Slash and gender roles
Jun. 19th, 2013 09:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
farad posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
mag7wrimoYesterday, I read this really interesting article, "Gender, Power, and M/M Romance". The first sentence immediately caught my attention:
If I hear one more time that readers turn to the m/m genre because it is free of “gendered power relationships,” I will throw a large heavy object across the room.
This got my attention because I do tend to think that m/m relationships bring more equality to the relationship, making it 'less traditional'. But having read the article, I am in the process of re-thinking what I thought (that's a good thing, right?). Here are some of the more thought-provoking comments in the article:
In an m/m romance, the substitution of the heroine with a second hero does not mean that gendered power relationships disappear. It means that we now have two protagonists whose socially constructed roles are drawn from the same side of the gender binary** rather than one each from opposite sides.
True - and part of the complexity of writing m/m. Though I hadn't thought of it in 'gender' terms, I have thought about it in terms of other constructions in the relationship - not so much 'sex' per se (though that is part of it), but in terms of life expectations - do they live together and if so, where? Do they allocate daily chores and if so, how? Things like that, the 'domesticity' issues.
This, though, is pretty much the part that most caught my attention and made me go 'huh': These attitudes and behaviors are part of being socialized as a male, regardless of sexual orientation (and that socialization begins at birth for most people). Not all men exhibit these attributes, of course, because response to socialization is conditioned on the individual. And gay men may fight certain aspects of gender conditioning more than straight men do. But gay men grow up in the same gendered world as straight men, women, and everyone else.
And this made me think of our little fandom and some of the issues we face with certain types of stories, many of which are related to certain pairings: I would argue that we port a lot of our assumptions about relationships over to what is supposed to be a gender-neutral environment. Gay4U is basically the virgin heroine trope; guys taking care of other peoples’ kids is the family-friendly HEA; infidelity is frequently a relationship deal-breaker (unlike in other fiction with gay main characters), true love means having penetrative sex, and so on. I think that we unconsciously expect certain types of relationships no matter what we’re reading.
This is where m/m writing - fanfic and original - is often distinguished from 'gay writing': m/m writing is usually written by women who 'import' our relationship views onto male relationships, thus making it more like traditional m/f relationships.
We can't write from the male perspective, as it were, but when we write the guys, do we try to consider them as men and not 'women with dicks'? Do we try to take into account the gender/power issues that men have among themselves, ones that are different from what we women experience but are still there? What are the male gender issues - what issues are there between two guys in a relationship? How does 'power' get sorted out?
It's a really interesting article and it has me thinking about our various pairings and what the nature of their power relationships are based on their gender issues. The comments are very good too, and thinky.
If I hear one more time that readers turn to the m/m genre because it is free of “gendered power relationships,” I will throw a large heavy object across the room.
This got my attention because I do tend to think that m/m relationships bring more equality to the relationship, making it 'less traditional'. But having read the article, I am in the process of re-thinking what I thought (that's a good thing, right?). Here are some of the more thought-provoking comments in the article:
In an m/m romance, the substitution of the heroine with a second hero does not mean that gendered power relationships disappear. It means that we now have two protagonists whose socially constructed roles are drawn from the same side of the gender binary** rather than one each from opposite sides.
True - and part of the complexity of writing m/m. Though I hadn't thought of it in 'gender' terms, I have thought about it in terms of other constructions in the relationship - not so much 'sex' per se (though that is part of it), but in terms of life expectations - do they live together and if so, where? Do they allocate daily chores and if so, how? Things like that, the 'domesticity' issues.
This, though, is pretty much the part that most caught my attention and made me go 'huh': These attitudes and behaviors are part of being socialized as a male, regardless of sexual orientation (and that socialization begins at birth for most people). Not all men exhibit these attributes, of course, because response to socialization is conditioned on the individual. And gay men may fight certain aspects of gender conditioning more than straight men do. But gay men grow up in the same gendered world as straight men, women, and everyone else.
And this made me think of our little fandom and some of the issues we face with certain types of stories, many of which are related to certain pairings: I would argue that we port a lot of our assumptions about relationships over to what is supposed to be a gender-neutral environment. Gay4U is basically the virgin heroine trope; guys taking care of other peoples’ kids is the family-friendly HEA; infidelity is frequently a relationship deal-breaker (unlike in other fiction with gay main characters), true love means having penetrative sex, and so on. I think that we unconsciously expect certain types of relationships no matter what we’re reading.
This is where m/m writing - fanfic and original - is often distinguished from 'gay writing': m/m writing is usually written by women who 'import' our relationship views onto male relationships, thus making it more like traditional m/f relationships.
We can't write from the male perspective, as it were, but when we write the guys, do we try to consider them as men and not 'women with dicks'? Do we try to take into account the gender/power issues that men have among themselves, ones that are different from what we women experience but are still there? What are the male gender issues - what issues are there between two guys in a relationship? How does 'power' get sorted out?
It's a really interesting article and it has me thinking about our various pairings and what the nature of their power relationships are based on their gender issues. The comments are very good too, and thinky.