FitN Time: Slash Fans go Public

This edition of Fandom in the News brings together some high quality links.  Seriously.  Trust me.

First up: an article from AfterElton

This was posted back in August and was supposed to be the first of two parts.  I kept waiting for the second before I posted this, but so far I haven’t seen it, so I’m linking you to Part 1/?.  Brent Hartinger does a pretty interesting job discussing the rise of slash fandom and its effect on the LGBT community.  Includes some interesting issues raised, like whether the gender roles in slashfic are potentially harmful to mainstream acceptance of gay male culture, the increased awareness of and demand for gay plotlines and characters in popular culture.  Also, Adam Lambert.

Numero dos: an Out.com article

 

 

Another summer-time post about slashfans that, frankly, pisses me off.  It’s condescending and way behind the times and treats ‘the renegade slash fiction phenomenon’ (yes, that’s a direct quote) like some little afterthought of a freak occurrence as opposed to a major fannish culture. 

Also a direct quote?  This gem: What has been a relatively recent and surprising revelation is that the majority of slash creators (known as “slashers”) and fans are heterosexual, college-educated women — and that for a rather large number of them, gay erotica is the pornography of choice. Observe the “slashers”, dear reader, in their natural habitat.  See them stalk their prey across the e-plains.  And behold their surprising demographics!  What?  What’s that you say, dear reader?  Slash fans have nearly always been primarily heterosexual, college-educated women who prefer gay porn to other types?  But that can’t be, for it disproves this author’s belief in the importance of her own discovery of what we’ve all known for years. 

Anyway, the article still has interesting content, mostly in the bits about how slash fandom has more recently prompted commercially-available m/m romance novels, often written by fen who’ve made names for themselves as slashers.  Also in the bits from the authors themselves (Alex Beecroft and Erastes, whose work many of you may be familiar with), where they talk quite candidly about their own identities and sexualities. 

So, please to be disregarding Cintra Wilson’s narrow-mindedness (seriously… you still don’t believe there’s anything to all this m/m fiction apart from the sex?), which she attempts to explain away with that most white-washing of last lines, who are we to judge?, and focus on the fact that there are some good meaty issues raised here.  Is it misogynistic to write significant female characters completely out of the sexual realm (as many slashers do)?  Does the slasher’s excitement about m/m relationships include (or even strictly rely on) identification with one or both characters in the pairing?  Are m/m romance novels a sell-out betrayal of the slash subculture?  Good stuff, despite my ranting.

Item number three: Fandom comes to Bigthink.com

Bigthink.com is a site that’s full of musings and interesting articles and videos about all kinds of topics.  Matthew Nisbet is one of their contributors who looks at communication’s influence on various fields, and here he shares some of Alice Bell’s (academic lecturer and blogger extraordinaire) thoughts about the intersection of fan culture and the science communication world.  Basically, she’s suggesting cool things about how slash fandom can positively influence and spread dialogue about science and scientists.  She cites a few specific examples: in particular, general_theory (Einstein/Eddington slash based on the BBC drama and generally very thoroughly historically researched), one of those Tiny Fandoms of Awesome types that I have mentioned previously as being so addictively engrossing to a select few.  Personally, I’m tickled by the idea that through fandom and self-professed nerdiness/geekery, information about history and science can be disseminated and… dare I say it…. even given a cool, counter-cultural sheen.

And finally: The Boston Phoenix’s currently-running politislash contest

Yep, it’s your turn to submit 400 words or less OR 300 dpi fanart of your fave political slash pairing to letters@phx.com by 22 October to spice up the dreary mid-term elections in the USA.  My favorite thing about this?  Not, actually, its existence overall, but the note from editor Sarah Rosenbaum that, “We’ve put out the above call to our readers here in Boston — but we really want submissions from slash fandom, too. This isn’t a make-fun-of-slashers deal; it’s more in the spirit of a crack prompt. So please, help us out.”

So, on that cheery note of the mainstream soliciting fandom for help, I will close this edition of FitN and wish you all fannish dreams until I return.