Posts Tagged slash

The majority of slashers identify as queer

Posted by admin in Meta on January 19th, 2010

According to DreamWidth member Melannen, the long-held claim that slash is primarily for by and for straight women may be very wrong.

Melannen did some digging, looking at both academic citations and user statistics available through online sources, and was surprised by the results. In nine polls taken over seven years in a variety of slash fandoms, participants who self-identified as queer were in the median of total participants, at 60.8%.

I highlight this finding here because much of the discourse of slash studies (and fan studies in general, which in many ways is a fusion of ethnography and feminist scholarship) creates the “slasher” subject position by asserting that straight women enjoy depicting sexual situations between two men as a means of transcending their own marginalization. As a result, criticism of slash culture relies heavily on accusations of mis-appropriation of queer culture by straights. Naturally, this dynamic is of great importance to anyone doing fandom research. But if the numbers Melannen has collated are correct, then scholarly discussion on slash has been off-base, to say the least.

I think the question of how queer women can appropriate queer men’s identity, and the damage that can be done when gay men speaking about themselves are drowned out by women, are valid discussion topics, and worth addressing. That is not a conversation that is going to happen as long as THE MAJORITY OF SLASHERS, WHO IDENTIFY AS QUEER, are being erased from the discussion. fyi.

And SO when people say things like “slash is a legitimate way for straight women to express their sexuality”, what THE MAJORITY OF SLASHERS, WHO IDENTIFY AS QUEER hear is either “you aren’t queer enough, your queer identity isn’t relevant” or “straight voices are the only ones qualified to speak for the slash community”.

I think the question of how straight women’s sexuality interacts with queer sexuality, and the ways straight women’s sexuality defines slash, are valid discussion topics, and worth addressing. That is not a conversation that is going to happen as long as THE MAJORITY OF SLASHERS, WHO IDENTIFY AS QUEER, are being erased from the discussion. fyi.

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Proposed Australian law could impact slash fans the most

Posted by admin in Uncategorized on January 19th, 2010

Note: I grabbed this post from my friend Katie Freund, a Canadian fandom scholar studying in Australia. If the law described below passes, much of Katie’s academic livelihood could vanish down the ‘tubes. Katie did not write this post, but is spreading it on behalf of a fellow academic who prefers to remain anonymous.

Alert!

In 2010 the Australian Government proposes to go ahead with a mandatory ISP-level internet filtering scheme which, if passed into law, could have a massive impact on anime, manga and slash fans. Why manga and slash fans? Because the main target of the law is to prevent the circulation of ‘child abuse sexual imagery’ – BUT in Australia ‘child abuse sexual imagery’ covers even FICTIONAL representations and includes the ‘under age’ characters in anime, manga and slash. If the law is passed, any fan site that contains or links to this material could be added to a government ‘blacklist’ and denied access in Australia.

The proposal

The Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy has recently announced measures to require internet service provider (ISP) level filtering of overseas-hosted internet material classified Refused Classification (RC) under the National Classification Scheme. Such material includes child sexual abuse imagery, bestiality, sexual violence, detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use and/or material that advocates the doing of a terrorist act (Consultation Paper, 2009).

The problem for ACG/slash fans

‘Child sexual abuse imagery’ is a primary target of the proposed filter – as it should be when dealing with pictures of actual children. Yet, in Australia ‘child sexual abuse imagery’ is an extremely broad category that extends even to purely fictional representations of ‘under-age’ characters in violent or sexual scenarios – including animation, comics, art work and text. Hence, existing legislation targets not only a small coterie of adult paedophiles dealing in representations of actual children, but extensive communities of ACG and slash fans whose activities involve the consumption, creation and dissemination of representations of young persons that would be classified in Australia as ‘virtual’ child pornography.
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