In the Tradition of the Wickedary, Part Two by Dissenter

I have been studying fanfiction and slash fanfiction from a radical feminist perspective for several years now, and these definitions are the culmination of much reading, writing and thinking on the subject. I believe understanding the phenomenon of fanfiction and slash fanfiction within a radical feminist framework is extremely important, due to the sheer numbers of women who are now engaged in this kind of fan culture, and also because the current dominant understanding of fan writing is inaccurate, pronouncing fanfiction and slash fanfiction as radical and progressive, when in fact fan culture is highly conservative, and bolsters and propagates male supremacist ideas.

Thanks to allecto, Dragort and Demonista for many intelligent and helpful comments on my earlier slash essays, and for listening to me go on and on about this subject. I am probably still not finished with it.

Fanfiction – Fanfiction is a conservative and worshipful genre of writing, increasingly dominated by women, which involves writing original stories based on texts that are already in existence, for example, novels, movies, TV shows etc. Some popular fandoms include those of Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, Stargate, Buffy and Pirates of the Caribbean, though there are many more as well. Prior to the existence of the internet, fanfiction writers were only a small part of the wider phenomenon of fan culture, partly because it was very difficult to effectively distribute fanfiction to large audiences, with the most common method pre-internet being the publication and sale of small fanzines. These days, however, most fanfiction is published on the internet, easily accessible to thousands of people all over the world, which has encouraged the exponential growth of fanfiction and has also led to the development of countless online fanfiction communities. Fanfic writers pride themselves on their respect for and fidelity to their original source material, and in their writing they rarely, if ever, do anything that questions or contradicts the ideologies underwriting the original texts. As, in most cases, these original texts are steeped in patriarchal ideologies, this means that fanfiction, likewise, is strongly patriarchal and almost always woman-hating, despite the fact that women are now the main authors of fanfiction.

Slash Fanfiction – Slash fanfiction is a sub-genre of fanfiction, though it is increasingly coming to dominate fanfiction as a whole, that takes characters, generally male, from books, movies, etc., and portrays them as being in homosexual relationships with each other. Slash is almost always written and read by heterosexual women. Pre-internet, slash fanfiction was only a tiny sub-section of the fanfiction community, being written by small groups of women at a time when most other kinds of fanfiction were male dominated. (This is no longer the case in contemporary times; I would say that now women are the main authors of all the different sorts of fanfiction). Like other kinds of fanfiction, slash experienced a huge explosion in size and popularity with the advent of the internet, so much so that it has now practically become the norm of fanfiction, whereas ‘general’ or ‘gen’ fanfiction (as non-slash writing is usually called) has declined.

There is a basic misconception about slash writing, shared both by those who participate in the genre, and academics who have written analyses of the phenomenon. It is believed that slash writers often bring to the surface the ‘gay subtext’ or ‘homoerotic subtext’ that exists in a given text by portraying male characters who are ostensibly heterosexual in the original as being ‘gay’ in their fanfiction. Most usually, two male characters who are ‘friends’ in the original text will be portrayed as being in a ‘gay relationship’ in slash. However, as radical feminists have long known, erotically charged homosocialism has always been a necessary fixture of male supremacist and heterosexual culture. Men can only view other men as human, and it is therefore perfectly logical for men to develop deep, complex and even erotic relationships with each other, whilst still being ‘heterosexual’ to maintain sexual and emotional dominance over women, since, under patriarchy, sexual relationships can only follow a dominance/submission model, and most men hardly want to give up their right to the position of dominance over women by ‘turning’ gay. (Although, of course, gay men continue to be dominant over women in other ways).

So what slash writers are actually doing is merely recognising the homosocialism that exists in film and literature, as well as everywhere else in our society. To say they are drawing out a ‘gay subtext,’ and to attempt to attach revolutionary potential to this act is highly inaccurate, since homosocialism is one of the foundation stones of male supremacy, and fanfic authors who endorse and strengthen the homosocial relationships of male fictional characters by portraying them as homosexual are committing an act in support of patriarchy, not against it. (Even though these authors are unknowingly breaking social taboos by recognising that erotically charged homosocialism between men exists in the first place).

Nevertheless, slash is still often disguised as, or mistaken for, radical feminist rewriting, or at least radical rewriting of some kind, and I would like to explicate in more detail why this is simply not the case. Like fanfiction (see above), slash fanfiction is a conservative genre written by women who conform to patriarchal ways of thinking, and which is characterized by lesbophobia, homophobia, woman-hatred and severe phallocentricity, both in terms of its erotic content and intellectual ideas. The same-sex male relationships portrayed in slash stories are usually thinly veiled versions of heterosexual relationships, with one character taking on masculine characteristics and the other feminine, and with the ensuing power imbalances and abusive and destructive behaviours that result from this. Sex is generally portrayed pornographically, with an emphasis on penetration, force and pain, and the overwhelming/uncontrollable need the masculine character has for the feminine character, and the feminine character’s need to be needed by the masculine character in order to have a legitimate identity. Descriptions of sex tend to focus only on the physical side of the encounter, using an excess of violent imagery, and with characters often reduced to a collection of sexualized body parts devoid of emotions or humanity. Furthermore, the same-sex male relationships portrayed in most slash stories have a use-by date: sooner or later most of the characters ‘turn’ heterosexual and get married, it apparently being beyond the ability of most slash writers to imagine anyone actually choosing a non-heterosexual identity permanently. It is evidence of in-built lesbophobia and homophobia, since this use-by date mentality means that same sex relationships in slash are generally portrayed as being illegitimate, transient, unstable, and not able to last. Only heterosexual relationships are capable of doing that, apparently. (As evidenced in the real world by 50% divorce statistics).

Female characters often do not appear in slash stories at all, and if they do, they are portrayed as vapid, stupid, cold, calculating, grasping, unfairly demanding, physically disgusting, and generally lacking in any desire at all except for an overwhelming need to get married and have children. Women’s sexual desires are never mentioned, and presumably do not exist. No hint of lesbianism is ever permitted.

In the final analysis, women who write slash are not seeking to resist or disrupt patriarchal ideas; on the contrary, they are the disciples of Male Artists, and the slash they write is written in homage to their male idols, whether that be Joss Whedon, Gene Roddenberry, Peter Jackson, J.R.R. Tolkien or any other number of men whose primary goal is to bolster patriarchy and male supremacy in all its ugly forms. This makes it impossible for slash to be in any way a revolutionary or transformative genre of writing. Stories which engage critically with men and their works should therefore not be called slash, or fanfiction, but more rightly Radical Feminist Rewriting (see below).

The Psychology of Slash – The psychology of how and why women come to write slash fanfiction goes something like this. There are thousands of women, all over the world, who, thanks to our wonderful friend male supremacy, cannot relate to themselves as women. They can only relate to men, because only men are considered to be fully human. So they fall in love with the heroes of film and literature, and the ‘geniuses’ who create these texts, and they fool themselves into believing that these men speak universal truths, that they are speaking to everybody and about everybody, women included, when of course they are not, they are only speaking to men in the language of male supremacy that is death and poison to women.

In the cases of some women, usually educated, western women, this worship takes the form of fanfiction, even slash. Imagine it. Thousands of women, all around the world, writing millions of words about the trials and tribulations of men, laying their offerings humbly at the feet of their hundreds of male cultural gurus. Truly it is a terrifying thought.

Slash comes about because women under patriarchy cannot recognise their own sexual desires, or the possibility of a female-centric sexuality, and they therefore take to writing erotic stories about homosexual men as a way to deal with and relieve all of those sexual desires they supposedly don’t have, though of course, the very existence and popularity of slash proves the existence of female sexual desire, albeit a female sexual desire that is still trapped within patriarchal (non)understanding.

The second great irony of slash is that most women who read and write slash are not only heterosexual, but defensively so. Despite writing about gay men, and sometimes claiming to be ‘for gay rights’ (whatever that means), most women involved in slash communities would choke in horror if they were ever to be mistaken for, or tainted as, lesbian, and on their blogs etc. they are often at pains to point out that, yes, they greatly enjoy the idea of men together (because, you know, they’re heterosexual and they like men), but they are not in the least turned on by the idea of two women together, and therefore never, never, never, never, ever, read female/female fanfiction (which does exist, in very small amounts). Yet what do we have with slash fanfiction? Hundreds and hundreds of heterosexual women writing erotic stories for each other in order to turn one another on…is it just me, or is that starting to sound a bit lesbian?

It should also be noted that the women who read and write slash are surprisingly diverse. They do tend to have some factors in common, like generally being well educated and well off economically, these two factors combining to mean they are often also white, they are almost always heterosexual, and they are generally living in western countries where it is easy to access technology like computers and the internet. But other than this, women in slash communities can be married or single, old or young, conservative Christians or progressive liberals. Slash is friend to them all, and I think its very appeal to different women across these divides is further evidence of its ultimately conservative nature. Speaking personally, I have read essays in which slash is interpreted as radical and progressive; as feminist; as pro-homosexuality; and even as disseminating Christian values; it just depends on which part of the patriarchal spectrum the woman reading/writing the genre has allied herself to. But the fact that these women engage with slash in the first place in and of itself is proof that it does not contradict their internalised patriarchal ideologies, as most women invested in patriarchal ways of thinking manage very efficiently to avoid material that has the potential to meaningfully challenge their patriarchal allegiance. Therefore, slash does not do these things.

Radical Feminist Rewriting – taking characters, events and/or scenarios from literature, history and/or legend which are portrayed misogynistically, and rewriting and reimagining those characters and/or events in a radically feminist way. Radical Feminist Rewriting differs essentially from fanfiction and slash fanfiction in that it critically engages with the original text, for example by denouncing patriarchal assumptions, reclaiming poorly portrayed female characters, reinterpreting the meaning of events and situations in the text in feminist ways, and reclaiming male characters by making them the allies of women and feminism. (These are just some examples of how one might go about Radical Feminist Rewriting. There are many other ways).

There are examples of Radical Feminist Rewriting in published literature as well as on the internet. Published novels include those like Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) by Jean Rhys, which reclaims the mad woman from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847); Rebecca’s Tale (2001) by Sally Beauman, which reclaims the ‘evil’ Rebecca from Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca (1938); Alias Grace (1996) by Margaret Atwood which reinterprets the historical Canadian figure of Grace Marks; and a number of short stories in Isobelle Carmody’s collection Green Monkey Dreams (1996) that involve feminist rewritings of fairytales.

Some examples of Radical Feminist Rewriting that can be found on Spinning Spinsters are Water Lilies in Her Hair, my own reinterpretation of Tom Bombadil’s and Goldberry’s supposedly ‘happy’ marriage from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (1954-1955), and allecto’s stories The Blood of Women and Lot’s Wife, which critically engage with Greek myths and Christian myths respectively.

by Dissenter