Slashtastic

[osprey_archer]

Spent the day - not studying; but instead looking over old Honors Projects in the archives, to get a sense what I need to do to make the grade.

Someone back in 2003 wrote their honors project about "Harry Potter and the Age of the Internet: Community and Conflict in the Harry Potter Fandom," about Harry Potter slash fandom. I read the first two pages and went "OMG she's so in slash fandom" - because she breezed by "Why would anyone read slash?" in about half a page. (To paraphrase: "If you ask, they'll say 'it's hot!' Do we need to pathologize that?")

Outsiders always spend ages on it because they are certain, CERTAIN there must be something pathological about it: "slashers are gay men trapped in women's bodies" or "slashers are women who are so alienated from their own bodies that they have to broadcast their desires onto men." There are doubtless members of the slash fandom who meet those descriptions, but all of fandom?

Both constructions also presuppose that slashers read nothing but slash, which is at very least an assumption that needs some research behind it. I have the impression that this is growing less true, possibly because slash is no longer seen as so weird and fringe.

Sometimes I think we'll all be much happier if we stop trying to explain sexuality and just go with it. If it was explicable, it wouldn't be so damn powerful.

Incidentally, I was totally right: she acknowledged her membership in slash fandom in the conclusion. That must have taken some guts; one of the charms of academic language is that you can write about something deeply personal without emotional exposure.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

And if we get one more to join us, we can level up and start a religion--in New York State, anyway. (That was a fact my parents delighted in telling us when we were kids: that in New York State it took only three people to start a religion.)