Asexuality and Femslash
May. 23rd, 2011 03:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snowynightDisclaimer: As I am no way an expert in the subjects about to be discussed; I’ll be grateful if you can point out the problematic aspects in the following.
What is asexuality?
According to AVEN, an asexual is someone who does not experience sexual attraction.1 Asexuality is a sex orientation that exists along a spectrum. Some feel romantic attraction. Some don’t. Some masturbate. Some have sex. They are all different.
What problem does asexuals face in real life, and in fandom?
If homosexuality is the love that dares not say its name, asexuality is the orientation that doesn’t even have a name. In daily life, there is nearly to none awrareness of asexuality. The media is full of story lines of people becoming fully grown through sex. If people say they’re not into sex, they are often taken to mean avoiding the matter and not taken seriously. In a personal anecdote, one was told it was just because zis biological clock hadn’t clicked yet. The sex-obsessed society puts a lot of pressure on asexuals. They were seen as immature or inhuman. Sexless relationship is described as neutered relationship. People can only get to be more human through sexual relationship.
In the media, they ‘re either inhuman, evil, or socially clueless. We have Doctor Who, who’s an alien. Shelden in Bigbang Theory, who is described as an alien. Sherlock, who’s a sociopath. Dexter, who’s a serial killer.2 Even among the LGBTQ movement, asexuality is like a unicorn. The fandom didn’t fare better. The slash debate last year demonstrated a double erasure of asexuality.3
Common Challenge faced by asexuality and female sexuality.
Patriarchy enforces a male-dominated heteronormative paradigm that every sexuality representation is under its scrutiny. Female sexuality has always been an issue. It has been molded, shaped, and controlled by the patriarchy. Women were punished for just having a sexuality. They were either imagined as chaste virgins or greedy devouring monsters. Despite strides of feminism, discourse about female sexuality is still dominated by male gaze. Freud was notorious for introducing penis envy to show the inferiority of women, that they were “jealous” of men. Modern women face a double-bind situation. If they refuse sex, well, no never mean no. If they welcome sex, they are demeaned and judged as not deserving the protection of patriarchy. Hence the rape culture. Female sexuality is seen as subjugate to male sexuality, largely defined by altruistic notion of traditional femininity. Females were historically desexualized by the society.
The challenge of asexuality comes from its pervasive invisibility. Because they defy safe definition of heteronormative sexuality, their sexuality are deemed as a disease, a phase, unreal, unhealthy. Their romantic relationships don't count. They are included in the DSM. However, their struggle “don’t count”, even in the context of LGBT movement. 4
Oppressions on female sexuality and asexuality do not happen in a vacuum. Rather they both exist in an interrelation network which oppress minority equally. They needed to be understood and (destroyed) together.5 Females and asexuals are not mutually exclusive groups.
Why asexuality in femslash?
Asking this question is somewhat like asking why to introduce disability, bisexuality and female homosexuality, people of colour into fiction. Because it is a part of human life. Because the more representation of minority in fiction, the bigger step it is pushing for acceptability and normalization of the minority. Femslash has always been seen as a step to accept female sexuality, and it can definitely go a further step toward addressing the reality of fluidity of sexuality.
How can femslash reflect the reality of asexuality?
Femslash is often defined as a story that depict two or more canonically female-identified people in a sexual or romantic relationship. But relationship is a loaded word. In recent days, intimate relationship is always an euphemism for sexual relationship. But it doesn’t have to be like this. We have to be aware that there is a spectrum along relationship, including particularly close friendship, traditional but not sexual coupling and other unique combination. "It can be just about women making a deeper connection to each other that's erotic, but not necessarily sexual," as spoken by jazzypom.
Research is always important. Just like writing about any minority, proceed with respect and humility. Be prepared to back down.
What’s femslash with one or more asexual female-identified characters like?
There’s love, humour, angst, or just like other femslash. Except that one or more of them is not into sex. The resolution of a story doesn’t always result in sex. Femslash with one or more asexual characters are still uncommon, and I only found 3 labelled as such on AO3 as I'm writing. They are:
Title: Don't Want to Know What I'll Be Without You
Author:torachan
Fandom: Aoi Hana
Summary: Akira's seen that look before. It makes her heart ache to remember Fumi-chan's quiet despair when she told Akira she liked her that way. She'd do anything to keep Fumi-chan from looking like that again.
Read it on AO3.
Title: A Country That Has No Language
Author:language_escapes
Fandom: St. Trinians
Summary: Because really, how can you explain a polyamorous relationship consisting of an asexual domme, a lesbian sub, and a vanilla bisexual? They fit. They love each other. Isn't that enough?
A Country That Has No Language
And the last one from me:
Title: Treasures
Author:snowynight
Fandom: Disney
Summary: Another chapter of Belle and her companions' expedition to a lost ancient city, and Belle discovers something more too.
Treasure
Reference:
Further reading:
Asexy Sex Scenes 101
Asexual information and perspective
FONSFAQ: Asexuality
Questions:
How do you explore asexuality in femslash? What’s the joy/challenge of writing about it?
What do you think can be done to make femslash fandom more friendly for asexuals?
What is asexuality?
According to AVEN, an asexual is someone who does not experience sexual attraction.1 Asexuality is a sex orientation that exists along a spectrum. Some feel romantic attraction. Some don’t. Some masturbate. Some have sex. They are all different.
What problem does asexuals face in real life, and in fandom?
If homosexuality is the love that dares not say its name, asexuality is the orientation that doesn’t even have a name. In daily life, there is nearly to none awrareness of asexuality. The media is full of story lines of people becoming fully grown through sex. If people say they’re not into sex, they are often taken to mean avoiding the matter and not taken seriously. In a personal anecdote, one was told it was just because zis biological clock hadn’t clicked yet. The sex-obsessed society puts a lot of pressure on asexuals. They were seen as immature or inhuman. Sexless relationship is described as neutered relationship. People can only get to be more human through sexual relationship.
In the media, they ‘re either inhuman, evil, or socially clueless. We have Doctor Who, who’s an alien. Shelden in Bigbang Theory, who is described as an alien. Sherlock, who’s a sociopath. Dexter, who’s a serial killer.2 Even among the LGBTQ movement, asexuality is like a unicorn. The fandom didn’t fare better. The slash debate last year demonstrated a double erasure of asexuality.3
Common Challenge faced by asexuality and female sexuality.
Patriarchy enforces a male-dominated heteronormative paradigm that every sexuality representation is under its scrutiny. Female sexuality has always been an issue. It has been molded, shaped, and controlled by the patriarchy. Women were punished for just having a sexuality. They were either imagined as chaste virgins or greedy devouring monsters. Despite strides of feminism, discourse about female sexuality is still dominated by male gaze. Freud was notorious for introducing penis envy to show the inferiority of women, that they were “jealous” of men. Modern women face a double-bind situation. If they refuse sex, well, no never mean no. If they welcome sex, they are demeaned and judged as not deserving the protection of patriarchy. Hence the rape culture. Female sexuality is seen as subjugate to male sexuality, largely defined by altruistic notion of traditional femininity. Females were historically desexualized by the society.
The challenge of asexuality comes from its pervasive invisibility. Because they defy safe definition of heteronormative sexuality, their sexuality are deemed as a disease, a phase, unreal, unhealthy. Their romantic relationships don't count. They are included in the DSM. However, their struggle “don’t count”, even in the context of LGBT movement. 4
Oppressions on female sexuality and asexuality do not happen in a vacuum. Rather they both exist in an interrelation network which oppress minority equally. They needed to be understood and (destroyed) together.5 Females and asexuals are not mutually exclusive groups.
Why asexuality in femslash?
Asking this question is somewhat like asking why to introduce disability, bisexuality and female homosexuality, people of colour into fiction. Because it is a part of human life. Because the more representation of minority in fiction, the bigger step it is pushing for acceptability and normalization of the minority. Femslash has always been seen as a step to accept female sexuality, and it can definitely go a further step toward addressing the reality of fluidity of sexuality.
How can femslash reflect the reality of asexuality?
Femslash is often defined as a story that depict two or more canonically female-identified people in a sexual or romantic relationship. But relationship is a loaded word. In recent days, intimate relationship is always an euphemism for sexual relationship. But it doesn’t have to be like this. We have to be aware that there is a spectrum along relationship, including particularly close friendship, traditional but not sexual coupling and other unique combination. "It can be just about women making a deeper connection to each other that's erotic, but not necessarily sexual," as spoken by jazzypom.
Research is always important. Just like writing about any minority, proceed with respect and humility. Be prepared to back down.
What’s femslash with one or more asexual female-identified characters like?
There’s love, humour, angst, or just like other femslash. Except that one or more of them is not into sex. The resolution of a story doesn’t always result in sex. Femslash with one or more asexual characters are still uncommon, and I only found 3 labelled as such on AO3 as I'm writing. They are:
Title: Don't Want to Know What I'll Be Without You
Author:
torachanFandom: Aoi Hana
Summary: Akira's seen that look before. It makes her heart ache to remember Fumi-chan's quiet despair when she told Akira she liked her that way. She'd do anything to keep Fumi-chan from looking like that again.
Read it on AO3.
Title: A Country That Has No Language
Author:
language_escapesFandom: St. Trinians
Summary: Because really, how can you explain a polyamorous relationship consisting of an asexual domme, a lesbian sub, and a vanilla bisexual? They fit. They love each other. Isn't that enough?
A Country That Has No Language
And the last one from me:
Title: Treasures
Author:
snowynightFandom: Disney
Summary: Another chapter of Belle and her companions' expedition to a lost ancient city, and Belle discovers something more too.
Treasure
Reference:
- "Overview." Asexual Visibility and Education Network. Asexual Visibility and Education Network, n.d. Web. 23 May 2011. <http://www.asexuality.org/home/overview.html>
- pippin, . "FONSFAQ post -- asexuality in fiction." N.p., 26 004 2011. Web. 23 May 2011. http://pippin.dreamwidth.org/95781.html
- kaz, . "Some words are rather unpleasant to read in this context...." N.p., 14 001 2010. Web. 23 May 2011. http://kaz.dreamwidth.org/215605.html
- mirielenfield , . "LGBT Community." asexuality. N.p., 21 009 2010. Web. 23 May 2011. http://asexuality.livejournal.com/766364.html?thread=13612956#t13612956
- Harris-Lacewell, Melissa. "Intersectionality." The Kitchen Table. N.p., 16 003 2009. Web. 23 May 2011. http://princetonprofs.blogspot.com/2009/03/intersectionality.html
Further reading:
Asexy Sex Scenes 101
Asexual information and perspective
FONSFAQ: Asexuality
Questions:
How do you explore asexuality in femslash? What’s the joy/challenge of writing about it?
What do you think can be done to make femslash fandom more friendly for asexuals?
no subject
Date: 2011-06-01 09:56 pm (UTC)I’ll be grateful if you can point out the problematic aspects in the following.
It mainly feels a bit like playing off femmeslash against asexuality, and priorizing the later at the expense of the former. We need both in fiction, and for Femmeslash, we particularly need femmeslash that isn't focussed on keeping the characters pure and unsullied from the scary scary sex. We need more sexual F/F, not less.
The lack of sexual F/F in particularly is what plagues many, many stories that are F/F - Maria Sama ga Miteiru as mentioned above is one of the more jarring examples, but there are many more. We're kinda pushing away from it for a reason.
"It can be just about women making a deeper connection to each other that's erotic, but not necessarily sexual," as spoken by jazzypom.
This, especially, is what I mean. From my perspective, this is not a solution, but one of the major problems in F/F canon stories. Most authors take great pains to make sure that it's one of these two:
a)non-sexual (I can start listing canon stories and finish next week, and people'll be able to list more. Women being sexual with other women? Sure is frowned upon - including by the very same men who are usually claimed to like it. What they tend to like is women making out before a guy joins in)
b)non-emotional (pretty much every supposedly lesbian encounter in every fantasy story ever, Song of Ice and Fire being a "good" example for it. Sure, they have sex, but care little for each other, that'd threaten the ego of poor male readers, after all, women being able to love non-men? Blapshemy!)
F/F canon stories that have both an emotional and a sexual component are very, very rare and only became a bit more common in the last 3-4 years.
Canon-wise, I don't see asexual characters being underrepresented in F/F. They seem to be the norm. And since fanfiction tends to fix what canon is missing, not what canon has in spades, it makes sense that fanfiction tends to add characters that are sexually involved, for a change.
The only real way to reconcile them that I see is have a couple of both kinds, sexual and nonsexual, or sexual couple AxB, who both have a deep nonsexual relationship with C, who has no sexual interest in either A or B. I think the later option could actually be pretty interesting in fact.
Just removing the sexual as the main part is really not what's lacking in F/F. We can just watch canon for it.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-01 10:05 pm (UTC)Also, uhm, if I sound a bit odd, it's near midnight here, I spent nearly two hours on the response, deleting it over and over again because I just wasn't sure how to put it all. x.X
no subject
Date: 2011-06-02 05:33 am (UTC)I think there's a distinction between the canon desexualizing the characters and the representation of the asexual characters. It say something about the canon female representation that the different sexuality has to fight for the often only representation.
A character not having a sexual relationship may not mean there's a representation of asexuality. A female character that (1) is not anyone's romantic interest. (2) hasn't been involved in a sexual relationship on canon (3) explicitly states that she's not into sex with either sex, just because, as far as I know, are not many. Even fewer that it's not the focus of their character or shown as a sign of sexual immaturity, just a phase, celibacy, or something like that. So far I only know of a canon example.
I'm not arguing for removing the sexual. I just want a variety of asexual, bisexual, lesbian or other form of representation of female sexuality in f/f. The only solution as far as I see is writing more so there's more to choose.