maculategiraffe

inoru_no_hoshi linked on InsaneJournal to this blog post, which, based on the linked responses in her post, has rather been making the rounds. And I... well, I'm not going to bother pointing out the generalizations and inaccuracies and whatnot; it looks like the rest of the internets have that covered. But I had a few thoughts on it. More than I thought I should reasonably inflict on her in a comment.

Not thoughts on the fanfiction part, per se, though I've been writing fanfiction since LONG before I knew the word or that anyone else was doing it; I called it "here, let me fix that for you." ("The totally awesome and obviously gay Helen from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall escapes her abusive husband only to end up with the poncy, insufferable, domineering and judgmental male narrator? Here, let me fix that for you." *scribble scribble torrid lesbian romance*) However, the only long, completed, decent work of fanfiction I currently have on file is het between Wonder Girl and a male OC, so I am not really qualified to discuss What Makes Women Write Slash Fanfiction, except to wonder where J.K. Rowling fits into the whole "woman-hating women write about men created by men" paradigm.

But the whole "women write male-male romance because the culture has fucked with their heads to the extent that they can only identify with men, sexually and emotionally" thing, yes, I have Thoughts On That.

Well, actually, they're thoughts on me. But I'm a woman writing boyporn, so they're sort of related.

As you probably know if you're here, I like to write about sex. In fact, the inimitable

mistful apparently has a similar writing process to mine, as recounted in a recent entry:

CASSIE: So I'm stuck on a scene. Say we have-
SARAH: Don't worry. I know what to do.
CASSIE: But I haven't told you what-
SARAH: I know what to do whenever you're stuck. Add a make-out scene!
CASSIE: What.
SARAH: It never fails. Disgusting, romantic, life-threatening - doesn't matter how it plays out, it's always interesting. I love a make-out scene.
CASSIE: ... What if the scene is between a werewolf-
SARAH: Fine!
CASSIE: And a giant eyeball.
SARAH: ... I'm not saying that would be one of the romantic ones. But it could be done!

As you probably also know, I predominantly write boy-on-boy sex scenes.

That's not for the reason one often hears given by women writing slash, that I'm exclusively attracted to men and therefore not interested in writing about women having sex. (This is true for my husband's tastes in porn, only in reverse-- he doesn't like seeing penises, he doesn't like porn that dwells at all on the man, and he prefers lesbian porn, but then, he's straight.) I am not straight; I am a fully equal-opportunity lech (and switch).

And I don't think it's because the patriarchy has rendered me incapable of identifying with my own sex. I'm actually kind of known among my friends for being annoying about this; one thing I hear a lot from people who are recommending books or movies or TV shows to me is, "But I don't know-- there aren't very many women in it, so you might not enjoy it." And they're usually right. They don't have to be the main characters, but when there aren't at least a couple of three-dimensional female characters in a world, I get antsy and bored. (Same is true of things full of women without any men, though that seems to occur less often in pop culture and classic literature. I Wonder Why.)

So why do I write so much boy-on-boy, then? Well-- good question. One factor is that men-only sex is the only kind of sex I can't actually have, myself, and so it's particularly fun to imagine, like historical fiction or stories set on Mars. Nothing problematic or oppressed there, afaic; straight men do the same thing with lesbian sex. (I don't know about bi men. I'm afraid to Google "bi men thoughts on yuri.")

Another contributing factor, and this might sound kind of terrible, is that I think I'm more comfortable with the graphic sexual objectification of men than of women, just because the culture runs so much the other way. (Same is true in my private life, of domming men vs. women, and what is writing but a form of domming, really-- shaping a fulfilling narrative wherein your characters do your bidding for your perverted pleasure. There's a reason we call it a "scene"...) I'm not saying men deserve to be dominated as payback for the culture of male supremacy, I'm just saying that the subjugation of women comes with cultural baggage that it's easier not to have to deal with, for me, and that isn't there with men.

And there's another contributing factor-- and really, I think this is the reason I'm still not happy with the Alix/Greta I've been trying to write for months. You may have noticed that when referring to the primary male sex organ in an erotic context, I use the word "cock" almost exclusively, occasionally interspersed with "penis" (usually when it's not erect) and "prick" (in a negative sense, as when Lee is recalling Dunaev choking him with his prick). Cock: a nice, simple, short, moderately sexy word that doesn't draw attention to its own use and leaves the reader's attention free for what's actually being done with/to the anatomy in question. There is no equivalent term for the female genitalia in the English language. Every single damn word I can think of sounds either ludicrously clinical (vagina, vulva, labia), derogatory (cunt, slit, twat), or coy and sissified (pussy. Seriously-- pussy? Is it wearing boots?*).

It just bugs me, stylistically as well as ideologically. I don't like having so many connotations attached to the word I'm using for genitalia, because, as Shirley Jackson noted in her advice to budding writers (not specifically about porn): "every time you use an unusual word, the reader has to turn his head to watch it go by-- and may not turn his head back again." You may also have noticed (though I hope not, because I hope it flowed) that in that sex scene with Inga, I didn't name her bits at all. (Except her clit, which doesn't have any connotations at all that I know of, perhaps because it remains an elusive and ethereal legend to men in general.) There simply wasn't a word I could think of that Lee would be thinking right then about a girl's genitals, and the fact that the thoughts going through a sweet submissive boy's head when he's going down on a girl for the first time are nearly literally inexpressible in the English language-- that does get my inner Germaine Greer baring her teeth a little.**

"Oh, Ms. Giraffe," I hear you say, in your sweet, girlish way, "how you do run on." Yes, well, to sum up: though I certainly disagree with the extreme forms of the ideas she's expressing, and I think she generalizes way too much (the paragraph about how there are never, ever any women in slash, and if they are they are never, ever relatable, and certainly never, ever lesbians is particularly annoying to me for what I hope are obvious reasons), I don't think Dissenter is wrong about women writing slash (in the sense of boy-on-boy romance, not just fanfic) in part because of a problematic culture. I just also don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. The culture is messed up (what culture isn't?), and we have to live in it-- and if you're me, you have to play to stay sane. I don't see what's wrong with playing here, when here is where we are.

(Finally: I kind of loved the part of that essay about how women writing erotic stories about men to turn other women on is lesbian. [Which, I thought we were laying our fannish works at the feet of the male creators in self-subjugation, but anyway.] Not that I have crushes on a number of straight female writers of boyporn... and not that I want to flirt with them, or anything. Just, um, *clears throat* I hate to see my, um, my sisters in oppression clinging to the heteronormative chains of... hetero... ness. Is all.

But in all seriousness, I think it's healthy to express your sexuality in an arena where there's no necessary expectation of it being acted on, or of being paired off. Women need homosociality too, dammit.)

Okay, now that that's out of my system... *runs off to flirt with the commentators to her lesbian gayboyporn for girls*

*Though one redeeming feature of the whole "cat" association is that Alice's conversation with her kitten from the beginning of Through The Looking-Glass sets the tone perfectly for reading the entire book as surrealist lesbian porn, complete with a man (The Red King) without whose fantasies the whole world would implicitly cease to exist-- or would it?

**Actually, I have the same problem, to a lesser extent, with asshole terminology. Apparently the English language doesn't respect the gay bottom (no pun intended) any more than the Second Sex. Go figure.