Oops! I sent this post without signing in. My apologies. Excuse the long reply - been told I "talk a lot".
I do know about the third volume! I already preordered it. :)
What got me hot was hradzka's comment for several reasons. One: there is no such thing as a real gay man and there is no such thing as a slash man. Slash is a genre. Let's not overcomplicate things to suit political views.
Two: my sister writes slash and when asked she said she has no interest in the romance of a woman. She is an outsider to her own characters and has no mental incliniation of putting herself in them. Although, considering that she admits to fingering and using phallic toys on her man, I jokingly tell her she's a top in a woman's body.
Not all (female) slash writers share her personal preferences. Every mind is its own universe; we may share interests but never for the same reasons.
Third reason: I knew a Muslim girl way back in college who told me of the dangers women faced in Tehran if they were caught reading - let alone writing! And here I see Hradzka using specious and twisted psycho analysis disguised as literary criticism in an attempt to shephard what free women write - because there is not enough reading material that caters to her feminist interests.
There is no such thing as transitioning literature, just as there is no such thing as a frog evolving into a bird in biology. She should remember that if you are not a heterosexual white man, our voices were cut down until only ninety years ago. As we enter this new century, blacks, women, and gays are rising in all ventures. It doesn't necessarily mean that a woman who writes slash should be a feminist or transition from gay romances to hetero romances, no more than a black person should transition from writing all Japanese characters to more black characters.
If you are a free woman, write freely. If you are a critic, approach literature with humility, curiosity, and above all REVERENCE. When you read, you enter someone's mind/universe. You are a visitor, whether for pleasure or to study - not to demand how things be done there for any reason or excuse - that is not a critic's job.
As a feminist, you might be interested to know that women have strongly (often times lasciviously :)) supported the romance between two men since the age of the Sumerians. There have been excavations from Asia to the West of cups, plates, vases, with images depicting two men embracing and a woman or pair of women peeping on them. In pre-Christian eras, sexuality was not repressed or compartmentalized, even so there is an equal number of such images in the Renaissance era. Women have always been writing "slash" before "slash" became a genre, for centuries, even millennia past. It is NOT new trend; it is being more widely recognized after centuries of repression as society progresses.
I highly recommend Mary Renault. Strong woman in the forties, wrote well-informed and beautiful historcal novels based on Greek homosexual culture. Persian Boy is my favorite, then The Last of the Wine.
And if we share the same taste for stories like Captive Prince with beautiful men and powerful women, you will enjoy Katherine Kerr's Deverry and Westland series. Rhodry, a banished prince with a gorgeous face, his lover,Jill, a young swordswoman, daughter of a mercenary, political intrigue, battles, some homosexual elements (soldiers that are smitten with Rhodry. Unfortunately for them, he's straight). Oh and Jill is blond, tough, doesn't bullshit, and has a potty mouth. You'll love her:)
Re: real gay if men write it, fake gay if women write it, even if they write the same thing
I do know about the third volume! I already preordered it. :)
What got me hot was hradzka's comment for several reasons. One: there is no such thing as a real gay man and there is no such thing as a slash man. Slash is a genre. Let's not overcomplicate things to suit political views.
Two: my sister writes slash and when asked she said she has no interest in the romance of a woman. She is an outsider to her own characters and has no mental incliniation of putting herself in them. Although, considering that she admits to fingering and using phallic toys on her man, I jokingly tell her she's a top in a woman's body.
Not all (female) slash writers share her personal preferences. Every mind is its own universe; we may share interests but never for the same reasons.
Third reason: I knew a Muslim girl way back in college who told me of the dangers women faced in Tehran if they were caught reading - let alone writing! And here I see Hradzka using specious and twisted psycho analysis disguised as literary criticism in an attempt to shephard what free women write - because there is not enough reading material that caters to her feminist interests.
There is no such thing as transitioning literature, just as there is no such thing as a frog evolving into a bird in biology. She should remember that if you are not a heterosexual white man, our voices were cut down until only ninety years ago. As we enter this new century, blacks, women, and gays are rising in all ventures. It doesn't necessarily mean that a woman who writes slash should be a feminist or transition from gay romances to hetero romances, no more than a black person should transition from writing all Japanese characters to more black characters.
If you are a free woman, write freely. If you are a critic, approach literature with humility, curiosity, and above all REVERENCE. When you read, you enter someone's mind/universe. You are a visitor, whether for pleasure or to study - not to demand how things be done there for any reason or excuse - that is not a critic's job.
As a feminist, you might be interested to know that women have strongly (often times lasciviously :)) supported the romance between two men since the age of the Sumerians. There have been excavations from Asia to the West of cups, plates, vases, with images depicting two men embracing and a woman or pair of women peeping on them. In pre-Christian eras, sexuality was not repressed or compartmentalized, even so there is an equal number of such images in the Renaissance era. Women have always been writing "slash" before "slash" became a genre, for centuries, even millennia past. It is NOT new trend; it is being more widely recognized after centuries of repression as society progresses.
I highly recommend Mary Renault. Strong woman in the forties, wrote well-informed and beautiful historcal novels based on Greek homosexual culture. Persian Boy is my favorite, then The Last of the Wine.
And if we share the same taste for stories like Captive Prince with beautiful men and powerful women, you will enjoy Katherine Kerr's Deverry and Westland series. Rhodry, a banished prince with a gorgeous face, his lover,Jill, a young swordswoman, daughter of a mercenary, political intrigue, battles, some homosexual elements (soldiers that are smitten with Rhodry. Unfortunately for them, he's straight). Oh and Jill is blond, tough, doesn't bullshit, and has a potty mouth. You'll love her:)