Why is everyone in fanfiction gay

To put it simply, this term shows how people attempt to make heterosexuality the norm. By fetishizing lesbianism, the porn industry is basically saying that lesbians only exist for straight male pleasure. This issue has been thoroughly discussed when it comes to the issue of lesbian porn.

But often these heteronormative stereotypes are used in fanfiction. I have had several fanfic authors tell me that they added slash ships to their stories because they knew it would get them more views. I should also state that I will be focusing largely on slash fanfiction and not femslash partly because there is more slash fanfiction, but mostly because it is largely believed that most fanfiction is written by straight women for other straight women.

For the rest of this post, I will largely focus on the idea that slash fanfiction is fetishizing gay relationships. 2: It's rare to see gay couples (or LGBTQ+ couples of any kind, for that matter) in mainstream TV, movies, books, and games, and rarer still to see them done well.

They want it to be more representative of themselves and how they look at the world. One reason is that it erases any experience or identity of homosexuality by asserting that homosexuality must have male and female gender roles to be valid—basically claiming that homosexuality is really just heterosexuality with same sex partners.

This reduces lesbianism from a legitimate sexuality to a fetish. One of the reasons that fanfiction is criticized for fetishizing homosexuality is that it is mostly written by straight women for straight women. Slash fanfiction is, similarly, often accused both of casting gay couples in straight roles and of fetishizing homosexuality.

I have briefly touched on this before, but that post mostly dealt with sex, which plays into fetishization, which I will get into in a second. There is also just a basic understanding of sex. One of my favorite authors is asexual but predominantly writes fanfiction about gay male couples.

Lesbian porn is almost never made with lesbian audiences in mind. So of course in that AU domestic fanfic Kirk will be fulfilling the male gender roles and Spock will then get to fulfill the female ones, meaning Kirk will be protective and aggressive while Spock is loving and nurturing.

LGBTQ+ people often find solace in reading fan fiction about their favourite franchises on platforms like AO3. Here are some reasons why. In this context, it would mean having a gay couple act straight or reflect heterosexuality in some way. Or there is so much debate over the power dynamics and roles in a relationship that eventually the fandom produces a well-rounded and thought-out sense of the couple without confining them to heterosexual gender roles.

Rather, it is made for and marketed toward straight men. In trying to understand it through a queer perspective, one can, thus, notice why a queer-populated fanfiction community—such as AO3, for instance—would queer the canon world, introducing queer characters, relationships, and themes.

Which is why I used them in this example to show how weird it can be to put stereotypical male and female gender roles onto two very male characters who are gay. In doing so, fanfic can become both degrading and homophobic. Rather, I will look at how relationships are portrayed in slash fanfiction.

Furthermore, despite the sexuality of the author, they could still be writing the fanfic with the intent to appeal to a straight audience. This is offensive for several reasons. So for now I am not going to mention sex at all. Another way something can become heteronormative is when, despite the source material depicting gay characters in a sexual relationship, it is written primarily with straight viewers in mind.

With gay couples, one of the two partners almost always has their gender identity taken from them, whether by casting one half of a gay couple in a female role or one half of a lesbian couple in a male role. In my own experience, most fanfic authors appeared to be women, but not all are straight.

But this debate also plays out in what gender roles the characters are cast in within fanfics. A few reasons. Fanfiction gives queer writers and readers the possibility to reclaim an original story and add, change or completely overturn the narrative. I have always felt that one of the biggest arguments against slash fanfiction is that it often takes gay romances and makes them heteronormative.

Many times when a pairing is collectively conceived by a fandom, there is often a debate over who is the man and who is the woman in the relationship. There are a lot of issues to unpack here and for that reason this might end up being a topic I go back to again. 1: Most fanfic writers are women and women tend to like seeing gay couples together, kind of like how there are guys who like to watch lesbian porn.

Captain Kirk is a big tough manly man, right?