Honestly I can’t figure out why I find two men getting it on so damn hot. It’s not like I have anything to do with it; my boobs don’t even fit in that fantasy.
I was always hoping to…
You people are all making me think. The interplay between slash and sexuality in general is something that interests me, and I’ve also been trying to sort stuff out about my own sexuality, lately, as it’s increasingly come to my attention that I don’t seem to tick like most people in that sense. I suppose I’ve known it for years, but lately I’ve gotten more curious about how I do work.
I’m beginning to realize that a lot of my bitterness toward romance in stories (it drives me up the FUCKING WALL most of the time—you could just about call it a squick if a squick made you want to punch people rather than recoil and click away to another window); my bitterness toward many female characters (I have a high standard at this point; if you can’t bear to let her be both flawed and awesome, then you can take me off your calling list); and probably also my nigh-pathological contrariness may stem from childhood bombardment with ‘the woman as love interest/victim’ trope.
When I was a kid, even before I had any idea what I was reacting to, it set me fuming every time the heroine had to get kidnapped, or had to kiss the hero. I felt like I was being told that girls don’t get to do cool stuff in the story, they only get to be a target. And if you love somebody, you become even MORE of a target, because being somebody’s girlfriend is an instant ticket to a hostage situation. And I felt like I was being told, “You HAVE to be romantically attached if you’re a girl.”
But I didn’t want to BE a love interest. I didn’t particularly want to be with anybody. I still mostly don’t. The token female drives me crazy. If I have to be stuck with her, I’d just as soon you boot the girl entirely and let me get on with identifying with one or more of the (straight white) dudes who get to actually DO things. I’m used to it. That’s pretty much all you give us anyway.
But the thing is, I DO like romance stories (when they’re not a thinly veiled excuse to have a token female/hostage), and I DO like men (even if mostly I prefer not to do anything about it), and Professor’s totally on point about ‘men in their pleasure.’ Good Christ, yes, gorgeous. I…I just don’t find sex itself sexy, I think? It’s the sensory and emotional experience, the connections being made and the slip and slide of the power dynamics that turn me on. The intellectual and emotional action involved.
(If you’re looking at the stuff I write and wondering how the hell my brain works, well, welcome to the club. Free admission, drinks are on the house.)
So Professor’s got it right, I think, about the distribution of self throughout the fantasy. Definitely that. I fantasize the same way I dream, and when I dream, I’m everybody in that dream (and also sometimes objects and items), flipping between perspectives as it suits me. I find sex in fanfic far more erotic than, well, doing it in real life most of the time, because what’s on display is far more of the interiors of the characters, and their interiors are the sexy part.
On scienceofobsession’s comment about slash being ‘unique and naughty’—science apologizes for the potential implication of fetishizing gay men, and so do I. But the thing is, (speaking for myself, since I’m not inside anybody else’s brain) it’s not about getting off on gay men. It’s about the liberation of not having to be confined to one role. That uncomfortable power dynamic you guys mentioned holds true for me, too. I’m much more comfortable with slash, where I can identify with whomever I want; and where taking on the role of top or bottom (or both, or neither, or just reader-creepering from the shadows while the characters get it on) isn’t a judgment on who ‘should’ be where.
In short, slash lets me enjoy stories about sex and romance without feeling like my role is being dictated to me.
oh, don’t mind me.: on enjoying queer erotica