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.

Comments

[bunnysquee.livejournal.com]

hmm, i thought gay writing was about, well, gay boys, real or fictional. and slash is pairing up 2 boys whose sexual identity is unknown, say Dom or Orli, or who are straight, say, Bean or Viggo.

i think brokeback mountain is gay writing since it is about discovering their true sexual identity.

omw! i don't think i have ever disagreed with you. *runs away*

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

omw! i don't think i have ever disagreed with you.
I am still getting over the shock.

*self-administers valium*

i thought gay writing was about, well, gay boys, real or fictional. and slash is pairing up 2 boys whose sexual identity is unknown,
Oh yes, I completely agree that the non-gayness is precisely the slashiness. Or for me it is, anyway. Which is why I find rl Ian or rl Craig so profoundly unslashy.

i think brokeback mountain is gay writing since it is about discovering their true sexual identity.
No, it's not about discovering their true sexual identity; it's about discovering their true love. They don't fuck on Brokeback Mountain, discover their identity and go off to fuck hundreds of other men. They say at various points how they are overwhelmed by this big thing, 'i wish i knew how to quit you', 'i ain't no queer', this is just between the two of us, i ain't been fucking nobody else. Now Jack Twist may be lying about not fucking anybody else, there's a suggestion that he is, but the main thing about that story is their love.

So that's why it's slashy. Because they are both married, too.

And in slash, too, it's rarely about discovering your gay identity. Even when they do sort of do that, it's never emphasised. It's always about their attraction to each other and about love. Because gay identity is generally so un-monogamous. Male het identity is, too, actually.

[bunnysquee.livejournal.com]

*also self-administers valium* :-D

i think it's a bit about their sexual identity too, since they are straight and married blah blah blah, yet they love each other enough to get it on. so that means they are not strictly straight ... am i being a pedant? i can see if they were, say, in the army or in prison, and there were no other sexual options, and they fucked. okay, i guess, yes, they can still be straight. but this has love all intertwined in it.

let me go home and read the thing again. i might be talking through my hat for all i know.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Yes, they 'discover' their sexual preference, I guess but it's completely and utterly intertwined with their love, as you say. And that is what is slashy about it. We think that is quite standard but in gay writing this is not the case. Sex is not at all entwined with love. That is just what we slashy women think. For us, the discovery of sexual identity may be a sort of by-product of love or a prerequisite of love (which is what it totally is in Brokeback Mountain). But in gay writing, love exists quite separately from sex. Hollinghurst's men fuck like bunnies: scores of different partners. Proulx's men fuck like bunnies but only each other.