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damkiannaThis? Makes me cringe. I could probably rant for quite a while about how much I disagree with what this guy has to say, if I could make it all the way through the article, but one pair of lines in particular made me go "bzuh?" and I stopped reading very soon after: "Why ... would any woman want to write or read such fiction? Our goal, when we began collaborating in 1994, was to answer this question."
Now, possibly I am being hasty, here; pretty much everything in this entry is the result of a few minutes' reading and a snap judgment, and it is certainly possible that I'm not giving Mr. Symons a chance.
But ... your goal was to take the assumption that every single person (person, not woman, because not everybody who reads and/or writes slash is a chick - or straight, for that matter) who consumes slash fiction does it for exactly the same mysterious sekrit reason, and RUN LIKE HELL with it? Oh, VERY SOUND METHODOLOGY, THERE. And the assumption that slash somehow provides a special window into the general female psyche, when not a paragraph ago there was a distinct note made that the second author of the article, a woman, was just as confuzzled by the appeal of slash as Symons himself, is pretty idiotic.
Fandom and slash are really interesting phenomena, and I understand the appeal of examining them with the hope of better understanding people through the pursuit of that examination. But the minute you start making sweeping (and stupid) assumptions about the individuals involved - that they are all women, and straight ones at that; that their motivations are all the same; that those motivations will give you insight into all women ever, even those who do not consume slash - you have just so completely lost me. Ugh.
Now, possibly I am being hasty, here; pretty much everything in this entry is the result of a few minutes' reading and a snap judgment, and it is certainly possible that I'm not giving Mr. Symons a chance.
But ... your goal was to take the assumption that every single person (person, not woman, because not everybody who reads and/or writes slash is a chick - or straight, for that matter) who consumes slash fiction does it for exactly the same mysterious sekrit reason, and RUN LIKE HELL with it? Oh, VERY SOUND METHODOLOGY, THERE. And the assumption that slash somehow provides a special window into the general female psyche, when not a paragraph ago there was a distinct note made that the second author of the article, a woman, was just as confuzzled by the appeal of slash as Symons himself, is pretty idiotic.
Fandom and slash are really interesting phenomena, and I understand the appeal of examining them with the hope of better understanding people through the pursuit of that examination. But the minute you start making sweeping (and stupid) assumptions about the individuals involved - that they are all women, and straight ones at that; that their motivations are all the same; that those motivations will give you insight into all women ever, even those who do not consume slash - you have just so completely lost me. Ugh.
