Is this forum the Norm ??

Nowaysis · 22-05-06 14:46:51

Hey, look! It's Frodo!

Oh, wait, that wasn't the point, was it?

Burlesque · 22-05-06 20:50:03

The best of luck with your exams, Liandra. Oh, and thanks for calling me an asset!

Vangora75 is breaking the silence! Hooray! You don't need to be shy here! That's not what we do .

Burlesque.

Last edited by Burlesque (22-05-06 20:52:13)

Nowaysis · 23-05-06 10:33:56

Just tell them this isn't porn, it's part of the new enlightenment project that's going to be sweeping all over the world in the next few decades.

Lia · 23-05-06 11:26:47

Liandra wrote:

Actually I'm at uni, right now, and I'm waiting for the IT monitors to come tap me on the shoulder and tell me I'm not allowed to look at porn on univeristy computers. My fellow students on either side of me just got an eyeful of it, infact I think the people in the que are grouping up to make a complaint so i ahd better get on with it. toodle-oo feelers

The thesis I'm handing in on Friday is about porn (well, slash, specifically, but don't bloody well get me sodding started), so I'm going to be merrily printing out pages and pages of lurid, graphic erotica and rather detailed, stylised pictures of hot hot buttsex. All in the name of academia. They made me do it.

Elfman · 23-05-06 11:35:17

Lia wrote:

The thesis I'm handing in on Friday is about porn (well, slash, specifically, but don't bloody well get me sodding started), so I'm going to be merrily printing out pages and pages of lurid, graphic erotica and rather detailed, stylised pictures of hot hot buttsex. All in the name of academia. They made me do it.

Slash? What is slash then?

Elfman.

Warmtouch · 23-05-06 12:33:03

Elfman wrote:

Slash? What is slash then?
Elfman.

You just proved your Internet pervert credentials are phony.

Slash is male homoerotic fiction written by fans using characters from existing intellectual properties -- usually men whose friendship was famous in the original. The term "slash" has nothing to do with violence; it refers to the forward-slash, or "stroke" as the British used to call it, character that appears between the names of the protagonists, e.g. Kirk/Spock, Frodo/Sam, Holmes/Watson.

It's mostly about as wretched as any other FSF fan fiction, from which it derives much of its inspiration. The extremely peculiar thing about slash is that it is almost exclusively written by young women. Much of it is also lyrically tender, a characteristic not often associated with gay male sex. Psychological theories abound as to what's going on here... young women working out some unmet need in their own lives; a desire to see men in warm loving relationships; a secret world to which women are denied... I'm rather curious about this thesis.

Elfman · 23-05-06 13:50:17

Thanks Warmtouch. (I'll try to be a better pervert in future, I promise).

Liandra wrote:

Rather curious would be putting it mildly... Lia we shall be expecting a copy to be posted on the forums.

Yes I agree. It would be interesting.

Elfman · 23-05-06 14:30:39

Found this quick explanation for any other Slash neophites.

http://www.asstr.org/~ladycyrrh/GOODIES … index.html

Iv'e pulled this quote from the above:

"For young women, it'sone of the few outlets in which they can have fun with and share their sexuality - and go as far as they can with their (written) sexual fantasies -- in an environment that is safe and supportive".

I think I know of a better one .

Elfman

Last edited by Elfman (23-05-06 14:47:24)

Lia · 23-05-06 16:25:15

Liandra wrote:

Rather curious would be putting it mildly... Lia we shall be expecting a copy to be posted on the forums.

Oh, it's all pure academic dreck (admittedly academic dreck which happens to deal intimately with myriad representations of Harry Potter's knob), replete with a lot of boring, dry academic lingo. Though it's lovely and amusing to be able to use words like 'fuck' and 'cock' in an academic context without having to put quotation marks around them. But you'd be surprised at how tedious analysing infinite accounts of Alan Rickman's rimming/rogering/buggering techniques can get.

Maybe I can work the theme into my next submission - wanking at my computer, stirred compulsively by some epic piece of slash art.

Lia · 23-05-06 16:40:36

Warmtouch wrote:

Elfman wrote:
Slash? What is slash then?
Elfman.
You just proved your Internet pervert credentials are phony.
Slash is male homoerotic fiction written by fans using characters from existing intellectual properties -- usually men whose friendship was famous in the original. The term "slash" has nothing to do with violence; it refers to the forward-slash, or "stroke" as the British used to call it, character that appears between the names of the protagonists, e.g. Kirk/Spock, Frodo/Sam, Holmes/Watson.
It's mostly about as wretched as any other FSF fan fiction, from which it derives much of its inspiration. The extremely peculiar thing about slash is that it is almost exclusively written by young women. Much of it is also lyrically tender, a characteristic not often associated with gay male sex. Psychological theories abound as to what's going on here... young women working out some unmet need in their own lives; a desire to see men in warm loving relationships; a secret world to which women are denied... I'm rather curious about this thesis.

Oh, I'm desperately relieved to find a man who knows about these things who isn't my manic, herbal tea sipping, Julie Andrews worshipping supervisor.

Although I will say that whilst it's exclusively written by women, they're not all young. A good deal of slash communities are comprised of older, sometimes middle-aged women who've been doing it since the "golden" Kirk/Spock era, who either still haven't completely evolved beyond good ol' "pass the lube, Captain" narratives, or have now moved onto arguably bigger and crazier things like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, The X-Files, and God fucking help me, Dawson's Creek. These days, they cover everything from Sherlock Holmes to The OC. I found *twitch* some Narnia slash the other day, and had to refrain from poking myself in the eye with a fork.

As for this thesis... I'm basically discussing slash as a form of 'fag-hag narrativity', where women can mediate a channel between the straight realm and the 'alien' or 'exotic' queer one which they can otherwise only access through fantasy, where women can project their own desires and needs onto these idealised gay men whilst simultaneously negotiating their own sexual/gender identities. So it's also potentially politically empowering. And I'm sort of synthesising all of the potential functions of slash through the notion of utopianism, wish-fulfilment, escapism, where slashers essentially create 'alternative' spaces or utopias in which they can explore the unreal and the fantastical.

I never thought I'd say it, but I'm getting very sick of reading and dissecting gay porn.

Last edited by Lia (23-05-06 16:41:16)

Warmtouch · 23-05-06 23:20:01

Good thoughts, Lia. I love the phrase "fag-hag narrativity." I definitely get the impression it has something to do with unmet desires among a rather special and self-selecting group of people. If we take mainstream romance fiction as romantic aspiration for, shall we say, "conventional" women in the same way that spy thrillers are macho aspiration for "conventional" men, slash represents a tiny and weird subset -- women who still have romantic aspirations, but combined with eroticism (most mainstream romance fiction had little sex up through the early 80s) and hints of the forbidden. Plus it obviously has to be by women who want to write, not just to read.

Could it be that just as men find watching women have sex arousing, some women find at least the idea, if not perhaps the reality, of watching men have sex arousing also? (You're dead on about the idealization of the men.)

I'm rather surprised by the pedophilia angle implied by Harry Potter, though. I didn't realize that was a feature.

Lia · 24-05-06 07:42:15

Warmtouch wrote:

Good thoughts, Lia. I love the phrase "fag-hag narrativity." I definitely get the impression it has something to do with unmet desires among a rather special and self-selecting group of people. If we take mainstream romance fiction as romantic aspiration for, shall we say, "conventional" women in the same way that spy thrillers are macho aspiration for "conventional" men, slash represents a tiny and weird subset -- women who still have romantic aspirations, but combined with eroticism (most mainstream romance fiction had little sex up through the early 80s) and hints of the forbidden. Plus it obviously has to be by women who want to write, not just to read.
Could it be that just as men find watching women have sex arousing, some women find at least the idea, if not perhaps the reality, of watching men have sex arousing also? (You're dead on about the idealization of the men.)
I'm rather surprised by the pedophilia angle implied by Harry Potter, though. I didn't realize that was a feature.

Precisely. Which is why slash fiction has often been referred to as "pornographic romance", a way of sublimating the lacks and needs and desires of these segregated but highly interactive communities who write for themselves and their own ilk. What's particularly subversive and supposedly 'underground' about slash is that these women aren't just writing erotic romances or outright smut - they're turning already existing fictitious characters who are otherwise straight or sexually indifferent into all-rutting, all-spurting sex-gods, which churns up all sorts of issues about the relations between gay men and straight women, spectatorship, mass media, and power struggles between consumer and producer.

The idea of comparing it to the traditional male lesbian fantasy or seeing it as an inversion thereof has certainly come up. The first time I read any of it - and this was long before the thesis started; I was/am something of a fag-hag myself - I certainly immediately read it that way; that maybe gay male sex is as intriguing to some women as lesbian sex is to straight men. A lot of these women really do get aroused by the idea of men getting it off which each other, and I know a ridiculous number of women in real life who love nothing better than a bit of man-on-man action too. The motivators and drives of the male lesbian fantasy could certainly be linked to those of slash, though slash is a somewhat more arguably complex, multi-layered 'slippery' dynamic.

But what's important in this case is the really blatant, sexual component of slash - that is, the often graphically erotic is a really integral part of the genre - and it's been constantly overlooked as a metaphor for romance or as a plot device.

Regarding Harry Potter's adolescent bollocks... A lot of the time it isn't really perceived as paedophilia so much as a form of power-play or sexual experimentation. A lot of writers also suggest that notions of 'the age of consent' et al are really rather irrelevant and convoluted, and that 15 year-old boys (particularly in utopian fantasy universes) are entirely capable of consenting to sex. There's a sub-genre of slash which is termed 'chanslash' which often deals with inter-generational pairings and what is essentially sexual dalliances involving teenaged boys, but only very rarely are these sequences described as acts of rape, kiddy-fiddling or dubious consensuality.

Gawd. My thesis is due on Friday and here I am cheerfully re-hashing it on a website forum about wanking.

Warmtouch · 24-05-06 12:25:24

As someone who started having entirely consensual, positive, and loving sex at age 15 I'm here to tell you 15-year-old boys are FINE with that idea. But it was with another 15-year-old. The problem with teen sex isn't teens having sex, it's adults misusing power to have sex with teens, which is why Harry/Ron is OK by me and Harry/Snape isn't. But fantasy is fantasy, and I would never condemn fiction so long as people know where the lines are.

You raise interesting questions about the political implications of sexualizing characters that are the property of large corporations, but I wouldn't take that too far. There's not a lot of point in saying "fuck you" to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or J.R.R. Tolkien at this point; they're dead, and Holmes is now in the public domain. You're probably right that it has political meaning to a subset of the slash author crowd who want to make Statements through Art, but I suspect that to the vast majority of them it's just a way of avoiding the incredibly hard work of good characterization -- someone else has already done it for you.

Re being a fag hag -- for complicated reasons I know rather more lesbians than a middle-aged straight male is supposed to. But it doesn't have much to do with sex in my case. I just generally prefer the company of women to that of men. Both sexes have their own vicious dominance games that don't apply to the other sex, and as I don't care for those games among men, I prefer to hang around with women where I don't have to play. I've met a few women who have the same reaction in reverse -- they don't really like being in the company of a lot of women because they can't be arsed to put up with the whole bitchiness thing.

Lia · 24-05-06 19:50:52

Liandra wrote:

This is a bit off the topic but this reminds me the Ancient Greeks. In Classical Athens they practiced state condoned pederasty where a citizen (bearded) Athenian would court and seduce a youth between maybe 12 and 23 (unbearded). Anyway they had lots of mythical representations of boy love. Like Apollo and Hyacithus, or Zeus and Ganymede, or Patrokolus and Achilles, or Theseus and Peithos. This stuff as well as poems like Theognis by Megara which is all about two male lovers is like slash for me. I think it's why I love studying classics...is that wrong?
Which reminds me...I have work to be doing. Better go

My mind immediately drifts to antiquity too when I'm reading and analysing this (often shoddily written) stuff; those lads apparently represented some sort of strange middle ground between rent-boys and lovers-on-the-side. The Greeks (and the Romans) are/were somewhat notorious for lad-shagging, precisely because it was a sanctioned and utterly common practice. "So that's why they call it 'Greek style'", said my friend's personal trainer when Troy was released. Sodomy and its variants only became the proverbial Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name when the arguably more repressive morés of Victoriana were enforced.

Like every other field of study (except mayhaps Accounting), Classics just continually opens up new portals of sexual curiosity. In my case, in bloody Cultural Studies/English, you just don't have to search very far for them.

Oh, and congrats on your HD!

Warmtouch · 24-05-06 20:33:22

Congratulations indeed, Liandra! Does this mean you'll get your degree and be with us full time?

No, I don't think it's wrong to reflect on and enjoy the classics, boy-humping and all. I think in some respects we're in sort of a bind over the whole issue, and it has to do with what constitutes consent. Teenagers are just as horny as fuck, and they're interested in sex -- no question. And I don't think sex is inherently bad for them. But they're also confused, uncertain, and often ignorant about themselves and about what they really want and what's right. And circumstances can take them by surprise. ("I can't believe this is my first time and I'm doing it up against the wall behind Safeway!" ) This leads the unscrupulous to take advantage of them. I think the reason I know so few women who can say they had a great first time is just that the first time, well, sucked, and I suspect that in a lot of cases, that's why -- someone abused their trust at the very least.

If we were to say that adult tribal men in Siberia [or pick your location] all just routinely took teenaged girls as lovers and this was normal and sanctioned, we would probably ask a lot of hard questions about how much choice the girls had in the matter.

So I'm willing to hope and pretend that the male youth of Athens all were into it and enjoyed it and got to say no when they wanted to. But I have to wonder. Of course, in their case, unlike in Siberia, they at least grew up into members of the privileged sex, so if they didn't like it, sooner or later it was bound to end. Which leads to an interesting question: can we, should we, just establish a double standard here? Treat horny teenaged boys differently from horny teenaged girls, when it comes to having sex with adults?

Lia · 24-05-06 20:39:33

Warmtouch wrote:

As someone who started having entirely consensual, positive, and loving sex at age 15 I'm here to tell you 15-year-old boys are FINE with that idea. But it was with another 15-year-old. The problem with teen sex isn't teens having sex, it's adults misusing power to have sex with teens, which is why Harry/Ron is OK by me and Harry/Snape isn't. But fantasy is fantasy, and I would never condemn fiction so long as people know where the lines are.

Agreed. I similarly engaged fully consensually and happily in sexual activities at quite possibly younger than 15, but I also participated in erotic liaisons with people sometimes a fair deal older than me. And I never perceived those episodes as emblematic of exploitation or being taken advantage of or dubious consent. In turn, I don't think it was mutually perceived as any sort of power-play or hierarchical game. That being said, I was rather er mature for my age, and quite sportingly precocious, and whilst I feel that I was capable of consciously and utterly consenting, a lot of other lads/lasses might very well not be. This consent business has always been a highly ambiguous, complex and controversial sphere of contention, and I think that slash narratives which explore the idea further reinforces the notion that slash fandom consistently and tenaciously plays with and interrogates reality/fantasy binaries.

I'm not remotely interested in specifically paedophilic narratives, but Snape/Harry is one of my favourite slash ships (she says apologetically and fangirlishly). These narratives, you know, are often written in different contexts to compensate for or at least rationalise the inter-generational issues, whereby a slashfic will take place, say, after Harry has turned 17 (when one is considered 'of age' in the wizarding world), or years later when the two are reunited in very different circumstances. But I still have a fondness for the whole Don't Stand So Close To Me 'naughty' professor/student sensibility though (I probably still have a bit of a father complex to work on). Serves me right for reading Lolita at the ripe age of 8.

Warmtouch wrote:

You raise interesting questions about the political implications of sexualizing characters that are the property of large corporations, but I wouldn't take that too far. There's not a lot of point in saying "fuck you" to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or J.R.R. Tolkien at this point; they're dead, and Holmes is now in the public domain. You're probably right that it has political meaning to a subset of the slash author crowd who want to make Statements through Art, but I suspect that to the vast majority of them it's just a way of avoiding the incredibly hard work of good characterization -- someone else has already done it for you.

There's been a lot of critical theory done on this - and I can't possibly encapsulate it all without turning this "little" comment into a bona fide essay - but what "fan studies" has attempted to do is redeem the delegitimised, largely marginalised fan (slash itself being a form of fandom) as a potentially subversive figure who actively participates and interacts with original texts to create unique new texts of his or her own, thus creating new meanings which intimately personalise the fan's own reading. Fandom is thus perceived as a form of 'unique' reading, whereby commonly perceived notions of the fan as pathological or socially inept are negotiated in favor of the concept of fan participation as a highly creative, productive activity. And really, fan activities are very much postmodern (oh, dear - she used the p-word) manifestations of popular culture, and arguably too complex and dynamic to analyse simply in terms of "This is crap and unoriginal because they're just mucking around with someone else's work", relevant as that argument sometimes is.

Warmtouch wrote:

Re being a fag hag -- for complicated reasons I know rather more lesbians than a middle-aged straight male is supposed to. But it doesn't have much to do with sex in my case. I just generally prefer the company of women to that of men. Both sexes have their own vicious dominance games that don't apply to the other sex, and as I don't care for those games among men, I prefer to hang around with women where I don't have to play. I've met a few women who have the same reaction in reverse -- they don't really like being in the company of a lot of women because they can't be arsed to put up with the whole bitchiness thing.

*nods* Whilst I have a fair few very close female friends, I've always found that I've gotten along better with men. Whilst I've always been sexually interested in women, I've consistently found them to be often viciously bitchy, painfully volatile, and intent on playing all sorts of Machiavellian reindeer games which men seem frequently so much more honest, unaffected and upfront about. These are obviously the potentially misogynistic tropes of the PMS-enraged, monstrous, irrational, completely stereotypical woman - and I'm not in any way suggesting that all women are like that - but I've consequently found myself usually largely more comfortable in the presence of men, many of whom (rather often incidentally) are gay.

Warmtouch · 24-05-06 20:45:56

Lia wrote:

Sodomy and its variants only became the proverbial Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name when the arguably more repressive morés of Victoriana were enforced.
Like every other field of study (except mayhaps Accounting), Classics just continually opens up new portals of sexual curiosity. In my case, in bloody Cultural Studies/English, you just don't have to search very far for them.

I think the repression started a bit before that. Article 29 of the Articles of War punished the "unnatural and detestable Sin of Buggery or Sodomy with Man or Beast" with death by hanging as of 1749, and the earliest articles (whose text I cannot find) were published in 1652.

You might be surprised about accounting. As prostitution is a cash business, it is notorious for tax-fiddling; but some honest prostitutes do pay their taxes and deduct their business expenses, which can be surprisingly heavy -- clothing, condoms, petrol, advertising, their business premises, and so on.

Lia · 24-05-06 21:25:00

Warmtouch wrote:

Lia wrote:
Sodomy and its variants only became the proverbial Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name when the arguably more repressive morés of Victoriana were enforced.
Like every other field of study (except mayhaps Accounting), Classics just continually opens up new portals of sexual curiosity. In my case, in bloody Cultural Studies/English, you just don't have to search very far for them.
I think the repression started a bit before that. Article 29 of the Articles of War punished the "unnatural and detestable Sin of Buggery or Sodomy with Man or Beast" with death by hanging as of 1749, and the earliest articles (whose text I cannot find) were published in 1652.
You might be surprised about accounting. As prostitution is a cash business, it is notorious for tax-fiddling; but some honest prostitutes do pay their taxes and deduct their business expenses, which can be surprisingly heavy -- clothing, condoms, petrol, advertising, their business premises, and so on.

Oh, I know - I was just being sweepingly deductive and impressively generalistic. But it was the Victorian dismissal of buggery - the declaration that it didn't actually structurally or semiotically exist or was inherently invisible, hence the Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name - which I've always marked as a significant chapter of homoerotic history because it dealt with 'acts of sexual deviance' in a rather different, somewhat idiosyncratic way. Lesbianism, in turn, had been similarly regarded as 'invisible', as something which couldn't even be condemned or subordinated because it wasn't perceived to exist. Hence all of those studies on 'special friendships' amongst women.

Ahh, yes. Yes, I know of these things. I have quite a few friends who are working girls, and some of them who do claim their earnings - more so the ones who've been in the business for more than five years or so, rather than the one-offs who do it to get through university or pay off some debt or whatnot - claim back everything they can, from bikini waxes to lube.

digitalist · 24-05-06 22:19:47

I've got a little familiarity with slash as it applies in anime fandom and one of the things I percieved, particularly amongst teenage girls who wrote/consumed slash of a quasi-violent nature was how the 'bottoms' in these stories were made stand-ins for the socially prescribed female gender role of being the object sex is done to (rather than a subject and active participant) and how these stories seemed to represent on the one hand an opportunity for these girls to play the part of subject, and on the other a safe-space to come to terms with that socially prescribed role.

But I might have been reading too much into it...

Warmtouch · 24-05-06 23:33:12

Lia wrote:

There's been a lot of critical theory done on this - and I can't possibly encapsulate it all without turning this "little" comment into a bona fide essay - but what "fan studies" has attempted to do is redeem the delegitimised, largely marginalised fan (slash itself being a form of fandom) as a potentially subversive figure who actively participates and interacts with original texts to create unique new texts of his or her own, thus creating new meanings which intimately personalise the fan's own reading. Fandom is thus perceived as a form of 'unique' reading, whereby commonly perceived notions of the fan as pathological or socially inept are negotiated in favor of the concept of fan participation as a highly creative, productive activity. And really, fan activities are very much postmodern (oh, dear - she used the p-word) manifestations of popular culture, and arguably too complex and dynamic to analyse simply in terms of "This is crap and unoriginal because they're just mucking around with someone else's work", relevant as that argument sometimes is.

Hmmm, I think we've begun posting across one another, which is interesting given that we're at the antipodes.

Machiavellian reindeer games is one of the funniest expressions I've ever seen on any forum whatsoever.

You've certainly got the lit-crit lingo down well, and yet you use it in a way that is actually comprehensible, unlike many of your colleagues -- AND you're self-aware about it rather than being so everlastingly earnest as so much lit-crit is. You should do well on your exam. Seriously.

I've never subscribed to the notion that fans are pathological or socially inept. When wealthy men spend zillions trying to push a small white ball into a hole in the ground several hundred yards away by the most inefficient means they can think of, and we regard that as not only a hobby but a legitimate sport that pays hundreds of thousands of dollars, we've got no business sneering at FSF fans. Or perhaps I sneer at both equally.

I used to read FSF all the time as a teenager, but nowadays I find that I don't have the time to give it the effort that it requires, and so I descend into the comfortable and familiar instead. Which is a shame. But I was never a fan in the proper sense anyway; just because I liked the stuff didn't mean I wanted to hang around other people who did too. I'm fond of single malt scotch, too, but I don't seek out other people to drink it with.

I do persist in thinking that as literature qua literature most slash is pretty dire, but then I don't really think it's intended to be literature qua literature, do you? More an act of negotiation, as you say.

About your friends on the game -- I'm curious about how they feel about it. Most of the ones I know are well into their thirties and more (one is in her fifties) and so have worked through whatever they needed to work through to make it OK for them. They're also independent, financially secure, and have a group of regular customers, which probably helps. The ones who were bitter, angry, or generally unhappy were the younger women who seemed to hate their customers and themselves in equal measure. It's not a job that just anybody can do, and I've always been curious about who takes it on, why, and how long they stay in it.

Lia · 25-05-06 07:55:37

Warmtouch wrote:

Machiavellian reindeer games is one of the funniest expressions I've ever seen on any forum whatsoever.

Heh. Oh, what's funnier is that I'm toning it down. I'm a verbose, lexicographically affected word-monger (the nefarious scholastic inclinations may well have given that away), and come up with incredibly lurid, surreal, often incredibly inappropriate phrases at the drop of a hat, but this forum is teaching me brevity.

Warmtouch wrote:

You've certainly got the lit-crit lingo down well, and yet you use it in a way that is actually comprehensible, unlike many of your colleagues -- AND you're self-aware about it rather than being so everlastingly earnest as so much lit-crit is. You should do well on your exam. Seriously.

I can certainly use it incomprehensively and fatuously, though, in a way that's often required amonst my curmudgeonly, polysyllabic colleagues. The thesis, for instance (which is due tomorrow; sweet crap - and no, there's no exam; just this 15000 word document and two other monstrous essays), is absolutely fraught with lines and lines and lines of poxy academic lingo that could easily be tidied up in a manner far more palatable, but the point of these things, you know, is to convolute the most simple and cogent arguments with hypertrophied vocabulary. As for the self-awareness... Well, I can never take all that many things - especially lit-crit dreck, and anything that uses words like "postcolonial" and "heteronormativity" without the slightest hint of irony or self-deprecation - all that seriously. I could never be beatifically earnest and wide-eyed about academia; not when so much of it is just as hypocritical and self-righteous as it is passionate and dynamic.

Warmtouch wrote:

I've never subscribed to the notion that fans are pathological or socially inept. When wealthy men spend zillions trying to push a small white ball into a hole in the ground several hundred yards away by the most inefficient means they can think of, and we regard that as not only a hobby but a legitimate sport that pays hundreds of thousands of dollars, we've got no business sneering at FSF fans. Or perhaps I sneer at both equally.

Some fans are insatiably nutty - these are the ones who stalk Shatner and think that the Enterprise is actually real. There really are some slashers out there who are using the medium as a form of escape from their otherwise mundane, banal everyday lives, and whilst there's nothing wrong with that kind of empowerment of fantasy in theory, it becomes dangerous, slippery and (dare I say it), somewhat unhealthy, when that sanctuary becomes their entire existence - when it becomes more than a kink or a 'hobby', and descends into full-blown obsession, where their only form of release from their own alienation/loneliness/real-life constraints comes from writing about fictional character shagging each other, all day sodding long.

Warmtouch wrote:

I used to read FSF all the time as a teenager, but nowadays I find that I don't have the time to give it the effort that it requires, and so I descend into the comfortable and familiar instead. Which is a shame. But I was never a fan in the proper sense anyway; just because I liked the stuff didn't mean I wanted to hang around other people who did too. I'm fond of single malt scotch, too, but I don't seek out other people to drink it with.

I've never been one for fandom and community in general because I'm fairly solitary and misanthropic, and was never fond of attending organised, schematic conventions or offering myself to online communal fan-fiestas just because I share certain tastes with certain people. And I don't get that thing a lot of people do where you "need to belong somewhere". If I want to rant sycophantically about the latest Will Self novel or Alan Rickman's fruitbowl, I'll do it with my friends. I never wrote slash either because being the elitist, pretentious, narcissistic shit that I am, I always maintained that I prefer to write my own original material, rather than base it on someone else's, which essentially contradicts all of that positivist, enabling dreg I've espoused about the dynamic, fertile potentiality of fan-fiction.

Warmtouch wrote:

I do persist in thinking that as literature qua literature most slash is pretty dire, but then I don't really think it's intended to be literature qua literature, do you? More an act of negotiation, as you say.

Well, actually now that you say that - and in light of what I just babbled on about - some slash (and by all means, not all of it; a lot of it is absolutely cringe-worthily ghastly) is surprisingly and often pleasingly well-written, even literary. There are a couple of slashfics I'll actually re-read because they're crafted so - and I'll regret saying this - elegantly and skilfully, particularly the ones imbued with a sense of arch wittiness and dry humour (arguably, the ones who don't take themselves or their work so seriously). There are some more 'highbrow' texts which are sensationally constructed, and the only effective difference between those and 'real' "good lit" is that these are based on the precincts of an already written text. So I read this "good" slash and bemoan the silliness and self-imposed restraints of these otherwise talented writers - why waste that sodding talent on sodding slash?

Warmtouch wrote:

About your friends on the game -- I'm curious about how they feel about it. Most of the ones I know are well into their thirties and more (one is in her fifties) and so have worked through whatever they needed to work through to make it OK for them. They're also independent, financially secure, and have a group of regular customers, which probably helps. The ones who were bitter, angry, or generally unhappy were the younger women who seemed to hate their customers and themselves in equal measure. It's not a job that just anybody can do, and I've always been curious about who takes it on, why, and how long they stay in it.

Most of the working girls I know are somewhere between 21 and 40-something, and like all girls on the game, I think, they've all got very different reasons for doing it and of coping with it. A lot of girls I know have done it somewhat more short-term to pay off debt, make their way through university, buy themselves rather expensive things. In turn, some of them have done it to finance their kids, to support drug habits, and out of sheer curiosity, thinking that the industry is somehow glamorous or exotic. Whilst most of them don't love it and don't consider it a scintillating, hard-hitting career move (even the ones who've been in it for over a decade), they seem to have no particular unresolved issues doing it, and when they find it just that little bit too emotionally or physically draining/exhausting, they just take time off. All in all, a lot of them seem quite well-adjusted and just see the entire exercise as nothing more than a rather intimate rendition of customer service - a business transaction, a job that basically involves some sort of performance or acting. I've met a good few working girls with enormous issues regarding their own self-worth, sexuality, men, etc., but I know far many more women who aren't sex-workers who have precisely the same glitches.

You're right regarding the fact that it's not a thing that just anyone can do - it certainly seems to require a certain personality type, and that fundamental ability to be able to delineate 'work' from actual 'sex'; the aforementioned notion that it's just a business transaction like any other that just happens to involve rumpy-pumpy. And a lot of women can't cope with that. The thing is, it's legal here (well, in quite a few parts of 'here'), and whilst prostitution is often still perceived rather stigmatically and contemptuously by some otherwise incredibly open-minded, egalitarian, leftist people, its decriminalisation seems to take the edge off some of the pre-conceived ideas of it being dangerous, risky and dodgy, even though it can certainly still be that. Most of the sex workers I know work for incredibly normal and unexotic escort agencies or brothels (as opposed to the ones who street-walk in lieu of narcotics, which makes me rather sad), make very good money, take all the necessary precautions, and are consequently doing it all entirely out of their own accord. They aren't bullied into it, they aren't subordinated by pimps and whatnot; rather they make a conscious, considerable, independent and usually informed choice to do it.

Lia · 25-05-06 08:02:14

digitalist wrote:

I've got a little familiarity with slash as it applies in anime fandom and one of the things I percieved, particularly amongst teenage girls who wrote/consumed slash of a quasi-violent nature was how the 'bottoms' in these stories were made stand-ins for the socially prescribed female gender role of being the object sex is done to (rather than a subject and active participant) and how these stories seemed to represent on the one hand an opportunity for these girls to play the part of subject, and on the other a safe-space to come to terms with that socially prescribed role.
But I might have been reading too much into it...

That seems like a fairly reasonable reading of it to me.

Reminds me of the suggestion that because so much of Japanese sexual culture and media is so overtly violent, misogynistic and even rapacious (whereby the idea of stylised sex as an incredibly brutal act is perceived as the norm; tentacle schoolgirl rape et al), it acts as a form of catharsis, so that violent crimes like battery and rape are actually significantly reduced because these forms of media allow readers/viewers to assimilate and mediate violent, destructive, degradational desire through the sanctity of it all being simulated.

Warmtouch · 25-05-06 12:18:14

Lia wrote:

I've met a good few working girls with enormous issues regarding their own self-worth, sexuality, men, etc., but I know far many more women who aren't sex-workers who have precisely the same glitches.
You're right regarding the fact that it's not a thing that just anyone can do - it certainly seems to require a certain personality type, and that fundamental ability to be able to delineate 'work' from actual 'sex'; the aforementioned notion that it's just a business transaction like any other that just happens to involve rumpy-pumpy. And a lot of women can't cope with that. The thing is, it's legal here (well, in quite a few parts of 'here'), and whilst prostitution is often still perceived rather stigmatically and contemptuously by some otherwise incredibly open-minded, egalitarian, leftist people, its decriminalisation seems to take the edge off some of the pre-conceived ideas of it being dangerous, risky and dodgy, even though it can certainly still be that. Most of the sex workers I know work for incredibly normal and unexotic escort agencies or brothels (as opposed to the ones who street-walk in lieu of narcotics, which makes me rather sad), make very good money, take all the necessary precautions, and are consequently doing it all entirely out of their own accord. They aren't bullied into it, they aren't subordinated by pimps and whatnot; rather they make a conscious, considerable, independent and usually informed choice to do it.

Most separate "work" from "sex" by drawing a line inside their heads somewhere and refusing to step across it. Back in the 70s I read a book that stated flatly that prostitutes never kiss. This is false and ridiculous besides; you might as well say that all painters refuse to paint houses chartreuse. Some will and some won't. The working girls I know usually reserve certain activities for lovers, but which those are varies from one to another.

What sets the skilled working girl apart from the run-of-the-mill has nothing to do with sexual technique or athleticism or even youth and beauty. It's actually about attitude and hospitality -- offering a warm welcome and their full attention. Good sex is very much about attention, I find. Having sex with someone narcisstic or self-absorbed (or just plain absent) is extremely disappointing. But of course offering that attention to strangers is much more mentally and emotionally tiring than just getting them off and out the door. Orgasms are cheap, but attention commands a high price.

That's one of the things that makes the Abbywinters videos so hot. Most of the porn on the net seems to take place between people who don't know each other and couldn't care less about each other -- they scarcely even LOOK at one another. The women on AW seem to really be into each other, which is rather surprising considering that many of them barely know each other either... maybe it's just good sexual manners, and the effect of not worrying about the camera.

Re: the catharsis argument -- there's a huge debate in the US about that, and at least in that society it seems not to be true. But Japanese society is so extremely different from American that it's really apples and oranges.

Last edited by Warmtouch (25-05-06 12:21:44)

Elfman · 25-05-06 14:05:36

Liandra wrote:

What did I tell you...Lia is just enagaing in her normal level of discourse and I feel like I'm lost somewhere in the back alleys of a large and sprawling city... Oh how I covet her brain!

You know I'm so pleased to hear you say that Liandra. I thought it was just me.

Burlesque · 25-05-06 14:18:26

Lia is an amazing individual. Those of you who have seen her "confession" on BA know that she actually speaks the way she writes, which to me is a thing of beauty: to be in such command of one's language and the philosophical tenets behind it, without becoming haughty and superior in one's attitude. If anything, I think she puts herself down a little too frequently. While amusing, it implies that she feels her intelligence is something to be ashamed of, and I sincerely hope she doesn't really believe that. The only thing that really annoys me is that I don't know anyone like her .

Burlesque.

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