slash and porn and yet again *waves at metafandom: hit me, babes*

[lobelia321]

While typing a response to ithiliana, it occurred to me that I wished to compose a post about it.

So: the interesting thing about slash is that we (wimmins) imagine what is hot and what turns on men, and how men work, and how their genitalia work. It is all about us in the emotional sense but not about us in the body sense.

Gay porn is about men's bodies and men's lusts and addressed to men's bodies and men's lusts.

Straight porn is addressed to men's lusts, ostensibly, though it also shows women, lots of them. But they rarely have orgasms. I have seen a female orgasm once in a porn film, and that was a film made in the 1920s when perhaps conventions hadn't hardened yet (as it were). And don't tell me you can't see a woman's orgasm: you most certainly can!

So, men come for men in porn. Men come for women in slash.

Now, I also like looking at the wimmins in porn-for-men although they don't have orgasms. So what is that all about? That is swimming in the interstices, perhaps, reading against the grain? Or not, who knows. And the men in fanfic turn me on a hell of a damn lot but the men in porn leave me quite cold. They are, in fact, vile. From taking my pulse while watching a porn video, you'd never know I was 95 per cent straight.

But that's the thing about slash: writing about bodies that aren't our own. And that's yet another reason why men can't write slash. Unless it be about women, haha.

I must go and muse about femslash. Because that doesn't fit in, does it? Any ideas on that one?

NOTE: Please do not metafandom this. I mean, I can't stop you but please. *offers cake*

Comments

[msilverstar]

I agree you should change the title...

Did you ever look at kyuuketsukirui's list of snippets of gay porn written by women and men? I'm not saying "slash" because that's an issue.

What does "slash" mean to you?

Some people think that slash is only gay porn based on a story/life.

Others limit it to subtext: gay porn where there isn't any in the original. Therefore, QaF fanfic can't be slash because it's not based on subtext, it's all explicit in the source fiction. Presumably my Alan Cumming porn wouldn't be slash either, cos he's out as bi.

Others limit it to only female-written gay porn.

I think that men can write good homoerotic porn. Even straight men. I can write good lesbian porn, and I am pretty straight though not entirely. I can also write gay porn, straight porn, and I am working on orgies. Does that make me not a "slasher"? Is what I write not "slash"? What about the m/m stories? I tend to the wider and more inclusive view of the whole thing.


PS: your use of the word "wimmin" bothers a lot of people -- it's a bright flag to them about your world-view and says a lot about your assumptions of both the world and your audience.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Well, I seem to have escaped the wrath of metafandom so the title can stay. I think the key may be to be very boring. *g*

I've been meaning to email you to ask how you are getting on! I just never get round to email but been thinking of you. And yours.

I haven't looked at kyuuuki-whoever's snippets because I was traumatised by her and other metafandommers whom I don't know. Do you know her? Is she okay? Now that you've recced it, I may link. *holds onto your hand*

your use of the word "wimmin" bothers a lot of people -- it's a bright flag to them about your world-view and says a lot about your assumptions of both the world and your audience.
Whom does this bother? Nobody has said. My world-view as pertaining to my use of this word is this:
a) irony
b) age and being imprinted with feminism in the 1970s (I even remember it being called women's lib -- hah, as no doubt do you!)
c) the need to distance myself from that past in the present
d) um, something else that I can't remember now because too tired

See, I don't mind if you tell me critical things or questioning things because I know you and you know me. It's with these strangers that I get frightened and defensive.

[msilverstar]

Thanks for keeping an open mind. This stuff is hard, and I hope there's some mutual learning going on.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

By 'this stuff', do you mean internet communication? I'm not sure it's too hard but you're right, it does need to be figured out. I have a very firm view about web etiquette and I briefly posted my own guidelines on my userinfo but it looked woefully waspish and dogmatic and nobody would pay heed, anyway, because everyone has their own rules so I deleted it again. It's good, though, to be reminded of it because there was one case where I did go against what I have since discovered are my web etiquette ethics and I regret having done that. It's easy to be childish online. But I will not have my free speech muffled, especially if it is responsible free speech, that is, not harming anybody.

Now free speech...! There's another hot topic! I have also been thinking about that, well, how can one avoid it with recent Danish and otherwise events.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Okay, I just scrolled up to check how I had used 'wimmin'. I haven't, in fact, I used 'wimmins' which is like saying 'febulous' instead of 'fabulous'. I was talking about women in porn so the word 'girlie' is perhaps more usual in that context but I didn't want to use girly, I wanted to use something ironic to show that I also have a distance towards these porn representations; I could have used ladies, I guess, but that seems *too* incongruous. And wimmins has the nice touch of being 1970s/80s feminist spelling and being applied to porn I find that funny because 1970s/80s feminism tended to be anti-porn, that porn oppresses women.

Um, it's kind of belabouring to explain a joke so elaborately but thus are the traps of the written text as opposed to the spoken word exchanged in banter, I supppose!

[msilverstar]

More in the other post than this one, and yeah, it's one of those things people can miss the irony :-(

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I treat LJ as my personal little corner of the internet. I hardly ever friendslock, and I forget that what I am posting is, in fact, not just said to my little flock of Friends on my Default Friends list but to the entire world. So what shocked me most about that other post was that the entire other world suddenly appeared there. It was a reality check. I suppose it's good to pull oneself up every now and again and remember that this stuff is actually viewable by all and sundry plus their lame donkey as well. But I still want to treat LJ as my little corner because that's what I like about it, a little comfy space to chat freely and not have to self-censor about porn, teh pretteh and so forth! It's a balance, I guess, that each of us learns to negotiate on her own terms. Because it is semi-performative, as sophrosyne was saying. Which is also what's so moreish about it. I am allergic to diary keeping; I haven't kept a diary since my early 20s and when I used to re-read those, it sank me into week-long depression, so now I live in the present and filter the past. LJ is a good compromise for me; a half-way house because it is not private and there is the opportunity for exchange. I just sometimes forget that people whom I don't know can exchange with me. I've been thinking about why I don't want to flock.