A fandom anonmeme.
Anti-fem/slash sentiment in fandom
It feels like there are more and more people these days who are vocal about how awful slash and femslash are, how they're the thing killing fandom, how all slashers are just MSF ATGers, all femslashers are just migratory SJWs, etc. Meanwhile if you so much as say that you're not comfortable with het you get jumped on for ~hating women~ (even if you are a woman, even if you ship femslash, etc).
I'm just so tired of this. You may think you're only talking about pairings of fictional characters, but the thing that unites the pairings you're being so nasty about is that they consist of two or more people who share a gender. And as a woman who is attracted to people who share her gender, it's really getting to me.




As a queer person, yeah, I can see it, and I swear some of it is just the more obvious "I just think it's wrong to be gay" stuff you used to see gone underground, now that it's not socially acceptable and everything has to be SJ-washed.
But I'm also wary of this type of post. I've felt really alienated lately by some of the lesbian extremism in fandom that makes my own community feel deeply unfriendly to me. I'm talking about the w4w-brand anti-bisexual, anti-nonbinary, anti-ace, constantly gatekeeping and gold-star-checking, being horrible to trans men in a way they aren't to cis men, and just...nonsense I don't fucking see in my lesbian social group IRL where we're chill people who might occasionally make "straight people jokes" but don't have this hate in our hearts directed at our own fucking community. I get really antsy because something that sounds reasonable like this can quickly devolve into "shipping het is the enemy," and like...I ship het. I write het porn for my girlfriend. We're not straight, and I don't even like men IRL.
I hate that I've become so gunshy about agreeing with a reasonable statement like this, because most of the people who start out reasonable on the internet just do a zero-to-wtf the moment you start nodding, and next thing I know I'm the bad guy for liking kink or liking het or associating with the evil bihets or...god even knows. These people have honestly destroyed something that should have been so good. Whenever I see someone on tumblr with "lesbian" in their URL, I'm like, hm, TERF, anti, or both? And that's so messed up. I self-identify as a lesbian a lot, and I find myself backing off it because these people are so toxic. This shit in our own community has hurt me more than anything "the straights" have done.
But yeah. I love Steven Universe because it's a good show and I legit love the ships, and I hate when people say I'm only fake-liking it because good feminists pretend to like fat lesbians. So I agree with this a lot! Plus the whole pretending wlw don't love slash irritates me a lot too! I'm really sorry if my comment made assumptions about stuff you weren't trying to say. I really feel hurt by both the queer community and anti-queer people who are pretending they're not anti-queer by couching it in social justice terms and alienated by everyone all around and...I don't know what to do about that. I just want to enjoy my ships and not have people assume I'm faking the gay or that my gay agenda includes a lot of other forms of hate I never signed up for. I want people to not read so goddamn much into the fanfiction I write--all of it, the slash, the femslash, and the het. I want to not have to be the Right Kind of Queer...whatever that is! The queer that likes the right things, and of course hates the right things.
Like not happening to ship het is one thing, but saying "not comfortable with het" is a big red flag for me because I'm not here to get my queer card checked by you, you know? And I get so tense because "het repulsed" usually comes about ten minutes before, "trans women are men trying to rape lesbians." And it shouldn't be a big deal to not like het--buddy, I don't care if you don't like het, but if you think that's the only way our tastes get policed, you are so wrong. Just end the taste policing. Let people LIVE.
+1 to so much of this. If I never again hear people complaining about ~awesome ladies~ or bland vegetables femslash or people shipping for cookies or whatever the hell, it will not be too soon. There's a heck of a lot of bad faith out there when it comes to shipping, and I get super frustrated with it. Let people ship what they ship!
But on the other hand, the generalities and the degree of interpretation in OP's post is too much for me. I can't agree with that. I can't agree with generalizations like "The DW community is homophobic."
I don't have anything substantial to add, other than I agree with pretty much all of your post. I want to send you hugs and support because I have seen some of the hate you talk about, and it hurts me too. I'm so, so sick of it. Thank you for voicing what hopefully many of us in the lesbian community are thinking. I hate how our community has been invaded by assholes and bullies. I hope we'll find a way to get rid of all the mindless hostility sooner than later, so it can become a kind and friendly place for everyone.
I've never seen anyone on meme say that all slashers are into MSF/ATG, and most of the time I see Migratory Slash Fandom come up, it seems like the complainer has another slash ship they wish had taken off instead, or they had already been into a slash ship that was being colonized by whoever the big names in MSF are these days and is now being written like 2005 Draco/Harry. IMO, Tumblr and its "this ship is problematic" and "you're fetishizing other people's sexuality and making them into dolls" and "you're ignoring the women (but don't pay attention to them by putting them in the wrong ships k thnx)" make up a much bigger wave of anti-slash sentiment than those who gripe about MSF.
I get that you're frustrated, but there's so much slash discussion/rec/actual fic on FFA that it seems kind of weird to characterize this as an issue there. I don't think meme's likely to turn into an environment that's hostile to slash anytime soon.
Sure, Tumblr's got its own issues and I'm not denying that. But to copy and paste what I said to another nonny: On an anoncomm like FFA or _coal all I have to go off of is the words you are saying, and if you say things like "This ship of two guys who are good friends is ATG" or "ew, $showwithcanonfemslash, get this migratory SJW shit away from me", I can't know your history. I don't know if you ship slash. I just know that you're saying shit that no one ever says about het.
I know you can't know their history. But to go from "this specifically is ATG BS" to "all slashers like ATG/slash is killing fandom" seems like going farther the other way into assuming history that's not knowable, too. And when I read entire discussions, that's where I'm getting the motives I described above, I'm not making them up.
Wouldn't you assume that if much of the positive or neutral pairing discussion on a forum is about slash or femslash pairings, and most of the fandoms mentioned in the forum are fandoms where most of the popular pairings are slash or femslash, that most of the people on the forum ship slash or femslash?
For example, I was just looking at the "Last fic read" thread on FFA, and most of the fics mentioned there were slash or femslash.
I don't think there's some deep, honest anti-slash sentiment out there. There's a undercurrent of sour grapes in the terms 'migratory slash fandom' and 'any two guys' slash, since these authors tend to be very prolific and because they produce lots of tropy fic, quite popular as well. It's a lot more socially acceptable to say that 'this type of popular slash is bad because of Very Important Social Reasons" than to say "I wish I could write tons of AU juggernaut fic on a dime in all the fandoms and be a popular kid too" -- it doesn't mean that any of what they say is true, or even that people honestly believe it.
You just gotta find your niche in fandom where you feel free to do you. Anything that you do will get someone's undies in a snit, but you gotta keep on keepin' on, because the moment you stop doing what you love, they win.
And more importantly, you lose.
It's the idea that the only reason you would femslash is for SJW brownie points that tires me out. Yeah, some of us actually like it best. Others might mostly prefer het, slash or gen, but there's one or two couples that grab them.
We're not all eating our vegetables.
Although I partly blame people who are "Oh, fandom is so misogynist, let's force ourselves to write some f/f to address the balance!" Just. Go. Away. Especially as they rarely do write any f/f at all, the self-flagellation is enough.
(Lesbian here, is 85% interested in the girls in her fic, does not care what others ship.)
I do think MSF ATG complaints are weird because a lot of het can be written in a very generic way or with poor characterization and can feature people who barely have a connection in canon. Het shippers can also "hate women" by bashing the rival female love interest. Similarly, I also don't think it's fair for people to complain about "whitecock" without acknowledging that there are a lot of all-white ships in het fandom.
I do think most people on FFA like slash and/or femslash, but I do agree with some of what you're saying.
(For context, nonny is straight and has spent most time in slash and het fandom spaces. I occasionally ship femslash, but I haven't been in any of the major fandoms for it.)
What on earth does MSF and ATG stand for?? I seem to see these kinds of terms everywhere on imzy and I've never encountered them on any of the other sites I've been on. Help?
MSF stands for "migratory slash fandom" and ATG stands for "any two guys." They are terms used to talk about how BNFs (fic writers with a huge following) move from slash megafandom to slash megafandom and produce generic modern AUs with generic characterization (hence "any two guys"). Sometimes, ATG is also used to complain about ships getting popular that people don't think have much of a canon connection and ships that are assumed to be popular just because they're slash. For example, Clint/Coulson is often accused of being an ATG pairing.
I do think that people migrate through slash fandoms in the way described and that ATG fic exists, but I think similar patterns could be said to exist in het fandoms. I don't know enough about femslash fandoms to comment on that.
Sorry if I was confusing. The abbreviations often crop up on the FFA meme.
Femslash fandom tends to migrate whenever our canon lesbians get killed off or whenever there's a new wlw character dating another woman. So like ... we're migratory but for different reasons, haha.
I have... never experienced this? Possibly because I am from tumblr and fandom people there tend to glorify slash and femslash fics (although very obviously biased to slash). However, I hope you don't let these things get to you.
Yeah, Tumblr's way better about this (although I have seen plenty of het fans who think there's some kind of Gay Fanfic Privilege because a lot of fans write slash). Dreamwidth is just nasty about it.
Tumblr has it's good and bad. It really feels more like sheep following the herd kind of thing going on there. They see someone say something and all you'll see is a thousand notes that show a lot of people agree. It's hard to tell if it's right or wrong there. With that being said, there seems to be a lot of het fans who do come off as very entitled for their gay fics. (especially fans of one of my m/m notps. when they found out there were people who ship one of them with a girl, a bunch of them started telling us off about how it was abusive and stuff) (trust me on this, it's not abusive)
I don't know, most of the anti-slash sentiment I'm seeing these days is coming from Tumblr. Of the "fetishizing gay men's/my sexuality" variety for the most part, with some "this slash ship is problematic, go for the het ship instead" thrown in occasionally.
Oh man, really? Tumblr (and recently Imzy) is my only source of fandom exposure, so I don't know how it's like at other sites. I would actually agree though that fetishizing slash pairings is actually quite a big problem. On one hand, it's great to be accepting of slash pairings! On the other hand, it reaches a point where it does become a fetish. Although I haven't seen anyone suggest the het ship instead. But yeah, these are pretty popular tumblr arguments
Do you have an example of this?
I get really :/ :/ :/ about the fetishizing argument. Because when it first started I was like, "Yeah, please remind people that gay men exist outside of fanfic, because sometimes people talk a bit creepy." But at this point, it's turned into "Don't write slash, it's appropriative and fetishizing and disgusting," and I just ... no.
Not exactly? There's always the people who would rather only read about their slash but are still very homophobic. Other than that, there will be people who will actively bash canon het ships just cause it's ruining their slash. But then again, the het ship is not necessarily always a healthy relationship either. I think everything depends on situation, but I do think that fandom may have a tendency to fetishize slash (especially m/m). This is just my opinion from past experience. I'm sorry if this doesn't make that much sense?
The only "this is fetishizing gay relationships!!" arguments I've seen in the past five years have been from het shippers upset that gay and bi people want to see same-gender relationships in fiction.
The whole appropriating argument has really gotten out of hand? I think writing slash fic is more of celebrating slash relationships. I'm trying to just stick with the original connotation of letting queer people exist outside of fanfics
I've seen it from a few gay men who aren't really fannish but happen to hang out on, y'know, Tumblr, where it's always just a step away from yr door. That at least I can kinda respect (in that, sure, have personal feelings about something that's seemingly-derivative of yr lived experiences) even if I don't agree.
3/10 trolling attempt. Will not win you place in trolling olympics.
Honestly? Fuck off.
The user has been temp-banned, and you're getting a warning for the language. (I understand why you feel this way, which is why it's only a warning.)
oh man are we actually not allowed to swear? I didn't realize that (honest question)
Swearing is fine! I just don't want people being hostile to each other.
oh okay, thanks!
This is not a good look for you, Terrence. Take a break.
Weird. I don't spend time on ffa, but this concept of MSF? I'm not sure why that's a negative, honestly. If something's popular, I go check it out, read the fic, like it, stick around, try something else, etc. I'm making a very confused face here, because that's a lot of what fandom is. Do these nonnies just hate having to keep up with new stuff? Angry that people aren't still writing their pet pairings? Do they also include 10+ year megafandom SPN fans in this?
And ATG? Friends, I grew up on Harlequin books with a random pair of characters to ship in each book every month. I WILL literally read any two guys. WHY IS THIS MEANT TO BE AN INSULT?
Maaaan, people will really find any way to bash ships that aren't their own ships, won't they? "You read too widely and experiment too much! Also stop liking things that are popular!"
Ah, sorry for commenting on something so off of what your post was meant to be about, but I'd never heard those terms before and it just kind of blew my goddamn mind.
I gotta be honest, I personally have never seen anything like this. Could you be more specific and/or provide links?
It is alllll over. Canons with canon lesbian ships are invariably called "migratory SJW fandom" on FFA (see Steven Universe, Undertale, Wynonna Earp). You can't take one step on FFA without tripping over accusatons of ATG.
The straw that broke this camel's back was this thread on _coal, where someone amazingly enough called Kirk/Spock "ATG".
Okay, but even complaints about ATG, as stupid as they are (and which I have seen plenty of), do not equate to "people who ship slash or femslash are ruining fandom" or "all same-sex shipping is bad"). For one thing, judging by the ships that get discussed there, the majority of ffa ships slash or femslash of some stripe. The people who complain about ATG are often snobby and assholish, but that is not the same as homophobic, and statistically they likely have slash or femslash ships themselves.
Meme is not a monolith, context matters, there's no way to read an anon's comments on a single thing in context unless they provide that context themselves, etc.
If what you're trying to say is that the ATG, etc rhetoric is disturbingly like things homophobes say, then I think there's some basis for that (again, lacking context about people to know the rest of their opinions), but you are going a couple of bridges too far.
Signed, A Bi Nonnie
I should have known better than to try venting about this here.
All I'm going to say is, it doesn't matter whether or not you (generic "you") ship slash or femslash or are gay or straight or bi or whatever. On an anoncomm like FFA or _coal all I have to go off of is the words you are saying, and if you say things like "This ship of two guys who are good friends is ATG" or "ew, $showwithcanonfemslash, get this migratory SJW shit away from me", I can't know your history. All I know is that the words you are saying are hostile toward slash and femslash. And slash and femslash are not as divorced from reality as some people insist: Their defining feature is the genders of the characters involved.
A lot of the anti-femslash thing is that one troll. They totally ruined Undertale discussion with their bizarre hatred of Alphys.
And you're tarring a hell of a lot of people, namely just about all of fandom, with one brush because of your butthurt, justified butthurt or not.
Maybe you should take a good look at, say, this thread and see that that is what people are having a problem with.
This. I can't speak to Coal because I don't do Yuletide and so I don't have much reason to glance over there unless someone links me to a funny/wanky thread. But I've been on FFA since 2011 and it is OVERWHELMINGLY full of dudeslash fans, with a small but very enthusiastic minority of femslashers, and a helluva lot of bi and lesbian nonnies.
Yes, there are some disgusting homophobes there (although I should note that some of the noisiest ones there are also known trolls, like WTNVHA or Cupcake), but for the most part the people complaining about Migratory Slash/Femslash Fandom, Any Two Guys/Girls fic, and so forth, are not covertly homophobic het fans bitching about the existence of non-het ships. Meme demographics are such that the odds are overwhelmingly that most such complaints are coming from slashers/femslashers who are grumpy about certain popular cliques of shippers and popular tropes that they consider to be bland and samey and repetitively generic.
They're not complaining that slash exists, they're complaining that so much of the time in big fandoms you can go read a popular Arthur/Eames fic that is damn near indistinguishable from what you'd get if you search-and-replaced the names on a Clint/Coulson fic. They're complaining that they want sexy, kinky, even dark-and-fucked-up femslash and they keep finding fandoms where the F/F fic is mostly pure-and-fluffy handholding. They don't want slash and femslash to go away, they want more of it that caters to their specific tastes.
/signed, Another Bi Nonnie
Yeah, and isn't the Undertale troll the same lesbophobic one who trolls up the Steven Universe threads? And also the ridiculously over the top Manly Gay Troll from the Night Vale threads?