Subject: OT: Why do straight women write femslash?
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Posted on: 2008-09-02 00:23:00 UTC

Most of you know about the research paper I'm doing for university; a broad overview of the world of fanfiction. I've finally finished sifting through all the data from interviews and other research, but a few gaps remain. So I'm throwing the question out to you:

Why do straight women write femslash?

I don't really understand slash at all, but that's personal preferance. I've been told, by many interviewees, that straight women can enjoy writing m/m slash because it lets them oggle two attractive guys without female competition (as well as simply "being hot"), but my Logic Circuits short out when I try to apply similar logic to straight women writing f/f slash.

Admittedly, I haven't got solid demographics here; it could be that a large part of femslash is written by bisexual or lesbian women. I don't know. What I do know is that I've been exploring the Wicked archive on FFN (which, if you don't know, is by and large a story about the friendship between two women, Glinda and Elphaba - there's also the man who ends up caught in a love triangle with them, Fiyero (eventually ending up with Elphaba), and another male interest that's quite often paired with Glinda), and I found that there is a (wonderful!) shortage of Mary Sues, an average amount of het romance (Fiyero/Elphaba, or Glinda/other guy, mostly), and a huge, HUGE amount of ("Gelphie") femslash.

As I find it hard to believe that so many writers for that one fandom just happen to be lesbian or bisexual women, I just don't get it.


(And let me disclaim that I mean no offense to anyone, of course. My preferances are my own and until now, I just avoided slash issues as much as possible because I don't understand and don't want to offend anyone. But for the sake of doing this essay right, I need to know, and my poor, pitiable Logic Circuits are crying out for mercy. Help?)

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