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I was having a conversation earlier this week with a real life friend who's aware of my passion for writing m/m fiction but doesn't really understand the reason for it, and a couple of thoughts came to mind. I know this is a topic that's been discussed to death in slash fandom, but I thought I'd share my random musings here.
First, I thought of my own experiences as a single mother, and how being the only adult in the house has changed the way I view my own gender role. For example, the other day RJ found a scorpion on the floor of our kitchen. When I was married, my response to such a situation would have been to climb on top of the nearest chair and yell for my husband to come and kill it. But because I was the only adult there, my initial response was to calm RJ down, then to go out and find a decent-sized shoe so I could squash the thing myself. Then I picked it up and flushed it.
None of which really has anything to do with why I write slash, but it raised some interesting thoughts about traditionally accepted gender roles and how easy it is to fall into them. Men are the "protectors", women are the "nurturers", etc. That's a tremendous hurdle when writing about two individuals of opposite sex involved in an intimate relationship. When writing m/f fiction, gender roles have to be taken into account even if they aren't addressed directly, because societal and cultural influences are so very powerful. You can certainly write a story where the princess rides off to rescue the knight, but the assumption of most readers is probably going to be that it was written solely to make a statement of some kind. :/
But that goes away when there are two men (or two women) involved in a relationship together. It's like having only one adult in the house.... Without someone of the opposite sex there to force the other character into certain preassigned roles, there's more freedom to focus on how Character A would interact with Character B, instead of how a "man" would interact with a "woman". If that makes any sense?
All of which is a huge oversimplification, I know. I'm sure there are as many different reasons for writing m/m fiction as there are people who write it (one of which is that reading about two men together is just darn HOT ^_^). But I do like the thought that choosing those two characters to focus on gives a writer more freedom to explore the intricacies of their characters, instead of getting bogged down by gender "politics".
First, I thought of my own experiences as a single mother, and how being the only adult in the house has changed the way I view my own gender role. For example, the other day RJ found a scorpion on the floor of our kitchen. When I was married, my response to such a situation would have been to climb on top of the nearest chair and yell for my husband to come and kill it. But because I was the only adult there, my initial response was to calm RJ down, then to go out and find a decent-sized shoe so I could squash the thing myself. Then I picked it up and flushed it.
None of which really has anything to do with why I write slash, but it raised some interesting thoughts about traditionally accepted gender roles and how easy it is to fall into them. Men are the "protectors", women are the "nurturers", etc. That's a tremendous hurdle when writing about two individuals of opposite sex involved in an intimate relationship. When writing m/f fiction, gender roles have to be taken into account even if they aren't addressed directly, because societal and cultural influences are so very powerful. You can certainly write a story where the princess rides off to rescue the knight, but the assumption of most readers is probably going to be that it was written solely to make a statement of some kind. :/
But that goes away when there are two men (or two women) involved in a relationship together. It's like having only one adult in the house.... Without someone of the opposite sex there to force the other character into certain preassigned roles, there's more freedom to focus on how Character A would interact with Character B, instead of how a "man" would interact with a "woman". If that makes any sense?
All of which is a huge oversimplification, I know. I'm sure there are as many different reasons for writing m/m fiction as there are people who write it (one of which is that reading about two men together is just darn HOT ^_^). But I do like the thought that choosing those two characters to focus on gives a writer more freedom to explore the intricacies of their characters, instead of getting bogged down by gender "politics".
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