It's been a while since I waded into this particular subject (tumblr's atmosphere rendered it a dangerous conversation to have).
Looking back over my own archives, I noticed that the reduction in "hard" femslash happened right alongside the continuing overlap between fandom spaces, and radical feminist oriented spaces, where "radical feminist" specifically refers to second-wave (1960-1980) regressive and anti-sex feminism.
The increased amount of "purity" culture, and its overlap with fandom spaces due to tumblr's entire mechanics, led to a general sanitizing of fandom content that began with F/F content, presumably because radical feminism prizes F/F relationships in a very unhealthy, pedestal fashion.
And so, women's relationships with other women were pedestalled, and over about 3-5 years, femslash became a much more genteel, coy space.
Which, I mean, fair enough. I love fluff and I absolutely mainline coffee shop/florist AUs. But when the ONLY thing your fandom has on offer is sugar cookies, you end up with an iron deficiency that can only be fixed by eating a steak so rare it's bleeding.
I'm hoping that as fandom migrates away from tumblr and into more a more focused-communities system again, we'll see a resurgence in this "lost art" of making tough as nails lesbian storylines.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2018-12-18 04:40 am (UTC)Looking back over my own archives, I noticed that the reduction in "hard" femslash happened right alongside the continuing overlap between fandom spaces, and radical feminist oriented spaces, where "radical feminist" specifically refers to second-wave (1960-1980) regressive and anti-sex feminism.
The increased amount of "purity" culture, and its overlap with fandom spaces due to tumblr's entire mechanics, led to a general sanitizing of fandom content that began with F/F content, presumably because radical feminism prizes F/F relationships in a very unhealthy, pedestal fashion.
And so, women's relationships with other women were pedestalled, and over about 3-5 years, femslash became a much more genteel, coy space.
Which, I mean, fair enough. I love fluff and I absolutely mainline coffee shop/florist AUs. But when the ONLY thing your fandom has on offer is sugar cookies, you end up with an iron deficiency that can only be fixed by eating a steak so rare it's bleeding.
I'm hoping that as fandom migrates away from tumblr and into more a more focused-communities system again, we'll see a resurgence in this "lost art" of making tough as nails lesbian storylines.