Someone on LJ wrote a very good explanation of why there's so little femslash, can't remember where, but her rationale was that women are not comfortable with their bodies to intimately describe and name their pleasure or their genitals etc.
I think slash is a special kind of othering of our own sexuality that has a way of making us think we're more ok with queerness than we actually are. I get kinda irked when I see someone say "ick, het. I don't normally read it!" (I'm assuming it's a woman who's saying this...I could be wrong, but most likely not), the self-erasure is kinda disheartening if you completely cut out the other half of the human race when you read fanfiction.
It could also be a case of the genre of the fandom. Soaps, sitcoms and more domestic tv shows/books/games etc probably have a higher number of female characters, but the most popular fandoms I see is mostly sci-fi/adventure/fantasy which are nortoriously male-dominated. Maybe it's a matter of finding fandoms that largely revolve around female characters like Buffy or the novels of Diana Wynne Jones. I dunno.
It's kinda disheartening, because although it may sound like an excuse, I do think there are few female characters that are given agency and a life besides being a romantic interest and it can't be brushed off lightly. And the ones we do get are a bit cardboard-like, conventionally pretty and have just enough spunk/toughness to fulfil the "strong woman" quota that is some kind of fictional/narrative equvalent of affirmative action.
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Date: 2011-06-02 04:54 am (UTC)I think slash is a special kind of othering of our own sexuality that has a way of making us think we're more ok with queerness than we actually are. I get kinda irked when I see someone say "ick, het. I don't normally read it!" (I'm assuming it's a woman who's saying this...I could be wrong, but most likely not), the self-erasure is kinda disheartening if you completely cut out the other half of the human race when you read fanfiction.
It could also be a case of the genre of the fandom. Soaps, sitcoms and more domestic tv shows/books/games etc probably have a higher number of female characters, but the most popular fandoms I see is mostly sci-fi/adventure/fantasy which are nortoriously male-dominated. Maybe it's a matter of finding fandoms that largely revolve around female characters like Buffy or the novels of Diana Wynne Jones. I dunno.
It's kinda disheartening, because although it may sound like an excuse, I do think there are few female characters that are given agency and a life besides being a romantic interest and it can't be brushed off lightly. And the ones we do get are a bit cardboard-like, conventionally pretty and have just enough spunk/toughness to fulfil the "strong woman" quota that is some kind of fictional/narrative equvalent of affirmative action.