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LC 103.01 Queer in America Courses : HIS 150 Topics in History & HUM 206; Topics in Humanities What do we mean when we use the word “queer”? Is it an insult? A term which denotes difference? An adjective reclaimed as an empowering way to encompass the diversity of sexual expression in our contemporary world? During the semester we will discuss the question of “queerness” and various related themes including sexual identity, sexual diversity, the history of institutional responses (especially medical, psychological, and legal), education and culture, media representation, and social and political activism. We will explore these issues in a respectful, sensitive, and sympathetic classroom environment. Methods of instruction to include class discussion, lecture, writing assignments, and invited speakers. Prerequisite: English 101
Kimberly Boyd Professor Beers Professor Fairman December 12, 2005 Just Kiss Already: Exploring the Links between Homoeroticsm and Fanficiton Set the scene: Two (or more) astonishingly beautiful men, (or equally amazing looking women) stand (or sit, or lay on the ground) facing one another, (or looking carefully away) interaction is comes in a heated exchange (or in a easy conversation) full of so many things to say (or full of things that are carefully not being said.) Then there is a sudden silence, a sudden heat and sexual chemistry blooms between the two characters of the same sex, leaving people to blurt out, or to at least think, 'Just kiss already' and ladies and gentlemen, we have HoYay! HoYay! is a term that comes like so many now a days from the Internet, having been coined on the website Televisionwithoutpity.com (here after called TwoP), an Internet message board about television shows. TwoP in it's main site FAQ defines HoYay! As: “short for "Homoeroticism, Yay!," a celebration of textual and subtextual homoeroticism” (Wing Chun). At TwoP alone, there are over eleven pages of topics that contain the term HoYay, never mind the individual pages and posts contained within those topics. But HoYay! isn't something that is contained simply in television, it can be found in every form of modern (and in many not so modern forms
Boyd 2 of media) around. It is found in movies, books, commercials, bands and real life situations, especially between celebrities. With all of the homoeroticism in the world today, it is little wonder that it has lent itself so well to the world of fanfiction and all the things that it contains. Fan fiction has been defined by Anne Kustritz as “...the practice of using characters from a professionally published text (a source product) in an original story” (Kustritz 371). The practice originally was born out of the science fiction genre and specifically the Star Trek random. Before the dawning of the Internet, stories would be, published in fan-run magazines (fanzines) and would be eagerly passed around between people of the same idea. Or they would come out for sale for the exact amount of what the printing would cost. (To make money off of still copyrighted source material is illegal.) With the Internet, fan fiction has become a huge phenomenon in and of itself. When one uses a search engine, two million, six hundred thousand sites show up, which is the largest number allowed by Google.com. The first site that is on the list is fan fiction.net which boasts over ten million stories, all of which are rated “R” and under, which means that no stories that are rated over that, “NC-17” are not archived there. When does one a search for story summaries, (a fifteen or so word summary that appears under the title of a story) thirty-three thousand, nine hundred and twentynine story summaries come up at the time of this writing. This does not include stories that do not place slash with the summary, and it does not take into account another identifier, the “/” between two names of the same sex. When one does a Google.com search for both fan fiction and slash, one million, two hundred and ten thousand sit show up. It seems to be an amazing figure considering how many other sites come up, but it begs the question of why?
Boyd 3 Fan fiction offers now the same things that it did back when it was simply a magazine trade. It allows a story to continue going on long after it has been ended in an unsatisfactory manner. It can become a haven for people who love a fandom (all of the things that go with a specific genre) when it goes away, either on hiatus or permanently. Fan fiction can allow something to be fixed, characters to be fixed when they go out of character. It can make sure that things never end. Fan fiction can allow for the expansion of a universe, and for the exploration of characters that are only touched upon by a genre. But more importantly for this paper it allows people to take a smaller subtext and expand upon it, using it to change characters and make them do things that would never have been allowed in other, more modern forms of media. It allows the subtext to become the context. In fan fiction, pairings that contain same-sex pairings are called 'Slash' for gay pairings, and 'Fem-slash' for lesbian pairings. The term 'Slash' comes from “ the “/” mark placed between the words Kirk and Spock (Kirk/Spock) at the beginning of the story to tell readers that it contains a sexual and romantic relationship between the two characters” ( Kustritz 372). There are slash stories found in every fandom that one can imagine. There are stories written about actors (although fan fiction.net has removed and disallows any “real person based” fan fiction) people from bands, they are written about characters in books, movies, games, sports teams, musicals, commercials and there are even fanfics (a slang term for fan fiction) written about fanfics. Who writes fanfiction? It can be anyone whom you can imagine; however, when it comes to the phenomena of slash fanfiction, the majority of people who write it are ".over educated, under employed heterosexual women who are oppressed not only by their patriarchy but by their employment status" (Kustritz 376). Further, it is explained that, ".ninety percent of users [of a particular slash fan site] had a college
Boyd 4 degree" (Kustritz 376). However, the difference between what the public perceives and how these authors actually are is that, "they do not simply love the source products that reproduce their sub-ordained position; they are also highly critical of them and of the implications of the rewrites provided by themselves and others within the fan community (Kustritz 376). The issue of the stories being written by "heterosexual women who mainly write in the genre are less concerned with issues of gay identity and more with expressing their own sexual desires through their identification with attractive male characters who are more interesting than the women usually represented in their source texts" (Smol 974). Although in that statement, it is something that one can find it easy to disagree with. After all, if these women are writing intimate stories in which two male characters are engaged in relationships that are far more sexual then ones in another context, it can be clear that this can be used to fight homophobia and sexual prejudice. However, for all of that, for these women, there is a need that writing and reading these stories is meeting. There are several reasons that it is easy to see. First, in most modern heterosexual relationships, in whatever media they fall under, there is an almost universal strictly adhered to version of compulsory heterosexuality and the problems that reproducing that system offers. This is something that slash doesn't have to deal with because, "writing about two men avoids the built in inequality of the romance formula, in which dominance and submission are invariably the respective roles of men and women" (Somogyi). Also, this sort of writing offers a chance for "Some slash writers insist that it is not identification with male characters that they find erotically exciting but the ability to manipulate and to "watch" them (Green, Jenkins, and Jenkins)" (Smol 974). There
Boyd 5 is another group of women whom write because this sort of sex in the context of the way in which is being written in a way that is erotic and sexual but at the same time isn't pornographic. "Pornography focuses on sex for sex's sake, or sex outside of the context (Heedy). What is especially disturbing is pornographic texts' denial of the emotional consequences of sex. Within slash narratives, characters are drawn from films and television series [or books] that provide years of shared history and emotional entanglement (Kustritz 377-378). Because of this, slash offers what can almost be defined as what women actually desire in a relationship, that it is based upon trust and intellect rather then on a power struggle that never really seems to end. Not only that, but within slash, there is no need for characters to be perfect, and indeed, the idea of such perfection is always frowned upon, often being placed with the label of Mary Sue or the male variation: Jerry Stu. (A Mary Sue is a character that is obvious based upon the author and has no discernable flaws and is like Mary Poppins "practically perfect in every way" as well as being exceedingly good looking and the ability to make any character fall in love with them.) Slash characters are, for the most part free of the Barbie Doll beautiful wilting violet sort of personification, and rarely are they placed within the bounds of the damsel in distress and something to be rescued. After all, these characters are men, and they don't have to live up to the ideas that women tend to have to. "They [characters in slash] receive the love of their desired partners not because of their physical and psychological resemblance to the airbrushed Playboy (or Playgirl) centerfold, but because they trust their partners enough to show them all of the hidden things and broken places. Slash characters receive love because they share themselves and their lives fully and without reservation" (Kustritz 379-380). The quote above offers one serious pause. What is it about our society that
Boyd 6 forces women to see themselves in this way? Why is it that cannot offer themselves fully? Why do they not trust their partners in a way that they don't have to take these characters and give them all of the attributes that they wished were in their relationships? The answer appears to be an easy one. Because as long as there is a patricidal system in power, women will be forced into the submissive roles, and as long as they are forced into such, they will in turn write stories that offer a flipping on that identity.
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Fanfiction.net (fanfiction.net) Accessed on December12, 2005 (fanfiction.net) Kustritz, Anne. "Slashing the Romantic Narrative" The Journal of American Culture. Vol. 26, Number 3, September 2003 pg 371-384. Smol, Anna : "Oh. oh. Frodo: Readings of Male Intimacy In the Lord of the Rings MFS Modern Fiction Studies 50.4, 949-979 Somogyi, V., "Complexity of Desire: Janeway/Chakotay Fan Fiction", Journal of American & Comparative Cultures, 15374726, Fall 2002, Vol. 25, Issue ¾ Wing Chun, "Television Without Pity General Site F.A.Q. (All your stupid questions answered.)" 2001 Accessed on the web, December 12, 2005 (http://televisionwithoutpity.com/faq.cgi)