drst:
thisisevenharderthannamingablog:
Which are the biggest ‘ships in fandom? On Monday, The Daily Dot posed this question. Today, I have answers about the most common relationships on AO3. (with a healthy dose of caveats, as usual!)
Holy wow.
Note the ridiculously high number of m/m ships, the relatively low number of het and/or canon ships, and the complete lack of f/f ships on that list.
I am not entirely sure what that says about fandom on a large scale, but it definitely says something.
This is especially interesting when you consider that fandom tends to represent as female (I have no hard data on this, it’s a personal observation from my interactions in various fandoms spanning ranged genres). But given that women are 50% of the population at any given time, this still presents a skew: males and their relationships are heavily represented while women are pushed to the side or ignored.
The fact that females in fandom focus on male sexuality rather than female sexuality might partly hinge on the reality that female sexuality has always been repressed, discouraged, made to be taboo and dirty, and something to be ashamed about—at least in American culture.
Women are taught to fear their bodies. Not talk about them (think about all the feminine hygiene commercials featuring blue liquid, or how about the fact that you almost never hear vagina said on t.v. but male parts are frequently discussed). Never explore them (male masturbation is so normalized that it features as punchlines in prime time sitcoms, but female masturbation is relegated to HBO series locked behind a paywall). Focus the majority of their efforts on enhancing male sexuality. (How many condom ads have you seen today? How about erectile dysfunction ads?) In recent years this has started to change…but only slightly.
Knowing this, it’s actually really easy to see why there are these high numbers of m/m, and the near lack of f/f. Interest and popularity of f/f would require a certain amount of female sexual liberation, whereas male sexuality has long been liberated, celebrated, and under the spotlight. There’s no need to defend the sex lives of m/m couples, because men are “allowed” to be sexual; women? That gets into a tangled mess of expectation, reality, stereotypes…
And then there’s the other side of the coin, something we can consider. Women live in a world where their sexual reality is one of imminent danger. There is a constant threat of sexual violence that underscores their lives. Even when they are not consciously thinking about it, part of their unconscious mind is weighing the dangers around them, always primed to trigger a fight-or-flight. Their control over their bodies can and do get taken from them.
This is a woman’s reality.
So, perhaps, weaving stories that objectifies and focuses on the gender they are taught to fear relieves them of some of the anxiety that sex can create. Even fictional sex.
If women don’t exist in fiction, then there’s no fear that something bad will happen to her—and thus, vicariously, to ourselves.
(Note that this doesn’t touch on LGBTQ issues, mostly because being a cisgendered hetero I didn’t feel too qualified to ramble about it.)
Too great not to reblog.
It is worth noting that these numbers also include fics where said ship is in the background, where nobody has sex, some where the ship might just be a passing mention.
I feel like it’s an even huger problem than just the sexual aspects, because these ships that involve women are hard to find even in the background, even in the corners where sex isn’t even really part of the story.
It pisses me off, but shy of writing a few thousand femslash fics, I don’t know what to do about it
ahhhhh this is so interesting
*puts on the fandom fandom hat*
my theory on why m/m is by far the most common type of pairing in fic is essentially that due to the fact that there are many more well-developed male characters in a lot of shows/books, there is obviously more to go at. like if you look at BBC Sherlock & SPN, by some way the most developed characters are male. when a lot of things just don’t pass Bechdel your potential ships are going to be dominated by m/m.
I think then there’s also a] straight girls liking the idea of two hot guys getting it on, a la straight boys who like the idea of hot girls getting it on, and b] queer girls who maybe wanna write about queer romance and due to their favourite fandom having more developed/interesting male characters than female, end up writing m/m.
What capricorn-child said. It’s really difficult to come up with well thought-out fic for female pairings in a lot of fandoms, because there’s so little to go on with the female characters. They are plot points for the male ones to build on and from whom they gain man-pain and/or emotional support. Before we can achieve the much-needed proliferation of femslash, we need a set of female characters that actually pass muster. Moreover, we need fandoms where there’s not just one good female character, but at least 2 (otherwise shipping gets a little difficult)
Yeah bullshit, bullshit and bullshit on your excuses.
You will write fic about universes with an all powerful Time Lord that can regenerate an entire body, people who coexist with fucking dragons and monsters, but you can’t write fic of a world where women are not raped because of insufficient imagination? Bullshit.
You will write fic about a male character who had 2 minutes of screentime, invent his entire life story, just so he can get fucked by your favorite white dude, but you lack imagination to flesh out a female character who is actually in the cast?
You handwave the fact that gay men get fucking killed all over the world every day with the claim that male sexuality is so much more accepted, completely ignoring that the only male sexuality that is accepted and normalized is straight? And use that to justify your lack of a spine when it comes to embracing and exploring female sexuality? You can write gay male sex, which female fans writing fic cannot ever experience, and is completely taboo in huge swaths of the world, but writing a woman having a good orgasm which is something you have actual experience with is too shocking for you?
Give me a fucking break, you little pathetic shit stains. You’re cowards, too desperate to hide from examining your own internalized misogyny. I’ve dealt with you before and I have no fucking patience for your ilk at this point.
^^^BLOOP
POUND THE FUCKING ALARM WE HAVE A FUCKING WINNER
tbh i am really sick of every fic and every pairing being some weird half-assed slash pairing i want some cute f/f and het stuff to read for once
All right I’m sure no one will care about the opinion of Random Inactive Guy, but
First lemme say for 100% that I am all for there being way more decent het and especially F/F fanfic in every fandom what needs it. That is definitely a thing that should happen. I’m well aware that what amount there is tends to be pretty bad, especially towards the role the women characters play in it.
However, as a gay man I would like to point this out: 80% of those M/M fanfics have about as much to do with actual gay people as My Little Pony has to do with actual real-life horses. They are fantasy teh yaois BLs setups which completely ignore anything to do with actual real-life stuff; many of them even handwave off the “gay” thing by implying or outright stating that this particular INSTANCE of it is somehow “special” and not subject to anything like real gay stuff. Many fans of M/M slash are actually pretty homophobic.
So associating those stories with male sexuality at all is completely misleading. It’s not about any form of real-life sexuality; it’s about an idealized sexuality that is extremely binary, extremely role-based, and above all, extremely ridiculous.