slash vs gay: brief musings

[lobelia321]

childeproof asked how do I distinguish slashy writing from gay writing. Here are some brief initial musings on the subject:

I said in another post that Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty was definitely a gay novel, not a slashy novel. And Sheela na Gig asked me to elaborate:

Slashy vs gay?

To me, Hollinghurst is like a researchy glimpse into gay culture because he is very good at describing it, unflinchingly, unsentimentally. And there are things in his books that do not, simply do NOT figure in slash: e.g. campy queens; men cottaging and having sex after sex after sex with fly-by-night-partners; detailed and loving descriptions of foreskins, penises and sphincters; the very word 'sphincter'; love as a problematic and complicated thing. He's too tasteful to describe 'thrusting' (which, in my admittedly limited experience, features large in gay porn) but he does pay attention to 'size' (how many inches?). Slashers couldn't give a fuck about size or about any of those other things. They are romantics through and through and it's all about either the overwhelming love or the overwhelming angst. Gay culture features not at all or as a marginal glimpse in fanfic, as does coming out or secrecy due to societal pressures. Men in slash love men because they love those individuals; they can't help themselves. This is why I found Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain definitely slashy: two straight men who are overcome by this thing that is bigger than the both of them, their passionate love for each other. The love is transported through the sex. That is slash.

In gay writing, sex and love are separate. This is, I think, actually closer to how men operate. They're from Mars and all that. Slashers feminify the men. I write feminify because we don't feminise them; we like the manly. Well, not all of us do but the manliness of the manly is a big drawing point for many. But what we love about the manly is how it fights with itself to overcome its manliness and admit and submit to the power of lurv.