Slashers = misogynists?

[noracharles]

ximeria forwarded me a link to a recent discussion about female characters and how some people just don't find them appealing on fandomsecrets.

I love women. In real life almost all my friends are women. Though I'm bisexual, I tend to fall in love with women much more often than with men. I feel a greater emotional connection to women, find them easier to communicate with and get along with, and I tend to respect them more than I do men. In fact, I often have to remind myself not to be such a man-despising sexist, that a person is not his gender, and I should drop the prejudices and get to know a guy and judge him solely on himself.

When it comes to fandom, I prefer male characters and read m/m slash almost exclusively. This is because male characters are written much better than female characters in the sci-fi/action/fantasy genres I prefer, and because I set the bar for male characters *much lower* than I do for female characters — I quite honestly have lower expectations of men, and find it easier to sexually objectify men.

There are a few wonderful exceptions to my male character oriented fandom experience: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Veronica Mars, and The Vorkosigan Saga. I have read several sci-fi/fantasy novels by female writers with enjoyable female protagonists, but none that I have liked strongly enough to inspire me to any fannish activity.

When it comes to my writing, I write women and non-gendered persons. I am far from prolific, in fact I've only written three (3) fics by myself (not counting drabbles):

• One femmeslash fic focused on the friendship between Willow and Anya in BtVS,


• One gen fic focused on the friendship between Lana and Chloe in Smallville, and


• One m/m slash focused on Lex's feelings of frustration when he fails to connect emotionally with the guy he's in love with. Lex is not effeminate in the fic, but the writing style and subject matter are definitely feminine and actively distasteful to my one male test subject. I think the emotions Lex expresses are part of the common human experience, and there are absolutely no explorations of either the specifically male or female experience or gender role, unlike my two fics focused on women and how female friendships can be.

I have never read a slash fic written from a male perspective about the male experience. I have read a few gay porn style fics written in a masculine tone, and feel that they were mislabeled as slash, but even then, had they not been so poorly written, I would say that they were about thoughts and feelings and experiences common to all human beings. (I've also read a few more traditional style slash fics written in a very masculine tone, by writers identifying themselves as male, so please don't take it that I think slash can only be written by and for women!)

To summarize: I am a slasher, but I have no particular interest in men, nor do I dislike women. I use slash to avoid dealing with poorly/offensively/superficially/stereotypically characterized female characters that do not live up to my real life experience of women, and to have guilt-free fun perving on and objectifying characters.