is it just "where the women are"?

[tellitslant]

So interestingly enough, someone who hadn't run across any of the recent femslash discussion asked me yesterday why Doctor Who femslash was so much better - bigger, easier to find, etc - than Stargate. I don't necessarily agree with the statement, but I understand where the perception comes from, and that is really making me think about femslash in general.

To an extent, I had the same experience - Who femslash was much more 'out there' than Stargate when I first went looking - and that was entirely contrary to my expectations. After all, the Stargates have and have had a fair handful of women, living in the same area, interacting with each other, in a military or semi-military organisation, who are decently interesting characters and very pretty. Who... has Rose, and my own thoughts on her aside, there's just not as much opportunity there, plus femslash has never been quite as big on the Cult of the One-Episode Guest Star as has boyslash or het. Even in oldschool Who, there's rarely more than one female regular - Nyssa and Tegan overlapped, and Susan and Barbara, but I think that's it - and most Who femslash seems to be newschool anyways.

For the record, I do think there's more SG femslash out there. My brief research reveals SG way over Who in both femslash06 and the FemGen Ficathon (not femslash, yes, but a decent crossover of fans, I think). But then, the Stargates have been around for ten seasons, while the newschool, freely shippy Who only has two under its belt, and I'm still gonna say that outside of these examples, I found Who much more easily than SG.

Both SG and Who are completely dominated by non-femslash pairings - the Stargates mainly have boyslash, while Who is overrun by Doctor/Rose. Does that say something about the fandom? Does the fact that the women aren't as crazy-popular in fandom-at-large translate into the amount of femslash? Why aren't the women as crazy-popular?

Stop. What about fandoms where femslash is big? Ensemble shows, say, where both sexes are present. I think BSG, obviously. Buffyverse to an extent. Grey's Anatomy. Alias, kinda. A couple of the cop shows that I don't watch or know much about - L&O, NCIS, I think. What does this say to me?

I have a feeling that I'm not getting out of this without being mean to the SG fandom, and I'm kind of sorry for that, but I keep trying to write this in a way that isn't and it's not working. But what I keep coming out with is that in the fandoms listed above, women are in power and empowered in a way that I just don't associate with SG fandom's view of their women. Everything that I saw as an observer of SG fandom was always "Teyla is boring" and "Weir is weak" and that sort of thing, which is part of the reason I never sought out SG canon. And now that I've seen SG, I am kind of bowled over wondering where people get that reaction from. So I think something in SG as a text is depowering women, and the fandom is letting it happen. I'm not entirely sure what, but I think that's the problem. I think part of it might be that SG is very much a military show where the men are the main military strength, but whatever it is, it pushes women out of the centre of fannish interest.

Who doesn't quite follow the same rules as above, but in a way it does. The central figure is certainly the male Doctor, but especially in newschool, the female companion is just as important. Rose particularly dictates a lot of what they do or try to do, and while I'll argue that she lost a lot of her autonomy through the end of the second season, she started out as a very powerful figure. And by default, by sheer lack of others, the companion is always the central female figure.

So sure, shows with powerful women draw the femslashers. This is no surprise. But if, if, we take my hypothesis up there, about letting the women be less in SG, then what does that say about the community? Do we need those powerful women before we start anything? Can't we make them better on our own, or pull out the interesting bits when there might not be as many? Boyslashers have always lived on that old phrase about "being subversive." If femslash is subversive, can't we be subversive in the way of empowering women where the show doesn't have or take the time?

Is this where femslash is falling down?



This is a post that I want people to tell me I'm wrong about and why. It's hugely subjective, so I want to see comments. Also, if those comments included Vala fic or a link to the huge SG femslash site that I'm obviously missing (and this would be a good time to mention both sg_femslash and dw_femslash), that might be nice too. ;)

Also, I have just discovered the fish_like_bikes SG Female Characters Kink and Cliche Challenge, ironically enough while I wasn't looking for it, so YAY for that.

Comments

[tellitslant]

I understand that previous to newschool Who fandom was very heavily male? That's really not the circles I tend to run in fannishly, though not deliberately, so I'm not very good at following the trends that way. But I find it interesting that you see the men ignorning the women in Who and the women ignoring the women in SG, for the same reasons more or less. Hrm.

determination to see any pairing other than the obvious central het one.
I think that is a huge, huge part of it. I suspect there aren't a lot of Chippers who write other ships - although I could be totally wrong on that - and the size and behaviour of that pairing's fandom tends to turn the multiship writers off it and onto anything else. And like calapine was mentioning today, Rose is a lot less annoying when she's not around the Doctor.

I think Who femslash seems bigger than it is because of that divide, too. Doctor/Rose is huge and the segment of fandom that is not Doctor/Rose is smaller, so the people that don't play with the Chippers see a smaller segment and everything seems bigger in it?

dw_slash does seem to be more active than dw_femslash, but more with oldschool stuff than I'd expect.

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

I understand that previous to newschool Who fandom was very heavily male?

Very. Such that it's always felt like the weird one of my fandoms. LJ-wise it always leaned female, but in the wider intarwebs it's always seemed mostly male.


But I find it interesting that you see the men ignorning the women in Who and the women ignoring the women in SG, for the same reasons more or less. Hrm.

There's probably some deep meaning behind the Companion Cults. I have no idea what it is. Hm. Might just be latching onto the women or something. One thing that might play into it is the way companions tend to get put down as worthless and then are often quite good when you actually see them in action. And of course they're the only people who get to have anything like evolving relationships with the Doctor. They're our emotional connection and all that malarkey.


I suspect there aren't a lot of Chippers who write other ships - although I could be totally wrong on that - and the size and behaviour of that pairing's fandom tends to turn the multiship writers off it and onto anything else.

I've noticed a shift over time where some of the Doctor/Rose BNFs moved away from the pairing a bit and into multishipping, though the mass of Chippers are, yeah, still in their OTP moment.


I think Who femslash seems bigger than it is because of that divide, too. Doctor/Rose is huge and the segment of fandom that is not Doctor/Rose is smaller, so the people that don't play with the Chippers see a smaller segment and everything seems bigger in it?

I think that's probably it. Doctor/Rose fic is so common it barely registers to me, but the other stuff I notice. In which there's a fair bit of femslash. (I should probably try to find some numbers based on the masterlist at who_otp, but maths scares me.