tumut

voidquius:

(( ooc: Yes. We real women are sexist against female characters who don’t exist. That is clearly the conclusion to be drawn from slash writing. Certainly my desire to write and roleplay stories about boys touching other boys’ naughty bits is a direct reflection of how I feel about every female thing in the universe, fictional or otherwise. Womb-hater. That’s me. It’s not as though fandom trends could possibly represent a varied but intersecting set of complex experiences and negotiations by fans who are working through both highly individualized (but also often communally and culturally experienced) notions of gender.

What I want to know is why some people (usually men) take it so personally that I’m writing slash or reading yaoi. Could it perhaps be because I’m not living out YOUR fantasy but inhabiting my own? Isn’t this an interesting tactic. Trying to make women feel like they’re not being feminist enough as a way of putting them in their place. (The worst part is I’m pretty sure that they’re not doing this intentionally. They’re just that thoughtless.)

What we have to ask ourselves, girls and boys, is this: Who benefits? When it comes to pairing characters together, the ones who benefit are not Men as a category or Women as a category, but fans of whatever gender identity who happen to like that pairing.

It just so happens that most of the people who like male x male pairings are women (not to mention men who like men, ilu guys too, it’s just that this particular image targets teh ladies). If I’m writing or roleplaying a pairing, guess who feels as though they aren’t being ignored? People who like that pairing. Guess who feels like they’re being ignored? People who don’t like that pairing. So actually, by writing slash, I am giving something to a largely female audience. Females who exist in real life. Not fictional characters. Real people. So how can you say women are being ignored when it’s largely women who are benefiting? ))

Curious how you seem to imply that people’s interests, sexual or otherwise (since slash is as much about satisfying a kind of emotional fetish as a purely sexual one), are divorced from wider cultural contexts, and that misogyny, be it external or internalized, is not reflected in the way people approach sexuality.

Question: why do girls feel the need to eliminate themselves from their own sexual fantasies in order to get off? Why do women feel threatened by their own presence as sexual beings?

(via tinyhoovequius)