I have real problems with slash in general. It puts forward the notion that you can't have love without bed romping and that platonic relationships are somehow weak and unfulfilled.
Yes! And the same applies to het romance/fic, but it bugs me much more when screamingly het characters *cough*Brother Cadfael/Hugh Beringar*cough* are slashed. It's not so much any individual story (some of which I do like), it's the body of fanfic as a whole and the cumulative impression it leaves.
I grew up in a time when "common wisdom" held that it was IMPOSSIBLE for a man and a woman to be "just friends", that there was always a sexual component in any male/female relationship. I fought huge wars with my parents over my right to have male friends -- some of whom were the wrong race as well, which really stirred things up. My mother went to her grave convinced that I'd had a clandestine romance with one of my high-school buddies -- clandestine because there was NEVER any evidence of romantic attraction, but of course it just had to be there, so I must be hiding it. I have spent my life fighting this bullshit, and it just frosts me to see the same attitudes manifesting in today's teenagers.
Effectively, it's the flip side of an extremely Victorian/Puritan attitude. Those people saw sex everywhere, whether it was there or not, and found it disgusting. Fanfic writers see sex everywhere, whether it's there or not, and find it titillating. That they are willing to extend this viewpoint to homoerotic relationships doesn't make it any more palatable to me. Why CAN'T Kirk and Spock have the kind of rock-solid bond that I have with my best friend, to whom I am not sexually attracted at all, nor she to me? Because that's harder to write? Sometimes I think that must be the answer.
Whew... I've been thinking about writing a post to this effect for a while, and now I think I've just done so. Gonna go copy this into my own journal; I invite comments there.
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Yes! And the same applies to het romance/fic, but it bugs me much more when screamingly het characters
*cough*Brother Cadfael/Hugh Beringar*cough*are slashed. It's not so much any individual story (some of which I do like), it's the body of fanfic as a whole and the cumulative impression it leaves.I grew up in a time when "common wisdom" held that it was IMPOSSIBLE for a man and a woman to be "just friends", that there was always a sexual component in any male/female relationship. I fought huge wars with my parents over my right to have male friends -- some of whom were the wrong race as well, which really stirred things up. My mother went to her grave convinced that I'd had a clandestine romance with one of my high-school buddies -- clandestine because there was NEVER any evidence of romantic attraction, but of course it just had to be there, so I must be hiding it. I have spent my life fighting this bullshit, and it just frosts me to see the same attitudes manifesting in today's teenagers.
Effectively, it's the flip side of an extremely Victorian/Puritan attitude. Those people saw sex everywhere, whether it was there or not, and found it disgusting. Fanfic writers see sex everywhere, whether it's there or not, and find it titillating. That they are willing to extend this viewpoint to homoerotic relationships doesn't make it any more palatable to me. Why CAN'T Kirk and Spock have the kind of rock-solid bond that I have with my best friend, to whom I am not sexually attracted at all, nor she to me? Because that's harder to write? Sometimes I think that must be the answer.
Whew... I've been thinking about writing a post to this effect for a while, and now I think I've just done so. Gonna go copy this into my own journal; I invite comments there.