Women’s Breaking Taboos in Cyberculture:
Tearing up Patriarchal Net through Slash Fiction?
Irana Astutiningsih
Faculty of Letters, Jember University Indonesia
irananingsih@gmail.com
Abstract
Apart from women objectification in media as a topic commonly discussed either in scholarly
or non scholarly context; this article provides an overview about women’s potential to
become the subject rather than the object in the internet. Cyberculture providing more
freedom and less control than offline world gives the same opportunities for everyone to
actively participate in producing cultural symbols by constructing his/her expectation in the
internet including breaking taboos prevailed in offline world. In terms of online slash fiction,
a fiction about homosexual relationship written and uploaded in the internet by fans (mostly
women) of particular source text, cyberculture enables women to become subject and
construct their expectation as a response to the dominant ideology. In other words, being
positioned as the subordinated gender in patriarchal culture, women are potential in
generating a counter discourse towards the dominant ideology. More particularly, the
women’s fantasy as seen in their online works shows that becoming a subject, the women
enable what the so-called “female gaze” to exist. Some slash fictions written by Indonesian
women and uploaded in www.fanfiction.net show how such female gaze exists and
furthermore, how the women, in spite of being the second-class gender in patriarchal culture,
attempt to break the cultural taboos by constructing their sexual expectation through the
portrayal of their major male characters’ sexual activities. However, further analysis on the
selected Indonesian women’s slash fictions, authors’ note and online interviews show that in
spite of their potential of being the subject due to more freedom and less control in
cyberculture, the women are not totally capable to liberate themselves from the dominant
ideology concerning its discourse of women objectification as well as the sexual taboos in
patriarchal culture.
Key Words: cyberculture, female gaze, sexual taboos, dominant ideology, slash fiction.
Gender Representation: Women as Objects?
Gender discourse in patriarchal culture frequently concerns with media representation
of men and women regarding their bodies and social role. In one article Wood (1994) says
that there are three themes concerning media representation about gender: “First, women are
underrepresented which implies that men are the cultural standard and women are
unimportant or invisible. Second, men and women are portrayed in stereotyping ways that
reflect and sustain socially endorsed views of gender. Third, depictions of relationships
between men and women emphasize traditional roles and normalize violence against
women”. Meanwhile, in Feminist Media Studies, Zoonen (1994) believes that the main
element of patriarchy is the women display for the sake of public (men) gaze. This correlates
to what Mulvey says about her concept known as “male gaze”. Mulvey believes that visual
pleasure in mainstream cinema reproduces a structure of male looking and female “to-belooked-at-ness” (1975). The previously-mentioned assumptions underline that women
representation by media is under the domination of patriarchal culture; positioning women as
subordinated underrepresented object. Through gender representation, media has power to
strengthen the patriarchal value persisting and being considered as ‘true’ in society.
Furthermore, media has power to produce an image on stereotyped gender identity with
reference to the patriarchal culture dominance. This is due to the media power in producing
such ‘reality’, like Grossberg has put that media “make meanings and organize them into
various codes and systems, which implies that these code interpret reality; they make world
meaningful and comprehensible” (2006: 194).
What have been assumed about women subordination and objectification refers more
to media having power in producing cultural symbols which pose audience as passive text
consumers. Throughout its history, however, the new media such as internet provide broad
opportunities to the audience to actively participate instead of passively consume text.
Internet as the new media has its unique characteristics; it is more democratic as it enables
anyone to be actively involved, producing cultural text through creative process since it has
less control and frequently operates out of control. Internet as the product of culture is in fact,
the producer of culture commonly known as “cyberculture or cyberspace” (Bell, 2001).
Cyberculture providing more freedom and less control than offline world gives the same
opportunities for everyone to actively participate in producing cultural symbols by
constructing his/her expectation including breaking taboos prevailed in offline world, in
which women are not the exception. In cyberculture, women are able to become the subject
and speak about what they really expect, instead of being merely objectified. This paper
attempts to provide an overview about how (Indonesian) women are potential in becoming
subject in cyberculture and how female gaze exists in terms of slash fiction, a genre of fan
fiction which tells about homosexual relationship and is written by fans (mostly women) of
certain source text.
Cyberculture and Slash Fiction: Being Subjects through Subcultural Activities
In cultural studies context, the study of internet is not solely focused on the
technological aspect, but more on its socio cultural one. It doesn’t mean, however, that
cultural studies exclude the technological aspect of internet at all, as cultural studies believe
that technology is always cultural. One of cultural studies theorists paying close attention to
the study of internet is Bell, who has put his conceptual definition about cyber culture as
follows:
“… cyberculture is a way of thinking about how people and digital technologies
interact, how we live together – so the suffix ‘culture’ is used in that elastic way
that one of the founding fathers of British cultural studies, Raymond Williams
(1976), uses it, to talk of ways of life (2007: 5)
In defining the term, Bell also refers to what Frow and Morris says about culture and
puts it as “ways of life in cyberspace, or ways of life shaped by cyberspace, where cyberspace
is a matrix of embedded matrix and representation” (2007:5). While the origin of the term
‘cyberculture’, as Bell has said, is obscure and uncertain, the word ‘cyberspace’ is
conventionally believed to be originally created by Gibson in his cyberpunk novel
Neuromancer. Gibson states cyberspace is “ … a consensual hallucination experienced daily
by millions of legitimate operators. … A graphic representation of data abstracted from the
banks of every computer in the human system ... “(1984: 67).
As cyberculture refers to ways of life in cyberspace, the phenomenon of slash fiction,
I believe, relates to the women’s (slash writers) ways of life in cyberspace. More particularly,
what the slash writers do in cyberspace corresponds to what Bell explains as
‘cybersubculture’. In An Introduction to Cyberculture, David Bell explains about what he
calls as ‘subcultural or countercultural use of cyberspace’, which is divided into two groups:
“…those that use cyberspace to advance their project, in the same way they might use other
forms of communication; and those that signal an expressive relationship to the technology
through subcultural activities ... " (2001: 163). Since in this paper internet is not only
considered as a medium but more as an arena of women who are actively involved in the
process of giving meaning to the source text they consume, the second thought of Bell about
cybersubculture is considered more appropriate. Eventhough the term subculture is debatable
regarding the prefix ‘sub’ which means ‘beneath’ and makes subculture regarded as the
culture that lies ‘under’, subculture cannot, matter-of-factly, be considered as unimportant or
non-standard culture. In Bell, it is said that subculture should be assumed as something
subordinate, subaltern or subterranean, as explained by Bell that subculture is “… a term used
to describe ‘groups of people who have something in common with each other … which
distinguishes them in a significant way from other social groups’ …” (2001: 164).
Furthermore, Thornton in Bell emphasizes that not every group that shares similar interest
and stands opposition to other group can be considered subculture; “they must be doing some
kind of cultural work with those interests and that opposition” (2001: 164). On account of
such ‘cultural work’, Hebdige says in Subculture: the Meaning of Style that ‘cultural work’
“…is often codified through dress, ‘attitude’ and lifestyle, and circulated through the
subculture’s own ‘micromedia’ output: music, fanzines, flyers and so on” (1979).
Regarding cultural work mentioned by Hebdige, fanzine (fans magazine) is the
pioneer of fan fiction recently booming in cyberspace. Slash fiction is one genre of fan fiction
focusing on homosexual relationship between main male characters. For this reason, I see
slash fiction as a cultural work reflecting sub-ordinate culture in cyberspace. I regard the
word ‘sub-ordinate’ in terms of slash fiction as a matter of subordination in two levels. First,
it refers to the women (slash authors) considered as subordinated gender and second, it relates
to the subordination of same-sex relationship (illustrated in slash fiction) in patriarchal values
as the dominant ideology. The internet users actively involved in the site of fan fiction not
only use internet as a medium, but also do their fandom activities in it; expressing their minds
by uploading their own fictions, collaborating and having interaction with other fans, as well
as expressing their expectations. This corresponds to what Bell says about cybersubcultures
as “those that signal an expressive relationship to the technology through subcultural
activities" (2001: 163).
The scholars’ studies about fan fiction show that most fan fiction is written by
heterosexual women. Regarding the less controlled and anonymous characteristic of internet,
the question that may rise is: is it true that women write slash fictions? Isn’t it possible that
anonymities in cyberculture enables slash writers to fake their identities as ‘real’ women? To
answer this, it is necessary to have a brief review about the history of slash fiction. In the mid
70s, far before the fanfiction phenomena are booming in the internet, the fans of Star Trek
TV series published fanzine (fans magazine) in limited number and distributed it among fans.
The first slash fiction in the fanzine was written by a heterosexual woman who told about
homosexual relationship between Kirk and Spock, the major characters in Star Trek, who
were originally heterosexuals. In Textual Poachers, Jenkins depicts in detail how the women
fans of Star Trek illustrate homosexuality between Kirk and Spock. He claims that fans write
fan fiction out of a combination of fascination and frustration with their favorite media
products. Furthermore, he believes that fans are not passive consumers, but also active
producer and manipulator of meanings (1992). Jenkins’ writing is based on his
ethnographical research for years which proves that what has been said about heterosexual
women being the slash writers is not a mere assumption.
Furthermore, Derecho’s assumption about fan fiction corresponds to what Jenkins has
put by saying that fan fiction is “the literature of the subordinate, because most fan fiction
authors are women responding to media products that, for the most part, are characterized by
an underrepresentation of women” (2006: 71). Regarding to ‘more freedom’ cyberculture
offer compared to offline world, the slash writers attempts to express their dissatisfaction to
media text dominated by patriarchal values. They do subcultural activities by uploading their
cultural works in forms of slash fictions; constructing their expectation unfulfilled by
patriarchal media text, and hence, becoming the subject in cyberculture. Providing
opportunities for women to be the subject by creating stories about homosexualites between
main male characters, cyberculture enables the women to have power over men, while in
offline world dominated by patriarchal values they are frequently underrepresented and
objectified.
Women’s attempts to depict homosexual relationship between main male characters
in slash fictions are interesting due to their position as ‘second class of gender’ in patriarchal
culture and the taboos they have to face in the hierarchy of system. In patriarchal world with
its dominant ideology, particularly in Indonesia, the matter of sex cannot be separated from
the discourse of gender dichotomy that poses men as subject and women as object of sex.
Since men are the subject, it is believed that men are to be aggressive while the women are
the otherwise. Furthermore, “the women’s sexual satisfactions are valued as long as they
satisfy men’s sexual needs” (Munti, 2005: 37). Researches have been conducted regarding to
female potential as the subject of sex; one of which is conducted by Warianto about a rubric
of sexuality in Cosmopolitan Indonesia magazine. The interesting findings Warianto has
shown in her research is is that despite being considered as a pioneer magazine which tries to
liberate women from patriarchal values, it is concluded that the construction of gender role
regarding sexualities in the magazine is still under the dominance of patriarchal values:
‘objectifying’ women as those who are to satisfy men’s sexualities. Since women are the
objects of sex, women being initiative in sexual acitivies is considred taboo; sex become
more about their ‘service’ towards men rather than pleasure and attempt to fulfill their own
needs. One of Indonesian cinemas representing women’s attempt to be liberated from
patriarchal value is entitled Perempuan Berkalung Sorban, which tells about the life of a
woman who questions her right to be initiative in sexual actitivies, and gets answer from her
teacher that an initiative woman must be a bad woman (Bramantyo: 2009).
Based on previous elaboration about cyberculture, slash fiction and sexual taboos for
women, I believe cyberculture provides wide opportunities for women to produce a counter
discourse towards the dominant ideology. In other words, cyberculture paves their way to
express their resistance in two levels: first, the resistance towards women’s objectification in
patriarchal culture and second, the resistance toward mainstream values believing that
heterosexual relationship is the ‘right’ one, all of which is represented through their cultural
activities in cyberspace.
Female Gaze and Women’s Version of Male Sexualities
Slashfiction, being very popular among heterosexual women, is commonly uploaded
in personal weblog or particular websites. Considered as the biggest fan fiction site,
www.fanfcition.net contains millions of fan fictions written in various languages. In one of
her writings, a slash writer pen-named Confeito, depicts the homosexual relationship between
two main characters in Harry Potter: Tom Riddle and Harry Potter. Her attempt to exploit
male’s body is seen in the following quotes of slash fiction:
“… Harry bisa dikatakan sebagai cowok cantik. (They say Harry is a beautiful
boy)… Dengan wajah berbentuk hati, iris mata indah hijau zamrud, dan bibir
merah merekah yang menantang siapapun untuk menciumnya.(with a heartshaped face, beautiful green eyes and red lips challenging everyone to kiss
him)… (Confeito: 2011)
The foregoing quotes show how Harry’s physical appearance is illustrated not only
through its physical attraction but also its sensuality. The phrase ‘challenging everyone to
kiss him’ emphasizes such sensuality. Like what is commonly seen in patriarchal media text
on women’s physical exploitation, Confeito’s illustration in her slash is obviously a matter of
male’s physical exploitation through the character of Harry. Further depiction of
homosexualities between Tom and Harry is illustrated by Confeito in the followings:
“…. Jari-jari Tom berlari meraba tubuh Harry. (Tom’s fingers ran through
Harry’s body).
... Dalam posisi terikat, dia tersenyum setengah malu-setengah genit pada Tom.
(Being tied, he smiled timidly, but seductively, to Tom).
‘Then punish me, Master.’
Sorotan mata Tom berubah menjadi sorotan predator yang mengincar
mangsanya. Dia tanpa segan lalu meremas pantat Harry keras, membungkam
desahan Harry dengan ciuman ganas.(Tom’s eyesight turns predatory ready to
attack its preys. He squeezed Harry’s bosom hard, silenced Harry’s moan with
fierce kiss)
… Harry hanya bisa mengangguk, entah menangkap perkataan Tom atau tidak.
(All Harry could do is nodding, either he understood what Tom was saying or not)
…Dia akhirnya menyerahkan diri pada dominasi kuat Tom. Berada sepenuhnya
pada kuasa si laki-laki bermata hijau turquoise” (He finally surrendered to Toms’
domination. Being totally dominated by the man with green turquoise eyes).
(Confeito: 2011).
The dictions chosen to describe Harry and Tom’s sexual activities emphasize Harry’s
position as a passive object. During their intimacy, Harry is described in tied position saying
‘Punish me, Master’. The illustration of Harry’s being tied and the words ‘punish’, master
‘surrender’ and ‘domination’ implies to the unequal power relation between the couple.
Harry Potter is placed as a dominated object, and even asks for the domination himself.
Confeito also illustrates Harry as a ‘prey’ and uses the word ‘predatory’, which also
underlines the domination over Harry. In sum, Harry is portrayed as a sexual object being
dominated by his lover.
What Confeito describes in her slash initially leads me to ponder her attempt in
objectifying male’s body through the portrayal of Harry. The voyeurism persisting in slash
fiction is voyeurism over male’s body through his body exploitation and sexual activities. In
cyberspace, not only is the male body exploited by the women authors of slash, but also
consumed by women readers of slash fiction. This proves that cyberculture enables female
gaze to exist. Due to the female gaze in cyber space, it can be said that Mulvey’s concept
about ‘male gaze’ in media texts as well as what Hayles says about ‘masculinitst bias’ in
virtual reality are to be reconsidered. The concept of masculinits bias, as Hayles states,
corresponds to the logic of capitalist market with its masculine characteristic: the desire to
have autonomy and control (Trend: 2001). What Hayles states about masculinits bias, is
perhaps, more compatible to the media text representing dominant ideology that places
women as objectified gender class. In terms of slash fiction, which represents women’s
expectation as their respond toward patriarchal values, it is obvious that the concept of ‘male
gaze’ and ‘masculinist bias’ becomes irrelevant. On account of women slash authors,
masculinist bias in cyberspace is potential to transform into ‘feminist bias’.
In describing the sexual activities between two male characters, it is obvious that
Confeito doesn’t attempt to be ‘gentle’ or ‘romantic’. Instead, she depicts the sexual
activities in a ‘direct’ language with reference to domination and power over Harry. This
shows how Confeito really tries to liberate herself from the sexual taboos she has to face in
offline world. As a subject in cyberculture, she ignores the rules in offline world by
constructing her expectation about sex; ‘talking’ about sex using ‘direct’ language. However,
it seems more interesting to me as I continue reading the slash fiction which is closed by
Confeito’s note: *sigh* Yep, I know I'm pervert. Shush *blushing* (2011). This note shows
Confeito’s ambivalence. Despite using direct language in her slash, Confeito closes her story
by expressing her feeling of embarrassment as she calls herself a ‘pervert’. Confeito’s saying
of being pervert basically represents her limitation in being a ‘real subject’ in cyberculture.
In other words, this shows that Confeito does not totally liberate herself from sexual taboos
persisting in patriarchal culture. With regards to homosexualities, I was interested to know
more about how Confeito faces challenges in offline world concerning such issue. Being
involved as a reader in www.fanfiction.net as well as a researcher on slash fictions in 2012, I
managed to make online interview with her. The following quotes show Confeito’s response
to my questions about whether or not she would be interested in publishing her stories about
homosexualities in offline world:
Tidak. Indonesia bukanlah negara yang menerima slash dengan suka rela.
Masyarakat kita sebagian besar menganggap slash adalah suatu hubungan yang
seharusnya tidak boleh dijalani. Saya sebagai warga negara Indonesia harus
tahu diri dan menerima hal ini pada batasan tertentu, ie saya hanya akan menulis
cerita slash di internet (lebih tepatnya di FFn), dimana orang-orang yang
membacanya berkemungkinan besar adalah penggemar slash. Boleh dikatakan,
saya ambil jalan amannya saja.
(I won’t. Slash is not kindly accepted in Indonesia. Most people consider
relationship in slash the wrong thing. Being an Indonesian, I really have to know
my position. I will go on with this idea of slash relationship in limited area, in the
internet, whose readers are also the fans of slash. Let me put it briefly: I want to
play safe in this ‘slash matter’. (online interview, March 2012)
Being a part of society who believes that homosexuality is not acceptable, Confeito
decides to keep ‘living in a secure world’, where people are more tolerable to the idea.
Cyberspace is an ‘ideal’ place for Confeito in playing with her fantasies, though from the
previous elaboration it is obvious that she cannot, nevertheless, totally liberate herself from
the patriarchal values persisting in offline world.
Further analysis on Confeito’s story reveals more about her ambivalence in being a
‘subject’. The character of Harry, being a sexual object, is obviously dependent on the
character of Tom, which is also the main character in her slash. This proves that despite
exploiting Harry’s body, Confeito also poses male’s dominance through her characterization
of Tom who has power over Harry. It can be said that as a ‘subject’, Confeito maintains
patriarchal values which pose men as the subject of sex, as portrayed through Tom in her
slash fiction.
When Confeito illustrates sexual activities between male characters using direct
language, Mizore depicts it differently, as seen in the following quotations:
‘Harry, aku selalu menunggu saat ini datang. Aku selalu menunggumu memelukku
dan menenangkanku seperti ini…. (Harry, I’ve been waiting for this moment to come.
I’ve been waiting for you to hold me and comfort me like this…).
… Harry merasa jantungnya berdebar kencang ketika Draco mengungkapkan lagi
rahasia perasaannya. Ia memejamkan mata pelan ketika mulai memasuki tubuh pria
yang sudah lama ia cintai.(Harry felt his heart beating fast as Draco expressed his true
feeling. He closed his eyes while getting into Draco, the man he had always loved for
ages).
…. ‘Yah, aku disini Draco. Aku mencintaimu, sayang.’ Harry memeluk erat Draco
dan mencium bibirnya lembut. ‘Aku mencintaimu sejak lama.’ … ( I am here, Draco. I
love you, honey. Harry hold Draco tight and kissed him gently. ‘I’ve loved you since
ages ago…’)
(Mizore: 2010).
It is interesting to discuss that in describing the sexual intercourse between Harry and
Draco, Mizore refers to a gentle, unhurried attitude which emphasizes more on love
expression. In other words, Mizore does not construct her idea about sexual activities with
reference to domination or power. It is obvious that the sexual activities between Harry and
Draco is not focused on technical matter related to body per se; it focuses on their spiritual
intimacy expressed as ‘love’ between them instead. Sex is not, in Mizore’s slash, a matter of
sole penetration, but more about their ways in expressing the deepest feeling of love. Mizore
is more interested in illustrating emotional attachment between Harry and Draco. When
patriarchal media texts commonly pinpoint the notion that sex is closely related to power and
conquest, as Seidler has put that sex is a means of proving men’s masculinities in
Rediscovering Masculinities (1998), Mizore as a subject in cyberspace has a different view
through her slash fiction. Sex in Mizore’s notion is focused more on emotional attachment
between lovers. Sexualities in Mizore’s expectation is not ‘autonomous’, as Seidler (1998)
says, which ignores the emotional aspects. In Mizore’s slash, despite being engaged in sexual
intercourse, the two male characters’ emotional attachment is considered more important
than sexual intercourse per se. Sexual activities in Mizore’s slash does not refer to the belief
about sex for the sake of power and conquest.
The previous elaboration on the quotes of two slash fictions shows that the women
authors have uniqueness in constructing their idea about sexualities. When Confeito is more
direct and aggressive in illustrating the sexual activities, Mizore is the otherwise. Due to this
distinction between the two authors, further question may rise. Regarding their contrastive
illustration on sex, do the two women represent contrastive ideas regarding the dominant
ideology? If Confeito is unable to totally liberate herself from patriarchal values, does it
mean that Mizore is more ‘successful’ in her attempt of liberation? Does it mean that, being
gentle in portraying the main characters’ intercourse in her slash, unlike pornography media
text which is, as Dowkins (in Seidler, 1998) believes, the perfect example of male’s
domination over female, Mizore represent her counter idea towards the dominant ideology?
To answer this question, it is important to know more about Mizore’s subcultural activities in
cyberspace.
As a slash author, Mizore has two accounts in facebook. One account is specifically
made for her fans as a slash author, which disguises her real name. The following shows our
conversation about her reason of using a disguised name in one of her facebook accounts:
Q: ada alasan mengapa akun FB untuk pembaca fanfic disendirikan? (Is there
any reasons why you created a specific account for slash readers?)
A: karena bahasanya membahayakan, hehehe. Akun FB saya yang asli
banyak teman yang baik-baik sih, saya tidak mau mereka menjadi sesat,
hoho… (because the language (of my slash) is dangerous… I have a lot of
friends, who are good people, and I certainly don’t want them to be
deviants… (online interview, March 2012).
The illustration of sexual activities in Mizore’s slash is far from being ‘direct’ and
‘aggressive’. Nevertheless, Mizore finds it necessary to make a special account for her slash
readers in facebook due to the language she considers ‘dangerous’. On the other hand, Mizore
believes that all her friends in her ‘real person’ account are ‘good people’ whom she doesn’t
want to be deviant. This implies that she considers the subcultural activities she has been
doing in the internet morally wrong in ‘real life’. In deeper level, her subcultural activities
concerning slash fiction will keep her from being ‘a good woman in real life’. Mizore’s
attempt to reveal herself as ‘a good woman’ makes her make two accounts concurrently; one
(with her disguised name) for her slash readers and the other with her real name for her
friends in ‘real world’. Mizore chooses to be a ‘good woman’ in offline world by hiding
herself as a slash author.
Regarding the slash fictions and cyberculture, it is obvious that the slash authors
attempt to escape from dominant ideology with its patriarchal values in two levels: first, the
women attempt to get involved in ‘taboo area’; constructing their ideas through the depiction
of sexual activities between main male characters in slash fiction. It implies that cyberculture
enables them to have control and power over men and thus, become the subject in terms of
sexualities. Secondly, cyberspace paves the way to the women authors of slash to construct
gender ideology which is ‘liberated’ from the hetero-normative values in dominant ideology.
It is furthermore seen, however, the slash women authors seem to play in the position of ‘inbetween-ness’. As has been previously elaborated, they choose to ‘remain safe’ by disguising
themselves as ‘slash women’ and thus, maintain the dominant ideology regarding sexual
activities; which put them as objectified gender class with sexual taboos to avoid. In this
point, it is obvious that being actively engaged in subcultural activities as subjects, they
cannot, however, become the ‘real subject’ totally liberated from dominant ideology with its
patriarchal values. While previously I see the potential of cyberspace’s masculinits bias to
transform into ‘feminist bias’, in this context the cyberspace seems to lose its ‘feminist spirit’
due to its inability to totally liberate the women from dominant ideology with its patriarchal
values.
Conclusion
As a new media, internet enables anyone to be actively engaged in cultural text
production, instead of merely become passive text consumers. Cyberculture eases people to
do what is considered ‘taboos’ in offline world. In terms of slash fiction, women are potential
to break the taboos they face in offline world by doing subcultural activities in cyberspace;
constructing their ideas about male sexualities in cyberspace and hence, become the subject.
Cyberculture enables ‘female gaze’ to exist as the women slash authors have power and
control over the objectified males as the main characters, which are also objectified by slash
readers most of whom are heterosexual women. In slash, the women as slash authors are able
to show their resistance toward dominant ideology: their resistance toward women
objectification and their resistance toward the hetero-normative relationship. However, their
subcultural acitivies in cyberspace cannot totally liberate them from the dominant ideology
with its patriarchal values.
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