let’s have a prayer circle for all the women out there
who have never read better porn than 50 shades of grey
…so, this got over 10k notes. oh tumblr, you large collection of elitist porn snobs, never change, mmk?
straight girls: you do not promote gay rights by shipping your two favorite male characters together all the time they are not your playthings
also if the men you are shipping are real people and not fictional characters and not together
that is wrong and disgusting and fetishizing
stop it
eh, i don’t necessarily agree with this. there’s a lot to be analyzed in terms of power and escape narratives and also just the history of literature itself, which is a lot of real personal fiction essentially, if not rps. of course, there can be exploitation and fetishization within fandom, but i don’t think it’s fair to categorize all fandom, or all of slash fanfiction as that. why is lesbian porn offensive, for example? i think it’s not just as simple as it’s because someone not of that sexuality witnessing people of different genders/sexualities having sex. it’s because of the perseverance of the male gaze, the recrafting of the lesbian experience to be all about males and their sex defined as using male-centric objects, etc, etc, about the delegitimization of lesbianism. do all those power dynamics exist when straight girls write gay fanfiction? some do, some don’t. there’s a lot of privilege straight girls hold over gay males, but does fanfiction show an exercise of that privilege in total oppressive ways? sometimes yes, sometimes not. what about when fanfiction is used to insert queer narratives into standard heteronormative content? what about when people who don’t feel conventionally attractive due to oppressive beauty standards have to create narratives where there aren’t romantic situations which they feel like they could never see themselves in? —especially when it’s woc/qoc writing slash between white males? who holds more power there— especially if the reason these girls are writing is because they can’t envision themselves in that narrative in any way and thus don’t want to write about a heterosexual relationship? what about gay fanfiction that’s introduced writers to a world of exploring femmeslash and their own sexuality? what about fanfiction that’s legitimately helped someone enter a world of sex positivity and queer positivity (i’m not going to lie, fanfiction was what introduced me, at one point a person from a very conservative and religious background, to it).
i’m not saying fanfiction isn’t problematic, because 90% probably hella is, and a lot of fanfic writers can be exploitative and gross. but i don’t think it’s fair to shut the entire media down when it’s often a way to express what can’t be expressed and battle this enormously oppresssive and normative media that kind of pushes us all out of the picture. and certainly my journey to understanding and deconstructing kyriarchy wasn’t solely through fandom but all the critical reading i discovered through the internet. but it’s not fair to sit on a holier-than-thou pedestal and universally condemn it, especially when so many people use it as a space of fantasy and escape. fanfiction should be done unexploitatively, critically, etc, and people indulging in it should do better always and make sure it’s not about fetishization, stereotyping, etc. but don’t shut it down so easily, you know?
