Is slash homophobic?

[emmagrant01]

Okay, I am finding this discussion on bubonicplague's LJ *very* interesting.

An excerpt:

I have said more times than I can count that I don't have a problem with slashfic. [...] What I do have a problem with is the trivialization of homosexuality in society today. [...] But it just ties into the fact that the only way mainstream society accepts gay men is as the oversexed pretty-boys of their fantasies."

How is this "Dance for me, gay boy!" fetish of straight female writers any better than the constant, sappy idealization of lesbians as glittery, bikini-clad mud wrestlers to fulfill male fantasies? And why is it somehow okay to degrade the issue by using the same ammunition?

So now I'm thinking about this, and I'm also thinking about clara_swift's recent post on m-a about slash and homosexuality. And I don't know what I think about what bubonicplague is saying here, except that she seems to be basing this on a a fairly stereotypical view of slash. If most slash I read was like she describes, clearly trivializing homosexuality and gay culture, then I probably wouldn't read it, honestly. I would find it disturbing for the precise reasons she describes in her post.

However, I tend to read slashfic that's about relationships. The sex is just the icing on the cake, and it's meaningful sex, not smut for smut's sake. It's keeping the cameras rolling instead of fading to black, like tamer profic or a movie would tend to do. I rarely find myself enjoying PWPs that are nothing but graphic sex with no characterization or setting of any kind. I find them boring, honestly.

Perhaps I'm so selective that I can't see the forest for my own particular grove of trees?

Comments

[clara-posts.livejournal.com]

Interesting it is - and *so* different to the discussion that we've been having on the same subject.

I don't believe that slash trivialises homosexuality at all. And I think gay men enjoy reading well-written slash as much as we do. The biggest compliment that I have received for one of my fics was from a gay friend who said how perfectly it described the relationship between a gay man and his much younger lover - the balance of loving and fathering in the relationship. And Qui is not your typical gay pretty boy at all - things like the age difference and their mentor/student relationship deepens O/Q slash.
She is taking a very narrow view of slash and being confrontational... I think I'll stick to the MA discussion :o)

Now let's just choose a pretty boy icon.... and post :o)