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“So he saved my life and then he kicked
me in the nuts:” Maintaining nonhierarchical relationships through
masculine rivalry in slash fan fiction
E. Cabell Hankinson Gathman
Presented at WisCon 29
29 May 2005
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Introduction: “I’m not a woman or a sheep, McLeod”
“Slash” is a term for fan-produced fiction concerning sexual and romantic relationships
between male characters from commercially available media artifacts such as Star Trek and
Harry Potter, frequently sexually explicit and almost entirely written and read by women (Russ
1985; Lamb & Veith 1986; Penley 1991; Penley 1992; Jenkins 1992; Bacon-Smith 1992), has
been the subject of occasional academic study since the mid-1980s. It began in the 1970s in the
English-speaking world as a subgenre of Star Trek fan zines1 dedicated to a sexual relationship
between Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. Such stories were designated by the notation “K/S;” slash
takes its name from the slash character used to connect the initials of the featured characters, and
readers and writers of the genre are sometimes referred to as “slashers.” The origins and
development of slash parallel those of Japanese yaoi or bishounenai, comics written and read by
Japanese women that portray young men in homoerotic relationships. Like slash, yaoi began as
fan-produced comics featuring male characters from commercial media, but it soon developed
into a subgenre of commercially available comics likeYasuko Aoike’s Eroica yori ai o komete
(“From Eroica with love”) (Aoike 1976-present; Williams 2004). Such commercial products
differ from slash, which has remained almost entirely based in media fandoms and is thus nonprofit by legal necessity.
Yaoi and slash were both originally distributed at conventions of fans with similar media
interests, such as Star Trek, and many fans ordered slash-specific zines that were advertised at
conventions and other fan gatherings through the postal mail. Over the past few decades,
however, slash has become a widespread phenomenon drawing from a multitude of different
fandoms. Access to the internet has allowed fans to distribute their work much more widely and
cheaply than they were able to do through the early Star Trek convention circuit (Consalvo 2003),
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Fan-produced collections of Star Trek-inspired fiction and art, along with fan discourse on the commercial product.
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as well as more anonymously—slash, by definition, violates copyright, and many copyright
holders are unhappy to see their product used as the basis for what outsiders and insiders alike
may term “pornography” (Russ 1985; Penley 1991; Green, Jenkins, & Jenkins 1998;
belleweather 2004), even if no significant profit is being made. Some fandoms, such as Harry
Potter, have been particularly targeted by recent government efforts to prosecute obscenity and
even child pornography; many of the characters in Harry Potter may be construed as minors,
even though many Harry Potter stories are self-consciously set in “seventh year” (belleweather,
2004).
As Green, Jenkins, and Jenkins point out in their 1998 article “Normal Female Interest in
Men Bonking: Selections from The Terra Nostra Underground and Strange Bedfellows,” many
academics approach slash from an outsider’s perspective, and argue for univocal theories to
explain all women and all slash (Green, Jenkins, & Jenkins 1998; see Salmon & Symons 2003
for such a theory). Most theorists make some note of the limitations of the female body and its
ability to engage in equal relationships; Kazuko Suzuki writes in her essay on Japanese yaoi,
“…equal relationships between men and independent women could be disrupted at the moment
of unexpected/unwanted pregnancy” (Suzuki 1998: 249). Although Suzuki refers in this case to
Japanese comics, the same issue is discussed in connection with slash (Lamb & Veith 1986), and
sometimes is even explicitly articulated within slash itself, as in Kalena’s Due South (19941998)2 piece “Surface:”
And so there they were, swapping spit like they were hormoneenhanced, and jesus did it feel good, tongue on tongue, so good
it was almost scary. But there was nothing to be scared of-nobody could get pregnant, and if they didn't come together
A television program following Fraser, a Canadian Mountie who trails his father’s killer to Chicago, where he is
eventually assigned to the consulate and partnered with a Chicago police officer named Ray. In the second season,
Ray goes undercover and is replaced by a second Ray. Notably, the series writer and star himself, Paul Gross, has
stated in interviews that he intended sexual tension between Ray #2 and his Mountie.
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nobody would get pissy about it--unless that really was a pistol
Fraser was packing (Kalena 2004).3
In the above excerpt, the author explicitly expresses through Ray, a police detective, female fears
of pregnancy through reference to its impossibility in a male homosexual act. Further anxiety
about the female body, or at least male reactions to and treatment of it, might be read into “if
they didn’t come together nobody would get pissy about it.”
The central focus of most academic writing on slash, however, aside from those like
Scodari who assert that slash is by nature misogynistic (Scodari & Felder 2000; Scodari 2003),
has been less on its concern over/rejection of female bodies and more on the character of the
relationships between men that it portrays. Two major constructions of those relationships, with
accompanying interpretations of the central “purpose” of slash, have typically been presented.
Suzuki’s study of yaoi indicates that it overwhelmingly depicts relationships that are homosexual
but heterogendered—one partner, though still male, is presented in a feminized matter that is
particularly recognizable in Japanese, where almost all dialogue has gendered connotations. In
some cases, the publicly dominant partner may become the sexually aggressive in private, but
individual interactions between the characters are always heterogendered, even if they
occasionally “switch” (Suzuki 1998: 253) This makes it easy, Suzuki claims, for Japanese
women to identify with the feminine but biologically male character and imagine themselves in a
romantic relationship between peers that is simply too far removed from Japanese social norms
to even be fantasized through heterosexual bodies.
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Slash pieces referenced in this paper, while they cannot be considered representative of all slash available, or even
all slash available online, have generally been recommended by other slash fans, usually in semi-public online
forums. Most of them were written by slash authors who are fairly well-known in their respective fandoms, whose
work is considered by many fans to be particularly satisfying to read; some of them have won fan awards. While
this may be considered a matter of personal taste, it is a personal taste shared by a significant proportion of slash
readers.
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Camille Bacon-Smith notes a similar tendency among Star Trek slash writers in her 1992
ethnography of female Star Trek fans:
Some writers in all genres strongly feminize one character over
another: they may emphasize a difference in height and bulk
between the pair, such as Hutch’s height or the broadness of
Kirk’s shoulders. When no such distinctions are apparent in the
source product, in Blake’s 7 or The Professionals, for example,
the writer may create the stereotypical shift in relative sizes
in her descriptions. Some writers place one of the participants
in the role of “wife,” even if he is a working wife (Bacon-Smith
1992: 250).
As Bacon-Smith goes on to recognize, however, even in early Star Trek slash some writers made
an effort to present both characters as masculine, although their masculinities might manifest
themselves in different ways; for example, through Spock’s logic and strength and Kirk’s sexual
aggressiveness and adventurousness. Women, Bacon-Smith and others note, are already
accustomed to products in media and literature in which all the important characters are male.
While men may be reluctant to identify with a female protagonist (Jenkins 1988 & 1992; BaconSmith 1992), women have learned to identify with characters of both sexes, and Western women
as well as Japanese may enjoy the sense of increased social power and autonomy experienced
through identification with a male character.
Penley specifically rejects Lamb and Veith’s early argument that Kirk and Spock, by
embodying both feminine and masculine qualities, become effectively androgynous (Lamb &
Veith 1986; Russ 1985). Rather, Penley argues, the masculinity of both partners in slash is
necessary, not only because of what she sees as slash’s central rejection of the female body as
occupying a socially disadvantageous position, but because slash also functions, like mainstream
romance novels (Radway 1984), to construct masculinities that are not threatening to women
living in the patriarchy. Both partners in slash, constructed as masculine-gendered men, are
…sensitive and nurturing without being wimpy, decisive and
intelligent without being macho, and able to combine love and
work without jealousy or rivalry. And then, by putting the two
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men together, you add the ability to acknowledge and act upon
one’s own sexual desires even when they are not the socially
normative ones (Penley 1992: 498).
Mirna Cicioni seconds this position when she asserts in her essay “Male Pair-Bonds and Female
Desire in Fan Slash Writing” that “slash writing… reflects some of the ambiguities that
characterize the position of women with respect to heterosexuality” and “egalitarian love is
constructed as impossible between men and women” (Cicioni 1998: 154, 169).
This impossibility, I have argued in previous work, extends to heterogendered
relationships between biologically male people, and thus it is important to many slashers that
both characters be recognizably masculine in some way. Some slash authors make their refusal
to heterogender slash relationships explicit in the fiction itself, as in the following excerpt from
Livia and Resonant’s Sentinel (1996-1999)4 piece “Nuance:”
Jim's attention was drawn back to Blair as he took a sip of Jim's
drink, glassy-eyed, then spluttered and coughed, staring at the
glass in his hand. “What the hell is this?”
“Vodka cranberry,” Jim muttered. “Look, maybe you shouldn't--”
“Never mind,” said Blair quietly. He finished it, then shuddered
again. “What the fuck kind of girly drink is that?” (Livia &
Resonant 2000).
Similarly, in shalott’s Highlander5 piece “Begin Again,” Methos unambiguously refuses to
simply follow Duncan McLeod’s sexual lead (the norm for McLeod’s female sex partners),
stating bluntly, “I’m not a woman or a sheep, McLeod” (shalott 1999). Along with the explicit
endorsement of both characters’ masculinity in many works of slash, however, there is an
expansion of the boundaries of what masculinity may include. Jim, a career military man and
police officer, displays a very different type of masculinity from Blair, a long-haired
A TV series in which an anthropology graduate student identifies a police officer as a “Sentinel”—a kind of social
protector endowed with heightened senses, originally described by Sir Richard Burton—and becomes his “Guide,” a
kind of shamanic partner. Why aren’t there more graduate students on TV?
5
The premise of the TV series, like that of the Highlander movies, is that there are lots of immortals in the world,
many of them trying to behead each other. Duncan McLeod is the protagonist of the TV series; Methos is 5000
years old and famous among immortals as the oldest of them all, although few are privileged to know his true
identity.
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anthropology graduate student raised by a hippie single mother, but that both partners are
masculine is made explicit in many stories by Livia and Resonant and others. Methos and
Duncan as written by shalott and others are also generally portrayed as masculine, but hardly
identical. By expanding gender options for men, who are dominant in the patriarchy as a group
if not individually, slashers may hope to suggest the eventual availability of a wider gender
spectrum to all.
I take issue, however, with Penley’s assertion that slash relationships “combine love and
work without jealousy or rivalry” (Penley 1992: 498; emphasis added). Like Green, Jenkins,
and Jenkins (1998), I approach this work from an insider’s perspective, having read and enjoyed
slash for at least six years now, and with the recognition that my own personal tastes have led me
to certain subgenres within slash. I am familiar with a fairly broad range of fandoms and
subgenres within slash, although of course it is impossible to be familiar with every media source
product, author, subtrend within slash fandom. I do believe, however, that I have observed a
particular relationship type within slash fandom that is popular enough to merit examination:
masculine rivals as partners in an equal, non-hierarchical sexual relationship.
Complicating partnerships: Enemies, opponents, and antagonists
Christine Scodari, writing on X-Files fandom in general, dismisses slash out of hand as
misogynistic (Scodari & Feldman 2000; Scodari 2003). In an article on fandom, fan fiction, and
tensions among fans over a possible romance between Agents Scully and Mulder, she and her
co-author, Jenna L. Felder, cite claims made by authors like Penley, Jenkins, and Bacon-Smith
for slash as the ultimate partnership between equals but immediately reject such an explanation
for X-Files slash:
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The oft-theorized desire for romances between mutually respectful
equals, sharing a dense backstory (Jenkins, 1992, pp.195-196)
would not seem relevant to X-Files slash, since neither of those
with whom Mulder is typically linked, Skinner or Krycek, fits
these criteria nearly as well as Scully (Scodari & Felder 2000:
243).
In fact, arguments could be made for a shared backstory—Mulder long suspects that Krycek
killed his father—although Scodari is correct in her assertion that Mulder and Scully are the
central “partnership” in X-Files. It does not necessarily follow, however, as Scodari argues in
her slash-focused article “Resistance Re-Examined: Gender, Fan Practices, and Science Fiction
Television,” that women who partner Mulder with Krycek or any other male character are simply
demonstrating latent misogynistic tendencies or a narcissistic need “to be the sole consequential
woman in an otherwise predominantly male universe” (Scodari 2003: 115). Rather confusingly,
Scodari seems to conflate all slash with the heterosexual Mary Sue story,6 claiming that in both
cases, female slash writers and readers identify with “blank slates upon which they can project
their own persona” (Scodari & Felder 2000: 243).
The female Mary Sue may well be—and is usually assumed by fan readers to be—a
transparent avatar of the author who created her; stories positing a relationship between an
established male character and a secondary woman like one of Captain Kirk’s “space bimbos”
often work in the same way. Despite the likelihood of some degree of reader identification with
one or both of the established male characters in slash, however, which Penley argues is an
important function of the genre, allowing readers the sexual fantasy of both being and having
(Penley 1992), there is an important distinction between those male characters and original or
“one-shot” women. The male characters featured in slash are well-developed within the media
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Stories in which an original female character is introduced who is beautiful, intelligent, speaks seventeen
languages and, in Star Trek fiction, is often half-Vulcan. Everyone loves her, she frequently has a short-lived
romantic relationship with an established male character, and then she dies, making all the established characters
extremely sad. Bacon-Smith suggests that this subgenre serves as a self-representation for women trying to create
an ideal feminine identity for the patriarchy: “…Mary Sue, who ideally minimizes her own value while applying her
skills, and even offering her life, for the continued safety and ease of men” (Bacon-Smith 1992: 102).
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artifact, and almost all fans, though their interpretations may differ, stress the importance of
“staying true” to the characters in fan fiction (Bacon-Smith 1992; Jenkins 1992). In fact, though
individual episodes and character actions from the media source product may be rejected as
“going too far,” it is always through a rhetoric of the fan as a defender of those characters and
their histories—fans take real pleasure in “knowing” the characters, faults and all (Jenkins 1988).
Skinner and Krycek may not be Mulder’s partners, but they are established characters with
backstories of their own, which fans often use in the development of slash plots.
Although Scodari is content to attribute slash pairings like Mulder/Krycek to female
jealousy and internalized self-hatred, she does make an interesting point by contrasting such
relationships to the equal partnerships emphasized in early research on slash. In fact, many
popular slash pairings seem to contain an element of antagonism in varying degrees: Professor X
and Magneto in X-Men, Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy or Harry Potter and Professor Snape in
Harry Potter, Duncan McLeod and Methos in the Highlander TV series, Superman and Lex
Luthor in assorted permutations of the DC Comics product Superman (the TV show Smallville,
the animated series JLA, the comics themselves)—by far the most popular pairing for Star Trek:
The Next Generation (1987-1994) is Picard and Q, the omnipotent being who appears
periodically to hassle Picard and the Enterprise. Picard and Q are a particularly interesting case
because Q belongs to a race/association known as the Q Continuum that is so far advanced of
humanity that his “true” form is never shown. He appears as a man because he chooses to do so.
Many P/Q fans would argue that Q has had a crush on Picard from the very beginning (the first
episode of the series, in fact), which raises questions about his choice of a masculine body.
Early slash authors, it is often noted, made very little attempt to create a sense of their
male characters as “gay”—while Kirk and Spock frequently agonized over revealing their love
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for one another, the obstacles they considered rarely explicitly included homophobia, gay
subcultures were conspicuously absent, and women writing about gay male sex frequently got
the details all wrong (Russ 1985; Lamb & Veith 1986; Bacon-Smith 1992; Penley 1992; Jenkins
1992). Of course, the stories were set in the future, but it could be argued that a future in which
female bridge officers wear miniskirts might reasonably be expected to contain homophobia as
well. Slash has changed since its beginnings in the 1970s, however. Authors have become much
more conscientious about the details of the sex, and some do incorporate a political awareness of
gay identity and the problems faced by gays and lesbians into their stories (Green, Jenkins, &
Jenkins 1998), although others either continue to ignore the issue of homosexual identity or
explain it away: there is no homophobia in the future, Methos is too jaded to care,7 who cares
about being gay when you’re already a mutant,8 etc.
Q, however, possesses the ability to bypass the entire affair—to appear as a woman, to
whom Picard might be expected from his established history to be attracted, and the entire
question would be moot. What kind of relationship, the outsider might demand of the P/Q fan,
could Q expect to develop by manifesting himself as another man? The answer may be found in
the English literary tradition itself, as discussed by Eve Sedgwick in Between men: English
literature and male homosocial desire (1985). Sedgwick opens her book with a chapter on René
Girard’s “erotic triangles” and “the calculus of power… structured by the relation of rivalry
between the two active members” (Sedgwick 1985: 21; emphasis added). Those two members,
of course, are men who are rivals in their pursuit of a woman, traditionally, although in fact it
need not be a woman over which they struggle. Because of the passive position occupied by the
In the media source product, Methos is said to have had 68 wives; in the slash fandom, Methos’s vast bisexual
experience is so widely accepted that the only story I have ever read in which Methos was sexually inexperienced
with men was a parody.
8
X-Men, which posits a universe in which some humans are granted superpowers via genetic mutation, has been
compared to both the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the visible gay rights struggle of the current time.
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female member of the traditional erotic triangle, she may be replaced by almost anything,
including inanimate objects (ibid.: 25). The emotional bond between the male rivals remains,
and “in fact, Girard seems to see the bond between rivals in an erotic triangle as being even
stronger, more heavily determinant of actions and choices, than anything in the bond between
either of the lovers and the beloved” (ibid.: 21).
P/Q fans, it seems, may be drawn to the pairing specifically for the rivalry it displays.
Exposure to a long literary tradition has taught readers to perceive a bond beyond the apparent
one between men relating as rivals, and to accept that bond as more authentic and enduring than
any bond either rival may have with a third party (usually a woman). When Q runs off with
Picard’s lover Vash, it is read by fans not as Q making the decision to settle into a normative
human heterosexual relationship, but rather as Q tweaking Picard’s nose, and sure enough, Q and
Vash quickly part ways. Furthermore, Q’s “teasing” behavior, coupled with Picard’s refusal to
be in awe of an omnipotent being, establish their relationship as essentially non-hierarchical,
despite the extreme surface power differential. Picard is a starship captain; Q can change the
gravitational constant of the universe by snapping his fingers. Their antagonistic interactions,
however, reveal that neither holds a secure dominant position in the relationship; if one did, there
would be no point to fighting.
In fact, while more abstract rivalries are also common, slash often capitalizes on
secondary female characters to portray classic erotic triangles in which the heroes are nominally
rivals over an actual woman, taking it one step further with the inevitable sexual consummation
of the men’s relationship. Despite the on-screen resolution of the recent film Pirates of the
Caribbean (2003), in which two of the main characters, Will Turner and Elizabeth Swan, are
presumed to be headed to the altar together while pirate Captain Jack Sparrow sails off into the
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sunset alone, numerous slash pieces online portray either threesomes or a hasty dissolution of
Will and Elizabeth’s relationship in favor of the bond between Will and Jack:
"You didn't want it."
Will shook his head.
"You drag me, my new ship and crew all over the Caribbean to save
her and you decided you didn't want it."
"I didn't drag you anywhere," Will snapped.
…
Jack patted the bed.
Will took a step forward.
"Lose the clothes along the way, luv."
Will dropped the blanket as he took two more steps.
"Lovely."
He stopped.
Jack gave him a questioning look.
Will glared back.
"Ah, my shirt for yours is it?"
"I'm not going to be the only one… disarmed." He couldn't quite
shake the feeling this might be some sort of bizarre joke and as
soon as he was naked the whole crew would burst into the room to
have a good laugh at his expense.
"Right you are. Forgot it works best that way, too."
Like hell he had. Will let it pass, but he held his ground,
standing with his hands on his hips until Jack had shed
everything except his trousers.
…
"Plundering." Jack's tongue glided up the length of Will's neck.
"Pillaging." He bit the nearest earlobe hard enough to make Will
yelp. "And otherwise ransacking our chosen prey" (Higgins 2003).
This particular story does not reject an emotional connection between Will and Elizabeth; instead,
it hints at issues of sexual orientation by contrasting Will’s feelings for Elizabeth, who he thinks
of “like a sister… [d]ear, beloved, but not desired” (ibid.), with his prickly, passionate
relationship with Jack. It is not certain that Will could not be attracted to a woman, but it is
known that ultimately, he prefers Jack over Elizabeth. The language of “plundering” suggests
Jack’s play at dominance, but Will still demands tit-for-tat; Jack may be an experienced pirate,
but Will’s potential to become his equal in that realm is made clear.
Another surface power differential torn down by rivalry exists between Harry Potter and
Severus Snape in Harry Potter slash. Harry is also frequently paired with Draco Malfoy, a fellow
student with whom he has an exceedingly antagonistic relationship from the beginning of the
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series, but Snape is a professor at Hogwarts, the school Harry attends, and thus might be
expected to dominate Harry, a student. Their interactions, however, deny such a simple power
dynamic. Snape frequently compares Harry to James Potter, Harry’s father—unfavorably, but in
such a way as to compare their own relationship to the one that Snape had with James, his own
classmate and peer. Harry frequently challenges Snape’s authority—even more frequently in fan
fiction than in the books themselves. “Dragon-Blind,” an HP/SS slash piece by Thamiris, subtly
outlines the contradictions in Harry and Snape’s student/teacher relationship in the second
paragraph:
Adults shouldn't hate boys, should be above all that, should be
settled and reasonable and kind, with pockets full of chocolate
like Professor Lupin. Any sweet from Snape would be filled with
poison, bitter and shaped like a skull that would explode in
Harry's stomach, already fluttering as Snape looms before him,
tall and too angular, like he's made from a hundred crows
(Thamiris 2004).
That Snape does hate a boy, that he is not “above all that,” suggests that the relationship is not so
easily defined. He does not offer chocolates to Harry, and if he did, Harry wouldn’t take them.
The tension of their relationship is contrasted with the easy one Harry has with Lupin, another
professor; Thamiris constructs Lupin as occupying a “correct” position of professor/adult in
relation to Harry, unlike Snape.
The contrast is extended later in the story, when Harry and Snape exchange avowals of
mutual disrespect:
"If Lupin could see you now," Snape whispers, stroking him with
one hand, the other gripping Harry's hip, "he'd be so
disappointed."
Harry twists around to stare at Snape for the first time since
this began and catches a wild openness on Snape's face before it
goes blank. "But you're not."
"I never thought you were a hero," Snape says, and begins to
thrust.
"Then we're even." Harry turns back, his eyes already closing as
Snape takes charge, his double strokes long and thorough.
There's nothing left to do but take it, take the hot fill of
Snape's cock, the firm grasp of his pumping hand, the ragged
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sound of Snape's moans, each one bitten in half as they leave his
mouth. It's more than enough, at least for now, this closeness
that might not be real but feels it, anchored to Snape...
A revelation. Because it's good to be anchored to Snape, who
despises him, but still touches him like no one else has: people
you love will leave you or forget you, but hate is now and
forever, the strongest thing in the world (Thamiris 2004).
Harry’s statement, “Then we’re even,” seems particularly telling. Although in this piece he is
still a student, and also the “bottom” in the sexual act, he and Snape are “even.” The explicit
identification of the relationship as one of “hate” may be read as adolescent exaggeration on the
part of Harry, especially after certain character developments in the fifth book in the series, or it
may be taken more seriously as a marker of self-conscious eschewment of romantic clichés.
Many slashers specifically seek out stories that are “not warm and fuzzy” (belleweather 2004;
teleute12 in musesfool 2004). Either way, however, neither party occupies a stable dominant
position. The relationship is one of tense give-and-take.
“Dragon-Blind” is a particularly un-warm-and-fuzzy piece, of course, and many fans
prefer their masculine rivalry a little softer. An online discussion of “enemy sex,” which its
originator, musesfool, explicitly avoided limiting to slash, since “enemy sex” is a category that
can include canonical media pairings like Buffy and Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer
(musesfool 2004), drew almost twenty commentators from the LiveJournal community.
Numerous heterosexual and slash pairings were discussed by the participants, all of whom were
both familiar with degrees of antagonism in sexual relationships in fan fiction and interested in
talking about them. Several people expressed a particular dislike for “messing up a perfectly
good Enemies pairing by getting schmoopy emotions involved” (teleute12 in musesfool 2004),
although not everyone expressed a particular interest in or “kink for” enemy sex. netninny,
however, set forth possible degrees of rivalry in slash relationships, allowing for friendly
antagonism:
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I think that distinction--between enemies (i.e., people who truly
loathe each other) and opponents (i.e., people who might be
friends if they weren't on different sides)--is a significant one.
There's a long cultural history of Opponents attracting--to the
point where initial antagonism between the guys involved is an
almost-obligatory introduction to most buddy pairings.
…For an early slashy pairing that starts out looking like
Opponents but ends as Enemies, I'd suggest Shakespeare's
Coriolanus/Aufidius. For an interesting recent SF example that
partakes of both, I'd point to the concept of "the mate of the
private war" offered by C. S. Friedman in In Conquest Born: it's
the idea that a long-pursued vendetta can strengthen the two
adversaries engaged in it, while fostering in each an
understanding of the other that far outstrips any mere romantic
relationship in its intimacy (netninny in musesfool 2004).
Most participants in the discussion expressed distaste for “stereotypical romance” and the
artificial lack of tension observable in its “sugar-coated” relationships, suggesting that even those
who are not necessarily interested in enemy sex want to see some degree of tension/antagonism
in the slash they read. Several people expressed a preference for slash about former partners
who have become opponents, like Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr (Magneto) from X-Men, or
Lex Luthor and Clark Kent of Superman fame. Although the currently aired series Smallville
portrays the pair as young adult and adolescent, respectively, and relating to each other as friends
if not clandestine lovers,9 a search of the Smallville Slash Archive for “futurefics,” stories set in a
future that fans know canonically features enmity between the two, yields 505 results.
Even pairings that seem to fit the traditional “equal partnership” mold, like Kirk and
Spock or Fraser and Ray (Due South), contain elements of antagonism. Spock’s logic and Kirk’s
impetuosity frequently lead to clashes, and in another fairly straightforward manifestation of the
erotic triangle in the media product itself, when Spock enters pon farr, the Vulcan equivalent of
sexual heat, and must fuck, fight, or die, it is a “to the death” combat between Spock and Kirk
that resolves the episode, despite the availability of a Vulcan betrothed (“Amok Time” 1967).
9
The sexual tension between Clark Kent and Lex Luthor in the first season of Smallville was so glaringly obvious
that it was remarked upon to me by numerous people who did not and never had read slash or any similar material.
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Pon farr became such a favorite plot device of Star Trek slashers that an entire zine was devoted
to stories based on it (Penley 1992; Bacon-Smith 1992). As netninny argues, “initial
antagonism” often leads into archetypical buddy pairings, but slashers often seem to emphasize
this antagonism more, and more consistently, than the media source product on which the slash
is based. Fraser and Ray of Due South have personality conflicts similar to Kirk and Spock;
Fraser follows the rules while Ray relies more on intuition. Within the series, their partnership
does work to combine their strengths and solve crimes, but the tension remains in varying
degrees.
Speranza, a popular author in Due South slash fandom, magnifies this tension in her piece
“Chicago’s Most Wanted,” in which by-the-book Fraser, undercover in a prison, suffers a head
injury that renders him amnesiac.10 Believing himself to be truly incarcerated, he immediately
uses his formidable intellect to escape—and begins committing robberies with a local gang.
Ray’s attempts to convince his partner of their true relationship are unsuccessful; although Fraser
incorrectly assumes their relationship is a sexual one, a common thread in amnesia plots, the
narrative constructs that assumption as not unwarranted. Ray’s response to Fraser’s belief that
they are lovers is only, “We… never got quite that far,” and as Ray muses when Fraser breaks
into his apartment, ties him up, and gives him a blow job:
Sucking cock and robbing banks. Fraser just hadn't been the same
since prison.
Except… Ray drew in a deep breath and opened his eyes. He looked
down his own pale, outstretched body and watched Fraser's head
rhythmically moving over him, sucking him off with sweetness and
tenderness. And that was nothing you could explain away by a blow
to the head. Hell, you could bash him over the head until he was
dead—and you still wouldn't be able to make him blow somebody he
didn't wanna blow, or make him good at it if he wasn't already.
You could maybe mess with someone's head but you couldn't totally
10
Amnesia has become a cliché plot device in slash, but slash readers are usually willing to accept cliché, and even
laud it, if it is done well. This particular story was so well-received that it was translated into Hungarian by another
fan.
17
rewire a person—and criminal mastermind or not, Fraser had still
washed the dishes after he ate.
So Fraser… Fraser just had skills that lent themselves to… well,
robbing banks and sucking cock (Speranza 2004).
This excerpt seems to suggest an implicit acceptance of Fraser as being attracted to men more
generally than just in his relationship with Ray, although the relationship is still of primary
importance even when Fraser believes that Ray, who freely admits to being a police officer, is
responsible for sending him to prison; it also suggests that some element of tension
unmanufactured by amnesia might well have existed in their relationship from the beginning.
Ultimately, of course, Fraser regains his memory and remains in a sexual relationship with Ray,
as the epilogue makes clear: “Benton Fraser lives with his lover Ray Kowalski, with whom he
often plays cops and robbers” (ibid.). The reader may assume that the characters still
occasionally experience personality conflicts, and is told that they enjoy “play” at an antagonism
that may be muted in everyday interactions; the experience of having been opponents is
obviously not one that the characters, or the women reading about them, found entirely
distasteful. As in many other slash stories, antagonism and struggles for dominance only serve
to highlight the equal status and essential, if not necessarily identical, masculinity of the
characters.
Female masculine rivalries: “You and me, girlfriend… we're enemies”
Another problem with Scodari’s blanket claims for slashers’ misogyny and unwillingness
to allow any other woman into the fictional universes of fandom (Scodari 2003) arises from the
existence of “femslash:” slash that focuses on relationships between female characters. While
Scodari grants the phenomenon a sentence’s worth of mention, she seems unaware that many
femslash writers also write male slash, and in many cases, hetfic as well (including many of the
18
authors quoted in this paper: Te, Anne Higgins, shalott, and Thamiris). Femslash tends to
appropriate female characters who are engaged in performing what Judith Halberstam terms
“female masculinities” (Halberstam 1998); in his book Media, Gender, and Identity, David
Gauntlett makes passing reference to Captain Janeway and Seven of Nine, “whose powerful,
rather loving but often antagonistic relationship… gave this series [Star Trek: Voyager (19952001)] its core” (Gauntlett, 63). Not coincidentally, Janeway, the first central female captain on
Star Trek, and Seven of Nine, a former member of the hive mind-structured Borg who exhibits
“masculine logic” similar to that of Spock in the original series, are a popular femslash pairing.
It is particularly telling that Gauntlett explicitly dubs their relationship both loving and
antagonistic. Two female characters performing different but recognizable masculinities easily
slip into the pattern of masculine rivalry. Just as they both perform masculinity, they also both
inhabit bodies that are socially marked as female; there is an equality of sex and gender just as in
the traditional masculine rivalries described by Sedgwick and others.
Just like their male counterparts, female masculine rivalries are played out in femslash
with varying degrees of ferocity. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) was a landmark in the
science fiction/fantasy/horror television genres in that it featured a strong female protagonist
(Consalvo 2003)—literally: as “the Slayer,” series protagonist Buffy Summers possessed super
strength and enhanced reflexes with which to battle vampires and other assorted forces of
darkness. When a second “bad girl” Slayer, Faith, was introduced in the third season,
performing her own brand of masculinity and declaring that slaying vampires made her “hungry
and horny” (“Bad Girls” 1999) the fandom quickly responded with Buffy/Faith femslash—the
only Buffy slash product that merits a mention in Consalvo’s more general article on Star Trek
and Buffy fandoms online (Consalvo 2003: 76). If anything, Faith’s decidedly visceral embrace
19
of her status as a vampire slayer, and eventual betrayal of Buffy and her friends, appeals even
more to femslash authors than Buffy, who is less at ease with her own role as a vampire slayer,
an inner conflict that often appears in femslash featuring the pair:
Any other person would've gotten kicked out. Bodily, if necessary.
But all Buffy had to do was stand her ground and Faith would let
her claim it.
It was pathetic. But Buffy *was* a Slayer, too… had to be some
leeway somewhere for fellow slayers. Had to trust the one who had
your back. Something.
But being with another Slayer also meant that you never had to
take it easy. "Is there really a difference? I mean, think about
it. We kill night and *day*. It's not like we stop and get to
know these things—"
…
Buffy pushed up against her hands a little harder, Faith pushed
back a little harder. They increased the tension push by push
until Faith could almost *hear* the way normal mortal bones would
break given the same treatment as their own.
Faith wasn't sure when she'd started thrusting against Buffy, but
they'd also maintained eye contact this entire time, and the only
thing in Buffy's eyes was that smug little look of determination
and a bit of that wide-eyed 'ooh, what's next, sis?' that Faith
had come to expect from the other woman.
So she didn't stop (Te 1999).
Although the story ends with Buffy walking out, neither Faith nor the author attributes her
departure to simple incompatible sexuality. The real problem is her fear of being like Faith, of
comfortably performing the masculine role of Slayer, the very quality that seems to make Faith
simultaneously dangerous in the context of the media source product and appealing to authors of
femslash. Faith continues to appear in at least as much femslash, if not more than, the show’s
canon lesbians, Willow and Tara.
It is interesting that while they are both prominent characters, neither Willow nor Tara
seems as promising a candidate for female masculinity as Faith or Buffy. Tara’s character was
structured as a stereotypical “earth mother” type, and was in fact a witch, as was Willow,
although Willow grew “addicted” to magical power and almost destroyed the world when Tara
was killed. In fact, the various female characters on the show provide excellent support for
20
Halberstam’s claim that “when and where female masculinity conjoins with possibly queer
identities, it is far less likely to meet with approval” (Halberstam 1998: 28). Faith, arguably the
more masculine slayer (she is also portrayed as coming from a working-class background), is
never seen to direct her sexuality towards women, but its voracity is stigmatizing in itself. When
she actually has sex with a major male character, Buffy’s friend Xander, it marks the point of no
return in her character’s “journey to the Dark Side”—she later physically assaults him with all
the force of her Slayer-enhanced strength. Buffy’s social performance of masculinity also causes
problems; her 4th and 5th season boyfriend, Riley, leaves her for being too emotionally closed off,
a behavior that might be considered perfectly acceptable in a male friend but is threatening and
ultimately insurmountable in a heterosexual romance.
Willow and Tara both exercise power through Goddess-identified magic; neither
possesses exceptional physical abilities, and both are initially portrayed as extremely lacking in
self-confidence, particularly in sexual situations. Before Willow entered into a relationship with
Tara and “came out” as a lesbian in the fourth season, however, the show featured two
appearances by a vampire version of her from an alternate universe (“The Wish” 1998;
“Doppelgangland” 1999)—vampire Willow, of course, possessed vampire strength and speed,
and she was sexually aggressive towards members of both sexes. Not coincidentally, vampires
in the world of Buffy are soulless and automatically evil. To be acceptable as lesbians, it was
necessary that both Willow and Tara be recognizably feminine and fully human, and even then,
Tara was killed off in the sixth season, accidentally shot by villains in pursuit of Buffy and
expiring in Willow’s arms—exactly the kind of tragic denouement to a lesbian affair one might
expect from a 1940s pulp novel. Ultimately, while they may inspire counter-hegemonic
pornography in femslash authors, the female masculinities (and queer identities) performed in
21
the commercially aired episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer demonstrate problems posed by
heterosexual bodies that are largely resistant to the equalizing strategies of rivalry that work for
same-sex pairings.
Limitations and failures of heterosexual rivalries: “Fear me, love me, do as I say and I will
be your slave”
Just as they did for Japanese readers of yaoi comics in the 1970s, heterosexual bodies
continue to create obstacles to true equality in media source product relationships even when
those relationships incorporate the elements of antagonism and rivalry that work so well for
masculine same-sex pairings. The problem is in the bodies themselves, and the ways in which
their differences are socially constructed and enforced. Sedgwick argues that Girard’s
microcosmic erotic triangle, in fact, mirrors the larger structure of patriarchy; male power and
status is mediated through women and other objects (Sedgwick 1985: 25). Within this
framework, Sedgwick argues, it is relatively non-threatening for a man to be “feminized” in
relation to another man—it is only when a man’s masculinity is found wanting in comparison to
a woman that the consequences are “dire” (Sedgwick 1985: 36). This suggests that even those
slash stories, described previously, in which a biologically male character is assigned the
feminine role in a heterogendered relationship may be qualitatively different from a heterosexual
relationship with its concomitant contrasting bodies. Ultimately, a man may remain confident in
his masculinity in relation to another man, even if they are in conflict, fighting for dominance:
…for a man to undergo even a humiliating change in the course of
a relationship with a man still feels like preserving or
participating in the sum of male power, while for a man to
undergo any change in the course of a relationship with a woman
feels like a radical degeneration of substance (Sedgwick 1985:
45).
22
One finds a similar argument in Karen Horney’s ground-breaking psychoanalytical piece, “The
Dread of Woman,” in which she suggests that the Freudian construction of fear of the father in
male children is really a displaced fear of the mother: “Besides the dread of the father there must
be a further dread, the object of which is the woman or the female genital” (Horney 1932: 351).
This dread of vaginal power is transformed socially into “the dread of being rejected and derided
[as] a typical ingredient in the analysis of every man” (ibid.: 357; emphasis added).
Specifically, men have a dread of being rejected and derided not just by anybody, but by
women; as Sedgwick claims in previously quoted material, to be derided by a woman threatens a
man in a way that another man’s derision simply cannot. Ironically, Horney attributes a
particularly strong dread of the vagina and sublimated female power to the male homosexual,
whose body of course is appropriated by women in slash at every turn; Horney published “The
Dread of Woman” in 1932, when homosexuality was firmly pathologized. The women who
appropriate male bodies for sexual relationships in slash, however, do recognize Horney and
Sedgwick’s models of male homosocial relationships and fears of the female in the world around
them, and that is precisely why they must act out their desires through same-sex masculine
bodies, male or female.
Antagonist heterosexual relationships are visible in the mainstream media; in her article
“Possession, Attraction, and the Thrill of the Chase,” Scodari notes the prevalence of “the
egalitarian love/hate matches featured in the ‘screwball’ and other romantic comedy films of the
1930s and 1940s,” and the transition of this model, called by other sources “the comedy of
equality” or “the comedy of the sexes,” to mainstream television programming, particularly the
sitcom (Scodari 1995: 23). Likewise, in her study of female romance novel readers, Janice
Radway outlines the typical plot of the romance novel as always beginning with a heroine who,
23
her social identity in turmoil, “reacts antagonistically to an aristocratic male” (Radway 1984:
134). What is notable about heterosexual antagonism, however, is the way in which it is
inevitably resolved—from Shakespeare to Danielle Steele, the heroine is always finally “tamed”
by the hero. When the final step of the romantic plot, “the heroine’s identity is restored,” is
enacted (ibid.), it is through the hero; implicitly or explicitly, her “restored” identity is
dependent on her relationship with a man.
Fans of particular television shows frequently claim that the show has “jumped the
shark,” i.e. lost its quality and appeal, when sexual tension is resolved between heterosexual
leads, as in Moonlighting (1985-1989) or, more dramatically, Beauty and the Beast (1987-1990).
In the second case, a sexual relationship actually leads not only to female pregnancy but the
kidnapping and eventual death of the heroine (Bacon-Smith 1992). It is important to note that
many of the pro-Mulder/Scully relationship fans referenced in Scodari and Felder’s work on XFiles fandom only favored a romance between the two agents at the end of the series—to avoid,
I argue, the possibility of seeing an antagonistic dynamic they enjoyed fall apart under the weight
of heterosexual romantic mores. For women paying attention to these stories, the threat of
implicit male dominance is always present, and heterosexual romantic consummation is female
surrender, not because of the simple physical act of penetration, which many slash couples
engage in, but because of the social relationships ascribed to heterosexual bodies. A cursory
survey of media products, particularly those that tend to attract slashers, suggests that only
through non-consummation can equality be maintained, even in heterosexual relationships that
are initially antagonistic.
As noted above, Beauty and the Beast followed the sexual consummation of the central
heterosexual relationship with the degradation and death of the female character involved. An
24
example of an antagonistic heterosexual relationship that succeeds by avoiding consummation
can be seen in Labyrinth (1986), in which the Goblin King Jareth demonstrates his affection for
16-year-old Sarah by stealing her baby brother. A surface power differential between the two—
sex, age, and supernatural identity all seem to give Jareth the upper hand—like those shown in
many previously quoted slash pieces, is belied by Sarah’s refusal to cower and her explicit
challenges of Jareth’s authority. Ultimately, she rescues her brother and leaves the Labyrinth,
and Jareth, behind. Labyrinth has certainly generated its share of post-film fan fiction, but these
stories seem to have more in common with those about Uhura and other women in the Star Trek
universe, which rarely succeed in escaping the patriarchal social structures set up by the source
material (Bacon-Smith 1992), than with slash of any kind. Any consummated relationship
between Sarah and the Goblin King seems to involve a kind of submission on Sarah’s part, even
if only implicitly; at the very least, such fan fiction generally assumes that Sarah will leave her
own world to dwell in the Labyrinth, where Jareth rules absolute.
Some slash explicitly works to “repair” heterosexual comedies of equality that, in their
use of heterosexual bodies, are seen by slashers to fail. McKay’s Harry Potter story “Too Wise
to Woo Peacefully,” a finalist in the 2001 Harry Potter Slash Awards, places Harry Potter and
Severus Snape in the roles of Beatrice and Benedick in a Hogwarts production of Much Ado
About Nothing, and develops a relationship between the two men that parallels the ostensibly
heterosexual relationship of the play, but more easily allows the reader to believe that their
equality can survive the consummation of that relationship (McKay 2001). The fact that Harry
spends much of the story costumed as a woman may be titillating to some readers, but the
underlying “fact” of his biological maleness preserves the equality of his relationship with
Snape/Benedick. Two men can behave towards each other in ways that a man and a woman
25
cannot; Speranza’s previously quoted Due South story, for instance, contains the following scene
of Fraser and Ray’s first meeting after Fraser’s memory loss:
As suddenly as Fraser had started it, Fraser stopped it, breaking
the kiss and turning his face so that he was breathing hard
against Ray's left ear. "That explains it," Fraser muttered
inexplicably, "that explains part of it, but...Ray, how could you
do that to me?"
Ray opened his mouth to ask, "What? Do what?" but Fraser
smothered the question with a quick, harsh kiss—
—and then brought his knee up hard into Ray's groin.
Ray doubled over, seeing red and purple stars, and when he
managed to open his eyes again, Fraser was long gone.
…
"So he saved my life and then he kicked me in the nuts," Ray told
Welsh. "Which is pretty much a metaphor for our entire
relationship, now that I think about it" (Speranza 2004).
It is not hard to imagine how differently such a scene would be read if Fraser would female; a
kick in the nuts from a woman is qualitatively different from one administered by another man,
as Sedgwick would agree. The threat to the injured party’s masculine identity is simply not there,
and thus the injuring party, as another man, need not fear the extreme retribution that might well
be directed at a woman who acted in the same fashion.
Another interesting twist on this need for an equality of bodies in slash can be found in
numerous pieces featuring Mystique from X-Men. As a mutant with the ability to shapeshift,
Mystique, although “originally” female, is not limited to performing female masculinity—she
can quite convincingly perform male masculinity, as well. Although it is worth noting that
Mystique’s position in X-Men’s moral universe, both in the comics and the recent films, has
always been ambiguous, her mutant body allows her a freedom denied to most women. Even so,
much fan fiction featuring Mystique places her in a mediating role between two established male
characters, Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr (Magneto):
"What is it you want, Mystique?" he asked quietly, propping
himself up awkwardly, striving for calm, for time. Without an
answer, smiling, she crept towards him across the floor,
tauntingly slow, and curled around behind him. She wrapped around
26
him in a parody of an embrace, fingers running up over his lapels
to cup his throat, thumbs bracing against his spine.
…
And then she answered him, but not with her own voice. "What do
you think I want, Charles?" drawled low and sweet, the thumbs on
his throat now roughened with calluses he would never forget. He
leaned against them for just a moment, helplessly, because he
couldn't sense her behind them at all, and only Erik had ever
been able to do that, either.
A moment, and then he grasped all the implications in a single
glittering picture. "You do this for him," he whispered,
something unfamiliar rising in his throat. "You become me—”
…
"It's never enough, Charles," he said. "It's never—quite—right-"
and Erik's mouth was warm and sweet on his own, dreadfully real,
Erik's hands working on him, Erik's heat, Erik's urgency beating
against him. And yet, yes, not quite right, an essential
bitterness missing, and he couldn't help reaching, blindly—
—to find Erik's mind, just beyond what his range ought to have
been and blessedly unshielded. Charles? His mental voice was
startled, an instinctive moment of welcome washing through him
clean and hot, and it required hardly any effort to catch up his
hands, make them set the helmet back down.
And of course, it would be easy to stop her now; a call from the
transmitter on Erik's desk to convince her of his control and she
would let go at once. Instead he opened his mouth and cupped
Erik's face in his hands and tasted him, lips and mind both, and
Erik groaned twenty miles away and spread him flat on the floor
of the elevator, busy with all the layers of his clothing
(shalott 2003).
Charles, a telepath, connects mentally to his former lover Erik; Mystique’s body is only the
medium for that connection. Later in the series, however, shalott makes clear that Mystique and
Erik have a relationship of their own that may ultimately be expected to outlast Erik’s reunion
with Charles:
But then again, she wouldn't care about Erik half as much if she
didn't know she could trust him on this completely. He won't ever
give in, not even a little, not even to have Xavier back. And
that means that anything he will accept won't be far short of
unconditional surrender” (shalott 2003b).
Mystique’s sexually malleable body, though it serves only as a tool in “Going Down,” allows for
an equal relationship between herself and Erik that the author expresses more fully in subsequent
stories in the series. The complicated relationships portrayed therein display different degrees of
27
antagonism, vacillation between friends and opponents, and overall a very non-warm-and-fuzzy
conception of romance in general.
Conclusion: “Too wise to woo peacefully”
Slashers are all too aware of the limitations placed on heterosexual relationships by
mainstream society. Their use of same-sex bodies to portray equal relationships is not, as
Scodari and some others claim, symptomatic of internalized misogyny; rather, it is simply
recognition that heterosexual equality, even when bolstered by antagonism, is a fragile thing that
is always vulnerable to hegemonic sexual power dynamics. The threat of implicit male
domination, clearly visible in mainstream heterosexual romance novels, is always present.
Femslash demonstrates that it is not necessary to have equality between men, only between
comparable bodies. The growing trend in portraying masculine rivalry between slash partners,
whether male or female, suggests a change in how women, at least those who read and write
slash, think about equality in relationships. The popular film Fight Club (1999) demonstrates
that equality among men through rivalry is not a new concept in the popular culture with which
most slash fans are intimately familiar. Despite the violence of the film and the book on which it
is based, the fight clubs create an environment in which no man is dominant over any other; all
men fight, and “losing” is not constructed as submission. Also, the relationship between the
narrator of Fight Club and Tyler Durden has a decidedly eroticized flavor and appears as an
erotic triangle with the character of Marla Singer, although they are ultimately revealed to be the
same man.
Like Japanese readers of yaoi, it is possible that slashers are creating relationships that
posit the best chance at equality they can imagine (Suzuki 1998). Personal experience may lead
28
many slashers to feel that no equal relationship is possible without struggle, leading to an
increase in the relationships of masculine rivalry discussed in this paper. Characters like
Mystique, who is “essentially” female but possesses the ability to perform masculinity in body as
well as role, unlike the masculine female Slayers of Buffy, represent many slashers’ best
imaginings of how a nominally heterosexual equality could possibly work. In the end, in a
society that places primary importance on them whether individual society members like it or not,
it still comes down to bodies.
29
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