huh. we sure are homosocial around here: the homosocial in fandom

[cimorene]

last night and this morning i read two works of radical feminist dystopic science fiction from the 1970s (walk to the end of the world and motherlines, by suzy mckee charnas).  "Imagine the worst and then read Suzy McKee Charnas' Walk to the End of the World. The horror of its 1974 post-Apocalyptic, radical feminist vision will surely exceed your wildest expectations," says one review. 

the radical feminist perspective forces them to be highly homosexual and homosocial, and that riveted my attention and got me thinking about those things again. 

in charnas's text the male and female societies are both completely homosocial;  homosexuality is a natural consequence of that, since members of the other gender are seen as unfit for emotional attachment.  the homosociality is completely explicit there, inherent in the universe charnas creates

"Walk to the End of the World is a post-apocalyptic dystopia, based on the idea that a small group made it through the apocalypse in a shelter and in the process developed a philosophy of extreme sexism and racism. The non-white races are (to the best of their knowledge) wiped out, so the racism is mainly theoretical, but women, or fems as they're called, are kept as slaves and for breeding purposes and believed to be completely subhuman. While there's a faint plot, it's mostly an excuse to explore the world and culture, which is a catalog of the worst that one could imagine coming out of extreme misogyny."  [from here]  "In Motherlines, her sequel to Walk to the End of the World, Charnas faces head-on the question ducked by most revolutionaries and social visionaries: what about the baggage that all of us raised in imperfect times will almost certainly carry into the halcyon future? The Riding Women of the Motherlines tribes are unscarred by oppression; the Free Fems are shaped by their horrific experiences as slaves."  [from here]

, in a way it isn't in slash.  but slash is also much concerned with the homosocial (as a consequence of its concern with the homosexual), though often in a less explicit manner.  in a meta way, gender division and the homosocial are overwhelming participants in slash--here we are, a group of women in our cosy, almost entirely homosocial society, writing porn/romance with the male homosexual/-social as the focus.  regardless of our reasons for doing that, gender is problematised. 

that might have been more rambly than i intended to be.  my point was this: 

the radical feminist perspective

[allow me to take a little background here directly from my lecture notes from introductory political science and sociology.  obviously, only the most vague and general superficial glance at it, disclaim, disclaim.]  the radical feminist tradition is associated with marxism because it's a conflict-based view of human society which sees gender as the most meaningful social class and the systematic and violent oppression of women as the driving force in history.  one of the defining characteristics of the conflict-based understanding of society is the belief that the only way to bring about social change is revolution, as opposed to gradual change and measures like affirmative action.  i'm not sure how many radical feminists actually wanted to separate women entirely from male society, but the trend did exist--and it clearly influenced charnas.  as the first linked review said, "Charnas proposes that [brutal] savagery is intrinsic to men and thus all male relationships. The take home message is that women can escape brutalization by men only when avoiding men entirely."

on homosociality focuses on the alienation of male from female.  in fact, that's arguably the entire basis of homosociality--men in ancient greece had meaningful relationships only with other men because only other men were their equals (according to aristotle, women had more in common with animals than with men).  but slash fandom identifies female with male through the homosocial and the homosexual, often projecting homosocial relationships/dynamics within fandom onto the characters. 

out in the wilds of profic there's a widespread debate over whether men are capable of writing convincing female characters (or protagonists, or points of view) and vice versa.  i'd guess that the more popular view nowadays is that it is possible for men to write women and vice versa, but that it takes talent, or skill, or work, or insight, or a special touch;  but that view hasn't won;  people will still fight with you over it.  that debate has, of course,  penetrated slash fandom too.

but actually, what slash fandom intrinsically does is ignore that argument and focus on queerness/desire instead.  even in stories with no "coming-out" element--stories in which the sexuality of the principals is never questioned or never mentioned--sexuality, romance, desire, is the special of the day.  and every day is the same special.  we might debate in the background whether our characters have been girlified and whether that's acceptable or desirable and how a character should go about acting like a real guy, anyway;  but we're going right along anyway in our society whose whole existence is founded on the presupposition that through queerness (homosociality/homosexuality), through desire, we're perfectly qualified to write and understand the experience of male homosexual desire, male homosocial love.  men aren't aliens or a different social class, they're analogies.  they're us. 

and it seems to me, thinking about it, that this fannish queer homosociality is so fundamentally different from the homosociality of the greeks and romans as to almost require a completely different word, that they're almost diametrically opposed.  slash fandom might glorify the homosocial.  but even if we say for the sake of argument that slash fandom actually universally considers homosociality superior to heterosociality, that identification across the gender gap changes it completely.  it's not just a side-effect of our taste in porn that doesn't happen to have been a side-effect of the romans'.  i see it as mutually exclusive with the class-stratification/radical feminist model of the homosocial, at the most basic level. 

  ultimately, charnas shows the negative male-like traits in the female societies being grappled with, possibly overcome, by the women's own natures.  more than that:  her ultra-female society of riders was designed and built from the ground up by women without the slightest participation of men throughout its history, and she makes it completely fundamentally different and rather superior in that particular in-touch-with-the-earth way.  there's some compare and contrast floating around, sure, because the similarities to male society are flaws in the female, and the differences are rather exciting.  but analogy or identification with the alien is impossible.  the unbridgeable gap, the alienness of the sexes, is the foundation of classical homosocialism.

i think there's another post in here about the gap of alienness between the genders in fannish queer homosocialism too, possibly focusing on the exaltation of likeness with reference to isilya's fandom homosociality essay "where your treasure is, there also your heart will be" and to her particularly well-chosen quote from "oblivion" by shalott.  maybe i'll want to spend a few hours writing it some other day.

Comments

[anglepoiselamp.livejournal.com]

*bookmarks for later reading* My brain just can't process anything right now. But I'm thinking of working on some kind of essay/presentation/thingy about gender roles in slash authorship/readership/characterization, for a sexuality/textuality workgroup I'm in.

Okay, that was way too many slashes even for a sentence about slash.

[arallara.livejournal.com]

Wow, I just randomly found this post through friendsfriends, and lucky me, because this is totally fascinating stuff. :) I've got to bookmark, also, for future thought, but I do have a few relatively brief comments following a first read-through.

i see it as mutually exclusive with the class-stratification/radical feminist model of the homosocial, at the most basic level.

I really, really agree with this. I get frustrated with much of the scholarly literature on slash because it relies on the same notion of fixed, stable gender identities that produce those radical feminist discourses of that "unbridgeable gap, the alienness of the sexes." So much of the theorizing about slash then becomes about explaining the "problem" of so many women, many of them identify as heterosexual, producing these fantasies about male/male relationships. If you're not invested in that idea of gender identity as something essential and stable, and in the heteronormative coherence of sex, gender, and desire (thank you, queer theorists and poststructuralist feminists! *g*), then the fact that we're a bunch of ladies getting off on stories about male/male relationships, even though many of us identify as heterosexual--well, it doesn't seem so problematic. *g*

possibly focusing on the exaltation of likeness

I haven't gone to read the essay you linked to yet, so I don't know how relevant this is, but something I've thought about is the constant negotiation between likeness and difference that I see over and over again in slash stories. We exalt "likeness," but the relationships we seem most often drawn to are those between characters who are constructed as contrasts to each other. We like the tension that difference produces, but we ultimately want that tension resolved (through, er, sweaty sex and romantic declarations) through the ways they find that the characters find they are the same.

And, a final quick comment: I've heard over and over again from other women in fandom that this is the first female homosocial space in which they've ever felt comfortable, that they've always been "one of the guys" and had few female friends before fandom. Not sure where that fits in with what you're talking about, but it occurred to me as another interesting wrinkle. :)

Anyway, thanks again for this post. Totally thought-provoking!

[cimness.livejournal.com]

So much of the theorizing about slash then becomes about explaining the "problem" of so many women, many of them identify as heterosexual, producing these fantasies about male/male relationships.

yeah, that irritates me too. if it WERE a real problem--it isn't, and i find the suggestion rather offensive--i don't think what those particular people do with their theories would be remotely productive, not even towards adequately explaining it, let alone doing anything.

and this:

If you're not invested in that idea of gender identity as something essential and stable, ... then the fact that we're a bunch of ladies getting off on stories about male/male relationships... doesn't seem so problematic.

is an excellent point. :)

[rabidfangurl.livejournal.com]

I've heard over and over again from other women in fandom that this is the first female homosocial space in which they've ever felt comfortable, that they've always been "one of the guys" and had few female friends before fandom.

The same thing happens in women's colleges (which are filled with slashers). I think it's the fact that most previous homosocial spaces which women encounter are merely small subsets of a larger heterosocial space, and therefore become yet another place to compete (for men, for power, for recognition, etc). Whereas fandom (or college, at least for me) lacks this urge to compete (unless you want to be a BNF). In fact, as the complaints about the 'Culture of Nice' show, fandom is a space that is explicitly about cooperation and getting along and god help those who disturb this.

The big thing, I think, that distinguishes competitive and non-competitive homosocial environments is the attitude toward things that are embarrassing and could be considered weakness. For example, a group of high-school girls would die before talking about their periods, while a group of women's college students will had loud conversations about them in the dining hall, even if there are men around. Fandom is the same; we talk about our desires and our sex lives without blinking. How many of us would do that outside of our comfortable non-competitive homosocial environment?

Also, what does in say that we are more comfortable in a heterosocial environment (that in which we are friends with males) than a competitive homosocial one? Is this an indication that with males, we feel we can talk more freely? Or that we are more comfortable hiding certain things, because they are males, whereas females bring to light hypocritical feelings of shame? You sure aren't going to talk about your desires with a guy you weren't hitting on, but why won't you tell another woman? Because you are in competition with her and are afraid? How does that work?


...wow, I am waaaaay more influenced by fem/gen than I will admit.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I loved reading this and can't think of anything to disagree with.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

thank you! i'm glad to hear somebody read it. :)

[randomblade.livejournal.com]

This is really interesting. I think one thing for me about reading anything is that I identify with the characters. And because I was brought up reading books with male protagonists, I have never found gender problematic in literature. To me, on the page, sexuality is totally a matter of character, because these characters are not physical constructs to me. They are constructs of personality. I have never had a problem, while reading, identifying with a male personality. In life it becomes much more charged, because the issues are embodied and circumscribed by matter. I don't know if this massive disconnect is a totally individual outgrowth of my crazy brain, but it is why I never really 'get' the arguments about exploitation of gay male culture for our jerkoff fantasies. For me it's not about gay males at all.

For me there's a very clear and indisputable line between fiction and reality.

[noracharles]

Yes, yes, everything you just said.
The male characters in slash are not men, they are personalities I can identify with. Moreover, they are free of gender roles or the implicit expectation that I will identify more with one of the persons than with the other, the way het and even femslash is.

[cimorene]

I'm curious, though, you feel that you're expected to identify with one specific character in f/f fic? You feel it shares specific gender-role qualities with het that m/m lacks?

[noracharles]

As I wrote that, I did think it was kind of clumsy, but I was too impatient to rephrase, sorry.

No, I don't think one of the women in f/f is "the woman", and I'm expected to identify with her rather than the other woman. I do think that women are seen as gendered and men are seen as default and not gendered in our male-dominated cultures. And it's rare for me to experience female characters, especially in North American shows and movies, as being people first and foremost, their gender second. Fic can round out characters, but can only ever supplement, not replace canon for me as a reader, unless a writer is exceptionally talented.

Like someone said in a post I read today about mammothfail, it's a matter of picking which tiresome stereotypical portrayal to go with, rather than writing people as people.

In my everyday life I feel extremely constrained by the unconscious expectations people around me have of me because of my gender, so I'm allergic to anything reinforcing gender roles for women in fandom, which is my safe and happy place. I acknowledge that I am hyper-sensitive, but maintain that I am not being hysterical and fantastic ^_~

[cimorene]

Ahhhhhhh, now I get it! And yes, I totally agree - I feel that way myself, sometimes. I think this has a lot to do with why many women, even women who are a) het and b) not into slash (or not into romance at all) prefer male protagonists sometimes. Personally, I find this almost always the case in visual media (although again, books are a different story). I don't have problems identifying with, for example, Andy or Miranda in most of the Devil Wears Prada fanfiction that I've read, while I do think of DWP-the-movie as a kind of feminist manifesto, it's much harder to identify with Andy of the movie if you try to take it at face value, and I think that has a lot to do with her relationship to gender role even though the movie is actually about her negotiation of being a professional woman. Man, gender roles really piss me off. I struggle with this issue a lot when I think about slash because, in my actual book-reading, I overwhelmingly read about female characters, and that's a striking difference from the huge # of males in slash.

[noracharles]

Ooh, The Devil Wears Prada! Hellooo Meryl Streep ^_~
I enjoyed the movie, but did get annoyed with Andy several times, though I don't remember why any more. I mostly just remember the hotness that is Miranda Priestly.

I'm not sure if I read more about women, but I feel as if I do, since I like both m/m romances and strong female characters, and tend to buy books written by women. I mainly read speculative fiction and classics, with some humor, mystery and historical thrillers thrown in. For school I have to read a lot of rather masculine fiction, and I get very tired of it.

Have you read The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield? A bibliophile used-bookseller who practically lives in her dad's bookstore is hired by an elderly recluse to tell her life's story. The elderly writer finds herself unable to tell a tale without embroidering it, so she needs someone who can get to the facts. Of course she immediately begins spinning an exciting, riveting and humorous tale which probably isn't all true, and the interviewer has to start doing some independent research. The novel is particularly entertaining if you love 18th and 19th century novels the way I do.

[cimorene]

Cool, thanks for the rec! That does sound really fun.

[noracharles]

Thank you for the link to thelastgoodname's post. I like it.

Edited to add: whoops. Still need to learn dw tags

[copracat]

You've given me a lot of interesting things to think about - not the least that there might be some value in feminist utopia/dystopia fiction.

[galadhir.livejournal.com]

I think the main problem with the sheer hopefulness of that is that, as far as we know slash fandom = mostly women and some gay men. Again, as far as we know, women may *always* have been able to identify with/understand men not as aliens but as fellow human beings. My main quibble is that none of this proves that straight men have become any better at identifying with/understanding women.

The ancient greek homosocial ethic was a male one. The fandom homosocial ethic is a female one. It may be that the difference in them is precisely the difference between male and female: we understand them and accept them as human, they don't understand us, or accept us as entirely human at all.

Damn, I didn't mean to be that depressing!

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Things may be a little more hopeful, though--more than a few slashers have close, warm, intellectually challenging relationships in the homosocial slash space but ALSO RL close, warm, and intellectually challenging relationships with both women and men in other spaces including, god forbid, Real Life. I mean, "I value the friendship of women" CAN but doesn't have to mean "Euwww, boy cooties."

[heartofslash.livejournal.com]

Wow. I heart you to death.

I like your analysis.

I consider slash to transcend societally-induced sexual identity. I like a good comin-out story as well as the next gal, but I love the freedom of a world where what attracts one person to another person is not first and foremost dependent upon gender. In real life, I think there are a gajillion personality traits that are far more important than which kind of genitals a potential partner happens to possess. (Similarly, I feel that skin colour, height and other physical characteristics are nowhere near as important as intelligence, sense of humour and desire to live in a truly free and fair world.)

When we slash, we are often writing of a perfect world. A world in which it's okay to be gay, or whatever one wants to be, without fear of repercussion. We often write of the difficulties those who want to be free encounter as they live within a world that is not free, but it is always with the vision of that better world in mind. That makes slash a bit revolutionary, in my book.

I'm friending you, BTW. Nice to see you on LJ. And, *g*, love the icon!

- Haleth

[cimness.livejournal.com]

but I love the freedom of a world where what attracts one person to another person is not first and foremost dependent upon gender.

nail on head! yes. and although i find a lot of the old 'academic' perspectives on slash grating, there's a certain resonation to the idea that slash evades the problem of gender roles. in slash, you can make gender truly invisible (although in the coming-out story, which is to say a large percentage of slash, people don't choose to do that).

that invisibility is something that you just can't achieve in writing about a heterosexual relationship--of course you can write a completely equal heterosexual relationship, or one where the people aren't attracted to one another because of gender but because of character, or you can write one that completely scorns gender roles. but we know as writers and consumers all about socialised gender, and we know that our entire audience shares that knowledge.

if gender isn't mentioned, well, it's a factor in every actual relationship because it works on the identity and reality of every person, the writer and the characters alike.