This! Femslash, slash and female-oriented het shipping really are different traditions (as is the more dude oriented het side of fandom and the mixed-gender gen tradition). And even now, they tend to hang out in different online spaces. Thank you for mentioning this, and for writing this out so well and so coherently.
M/m slash fandom tended to be pretty tribal and insular back in the day, but that was for a reason. Strikethrough was aimed mostly at m/m content. M/m was the thing that was banned from most archives, even ones that allowed porn, and had to go to its own mailing lists.
Femslash fans did face homophobia back in the day, but it tended to take the form of "this is really hot, but it would be even better with man in it" and " a relationship with another girl keeps her pure for her future True Love boyfriend/husband/the male viewers" and "but the f/f relationship doesn't really count; she'll grow out of it and get together with a dude as is proper." Whereas m/m faced more "this is evil and disgusting and shouldn't exist!"
And yeah, the presence of straight men did and does have an effect on femslash, both canon and fandom, in general. I don't think it's an accident that the canon gay relationship on Buffy the Vampire Slayer turned out to be f/f, or that the f/f on Babylon 5 was actual canon, while the m/m was Undercover as a Couple.
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Re: wank containment area
Date: 2018-08-10 12:54 pm (UTC)This! Femslash, slash and female-oriented het shipping really are different traditions (as is the more dude oriented het side of fandom and the mixed-gender gen tradition). And even now, they tend to hang out in different online spaces. Thank you for mentioning this, and for writing this out so well and so coherently.
M/m slash fandom tended to be pretty tribal and insular back in the day, but that was for a reason. Strikethrough was aimed mostly at m/m content. M/m was the thing that was banned from most archives, even ones that allowed porn, and had to go to its own mailing lists.
Femslash fans did face homophobia back in the day, but it tended to take the form of "this is really hot, but it would be even better with man in it" and " a relationship with another girl keeps her pure for her future True Love boyfriend/husband/the male viewers" and "but the f/f relationship doesn't really count; she'll grow out of it and get together with a dude as is proper." Whereas m/m faced more "this is evil and disgusting and shouldn't exist!"
And yeah, the presence of straight men did and does have an effect on femslash, both canon and fandom, in general. I don't think it's an accident that the canon gay relationship on Buffy the Vampire Slayer turned out to be f/f, or that the f/f on Babylon 5 was actual canon, while the m/m was Undercover as a Couple.