Why Femslash Is Different, Part 1,001

[alixtii]

[T]he fan community has also begun to generate a smaller (but growing) number of lesbian stories envision this type of reciprocal relationship between two female characters. [. . .] In lesbian slash, as with male-centered slash, sexuality involves a dispersal of traditionally masculine and feminine traits [. . .]. That the conventions of lesbian slash follow so closely those of the older and more fully developed male slash is not surprising, but it does point to the degree to which these same models are and have been available for narratives that more directly represent female experience.

That's from Henry Jenkins' Textual Poachers, which I recently ILL-ed. (pp. 197-8)

It took me a while to decide why this comparison didn't seem to ring true for me. Was it merely the 15-year time difference between when the book came out and the present? Obviously much of the difference in terminology is due to the evolution of the genre in that time period; we'd never think to call femslash "lesbian slash" today, seeing how it is neither necessarily produced by lesbians (he says) nor about lesbians per se (the "slash is not gay" phenomenon)--in some ways the field has changed from its narrower existence in the late 80's and early 90's.

What I finally decided, though, was the difference is that the "adrogenizing" of male characters was being painted as a resistant measure on the part of fans in order to explore identity outside of strict gender roles. Kirk and Spock each have some characteristics which could be considered to be traditionally coded feminine, but neither figure is particularly androgenous--it is the fan writer who chooses to emphasize the feminine characteristic in order to produce this androgeny.

This seems to link in to present-day concerns about "feminizing" male characters, a concern I admit to finding silly or at least misguided--shouldn't the concern be whether the character is acting in character for himself as opposed to his gender. If there's canonical evidence for his breaking gender type, then he should; if not, the problem is not being in character, not being "feminized."

There does seem, however, to be a sense that these "feminized" versions of the (male) characters are somehow OOC. But nobody ever complains about "masculinizing" female characters, do they? Ever wonder why not?

In particular, in the example of "lesbian slash" that Jenkins offers (from a fandom with which I'm familiar; the other is Jenna/Cally from Blake's 7) Tasha Yar/Deanna Troi from ST:TNG, the androgeny to which he points is very much contained within the canonical characterizations (from my perspective, admittedly, which is already influenced by being a femslasher; there's no way to make this argument from a strictly textual/formal standpoint). I think it's more likely for female characters appearing in these sorts of patriarchal-value-derived works to be more complex in terms of gender construction than the male characters, because it was assumed that for both men and women it is the traditionally male characteristics which manage to make the character "interesting." (Of course, the masculinity ascribed to the female characters rarely if ever is allowed to threaten male dominance or interfere with the character's ability to act as eye candy for heterosexual males).

My point isn't, of course, that femslash is more IC than m/m slash, because I don't believe that (conceptions of what is in character will always-already depend upon the hermeneutic conditions under which we are interrogating the text), and newer canons tend to have more complicated gender constructions for both male and female characters as well as an understanding that characters can be interesting (and thus marketable) for their traditionally female traits. (Progress!)

But I do take the differences in the way femslash and boyslash are produced to be further indicative of the distinctiveness of the two genres. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: a community of women writing women in homosexual relationships isn't going to end up working through the issues as a community (the same community, in many cases) of women writing men in homosexual relationships.

Comments

[executrix.livejournal.com]

I started out in B7, and I must say that I thought that Avon certainly behaved as though he had a sexual obsession with Blake, and since I was crazy about him I wanted to give him what he wanted. However, I didn't see a lot of Jenna/Cally chemistry, so I seldom wrote that pairing. (I thought that Soolin and Dayna had a lot more femmeslashy vibes, but I didn't like either of them as characters, so I wrote that pairing even less.) I didn't find either Jenna or Cally a very interesting character--not because I think women are uninteresting, but precisely because I didn't think the show did justice to creating believable women.

Also, I think that the scale femininity--->masculinity is less tightly coupled to the scale Kinsey 0--->Kinsey 6 than a lot of people do--a bisexual or completely homosexual character can, but doesn't have to be, androgynous, and an androgynous character can be entirely heterosexual.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't think anyone's trying to tie adrogeny to homosexuality or masculinity to the Kinsey scale. Jenkins was observing that when fen slash two males, they often androgenize them--an observation with which I wouldn't automatically disagree. He posited it as an independent phenomenon contingent on the fen's desires, I think, not as a necessary element of slash.

In terms of slashiness as the element in the source text which lends itself to sexualization, I've only begun to read HJ's thoughts on that, and is not an issue which often occurs to me, as I don't really need subtext to buy a pairing (since I so often write minor character/minor character when they might never have been on the screen at the same times as each other).

Troi/Yar doesn't strike me as fraught with subtext either, although I watched the show when I was much younger and brought a different lens to the experience.

[m-phoenix.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid that I don't have anything intelligent to add right now, I just wanted to say that I enjoy your meta posts, they always give me food for thought. Thanks.

[entrenous88.livejournal.com]

But nobody ever complains about "masculinizing" female characters, do they? Ever wonder why not?
I'm wondering about this, perhaps in a way that's overly tangential to your points of discussion, because it goes back to canon portrayal more than fanfic depiction. But I've been thinking lately about Kennedy as a character on BtVS that got a lot of dismissal from fans, not just as she appeared on the show, but in that she doesn't seem to show up much at all in fanfiction (other than "oh, by the way, Willow broke up with Kennedy" -- and I'm guilty of writing ensemble fic in which that scenario was played out -- or in a kind of "and Kennedy was there too" mode of background appearance, not speaking much or having a key role in the narrative).

And of course the issues are way more complicated in her arrival on the show -- people were incredibly unhappy about Tara's death, viewers had issues with Willow's addiction to/recovery from magic storyline that I think would have made it tough for any romantic interest attached to that.

But certainly Kennedy seemed to get some flak for some masculine behaviors. She was very aggressive, in her fighting style/criticism of Buffy as well as in her pursual of Willow. I guess I wonder if in a way we don't hear those "this character was masculinized too much" because at least a few of the characters that lend themselves to this kind of tweaking from canon might not get the same kind of enthusiasm and interest in fandom/fanfiction writing.

At any rate, I hope that's not so terribly off topic to your set of questions. I found the post really interesting, and it's made me think more about how as someone who writes lots of slash and some het but very little of what could be constituted as femslash, I'm missing out on not just good stories but a big swath of fandom conversations/considerations.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I'm not the best person to talk about her character, because I love her character very much and give her decent-sized roles in much of my fanfic. I do love her for agressiveness, her competence, her confidence, and the fact that she enjoys power--why shouldn't she? (And it makes perfect sense she'd be given power in the process of training, because her training as such has probably been much more comprehensive than Buffy's own, which is mostly instinct and what she picked up through fieldwork.)

I don't know if she's begrudged these characteristics because she is female or for some other reason--but the fact that these "masculine" behaviors are still so highly prized at all does say something, both about the show and about its audience.

And Kennedy's masculinizing comes from the source, the same way Tasha Yar's does, and in both cases I think for the same reason: they needed the masculine traits to be "more interesting." (And part of the problem was, I think, that some fans didn't want her to be interesting; they wanted her to fade back into the scenery, not necessarily because she was female, but because she was a Potential.) Traditionally female characteristics weren't understood as being capable of carrying an audience's interest.

There's not so much a big swath of fandom conversations about femslash as there is a very little (miniscule, really) swath, I'm afraid. But I do think there are enough considerations at hand to warrant (or at least support) a larger swath.

[sushis.livejournal.com]

Here via metafandom

"I've said it before, and I'll say it again: a community of women writing women in homosexual relationships isn't going to end up working through the issues as a community (the same community, in many cases) of women writing men in homosexual relationships."

I agree. I haven't read much femmeslash, but I have opinions about feminization in m/m slash, and why masculinization would likely not operate the same way in femmslash. In my opinion, a certain amount of androgyny is required for simple realism in most fiction. Believable characters of whatever gender will be a combination of "feminine" and "masculine" traits, although some characters will have more "feminine" than "masculine" traits, and this balance does not always correspond to biological sex. Nonetheless, some traits *are* more common in women than in men, and visa versa. Where feminization of male characters becomes a problem, in my opinion, is when female writers, whether due to ignorance of common male patterns of behavior or to the fantasy of being rid of the more disturbing tendancies that many men have, particularly in regard to sex and relationships, write men as idealized "chicks with dicks," sensitive and self-questioning, intent upon verbalizing their emotions, and imbuing every sexual encounter with deep emotional significance. I'm not saying that men with these traits do not exist, because they obviously do, but that a writer who assumes these traits in her male characters as a matter of course is feminizing men across the board.

Now, since I'm writing about women writing men, and the errors they can make in assuming "feminine" traits in men, I think it's clear why women writing women together would be unlikely to make the mistake of "masculinizing" female characters across the board, but would be more likely to write them as psychologically similar to themselves, ie, androgynous with perhaps an accent towards "feminine" traits (although this accent might perhaps disappear depending upon the individual character). Men writing femmeslash would be more likely to fall into the trap of unrealistic masculinization of women, I would think...Do many men write femmeslash women as panting sex machines uninterested in the emotional components of their sexual relationships? I don't know that I've read *any* male-authored femmeslash, so, I wouldn't know, but, that would seem to be corrollary to the sort of unnuanced feminization of men I've seen in some m/m slash.

Now, while I see such broad, ignorant and/or wish-fulfillment type characterization in any story that wants to be more than PWP to be problematic, as I indicated earlier, a certain amount of androgyny is just par for the course for most realistic characters. Few characters are purely "masculine" or "feminine" in their behavior, and even those that are can be portrayed as complex characters whose gendered behavior relates to other facets of their personalities.