what ARE we? (is there an actual term for women who like slash?)
So in the last 12 years when a ton of shit happened to me IRL (mostly repetitive strain injury-related, then a terrible combination of aging/sick parent related with job loss/layoff with returning to school/switching fields/careers), I fell of the Internet and out of fandom stuff for much of that time. I started to fall off around 2003-2004 due to severe bilateral tendinitis, and my absence was probably longest/participation was lowest from 2005 to around 2010 or 2011.
( explanation of how I didn't know about terms like cis and non-binary and ace until I returned to online fandom and encountered these terms on Tumblr, with some history of my fannishness and love of slash and how the latter brought me into the former more than a couple decades ago )
But what do we call ourselves? Do we have a name outside fandom, in the larger world, or in academia or gender studies? Do women who love slash have a term specific just to the love of slash? (Was there ever an archaic term for this, like from centuries ago? because that would be so cool... though I doubt that women of yore were able to be "out"/open about how they felt about seeing two dudes together, at least not if they found it super-sexy and squee-worthy.)
If there is a term for "women who enjoy contemplating/imagining two men being romantically &/or sexually involved with each other," is that terminology dependent on how we identify sexuality-wise? (given that there seem to be as many LGBTQ women who dig slash as there are vanilla het chicks, possibly more, that seems unlikely)
Is liking slash it's own thing, separate and apart from gender and sexuality? (Are there male slash fen? who aren't LGBTQ? IDEK -- I truly don't. Would this term -- if one other than "slash fan/fen" exists -- apply to those guys as well as us females, or would any such terms distinguish between the genders of the slash-admirers?
Maybe cis and non-binary and ace are terminology formed within that particular confluence of university studies and fandom (that's certainly where I was and what I was doing when I got into fandom).
But "slash" was a term before people were able to get slash stories through email lists or off the 'net. (I am familiar with the history of the term "slash" and origins in fandoms like original ST or MUNCLE.)
Yaoi (as a term) became popular in the late 90s, but that more describes the genre itself, than us women who love it. (And I can't say I personally relate much to yaoi for the simple fact that 99.9 times out of 100, I am not into boy/boy or tween/tween m/m... For me personally, at least one of the "m"s in "m/m" has to be an actual adult man -- YMMV -- Plus I'm not a manga/anime fan, unless you count a crush on Racer X when I was about 6 years old... I totally ditched Speed Racer for Racer X *g*!).
While such a term might be specifically about fans who like to contemplate m/m romance/sex, I would think it Could not be exclusively about watching/contemplating m/m couples being romantic &/or having sex -- because so much slashfic in so many different fandoms is PG rated with no sex at all, or primarily portrays the m/m relationship as deep partnership/friendship expanding into the realm of more than platonic love, yet less than explicitly sexual.
So... It's an interesting question, and I really don't know the answer. This isn't the first time I've pondered this in the last several months... it's just that I finally bothered to post the question.
I suppose I am fine with the term "slash fan" -- I just wondered if there was another term.
(I do object somewhat to the term "slasher" even though it is most expedient, but only because of the potentially violent connotations of "slashing" and "slashers.")
( explanation of how I didn't know about terms like cis and non-binary and ace until I returned to online fandom and encountered these terms on Tumblr, with some history of my fannishness and love of slash and how the latter brought me into the former more than a couple decades ago )
But what do we call ourselves? Do we have a name outside fandom, in the larger world, or in academia or gender studies? Do women who love slash have a term specific just to the love of slash? (Was there ever an archaic term for this, like from centuries ago? because that would be so cool... though I doubt that women of yore were able to be "out"/open about how they felt about seeing two dudes together, at least not if they found it super-sexy and squee-worthy.)
If there is a term for "women who enjoy contemplating/imagining two men being romantically &/or sexually involved with each other," is that terminology dependent on how we identify sexuality-wise? (given that there seem to be as many LGBTQ women who dig slash as there are vanilla het chicks, possibly more, that seems unlikely)
Is liking slash it's own thing, separate and apart from gender and sexuality? (Are there male slash fen? who aren't LGBTQ? IDEK -- I truly don't. Would this term -- if one other than "slash fan/fen" exists -- apply to those guys as well as us females, or would any such terms distinguish between the genders of the slash-admirers?
Maybe cis and non-binary and ace are terminology formed within that particular confluence of university studies and fandom (that's certainly where I was and what I was doing when I got into fandom).
But "slash" was a term before people were able to get slash stories through email lists or off the 'net. (I am familiar with the history of the term "slash" and origins in fandoms like original ST or MUNCLE.)
Yaoi (as a term) became popular in the late 90s, but that more describes the genre itself, than us women who love it. (And I can't say I personally relate much to yaoi for the simple fact that 99.9 times out of 100, I am not into boy/boy or tween/tween m/m... For me personally, at least one of the "m"s in "m/m" has to be an actual adult man -- YMMV -- Plus I'm not a manga/anime fan, unless you count a crush on Racer X when I was about 6 years old... I totally ditched Speed Racer for Racer X *g*!).
While such a term might be specifically about fans who like to contemplate m/m romance/sex, I would think it Could not be exclusively about watching/contemplating m/m couples being romantic &/or having sex -- because so much slashfic in so many different fandoms is PG rated with no sex at all, or primarily portrays the m/m relationship as deep partnership/friendship expanding into the realm of more than platonic love, yet less than explicitly sexual.
So... It's an interesting question, and I really don't know the answer. This isn't the first time I've pondered this in the last several months... it's just that I finally bothered to post the question.
I suppose I am fine with the term "slash fan" -- I just wondered if there was another term.
(I do object somewhat to the term "slasher" even though it is most expedient, but only because of the potentially violent connotations of "slashing" and "slashers.")