Some Girls Write Slash
Starsky was doing that. Licking them, covering them with little kisses until they hardened into tiny buds. If he's never done this before, how the hell can he do it so well? This question seems a reasonable one to put to an author of the genre.
Where on earth does the inspiration come from? Kitty Fisher, who works for the school library service by day, has been writing slash for eight years; her stories have appeared on the internet and in the Black Lace collection Wicked Words. There's a leaning to dark stories, non-consensual sex, dominance. By writing about men, you're distancing yourself. So it's a guilt thing? It's not acceptable for women to say they get turned on by sex and violence.
But it's not just about that - there's an emphasis on humour and emotion which is lacking in a lot of mainstream erotic writing. Fisher first stumbled upon slash in the pre-internet days when it existed only in obscure Star Trek fanzines. A reader knows the backstory; there are so many things actors do unconsciously on screen which fans can pick up on and twist to their own ends.
Many friends she has made on the scene work for the government, in management consultancy or teaching. Elanor Summerton, who runs the Britslash website, says: I've always assumed that if men like watching women together, women might enjoy the reverse. Women seem to prefer written erotica, with well-developed characters and more emotion.
In fact, some of the best slash I've read has few sex scenes and is not explicit. Another reason why many women are turning to the format is that the slash community encourages new writers.
Here you can discuss grammar and penis size, often in the same email. She believes slash is probably an attempt by women to take control of their sexuality but many writers may not be conscious they are addressing this. It's a nice idea but some cultural theorists suggest that slash, when deconstructed, mirrors nothing more daring than the format for Mills and Boon.
No woman, gay, straight, bi, demi, pan, queer or ace, can completely escape the narrow paradigms of female sexuality that are imposed on her. By using two male bodies, slash does away with these paradigms and offers women a chance to explore their sexual desires freely. And lastly, the world of slash is one that is completely free of female sexual objectification.
Taken together, this is why slash is so popular, and will only continue to grow and flourish. Physical beauty, I suspect, plays a key role in understanding why many female characters are so unappealing to slashers. Women are taught over and over that true love, true happiness, and by extension true sexual fulfillment, is the purview of the young, the thin, the white, the beautiful. Anyone who falls outside these narrow parameters is undeserving.
Why else would makeovers feature so prominently in rom-coms? As blogger poluciernagas points out, their appearance serves as an identificatory barrier that discourages ordinary women from relating to them. To be required to identify with this kind of feminine ideal is to offer oneself up to an unfortunate comparison and invariably fall short. After all, why would the hero want someone with body hair and cellulite when he could have a woman who looks like she just stepped off the cover of Vogue?
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I think that the resentment of these female love interests stems not from hatred of the characters themselves nor of the actresses who portray them , but because the constant reiteration of the feminine beauty ideal fosters a profound state of unworthiness in female viewers. And what could be more unpleasant than that? In the real world, women are constantly barraged with images of female perfection. The world of slash is one wherein women do not have to compare themselves to anyone, and I think this is part of what makes slash so appealing.
Having done away with heterosexual pairings and all the baggage that goes with them, a new world of sexual exploration is opened up to female slashers. That is, heterosexual relationships by their very nature seem to invoke a sense of intrinsic inequality between the two partners: For some women, then, true equality can only be achieved when both partners are of the same gender. Lamb and Veith therefore concluded that the fantasy of perfect egalitarian love is what draws women to slash Indeed, although some fics are unapologetically pornographic with little to no plot, the advantage of a slash ship is that the characters come with a pre-existing shared history.
The rise of slash fiction | Technology | The Guardian
She can enter the story at any point, diverge, or completely rebuild the world to suit her desires. Suppose, however, that a fanfiction writer were to create a whole new original love interest for her favorite male hero. Starting from scratch, an original female character could very well avoid the pitfalls of the Mary Sue and be as rounded, flawed, and emotionally complex as any of the male characters in canon.
And yet, even when one has the option of creating a heterosexual pairing , the draw of gay pairings is often irresistible. I would argue that slash is not used simply because it is the alternative to heterosexual pairings.
Most Fanfic Writers Are Girls
Rather, using two male bodies holds its own intrinsic appeal: If one were to use a heterosexual pairing, a female reader would feel obliged to identify with woman. Fictional men having sex lets me relax and enjoy because I have no part in it. This might be particularly true for asexual women, for women who have suffered sexual trauma, or for women who have difficulty overcoming the cultural dictum of female sexual passivity Lamb and Veith Male bodies also allow female slashers to explore sexual fantasies that are perhaps appealing on some unconscious level, but are much too disquieting when they are acted upon a female body.
The overwhelming use of third person point-of-view in fanfic, as well as the general contempt for first-person, seems to enhance this distanced, voyeuristic pleasure.