Confession: I like my male BSOs feminized.
Aug. 24th, 2009 02:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lotesseOkay, there's a line where that sort of thing goes from fun into badficland, but still. It's the girly men that I'm looking for. I fetishize and get off on their youth, their physical smallness, their visible and invisible innocence. Their tendency to use words instead of fists. Their ability to speak the language of emotional need. Their understanding of c retaking, and their own need for the same.
Their receptive sexuality, which basically gives you girl-pov hetsex with two guys.
I know that, objectively speaking, Daniel Jackson is a tall, strong man some five to ten years my senior who can more than take care of himself. But for some reason, I want to read about the side of him that's needful, young, sweet, vulnerable. This is one of those things that has more to do with identification than with sexual preference – so it's not that I'm irl attracted to femmy guys, so much as it's the fact that I'm a cis, femmy woman myself.
I think that what I'm really looking for in slash is some foothold for my gender, some place where I as a woman can enter into the text. Some frame through which my experience, culture, and embodiment can be relevant. I don't personally have a whole lot of experience with men – The Boy is male, but not exactly macho, and I descend from a tribe of women that never seems to produce boychildren. For the last four or five years of my life, my teachers and mentors and friends have all been women, both in physical space and in fandom. I identify heavily with my own gender, and my own sexed biology – not all women do, but I very much perceive myself as female, and choose to present as feminine.
And of course there's nowhere for me in genre fiction an media, because no girls allowed, duh.
I need my access character to be feminized, because I'm looking for a way to integrate my experience of the world as a woman, my own fairly feminine values and lenses, with genre fiction. I love sf and I love fantasy – I love their way of looking at things sideways, through layers of metaphor and substitution. But I personally don't identify with a masculine mindset, so I need to engirlify my characters.
It's rare that showrunners give me an access character that's already a girl. When they do, I glom on to that girl, and don't really have a need to feminize the masculine characters. I do tend to mentally transform those female characters to bring them more in line with my viewpoint picking the version of them that I find most accessible – so, for instance, I usually elide Buffy's suburban whitegirl privilege, whinyness, and Spike issues, because while I find many things lovable and attractive in Buffy there are also sides of her that are repugnant to me. The Buffy that I read/write about is a different aspect of the character than the one that I would write race or class meta about – I file off her dark spots, because I need to be able to love her. It's not actually that different from what I'm doing by feminizing my male access characters – I'm always trying to bring them more into line with my perception, experience, and values.
Given a choice, I'll run with an access character like Buffy or River or Gabrielle, Jane Eyre, Morgana and Gwen, Miyazaki's girls. I strongly prefer working with female characters – I think I probably write girls at least as often as I do boys, if not more so. I have to remind myself to make icons of male characters, and even then I upload girl icons for use first. But in most mainstream sf/f, girls-only-land is not an option. For one thing, lots of geek fandoms don't have any girls – unless you're doing Eowyn, Tolkien fic is pretty much always about male characters. For another, not all girl characters offer me access. (this is the one that showrunners never seem to get. Apparently all girls are alike). It's much easier for me to ride around in Luke's head than Leia's. Sam Carter is absolutely impenetrable to me, all sciency and all-American and sunshiny. It's Daniel whose pov comes easily for me, so it's Daniel that I try to shape into a perfect identity object.
When we talk about slash, we talk a lot about externally-oriented fantasy – that is, we adopt a view of slash fiction that posits the creation of an ideal heterosexual lover - women re-write male characters to make them better boyfriends. Many of my male BSOs fit this model, and they tend to be the ones attached to female access characters: Angel, Simon Tam, Arthur Pendragon, Rochester. But fantasy can also turn inwards. Access characters allow us, canonically, fantasies of heroism, adventure, and success. Fic takes these fantasies further, into dreams of being cherished, valued, loved, protected, praised, and fucked. Of being lovable – because if there' one thing that's universally true of the kind of access character who gets widely feminized, it's that they're beloved. The logic train goes that if Daniel is as lovable as we all find him to be, and if the characters within the text love Daniel just as much as we do, and if Daniel is like us, then we must ourselves be worthy of that kind of love. And considering the degree to which women's self-esteem is eroded by patriarchy, the fantasy of lovability and worth is pretty powerful for us. I know that it is for me.
Femme!fic is not good fic, insofar as good fic is defined by realism, canonicity, and sobriety. But it hits on one of the major streams of the id vortex, one that I think it could be argued is of great political and social import as well as being erotically satisfying. Oh, andprincessofgeeks has been doing some really interesting meta work on gender in Stargate SG1 fic, with bonus fic recs – for which I've got to thank her, because I had a lot of fun reading the more romance novely ones!
Their receptive sexuality, which basically gives you girl-pov hetsex with two guys.
I know that, objectively speaking, Daniel Jackson is a tall, strong man some five to ten years my senior who can more than take care of himself. But for some reason, I want to read about the side of him that's needful, young, sweet, vulnerable. This is one of those things that has more to do with identification than with sexual preference – so it's not that I'm irl attracted to femmy guys, so much as it's the fact that I'm a cis, femmy woman myself.
I think that what I'm really looking for in slash is some foothold for my gender, some place where I as a woman can enter into the text. Some frame through which my experience, culture, and embodiment can be relevant. I don't personally have a whole lot of experience with men – The Boy is male, but not exactly macho, and I descend from a tribe of women that never seems to produce boychildren. For the last four or five years of my life, my teachers and mentors and friends have all been women, both in physical space and in fandom. I identify heavily with my own gender, and my own sexed biology – not all women do, but I very much perceive myself as female, and choose to present as feminine.
And of course there's nowhere for me in genre fiction an media, because no girls allowed, duh.
I need my access character to be feminized, because I'm looking for a way to integrate my experience of the world as a woman, my own fairly feminine values and lenses, with genre fiction. I love sf and I love fantasy – I love their way of looking at things sideways, through layers of metaphor and substitution. But I personally don't identify with a masculine mindset, so I need to engirlify my characters.
It's rare that showrunners give me an access character that's already a girl. When they do, I glom on to that girl, and don't really have a need to feminize the masculine characters. I do tend to mentally transform those female characters to bring them more in line with my viewpoint picking the version of them that I find most accessible – so, for instance, I usually elide Buffy's suburban whitegirl privilege, whinyness, and Spike issues, because while I find many things lovable and attractive in Buffy there are also sides of her that are repugnant to me. The Buffy that I read/write about is a different aspect of the character than the one that I would write race or class meta about – I file off her dark spots, because I need to be able to love her. It's not actually that different from what I'm doing by feminizing my male access characters – I'm always trying to bring them more into line with my perception, experience, and values.
Given a choice, I'll run with an access character like Buffy or River or Gabrielle, Jane Eyre, Morgana and Gwen, Miyazaki's girls. I strongly prefer working with female characters – I think I probably write girls at least as often as I do boys, if not more so. I have to remind myself to make icons of male characters, and even then I upload girl icons for use first. But in most mainstream sf/f, girls-only-land is not an option. For one thing, lots of geek fandoms don't have any girls – unless you're doing Eowyn, Tolkien fic is pretty much always about male characters. For another, not all girl characters offer me access. (this is the one that showrunners never seem to get. Apparently all girls are alike). It's much easier for me to ride around in Luke's head than Leia's. Sam Carter is absolutely impenetrable to me, all sciency and all-American and sunshiny. It's Daniel whose pov comes easily for me, so it's Daniel that I try to shape into a perfect identity object.
When we talk about slash, we talk a lot about externally-oriented fantasy – that is, we adopt a view of slash fiction that posits the creation of an ideal heterosexual lover - women re-write male characters to make them better boyfriends. Many of my male BSOs fit this model, and they tend to be the ones attached to female access characters: Angel, Simon Tam, Arthur Pendragon, Rochester. But fantasy can also turn inwards. Access characters allow us, canonically, fantasies of heroism, adventure, and success. Fic takes these fantasies further, into dreams of being cherished, valued, loved, protected, praised, and fucked. Of being lovable – because if there' one thing that's universally true of the kind of access character who gets widely feminized, it's that they're beloved. The logic train goes that if Daniel is as lovable as we all find him to be, and if the characters within the text love Daniel just as much as we do, and if Daniel is like us, then we must ourselves be worthy of that kind of love. And considering the degree to which women's self-esteem is eroded by patriarchy, the fantasy of lovability and worth is pretty powerful for us. I know that it is for me.
Femme!fic is not good fic, insofar as good fic is defined by realism, canonicity, and sobriety. But it hits on one of the major streams of the id vortex, one that I think it could be argued is of great political and social import as well as being erotically satisfying. Oh, and
princessofgeeks has been doing some really interesting meta work on gender in Stargate SG1 fic, with bonus fic recs – for which I've got to thank her, because I had a lot of fun reading the more romance novely ones!
no subject
Date: 2009-08-24 07:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-25 12:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-24 07:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-25 12:31 am (UTC)Re: Confession: I like my male BSOs feminized.
Date: 2009-08-24 10:17 pm (UTC)Re: Confession: I like my male BSOs feminized.
Date: 2009-08-25 12:32 am (UTC)Loved this post.
Date: 2009-08-25 10:16 am (UTC)I realize, though, that that's not what you were talking about. You were talking about how you like stereotypically feminine imagery associated with a male because it makes it easier to identify with him. I do too, actually, though for different reasons - mainly that gender camouflage is kind of sexy. And I sure know I don't like 'em big and burly and bristly - unless they're also gentle and kind and a little insecure. I do also often end up noticing I'm writing my males without using the "man rawr" filter, which I correct when I notice it depending on character; it's easier to write a character who is more like me, who doesn't stopper emotion with man!shame, for example. There are plenty of male characters who don't (I LOVE hobbits). So yeah. All down to characterisation. I tend to find plenty access points in manly men, too, though.
"Access point". I like that! V. descriptive. I find I can really love characters with whom I share a rare-ish access trait (one that we rarely see in fiction), such as the hatred and the trigger points you get from being bullied for years.
Also Daniel Jackson is a allergic, weedy nerd with a brain of awesome, goddamn. I defy you, SG-1 retcon! *is so very alone*
Edit: I wrote "gentleman" originally when I meant "a gentle man". Hah, the first was so not what I meant!
Re: Loved this post.
Date: 2009-08-25 06:44 pm (UTC)Do you think there's a difference between your gentle men and femmy guys? Because as sweet as the little skinny queer boys are, they're not my sexual type - I think I'm a little too much of a bottom for that.
But I don't at all mean that men are "like making love to a woman." I shouldn't want them to be - I have very different preferences and kinks for f/f than for sex with man-bodies involved, both in fic and in life! Hobbits are actually a very useful point of reference. I think I could probably have cut this post short and just said that I want all my guys in fic to be like hobbits, and been done with it. Oh, hobbits.
Re: Loved this post.
Date: 2009-08-25 07:16 pm (UTC)Indeed - oh, hobbits! Just thinking about them makes me smile!
Re: Loved this post.
Date: 2009-08-26 02:23 am (UTC)And in point of fact, hobbits are happy bundles of sunshine and rainbows. Even when they're being emo. Or femmy!
Re: Loved this post.
Date: 2011-03-29 08:20 am (UTC)<3 this point. I think I conflate the two too much in my head.
Re: Loved this post.
Date: 2011-03-29 08:51 am (UTC)Oh well!
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Date: 2009-08-25 05:00 pm (UTC)Thanks for posting this well-articulated examination of why you enjoy applying stereotypically feminine characteristics on male characters. It gives me something to consider as I flail about sorting out my own preferences in that regard, and the reasons for them.
I do sometimes enjoy reading a character who mixes stereotypically-gendered traits, whether the character is male-w/femme-traits like some portrayals of Daniel (or Simon Tam), or female-w/masculine traits, ala some portrayals of Sam (or Zoe Washburn). That's one of my access points, coming from ostensibly cisgendered but a very genderqueer perspective here.
On the other hand (or maybe it's the same hand, I dunno) I find that I can be really picky about which traits are emphasized, and the ones that are anti-access or turnoffs for me do seem to be gendered. I keep looking for a pattern in which ones they are--are they socially devalued? Are they highly gendered? Are they the ones that make he character different from me? But I can't find one.
Maybe your perspective will inform my musings.
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Date: 2009-08-25 06:37 pm (UTC)I have no idea what this says about me - I'm a very nurture-oriented person irl, attracted to teaching and childcare work, and I do most of the caretaking between myself and my partner, who is mildly non-neurotypical. But it's something that makes me really happy deep down inside, when male characters take care of one another, and consider one anothers' feelings.
But I also totally grok your point wrt mixed gender portrayals - that amkes me happy in a very simple way, because each of those characters, so portrayed, would be challenging patriarchy by merely existing. And challenging patriarchy is never not awesome.
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Date: 2009-08-25 08:44 pm (UTC)::feeling it out::
I think I like those aspects that demonstrate the character's way of working toward a balanced and healthy relationship with self and others. Maybe failing, but trying. So, male characters who don't just unexaminedly buy-in to the masculine stereotype (nor over-react toward the feminine stereotype), females same thing other order. Which is really a complicated thing to read, as a reader, or to convey as a writer without coming off preachy or didactic.
And it's okay to me if a character's route to balanced and healthy relating is by way of their "native" gender, as much as the "opposite" gender, because that affirms my feeling that it is as much "manly" to be tender & receptive, for example, and as "womanly" to be tough and analytical (or whatever characteristics)... Just so long as they Use Their Gendered Characteristics For Good.
So to speak.
Wow. Very thought provoking. Thanks so much for putting this out where others could engage with it.
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Date: 2009-08-26 02:09 am (UTC)Yes to this, but I think that sometimes tropological "feminization," with all the irritating gender essentialism and overemphatic writing, can be a useful shorthand toward the representation of balanced&healthy. Which neatly circumvents all that didactic ickiness and gets straight to the id-ness of the thing.
I suspect that male feminization is a more common trope than female masculinization both because fen are more likely to identify as female and because there's some major mojo in writing male characters as opponents of patriarchy.
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Date: 2009-08-26 01:04 pm (UTC)and because there's some major mojo in writing male characters as opponents of patriarchy
WORD to that!
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Date: 2009-08-25 06:36 pm (UTC)As foreign as this POV is to me (being a Not!Girly sorta gal anyway :-), this is fascinating and it answers some questions I've always had about the, well, "feminization" of so many male characters in slash. It's still not my thing, but your post is *very* enlightening! I think I understand it better now. Thanks!
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Date: 2009-08-25 06:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-25 06:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-25 06:53 pm (UTC)There were a series of posts recently for SG1 fandom where a lot of the conversation under the OP and spun off of the OP seemed to chastise anyone who liked this sort of thing. And I had to ask myself, why? If I am watching canon (or reading), and I can actually pull some of these traits from the character and perhaps emphasize them a bit, how is that any different from the person who wants to emphasize the more alpha-male aspects of the character and ignore anything that might be construed as too-girly?
And maybe I'm looking at if from a support-your-theory scientific aspect. If you want to write Bob-the-character breaking down and crying after a sex scene, you might get a lot of people claiming it's OOC or it's too femme. Now what if Bob-the-character already has a history in canon of bringing out the tears or eyes full of unshed tears during highly stressful/distressing situations/charged emotional scenes in canon?
I think there's a plausible line there to bring that characterization into the fic if you wanted. It's the same plausibility someone who preferred the alpha-male characterization might claim; I see people say 'character x is tough and does this and this, there's no way he'd act in this-certain-way-I-don't-like-but-has-happened-in-canon. It wouldn't be out-of-character if he's done it already, and it wouldn't be a feminization just because there's some stereotype of a girly-girl crying after sex floating around in our culture.
I'm sure there's some line where the character is written too feminized to be in-character any longer, and that line shifts per reader. But I also think the same thing of the more testosterone/John wayneish versions of the character as well. For Daniel in SG1 for example, there are times I read fic recced of him and picture Albert/ Albin from "Les Cage au Foilles" and that's too extreme for me. And there are times I'll read characterizations of Daniel that are highly recommended as well, but all the more stereotypically 'feminine' characteristics have been stripped and he reminds me more of Gale Harold's character in US Queer as Folk. It's quite obvious that everyone's lines and character-trait list for feminization/masculinization *sorry in regards to spelling there* are different; it makes me wonder what experiences allow us to form these lines.
Very thought provoking post, thanks!
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Date: 2009-08-25 07:09 pm (UTC)So I think when I see meta about it when people are really tearing into a 'feminized version' of the character discussion, I flash back to these sorts of incidents, and it makes me curious what their own males-do-this females-do-this definitions come from. (which is, of course, totally different from people saying they hate that sort of characterization but accept others might like it, which is what most people here on this post are doing.)
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Date: 2009-08-25 07:30 pm (UTC)"Here's my take on feminine/masculine as descriptors:
Anything a female is or does is feminine.
Anything a male is or does is masculine.
In short, they're pretty much meaningless, or at least redundant, terms."
It went on from there, but some of you might find the comments interesting: http://princessofg.livejournal.com/371510.html
My breaking point for, say, Daniel, isn't simply writing his "softer" side, but when an author writes him as a 12 year old rather than a 30-something or even 40-something year old person. Granted, I'm drawn to his more "traditionally masculine" characteristics, but then, by all accounts, *I* am more "traditionally masculine" than I "should" be. (Wish my reproductive system would get the message - menopause *bites*! :-) For example, the tears mentioned above. My ex is far more likely to cry due to intense emotion than I am. It's just not my thing. But it would never have occurred to me to try and shame him for it. It's just who he is, and, IMO, since he's male, then tears brought on by intense emotion is perfectly masculine. :-)
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Date: 2009-08-26 02:20 am (UTC)I like men rather a bit myself, but I also sometimes want to read about characters that function through the "feminine" mode, which is the one that I use more often than not irl.
But I also hear you on the 12-year-old thing. Not sexy! Kidfic is its own kind of fun, but it's a very, very different kind! Like I said in the OP, you take engirlification too far and it just gets weird, not to mention ishy sometimes.
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Date: 2009-08-26 02:40 am (UTC)*shrug*
That's what makes horse racing. :-)
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Date: 2009-08-26 02:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-26 03:06 am (UTC)I wonder, too, if we're looking at this from different sides of a temporal and philosophical divide, as well. PoG and I are both 2nd wave feminists (correction - I am, and I don't think I've ever seen anything from her that makes me think she's slid to the 3rd wave side of things).
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Date: 2009-08-26 03:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-26 03:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-26 02:12 pm (UTC)So, yeah, in the post-patriarchy utopia, gendered concepts of behavior will have no meaning. But here, now, in our world of Boys Own Adventure stories, I feel a need to hack out a space for myself within them. To fandom bounce, in a thread above
It's unnatural that women are so excluded from narrative, and I feel like there are all these spaces where they ought to be - spaces which are often filled by softspoken geekboy types.
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Date: 2009-08-26 02:38 pm (UTC)And yes, it is unnatural, but coming to it as *I* do, as an emotionally-controlled (but not emotionally-*void*) type woman, I find the male characters far more accessible than most of the female characters available. Mostly, though, because, at least in tv and movies, women tend to be written so very badly. :-) I'd rather see *NO* women characters than badly written women characters.
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Date: 2009-08-26 03:47 pm (UTC)As much as I hate to say it, I agree - no women characters unless they can do it right. Most of the current excuses are just sad.
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Date: 2009-08-26 03:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-29 08:32 am (UTC)I really, really love this point of yours re: masculine and feminine being essential meaningless categories.
When USian current gender stereotypes are really getting me down, it helps to put on some costume drama, watch William Garrow cry and care and reflect that 18th Century European and American constructions of masculinity totally considered crying masculine. And wearing wigs. And stockings and garters! And high heels.
And lots of them were bastards &, you know, racism/classism/sexism, but! Masculinity does not have one universal or atemporal definition! YAY.
And William Garrow caring so much about injustice and cruelty that he cries is fucking beautiful.
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Date: 2009-08-26 01:09 pm (UTC)Bizarrely, at least from my understanding of your post, the reasons you like fic with feminised male characters (I assume only one per pairing?) are quite close to the reasons why I *don't*. One of the things I figured out when I first got into slash is that I'm latching onto stereotypically masculine characters - either the aggressive macho boy types like Arthur, or the controlled rational types like Edmund and Spock. And I like putting them with other manly men - usually two different models of masculinity, sometimes two of the same.
And then I like putting them in situations where they have to negotiate emotional intimacy, and achieve communication, and they can't just rely on The Woman to carry the work there, because there is no woman. Partly because I'm using them to write out the part of me which just doesn't get that (oddly, I come up high on empathy and so on in personality tests, but I *feel* like I'm negotiating an impossible emotional minefield), and partly because I'm trying to write a world in which *men do this stuff too*. Where working at intimacy / emotional connection doesn't automatically make you feminised, and therefore, does not automatically make the feminine weak.
Ditto my mad passion for bottom!Arthur and similar tropes. I want to see Arthur take it up the arse, or Caspian on his knees. I want to write them doing that without losing their control. I think I'm trying desperately to write myself into believing that to be fucked does not mean being disempowered. I shy right away from most top!Arthur, for example, because it feels like shoehorning the Merlin/Arthur pairing into standard het romance tropes, with the bigger/older/more "manly" person always coming out in the position of power. For me, fandom was a way to write my way out of that kind of thinking.
Now that you've put forward this eloquent case for the feminising of slash characters, I think I'll have to go back and have another look at some of the fics I've skimmed past on those grounds...
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Date: 2009-08-26 01:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-26 02:06 pm (UTC)This. Exactly.
I mean, I think most fen, myself very much included, read a wide variety of slash tropes, and there are definitely times when I'm ready for macho men, or for controlled rational types. But I also find a definite thrill in feminized!fic - often, for me, it's comfort reading, something that I reach for when I'm feeling low in myself, which is where I think the validatory aspect comes in.
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Date: 2011-03-29 07:34 am (UTC)Their receptive sexuality, which basically gives you girl-pov hetsex with two guys.
[...]
This is one of those things that has more to do with identification than with sexual preference – so it's not that I'm irl attracted to femmy guys, so much as it's the fact that I'm a cis, femmy woman myself.
This really helped me make sense of why I prefer genderfucky het. Because I'm TOTALLY DOWN with the femmy dudes (though they don't have to be young for my preferences). But it's because I'm attracted to femmy boys. And not terribly femmy myself. So... slash with a femmy boy and a butchy dude actually usually frustrates me as much as reading a story with a femmy woman and a butchy dude. Because I want to tell the butchy dude to STFU and GTFO and steal the femmy dude from him. LOL.
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Date: 2011-03-29 07:47 am (UTC)