The Slash Debate

Event
Event:	The Slash Debate
Participants:
Date(s):	December 2009-into the spring of 2010
Type:
Fandom:	M/M pro romance novels, slash fic
URL:
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The Slash Debate was sparked by a December 2009 article called Man on Man: The New Gay Romance... which was published in the L.A. Weekly by Gendy Alimurun.

While the article was a fairly standard one on this topic, it became a huge flashpoint for fans discussing the legitimacy and appeal of slash fiction writing, female desire, disenfranchisement, cultural appropriation, and more.

Topics discussed in the article were professional m/m romance, its appeal and popularity, and its roots in slash fic. It also had statements that reminded some fans of the McCaffrey Tent Peg Statement.

The resulting debate has been called "The Slash Debate," somewhat of a misnomer due to the fact that this discussion wasn't "the" slash debate insomuch it was one in a long, long line of "slash debates."

This debate occurred shortly after RaceFail '09 and LambdaFail.

For additional context, see Timeline of Slash Meta and Slash Meta.

Some Topics Discussed

• Women and Slash
• people telling other people how and what to write, people telling women they couldn't write about men
• the use of pseuds, women using male pseuds
• m/m pro novels
• are men abusing their privilege in telling women what they should or shouldn't be allowed to write
• m/m slash fic
• a lot of talk about "the gays"
• impatience with the gender binary tone
• the queerness of fandom
• cultural appropriation, does slash appropriate gay men for the sexual gratification of women
• does slash have a duty to depict "real" gay life
• Slash vs. Gay
• much more

December 29, 2009

• tigresslilly - Isms in Fandom and the On Going Meta-Fandom Inspired Debate, ^{Archived version} by tigresslilly

January 5, 2010

• damned_colonial, ^{Archived version} by damned-colonial
• porn/meta is my OTP, or: why there are so many queer people in my head - but I will hold on hope, ^{Archived version} by puella-nerdii
• 1952 called. They want their clichés back., ^{Archived version} by kill-claudio

January 6, 2010

• MAKING SHIT UP - Clare London, Author, ^{Archived version} by clarelondon
• It’s only fiction!, ^{Archived version} by sparkindarkness

January 9, 2010

• More on the M/M genre (because I’m not above flogging a dead horse :P), ^{Archived version} by sparkindarkness

January 11, 2010

• The first camp sees the second as part of the long and unpleasant tradition of criticising and suppressing female creativity, and of men coming into women’s spaces and trying to control them. by logophilos (journal purged and deleted)
• So the question was in relation to m/m romance and it was How Do I Know If I'm Getting it Right when it comes to writing gay characters? by gwailowrite (journal purged and deleted)
• There's been a debate going on in fandom and in professional literary circles about m/m fiction, or slash, or gay fiction, or whatever. by maryaminx (requires login)
• Meta, Meta, Meta: Two Links - a neon bolt of lightning: The problem for me, is that a lot of times, the reality of - hey, there are real gay people out there - is strangely absent from too much fan fiction and fan fiction discussions. by mresundance

January 12, 2010

• What? Straight Women Shouldn't Write Gay Characters? Huh? by gwailowrite (journal purged and deleted)
• The whole "is (some) slash homophobic" debate is here again by paradox-dragon (journal purged and deleted)
• My remarks about gay male critics was not intended to be an iteration of the tone argument. by logophilos (journal purged and deleted)
• Sparky made the point that “The history of women writers taking male psuedonyms is to overcome misogyny….They adopt a pseudonym not to adopt a viewpoint or appropriate a life experience they have not had, they are doing it to overcome prejudice.” by logophilos (journal purged and deleted)
• I remembered why I stopped following this speeding failtrain. Ann Somerville continues to annoy me. Ever since Lambda Fail, the more I read about and by m/m writers, the less patience I have for these straight women by mothwing
• I have been staying away from the whole women writing m/m romance thing that's been all over metafandom and linkspam the past few days, but today I foolishly clicked on this post about female m/m writers using male pen names. by kanata

January 13, 2010

• Slash and the appropriation/objectification of The Other by herongale
• I've been seeing a lot more posts over the past several months about the, hmm, I think "misappropriation" is the buzzword of the day, of LGBT issues by straight slash fans. I' by bedawyn
• In the current round of -fail, we're talking about women* writing male/male erotica. by jonquil (requires login)
• Should (straight/lesbian/etc) women be 'allowed' to write slash? by xtricks
• 1 Gay & Fannish Perspective by zephyrprince (login required)
• On Slashing While Straight and Writing While Queer by smirnoffmule (journal purged and deleted)
• Oh God, are we doing 'women writing m/m slash are just fetishizing gay male relationships' again already? Really? by bluflamingo
• "It's how I see relationships": Yes, they're both by women. I am always going to privilege women in any group over men in any group. by ithiliana

January 14, 2010

• The Invisible Slasher by fairestcat
• The Slash Debate: Queer vs. Female Space by thoracopagus (page "not found")
• Homophobia isn't just laws that make us second class citizens. Just like sexism isn't just 75c on the 1$. Racism isn't just a history of colonialism, enslavement and eugenics. by eumelia
• We're here, we're queer AND YOU DON'T SPEAK FOR US. by grey-bard
• (meta) this is why I get to call myself a dyke and still ask that you not by thoracopagus (page "not found")
• Fiction exists in the real world, and influences real-world people. This is not an issue of "some people" not being able to distinguish between fiction and reality. by mothwing
• (meta) The Slash Debate: Queer vs. Female Space by thoracopagus (page "not found")
• And some of it i understand; this article is nailing its particular colours to the mast so hard Jesus winced, and its colours are OMG SILLY WOMEN PRETEND TO BE MEN AND WRITE PORN ABOUT MEN. ITS LIKE THEY THINK THEY’RE PEOPLE. HAHAHAHA. by ashteth
• Some more poking of the m/m genre by sparkindarkness
• I'm in your fandom queering up your het... by qwertyuiop (journal purged and deleted)
• Also, current slash debate is making me unhappy where my sexual orientation is. Partially due to the double erasure of asexuals (once when the debate gets turned into straight women vs. gay men, second time when people start going "hey, what about the LGB women?" or "And there are straight and bi men who write slash too!"), but hey, old hat, I'm used to being ignored. by kazaera

January 15, 2010

• a) My standard line in this argument is comprised of two words: drag queens. Which I expand thus: women (most women) understand that (some) gay men have created a really distinctive and important form of cultural expression, saying things they couldn't say otherwise, through the adoption of female avatars from popular culture. by cesperanza
• [http://elayna88.livejournal.com/564135.html I occasionally find meta just... bemusing, particularly when I want to say, 'Haven't we been here before?' by elayna88 (page "not found")
• small things & intersectionality & internalized oppression by stoneself (login required)
• The Slash Debate: Slash and Heterosexual Privilege by thoracopagus ([age "not found")
• So, in the current greater fandom blow-up about varying issues of homophobia, objectification, fetishization and how real gay men feel about slash, I feel very strange because I don't know where to stand. by xie-xie-xie
• Ok, so she's got lots of good points (the addendum might need the clarification made in the comments). by readingz

January 16, 2010

• Okay, I've tried to stay out of the latest round of "OMG Straight Women write Slash and that's WRONG!" thing, because...hey, I've been through it all too many times in my (OMG!) fifteen years in online fandom. by telesilla
• so now slash is just like drag? seriously? by prof-pangaea
• It means when someone says to me 'this thing you do hurts me' that I should listen even when inside I'm going 'I did not, you are making that up'. When they (whoever they are) say 'you are hurting a whole community' I really listen. by jamie (page "not found")

January 17, 2010

• The latest round of "straight women shouldn't write m/m slash" meta is just . . . stoopid, as stoopid as it always is. by writestufflee
• That discussion about m/m fiction and appropriation... by carmarthen
• So I've been reading metafandom's links to the various arguements about 'straight women writing slash is objectifying gay men blah blah blah' that have been going on. by ix-tab (login required)
• privilege, culture, appropriation, stories - Dowsing, ^{Archived version} by Lee Kottner
• The m/m fiction versus gay fiction battle by duskpeterson
• Why the current m/m slash/appropriation debate is making me feel exhausted by das-dingsi

January 18, 2010

• Outside the borders of Slashtopia by sqbr
• Quite interested to see that some posts and comments are interpreting cesperanza's drag/slash analogy to mean that slash is okay because drag is okay. by copracat (login required)
• Switch hitters: Lesbians write gay male erotica, and gay men write lesbian erotica by xie-xie-xie
• I'm subscribed to both metafandom and linkspam. They usually don't post the same links, but now and then they intersect -- especially when a big, eh, event is taking place. Well, I usually don't have more use of these communities that quickly reading over the excerpts, then moving on. by jerico-cacaw
• SCIENCE (which is to say statistics, which is even better) by cimorene
• Slash, as I've often said, is an interpretation of the text. by eumelia
• Some things I will clarify up front: I am queer. I am biofemale, though identify as genderqueer in a way that would take a long time to explain. I write m/m profic. by mjules
• There's this thing going on in slash fandom by linaelyn
• You can't write in a vacuum by mothwing (login required)
• More Science! by melannen
• The first rule of slash... by oconel in camelot_fleet
• closing for now on slash fail by stoneself (login required)

January 19, 2010

• Fiction is appropriation. Appropriation is not the end of the world. by black-trillium
• you know, not all slash is actually about sex by edenfalling
• I don't know about everyone else but I've been following the current slash is the source of all evil debate avidly. by ssquirrel-fic (page not found)
• The Road Thus Far, The Queer Experience, & Writing The Other by spiderstars
• Thoughts on slash by miera-c
• tossing my two cents into the slash debate by spacelogic (login required)
• Yes more on the Slash Debate. Yes, more. by eumelia
• First Post on Fethisizing (expect MOAR) by ithiliana
• metafandom has lately been documenting a kerfuffle regarding some gay male fans complaining about straight women hijacking their sexuality to write slash. I personally wouldn't know - nearly all the slashers I know are bi or gay themselves. by ms-katonic (login required)
• The Male Gaze (relating to but not exactly connected to the Slash Authorship Imbroglio) by ithiliana
• Queer women, the slash debate, and the question of internalized oppression by paradox-dragon (journal purged and deleted)
• If you don't want to write female characters, and you prefer to write m/m slash fic for whatever reason you like, cool! by 51stcenturyfox (login required)

January 20, 2010

• A history and my take on The Slash Debate by Laura Hale
• Anger by wistfuljane
• in which i talk a lot (often in parentheses) by fizzyblogic

January 21, 2010

• I've been vaguely following the 'is slash inherently appropriative' debate on metafandom, but since my (general, non-absolute) feelings on slash can be best summed up thus, I don't really have an opinion. by frolicndetour
• The m/m debate is really confusing for me. Partly because even when people are talking about something they are labeling as slash, they seem to be talking only about m/m. by tigresslilly

January 22, 2010

• So, racism's been a recent meta topic, does that mean it's time for feminism? by beatrice-otter
• 1. Subtext. 2. Fandom misogyny. 3. coverfail. by bookshop
• Stupid on the internet by sprat (login required)
• it sort of parallels some shit I said about slash back in the day (back in the day three months ago) about how women* may just be using slash** as a way of exploring sexual relationships*** between partners with equal social status by laughingrat (login required)
• Half-baked thoughts on the male slash debate by magpyr (journal purged and delted)
• I have been thinking a lot lately, in the context of recent discussion here and especially here, about romance novels, because hot damn that is a genre with Problems and yet also a genre I love by kalpurna
• So, let me just say, that if you EVER, and I do mean EVER start a post, or comment with something like, "I just wish all the media I consume would do me a favor and write me some women I GENUINELY ADORE", I will wish you dead. by the-jackalope

January 23, 2010

• Regarding the the latest round of slash discussions by monanotlisa
• On female characters in fanfic by elfinblaze
• on female characters "not being good enough" for main male characters by tielan

• The more things change.... ALL OF THIS HAS HAPPENED BEFORE. by lyssie
• I'm a believer in slasher misogyny. I think it's a crying shame that femslash is a tiny proportion of fandom. by zvi
• It never fails to amaze me that we place female characters in such an awful catch-22. by musesfool
• Self, why don't you write women? by jerico-cacaw
• Also, can we stop phrasing this whole mess in terms of a gender binary? by such-heights
• From the blurb on Metafandom I concluded that the poster in question meant something like “female writers shouldn’t write male characters”, which naturally enraged me. by vamp-ress
• Misogyny is wrong. Who knew? by havocthecat

January 24, 2010

• OK I want to compile a list of the excuses we hear so often when the subject of female characters & their presence comes up. by miera-c
• http://copracat.dreamwidth.org/522847.html[ I was following recent linkspammed and metafandommed discussions which led to a bit of googling on intersectionality.] by copracat (login required)
• The flip side. ("Pickering, why can't a woman be more like a man?") by bookshop. ... I have a teeny, tiny problem with that post. by kookiety
• whoops that got long and thinky about women and stories. Plus meme by inmyriadbits
• The idea of disturbing "trends" and "patterns" in slash fiction/slasher behavior is rearing its head, again. Slash will always be targeted in this way by those who don't appreciate it, no doubt, and those who disagree will always defend. by carolyn-claire
• on feminism & queerness, women and slash, m/m vs female characters by cimorene
• My issues with het... by jane_elliot on epic_rants
• But collectively it's all starting to read a lot like "what's wrong with the women." And I've had enough of that for many lifetimes. by acrimonyastraea
• Those stories upset me, because those are badly written stories and offensive and the authors should be called out on it. by mistresscurvy (login required)

January 25, 2010

• I don't want it to seem like I'm denying the importance of these issues, and maybe it's just because I came in through anime fandom, where nobody ever shuts up about it, but dude, I thought we had already done been tired of talking about this stuff. by sabinelagrande (login required)
• Lets start by of some of the arguments from the list for not liking a female characters/het/femmeslash/gen by autumnus
• What does heteronormativity mean to you? by miera-c

February 6, 2010

• Do we have a duty? by sparkindarkness

February 15, 2010

• Derailment: The debate on whether it is okay for women to write m/m, or whether it is exploitative and appropriative, has started again. by senior-witch