thoughts in the bath on fanfic, m/m lust, being het, loving lube, bottoms + vaginas vs recta

[lobelia321]

If one has a thought in the bath, it is imperative that one run and type it into one's update box for it may be an ephemeral thought and be lost on the winds of synaptic decrepitude. Hence the following.



I have previously expounded on the four feet of fandom (and I haven't quite decided yet whether these are the metaphorical feet of tables or the metaphorical feet of metre). To refresh: the four feet are: man-on-man lust action, writing, community and fanship. Anyway, I just again want to reinforce my own prime foot, which is the foot of the man-on-man.

I think if this whole shebang suddenly turned het, I would lose interest. I would stop reading the fic, and I would certainly not develop an interest in the canon, and I would probably go slow on the community aspect as well.

But I could lose the fandoms and I could lose the writing, even, if the hot-boy-love were retained. The community is a more difficult one: the community is essential to me, but then, I think, it is essential because there is a consensus of shared hot-boy-love. If that weren't there, it might not feel like a community to me any longer. It's a substratum because half the time these days I don't really talk about the hot-boy-lust anymore with Friends or in posts but I know in case I ever need to do a brief gush, it would fall on sympathetic minds.

So to me the community and the hot-boy-love is intertwined.

Of course, I love good prose and the writing. And sometimes in the past it's felt as if this place was more important to me as a writing workshop-style place than as a place to celebrate teh manly love. I've had to realise, though, that pretensions to writerly highmindedness r not me. Alas, perhaps, but 'tis so. I'm here for the slash, and the slash is teh manly. Basically, teh slash is teh cock, and I likes teh cock.

I saw a film recently called Go Fish, centred on a group of lesbians in the USA somewhere. There is a scene where a woman is accused by other women of not being a 'real lesbian' because she has slept with a man: You can't do without that dick, or words to that effect, are spoken. And I thought, hm, that's me allright. I can't do without the dick. I am just too straight. Born straight, grown up straight, stayed straight.

'Straight' does not exclude leanings and occasional yearnings and every-now-and-again spurts of desire for the same sex. Hah, not for me, anyway. And although I have hundreds of pics of Orli and co on my hard disk, I also have some hard-core porn pics of women. But basically I am irredeemably heterosexual because I just like the idea of that dick in that cunt too much.

Which brings me to another strand in my somewhat rambling, topic-less post (well, what is to be expected from something spawned in the bath?): This is the notion that slash is het sexuality projected onto men. Or that it is feminine sexuality projected onto men. This gets debated every so often and some people put on tin hats and start bowing down to the Male Gods who deign to post with their supposedly superior knowledge of anatomy and physiology and psychology of teh holy male. Well, I crap on teh holy male (residue of my 1980s feminist past, no doubt) and I celebrate the projections.

The projections do sometimes veer into silly territory, but then, anything that is silly is to me bad!fic so I happily discount it. Good! fic can pull off anything. And when I ponder this, the fondness for the lube springs to mind. There is a lot of lube in slash, and I suspect there is more lube in slash than there is in gay porn. Now, one thing I like about vaginas is that they self-lube -- this is truly a marvellous thing and thank you, God or Evolution or the Primary Gene that came up with it. The absence of the self-lube function seems to worry a lot of fanfic writers so much is made of substitute lubes. Personally, I like this. It vaginalises the rectum, and I sort of get a kick out of that. Because actually, the rectum as such is not an oral zone for me. (ETA: I mean erogeonous zone! Freudian or what?) It could be; after all, anal sex is something that both men and women can have -- women only as bottoms, of course. (More on this in a second.) But the rectum does not happen to be an oral zone for me, or not a very important one, at any rate. This could be for reasons of having been repressed, I don't deny it. And maybe I am projecting my repressed desire for anal sex onto teh boys...? (Being repressed, I wouldn't know, would I?) However, it feels to me as if in fanfic it's the vagina wot is being projected.

Which brings me neatly to my next point: the bottom issue. I have not made a statistical survey of this but possibly, perhaps, maybe there is greater identification with the bottom among women slashers than there is with the top?? I am wondering to what extent a writer's Sue tends to be the bottom. For me, in my own writing, I am totally the bottom. I am so bottom I am passive sub. (Bottom and sub are not the same, I know. Bottoms can be very powerful and actually have the say-so in any relationship -- which is the kink of the bottom, to me.) This is not to say that I don't get a kick also from top-characters and also, deliciously, from switch-characters. (The nicest thing about Domorli in lotrps was always their equality.) But from the point of view of letting experience enter one's fanfic joy, I have experience of being fucked but no experience of fucking, nor will I ever have the latter. (Nor am I even much interested in the latter as deep down I actually believe women to have the more interesting and joy-bringing genitalia than men who have a very wysiwyg arrangement.)

Anyway, to sum up: I don't really have anything to sum up. These are random musings born of t'bath. I just know that people are here for different reasons: some are dyed-in-the-wool fans and would throng to actor conventions even if fanfic disappeared; others love canon and just really get off on the interstices of episodes or chapters or narrative ellipses and how these all get filled in by fanfic (they care more about plot than about sex); but I'm here for the sex.



Bring it on. And not just any old sex: the swoony, the gorgeous, the NC-17, the slashy slushy glorious hot boy-on-boy and man-on-man love-action sex.

Comments

[thamiris.livejournal.com]

But from the point of view of letting experience enter one's fanfic joy, I have experience of being fucked but no experience of fucking, nor will I ever have the latter.

Very interesting post, babe, though I'm curious about something. It seems that you're perhaps implicitly suggesting here that for female heterosexuals there's really no place beyond the bottom becase they don't possess flesh-based dicks of their own, that any pushiness they exhibit is limited to a pushy bottomness because of their receptive (to cock) nature. Where would you fit a woman with a strap-on or a hand-held dildo, or a woman who penetrates a man digitally?

Having engaged in two of the above three practices, I can tell you that they feel like fucking to me, that I was the one in charge, that I was the fucker, and he was my pretty bottom bitch. *g* Couldn't you, too, then, be the one in charge, the top? Maybe it's not something that interests you, but you seem to exclude such actions in the above quoted bit as a possibility in m/f relations, when they seem valid as a means of upending the conventional gendered power dynamics.

That said, I do wonder myself if it's possible for a woman to enjoy a man's ass--and I do enjoy men's asses orally, digitally, and, er, plastically--without at least partly reconfiguring them as vaginal despite the differences. Even gay men sometimes slip there, using vaginal terminology ("lips", "man-cunt", etc), not to mention the culture equation, which goes back to ancient Greece and Rome, of bottoming and femininity, so I wouldn't even suggest that the vaginal/anal conflation is necessarily a female thing.

Anyway, anything that can provoke thought in me before 5am is a good thing, so thanks for that.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Very interesting! Very interesting, indeed. Ah, where would my sex education be without LJ? First, to address the point about bottoming: I realise that bottoming can have two levels of meaning, the literal (the fuckee) and the, how shall I call it, more symbolic / metaphoric / connotative, i.e. the bottom gets equated with the passive partner. I was really only talking about the former. I meant that literally I can have no experience what it feels like to have a penis and to have that penis enfolded by another person's internal flesh. But I now see that even as I typed that I slipped, or perhaps my imagination did the slippage for me (hah!), and I ended up veering into a discussion about subs. And the sub-thing does have such strong overtones of passivity.

But I certainly wouldn't equate the bottom with the passive. In some senses, and certainly in some fic I've read, the bottom exerts quite a bit of power, both at the level of the actual sex (controlling the rhythm, the angle and so forth) and at the level of the relationship. But I wasn't even talking about the bottom as a personality-type (although the bottom is very often treated as such in slash and always in those manga comics whose name escapes me, yaoi something). I just meant the bottom part in a particular sex act.

Also, the top is in a way more open to anxiety attacks because the top has to make sure the bottom stays bottom and, if male, has to maintain his erection. This is another way in which women are like bottoms: we don't have to worry about that erection thing.

Again, does anything get confined to the particular sex act, though? These other issues seep in.

Your experience with dildoes and digits is extremely interesting. I haven't done any of that, being an innocent ingenue, but it is a very intriguing notion and I can see how it confounds all sorts of things. Not in fic, though. Fic operates with real penises. I think in all my time in slash (2 3/4 years) I have read all of one fic that had a dildo in it. Which doesn't address what you say at all.

he was my pretty bottom bitch.
I am getting off on this so much. *ggg*

The being-in-charge thing: I could argue this on some theoretical level but if I just keep it to my own experience (wot i have learned in slash) then I find that I am more in charge if I identify with the bottom/sub. It's that paradoxical thing of being in charge by not being in charge. I love that. That's me, though, and not necessarily a male/female or feminine thing.

and, er, plastically
*bursts out laughing*
Interesting about the arse-as-cunt thing not being necessarily female and also going way, way back.

[eyebrowofdoom.livejournal.com]

I have nothing to say except that I love your wet and yielding but also libidinous and penetrating brain.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

*rims you*

(*determined to love the arse*)

[eyebrowofdoom.livejournal.com]

Coming back to say, god I love this thread! Love!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I haven't even read all of it yet! God, everyone got here before me!

[gabbyhope.livejournal.com]

Truthfully, I don't know what I'm here for anymore, but if someone is giving out free samples or summat, can I be here for the sex, too?

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

You said summat! You're turning into a Brit!

Sex? Sure, everyone join in the merry heave-ho.

[blythely.livejournal.com]

if you hadn't moved to Hull, arse end of the frickin unverse, you could be getting those little plastic samples they hand out at the tube stations.

er. um. COME TO LONDON!

[calicokat.livejournal.com]

Well, this goes a ways in anwsering the eternal question of "Why do heterosexual women want two men to be gay?" Or, at least, is better put than most forays into that area.

This is the notion that slash is het sexuality projected onto men. Or that it is feminine sexuality projected onto men. This gets debated every so often and some people put on tin hats and start bowing down to the Male Gods who deign to post with their supposedly superior knowledge of anatomy and physiology and psychology of teh holy male. Well, I crap on teh holy male (residue of my 1980s feminist past, no doubt) and I celebrate the projections.

I'd have to say sometimes it is het or feminine sexuality projected onto men, but not all the time. It depends not only on the writer but the day of the week and phase of the moon they're writing in.

For an entertaining romp between two lesbians with penises one could pick up the recently released graphic novel Only The Ring Finger Knows (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1569709807/qid=1097671395/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/104-4698336-5163955?v=glance&s=books&n=507846). (I reccomend this because it is the most striking example of lesbians with penises I can think of.) Although the story is about two "men", the men's attitudes and reactions are all entirely feminine. The things they worry about are things women worry about. For Japanese shonen ai (boy's love) writers, it's always seemed to me that the majority of their stories are about trying to make men into people they can relate to. Because the gender gap is so large now adays that women are literally not getting married at a rate that is rather astounding, I can understand that the works that come from this culture are more about presenting men that the women would be able to love, rather than the men they meet day to day, who are still living pre-women's rights and women's independence movements and have been raised to expect to marry a traditional Japanese housewife (this generation of Japanese girls are anything but).

(I'm using the Japanese term because the genre is generally at odds with slash, although less so now adays, as this (http://www.aestheticism.com/visitors/index.htm) fairly good article can explain -- shounen ai and yaoi are pretty much the same thing, only the literal meaning of yaoi is more or less "plot, what plot?")

Almost all shounen ai stories are about lesbians with penises. But then, occasionally, you get someone like the author/artist Kazuya Minekura, who not only has a boyish first name but grew up with the boys and writes several shounen ai series about men with manly attitudes, emotions, and thought patterns. (She comments "I didn't know I wasn't a boy until my breasts started growing at puberty." It shows, and in a good way.)

Until the past few years, when incoming Japanese influences invaded the genre, this "lesbians with penises" idea wasn't quite so prevalent in slash. For the most part, women tried to approximate the male brain when writing about Kirk and Spock and those rough an tumble Highlanders. That includes some basic differences like recognizing through observation, if not through science, that the fact that the male brain has a weaker bridge between the left and right sides means that men have a hard time becoming very emotional while still being quite rational and other things like that they're more physically and spatially oriented than women and, in general, see life as something in which they must complete a "quest" (or a series of quests) while women are quite all right to not go questing.

However, even if a woman comprehends the male brain, it turned out that realism wasn't necessarily what American women wanted. I've watched the shonen ai boom seep into the slash fandom over the past ten years. Some women seemed to feel suddenly liberated by the idea that their men didn't have to act like men, while others didn't enjoy their slash unless their men were good and manly. For awhile, this caused a bit of a divide, and American slash stuck to American television and movies and comics while American shounen ai stuck to Japanese entertainment. However, in the past three or four years that has no longer been the case.

[calicokat.livejournal.com]

Ideas coming over from the shounen ai fandom don't only include men behaving like women, but ideas like "Somebody HAS to be the permanant bottom or the relationship doesn't work" and "The taller partner will always be on top." Although this doesn't mean slash fangirls didn't write permanant bottom/top relationships before, coming-to-slash-by-way-of-shounen-ai writers make the idea gospel. (It used to be I could run away to pretty much any given slash fic to escape that idea, but that's no longer the case!) Anyway, nowadays there's a lot more moblity between writing femmeslash+penis and man-on-man-action, and if a writer likes both they don't have to stay in the closet about one to keep the attention of their peers.

Personally, I strive for realistic emotions between men in my fiction and like my men manly. This is, I think, because as a lesbian I get plenty of estrogen in my day to day life and am not turned on but rather entertained by two beings similar to but different than myself having a completely different relationship dynamic than I'm looking for in my relationships. For some women it seems to be about making men seem more acessible and understandable by turning them into quasi-women and imaginging that when the girls go away the men let their feminine sides out. But a lot of women's standpoints are somewhere between the two extremes. (Or they may be, for example, at my end, but because it turns them on rather than just because they get a real giggle from it.)

Well, maybe I'll have some more coherent point about this later, but, basically, this is sort of where the psychology seems to be coming from, at least from my observations. >_o

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I am not Japanese and know little about Japan and have only ever read one shounen-ai in my life and that in German translation. The boys were certainly almost ethereally ephebic. Whether they were girls as opposed to just very, very feminine boys, I don't know right now.

I was intrigued by your claim that these are 'lesbians' with dicks as opposed to 'women' with dicks. I am not a lesbian (hah, as I explained in my post, er) although I know that there are lots of lesbians in slash who, no doubt, have very different reasons to me for being there (or possibly not so different but surely a bit different). But from what I know the lesbian sub-culture is different from the type of culture portrayed by these ephebic boys. A butch lesbian is not a boy, and a lipstick lesbian is not a boy. These boys are the daydreams of women but they are not lesbians with dicks.

[blythely.livejournal.com]

I just like the idea of that dick in that cunt too much.


How I love you.

I think that, even though I say I love good writing and interesting stories and whatnbot, it is really all about the sex. And not just sex, but fucking. Although, I must say that I think my thing is not so much m/m but cock object/insertion point. Having thought long and hard (haha) about the aspects of fic (slash, het, femme, combo, wotever) that i like, it's essentially the whole penetration deal that does it for for. I don't care if the penetrator comes with tits, ETC.

Of course, it's much more interesting and subversive if it's m/m, and I do like boys as a creature-of-otherness all their own (I just don't really understand them) and they have a humour and levity about them that women, who think too much, just don't really have. Of course this is a good and bad thing.

I forgot what I was going to say. Imma now go to bar and get another glass of wine.

<3

[blythely.livejournal.com]

there were a number of typos in that comment.

i blame the wine.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

*laughs in delight*

I'm so happy to see someone celebrate penetration. Penetration has had a bad rap, not least because of 1970s/80s feminism and the notion that penetration is "per se" masculine and aggressive and that wimmins are so much more cutesy softy pinky.

it's essentially the whole penetration deal that does it for for. I don't care if the penetrator comes with tits,
*delights!*

But then again, I also like sucking in fics. And frottage, frottage can be very nice and angsty and first-timey. And... and... *gasps excitedly*

cock object/insertion point
11111

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

I've had this post open all day (ah, broadband!) and have been thinking about the points you raise (also about lots of other stuff, like seagulls and frogs: but let's not go into that).

Anyway, this means that by the time I post this there will be Hundreds of Comments, none of which are present on my current view which has been open since noon.

- I suspect I am missing something in your use of the phrase 'oral zone'. Do you literally just mean it in, e.g., cunnilingus sense? This to me is quite separate from either vaginal or anal sex

- experience of being fucked but no experience of fucking, nor will I ever have the latter. Is that down to being female, or down to the sorts of sex you do? (And am I being too personal?! But it seems germane.) I'd say that a woman can fuck a man (or another woman) and not even necessarily with the aid of penetrative devices. But YMMV.

- have a feeling I have dropped out of your definition of community, not least because I am making a conscious effort to write next Thing as (historical) non-slash -- and can't help thinking of this as a Step. Though it's mainly to prove to myself that I can -- and to have some writing that I can discuss in polite company!

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

... yep, all those comments :)

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

oh, and I did also mean to mention the whole equality thing, the switching, which is what I find most compelling about same-sex relationships of either flavour. The equality and the inequality, e.g. social constraints as in classical Greece -- older man on top, anything else an Outrage -- etc.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

like seagulls and frogs: but let's not go into that
By all means: let's!

I was puzzled by your reference to oral zone and scrolled through my entry to find it only to discover, hah, that I made a rather Freudian slip and meant to write erogenous zone! Telling, or what?

Is that down to being female, or down to the sorts of sex you do?
Down to being female. And er, possibly down to the sorts of sex I do which (so far) have been confined to het sex. But I meant purely the sensation of penile penetration. I can see that the word fucking can be used for non-penile-penetration sex acts as well and maybe I should have said penile penetration throughout, but it seems like a long clinical thing to type when fucking sounds so much more to the point. Except, as you point out, it's not. I literally meant that I have no experience of having a penis and the way that penis feels when it's inside somebody else's body. The fleshly sensation of it. As I said above to phineasjones, the fact that I can never feel this is of no consequence in most walks of my life -- but it is of crucial consequence when I write slash because there I'm having to think myself into characters who do have a penis and who do (or can) feel what it feels like to insert that penis into somebody's arse or cunt.

YMMV
? *acronymically challenged*

have a feeling I have dropped out of your definition of community, not least because I am making a conscious effort to write next Thing as (historical) non-slash
No, it's not that people begin to write origfic, far from it. It's that I know if I mention certain boy-boy lustiness to people they will empathise, sympathise, nay e'ven squee!

[msilverstar]

As you know, I come from a very different start (I love het fic) and end up close to the same place. For me, the characters and emotions and sex all work together to make a story that gets to me. The plot is quite secondary, though it can't be insultingly stupid. I'm having a hard time writing tops and dominants, but enjoying it when I break through. I adore the chance to taste new things like this. I'm gonna stop rambling now.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

So what in the slash lured you away from the het? And what is similar in both? And I, too, adore the chance to try out new things, difficult things -- they always open out the world and your mind a little more.

[cupiscent.livejournal.com]

I have nothing coherent to say here, because my thoughts are rambling about even worse than yours, and I don't even have a bath.

However, I had been musing on writing my own essay/muse/rant on tops and bottoms all day yesterday, and you're just encouraging my stupid brain. We'll see what comes of it. Fic to write and thesis to proof-read before that can eventuate anyway.

(It's always an honour to witness you muse, btw.)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I don't even have a bath
*chortles* Maybe you need to rent yourself one! (I won't, btw, even go into why I was having a bath and not a shower...)

Thank you for you remark about the honour; I feel absurdly complimented and yes, honoured. And looking forward to your own ramblings! Ah, thesis!

[brightest-blue.livejournal.com]

All I can say is YAY for the idea of you having these thoughts in the bath!

Okay, I'll say a little more. I too am mostly here for the sex, although wonderful plot and characterization really do me in; witness my infatuation with [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com]'s American Football. But there is also no shortage of hot, really graphic sex in that WIP.

And that idea of the community- no we really don't discuss it much anymore, but it's so comforting to know that we can drop a slashy remark every now and then without anyone taking umbrage. I sometimes almost forget I can't do it in RL. For that very reason, I have had to stop drinking at parties, or I'll blather on about boysex all night, much to my husband's chagrin!

I love the idea (and am one myself) of a pushy bottom. I also love the equality in a relationship between two guys of nearly the same age and status who just fall in love, and work out everything else along the way. And I love men's arses. I just do. Give me a bare one, and I'll do nasty things to it. Hee.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean about the sex, the plot and the characterisation. I love plot and characterisation; I love good!fic, of course, I do, and I go on about it. But it is, I realised, not why I'm here. If I loved it so much I could confine myself to published novels. Two days ago I read a very good fic which had three men in a bed in it but no sex and only very, very muted ust -- so it was 'realistic', I guess, but just not fanon. It was extremely well written, I could appreciate that, subtle, detailed -- but I just could not warm to it. I was disappointed. I felt let down by the absence of sex at the end.

I have had to stop drinking at parties, or I'll blather on about boysex all night
*bursts out cackling*
Oh, I wish I could be at those parties...!!

As to pushy bottoms, equality and arses: yes, oh yes. I've had more thoughts on all of that since and will post anon! :-)

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

This inspires...way too many conflicting thoughts for me to voice at this hour. But I love that, even as it frustrates me. *G*

I'm a straight girl, love cock (don't want one), love men (don't want to be one), and toppy toppy toppy. Despite the lack of a penis, I tend to identify with the penetrator in slash, since the penetrator is usually portrayed as the top. I'm working on changing that with my own fic, though I seem to be too happy wallowing in frottage and blowjob country at the moment to actually reach that point (and there needs to be more rimming in slash, and did I mention I'm a bit incoherent?).

Anyway, yes. Hot mansex, tubs o' lube, squeeing. Check, check, and check.

Mind if I metablog this?

[airgiodslv.livejournal.com]

Ach. I have nothing really pertinent to add to this, but I'm commenting anyway, because your ideas intrigue me. *g*

First off, I consider myself well and truly bi, because I am not attracted to either men or women over the other. I do, however, have a *major* vaginal penetration squick. I mean, reading vaginal het affects me to the point that there is often sobbing and panicking and asthma attacks. Not because of anything in my past (I'm still a virgin), just because it's a squick. But het anal/oral/manual I'm fine with, and slash in all forms.

I think it's because it goes both ways. I can't stand het disguised as slash wherein one partner always bottoms and the other tops and they can't imagine another way to be, because to me that is missing the entire point. Boys and girls can switch more freely when there are no gender roles, and that is what I find fascinating.

But I also prefer m/m slash because it is pure fantasy to me (I think I've posted about this, but can't remember for certain now), whereas lesbian slash is highly possible for me to actually participate in and experience firsthand. Boylove is my imagination run wild, just the way I like it, and not a flashback of the last time my girlfriend pinned me against a wall and tied my hands behind my back with rubber bands.

But since you brought the s/D issue into it (yeah, I know, here we go), I am a total sub, to the point that dominance is something I actively search for in prospective romantic partners. I don't want it just in the bedroom, I like for there to be someone available to take control of my life and guide me. It brings me the greatest joy to submit and make someone else happy by doing what they ask/tell/command me to do.

But! I find it easier to write Doms. I don't know why, maybe it's me projecting what I look for in partners onto my characters, but when I write s/D, especially in rp, a lot of the time I find it more interesting and automatic to play the Dominant. Maybe it's because Doms are more calculating, more constantly aware and shifting with the situation, whereas subbing (to me) is all about hyperfocus and white-out of everything else.

I have no idea what you will do with any of this, but it is yours. *posts gleefully*