have a number of things to say, but I'll choke them back for one thing: whyfor the valorization of the UC ship over everything? I tend to canon hetship a lot, not because m/f is my favorite form of porn (for that would be the f/f), but because I tend to like the source material, and the more canon ships or canon UST ships I like tend to work with how much I like source. Because a lot of the people postulating queer het are probably those who say Tara/Willow wasn't slash cuz it was canon.

And for me, this is all just weird on several levels, but the fact that "good" het equals "queer" het, with an implication that if it's onscreen, or if it's normative in any way, it's bad, really sours me, because while I appreciate UC, especially thoughtful UC that's focusing on characterization and emotion and dialogue, I don't see what's evil about well-written, well-characterized canon het or liking it.

[vaznetti]

whyfor the valorization of the UC ship over everything?

I do not know. I have encountered the claim that "canon couples are boring," but surely that's simply due to ignorance--that all het relationships are the same, or that all canon relationships are the same. I too have a weakness for canon het couples, both as a reader and a writer (I mean, it's hardly accident that the only piece of non-crossover HP I've ever written is Hermione/Viktor). I don't think that these relationships have any less tension and drama than UC ships.

I wonder if it has anything to do with a fondess for first-time stories? There are a lot of those about.

[anenko.livejournal.com]

I've branched out as a reader since I first entered fandom, and am actually a bix vexed by the amount of 'ship/slash centric fics in fandom these days. When I first got into fandom, though, I did tend to gravitate towards UC pairings not because I found canon pairings boring, but because those couples worked for me as they were. I liked Willow/Tara, for instance, but felt no need to seek out fic about them because there they were, right on screen.

[thefakeheadline.livejournal.com]

whyfor the valorization of the UC ship over everything?

My thinking on this is that it comes down to different views on the purpose of fanfiction. There's the "more of this fictional world I like" view, which loves on canon 'ships especially, and the "things I want to see that the show/movie/whatever will never actually show," which focuses on the UC. I'm a bit of both minds, myself, so I can go for both. Which is to say that I don't know why some slashers seem to see it as slash *vs.* het...people are just odd.

[juleskicks.livejournal.com]

The focus isn't on how the two characters would get together, but why this particular character and that particular character (who happen to be men) would become lovers.

Yes.

I would say more, but I am mainly stuck on "OMG, yes." So, yes. Yay!

[malograntum.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm.

I was about ready to get behind the "queer het" category because I've been working on something that has a bunch of het stuff that really is pretty queer (too complicated to explain, but sci-fi shows open up a lot of gender possibilities). But then damned_colonial's examples seemed to be more what I'd call "good het." It seems almost as if, when heterosexuals (or "heterosexual" texts) have opinions about gender, that makes them "queer" by her definition.

(The only thing I can think of that makes Lee/Kara "queer" is the fact that Starbuck was a dude in the original series. Is the fact that their relationship doesn't fit the most rigid hetero-normative gender stereotypes of our culture [ours, mind you, not their own] enough to make it "queer"? Not many "straight" relationships left in that case.)

[vaznetti]

I think that there's a difference between the kind of play with gender that science fiction as a genre allows (since there's no reason aliens should have a fixed gender, or any gender at all (in the sense we mean), or thatthey should have only two options), and the kind of play with gender stereotypes that can be sound in relationships like Lee/Kara. Because yeah, there are many people who don't fit into traditional het stereotypes for one reason or another, but I think that to describe all these people as "queer" actually weakens a rather useful term.

[zarahemla.livejournal.com]

The focus isn't on how the two characters would get together, but why this particular character and that particular character (who happen to be men) would become lovers.

exactly. This is what I read for: no matter who the characters are: men, women, or whatever combination. I don't care how: I want to know why.

[monanotlisa.livejournal.com]

the post you linked to just made me shake my head in bafflement.

oh, wait--

I want something to get my teeth into: strong characters, moral ambiguity, power dynamics, complex relationships outside the primary pairing, sex scenes that share in all the complexities that I love... and so on. I want the sort of stories that show that the author's had to think long and hard about the sex and all its implications.

do i agree? yes, wholeheartedly-- just like just about every single fan out there. hardly special.

And from what I've read (OK, admittedly not that much, and I'm kinda drawing on secondhand anecdotal evidence here, too) that stuff's hard to come by... except when that het is written by slash authors.

what thorough research. i don't even think the theory isn't interesting, but this?

off the top of my het, i can think of a few jossverse slashers who give good het-- anna s., minim calibre, viciouswishes--, but i can think of more than a dozen less limited fanfic writers who write excellent het of the sort mentioned above.

"The fact that you feel that you are a member of a politically marginalized group does not give you carte blanche to make reductionist arguments about everyone else."

thank you. exactly.

"because as reader I know I do sometimes subscribe to the notion that slash stories are slightly more likely to be better written than het stories. (Whereas as a writer, I'd disagree strenuously.)"

interesting dichotomy, and one i don't quite understand. how come?

The thing is, it isn't all slash that I delete, only m/m. If the story is f/f or het, I'll give it a try, at least.

i've started to grasp the phenomenon of fannish preferences, but what never fails to confuse me is the tendency to create these three (main) categories-- mine revolve solely around parings and ultimately characters and their dynamics, whether real or imagined.

"there are people who read m/m slash nearly exclusively because they find it easier to read sex-scenes without a female body with which to compare themselves."

i'm convinced of this, too, but it is rarely ever mentioned in the discussions i've seen.

"The focus isn't on how the two characters would get together, but why this particular character and that particular character (who happen to be men) would become lovers. And this is the kind of piece I tend to find in het writers who have turned to slash, or authors who write both het and slash--they're interested in human beings rather than men."

yes. so true.

"that is, I have a high opinion of authors who write both het and slash"

*g* again, i agree.

excuse my brief, no-caps comment. still tendinitis-ridden.

[vaznetti]

interesting dichotomy, and one i don't quite understand. how come?

I think it's largely a holdover from my slash-reading days, mixed with the fact that for a while I would read a lot of het, but only a limited number of slash authors. It has to do with sample size and selection.

i'm convinced of this, too, but it is rarely ever mentioned in the discussions i've seen.

Really? I've seen it quite a lot, and although I don't subscribe to it, I can certainly see how that might work.

I think there are some interesting issues raised in the earlier post, to be honest, about the way authors approach their material, and the kind of thinking one does and doesn't do as one works on it.

[cija.livejournal.com]

I have the difficulty that while I often like stories that eroticize some sort of power imbalance, I cannot and will not deal with sexual situations in stories[1] in which a woman is at a disadvantage because she is a woman, realistically or no. I find it intensely anerotic. This leaves me with a lot of slash by default.

Then too, although I like m/m slash quite a lot, I'm absolutely repelled by the boy-fetishizing that goes on here and there - the posturing - by women - about what men are really like when they're alone together, with their locker-room antics and bad hygiene and aren't emotions too too girly and isn't it laughable when 'teenagers' (so it is said) write about 'women in mens' bodies'- it all fills me with a vast ennui, since I quite enjoy reading about men who behave like women, which is to say, like intelligible human beings.

Still more do I enjoy reading about women who behave like women, etc., but I don't seem to encounter them quite so often. Nowadays, finding a story that deals competently and interestingly with women gives me much the same surprised thrill that discovering slash fanfiction did back in college. Which I can't deny is sad.

[1]Stories that are intended as pure entertainments, anyhow.

[vaznetti]

You know, the fact that m/m erotica doesn't work for me doesn't mean that I don't understand that it does work for other people, for a variety of perfectly valid reasons.

I think I see what you mean about boy-fetishizing, but I've certainly done my share of that; the extent to which one feels it's necessary may have to do both with what one reads and what one reads for. I have a feeling that there are things you would enjoy reading which would be major squick-points for me.

[cija.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't know, I completely agree with what you said about reading primarily for characterization and emotion. I always overgeneralize about this kind of thing. When I look back at opinions I've expressed about fanfiction, it usually comes out sounding as if I only read for cheap thrills, for one thing, which is not true. The bitchiness in my tone was not intended to be directed at you, and I'm sorry if it reads that way.

What I object to in what I labelled boy-fetishizing is not the preference, or even the mockery; it's the occasional presumption that a particular way of writing men is not a deliberate choice but must be an error borne of youth and inexperience.

[vaznetti]

When I mentioned squick-points, what I meant was that the type of story you describe seeking out (m/m stories which focus on a power imbalance) is a genre I've been actively avoiding for a while now. (Especially if there's an age difference as well.) And there's a specific aesthetic which I associate with some stories of that type, which I think is a deliberate choice rather than the product of immaturity, but which I happen to dislike. But one person's squick is another's preference, you know?

And no, I didn't really think that you were attacking me, at all.

[fourteenlines.livejournal.com]

I think someone on my friend's list addressed this briefly yesterday, and made the point that a similar thing was said - probably more than once - about John/Aeryn on Farscape, although (and this is my addition) it didn't get much attention because of the tiny nature of the fandom, relatively speaking. (I think it must be the Muppets. I mean. BSG has the same time slot, same network, similar cool effects, equally engaging characters, and a both shows are arc-based. And yet BSG is suddenly the Big New Thing where FS never was. Must be the Muppets. *shakes head sadly*)

But, er. This post is not about that. Sorry, long day.

Anyway, I'd often heard it said that John/Aeryn was (paraphrased) 'the queerest het couple on tv,' etc, etc. And in a way, at the time, I thought that made sense - and by that I mean that neither of them really fit into well-defined gender roles, and that both of them were both canonically "okay" with "alternative" sexual orientations, if not fitting into that category themselves.

BUT.

The person on my reading list who brought that up the other day mentioned (and I cannot remember who it was) that this really cheesed them off because anytime there was a strong woman on TV, if she was part of a popular het pairing, it got labelled "queer" or "slashy" or whathaveyou. Because, the comment went, that evidently meant that women weren't allowed to be strong without having some kind of nonstandard orientation assigned to them. The comment used Mulder/Scully as an argument, as well.

I could be misremembering it or totally misinterpreting it, but I just thought it was interesting.

[vaznetti]

Because, the comment went, that evidently meant that women weren't allowed to be strong without having some kind of nonstandard orientation assigned to them. The comment used Mulder/Scully as an argument, as well.<.i>

I think that's interesting as well, and I think I agree with it. It seems to me to reinforce the notion that it isn't "normal" for a women to be strong -- that any strong, independant woman is by definition "queer." Maybe if you live in Leave it to Beaver-land that's the case, but it certainly isn't in the lives of most women I know. It also reminds me vaguely of the notion I encountered once or twice in feminist groups in college, that you can't sleep with men and be a feminist. It seems needlessly dismissive of the experience of (probably) the majority of women I know.

[fourteenlines.livejournal.com]

that you can't sleep with men and be a feminist

Huh. Don't know if I've ever come across this one before. I think this is also dangerous because it causes people to have a needlessly dismissive view of feminism. Which calls to mind...oh, I can't remember who is was. You'll remember what I'm talking about if you were around LJ then - that post awhile back about what it meant to be a feminist. "If you've ever done [blank], then you are a feminist."

[nell65.livejournal.com]

I loved FS when it was on (and still do) - and never could figure out why it wasn't bigger then.

Btw - I've read several of your FS fics via Nestra and Shrift's PolyRecs page, and enjoyed them very much.

Nell

[camille-is-here.livejournal.com]

Well, the whole argument annoys me on so many levels that I've been walking away from it for years. There is the limited view of what straight women are like and how that plays out in their sexuality, in real life or in fic. (Like you don't have to think about what you are doing when you go to bed with somebody twice your size?)

And the limited view of the levels of emotional complexity that can be written into sex and that resonates as meaningfully hetero to straight people (like John and Aeryn do, in all their tortured glory).

And the limited view of what fanfic is, which has turned the plotfic--with or without a thick and juicy love story--into the dinosaur of fandom.

I don't actually read much F/F because, while I like to see a me-surrogate in a story, I like to see the me with a guy. But some of my favorite stories are m/m slash, right up there with some of my favorite plot fics, and m/f stories But mostly, not recent ones. And not PWPs, which are generally just boring.

Camille

Surfed in via links here and there:

[nell65.livejournal.com]

And just wanted to give you a hearty "word!"

You've said it much more clearly than me - I was all incoherent and blithery at the whole idea that no one had ever written a complex het relationship full of self-conscious sexuality before slashers discovered Kara/Lee. Sometime last month.

Uh Huh.

Anyway, three cheers from me! -

Nell