Naughty Girls and Gay Male Romance/Porn: Slash Fiction, Boys' Love Manga, and Other Works by Female" Cross-Voyeurs" in the US Academic Discourses
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Carola Katharina Bauer Naughty Girls and Gay Male Romance/Porn Slash Fiction, Boys’ Love Manga, and Other Works by Female “Cross-Voyeurs” in the U.S. Academic Discourses Anchor Academic Publishing Bauer, Carola Katharina: Naughty Girls and Gay Male Romance/Porn: Slash Fiction, Boys’ Love Manga, and Other Works by Female “Cross-Voyeurs” in the U.S. Academic Discourses. Hamburg, Diplomica Verlag GmbH 2012 ISBN: 978-3-95489-001-9 Print: Anchor Academic Publishing, an Imprint of Diplomica® Verlag GmbH, Hamburg, 2012 Bibliographical Information of the German National Library: The German National Library lists this publication in the German National Bibliography. Detailed bibliographic data can be found at: http://dnb.d-nb.de The digital publication (eBook) of this work with the ISBN 978-3-95489-501-4 can be purchased on the general market or directly from the publisher. All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. Dieses Werk ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Die dadurch begründeten Rechte, insbesondere die der Übersetzung, des Nachdrucks, des Vortrags, der Entnahme von Abbildungen und Tabellen, der Funksendung, der Mikroverfilmung oder der Vervielfältigung auf anderen Wegen und der Speicherung in Datenverarbeitungsanlagen, bleiben, auch bei nur auszugsweiser Verwertung, vorbehalten. Eine Vervielfältigung dieses Werkes oder von Teilen dieses Werkes ist auch im Einzelfall nur in den Grenzen der gesetzlichen Bestimmungen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in der jeweils geltenden Fassung zulässig. Sie ist grundsätzlich vergütungspflichtig. Zuwiderhandlungen unterliegen den Strafbestimmungen des Urheberrechtes. Die Wiedergabe von Gebrauchsnamen, Handelsnamen, Warenbezeichnungen usw. in diesem Werk berechtigt auch ohne besondere Kennzeichnung nicht zu der Annahme, dass solche Namen im Sinne der Warenzeichen- und Markenschutz-Gesetzgebung als frei zu betrachten wären und daher von jedermann benutzt werden dürften. Die Informationen in diesem Werk wurden mit Sorgfalt erarbeitet. Dennoch können Fehler nicht vollständig ausgeschlossen werden, und der Diplomica Verlag, die Autoren oder Übersetzer übernehmen keine juristische Verantwortung oder irgendeine Haftung für evtl. verbliebene fehlerhafte Angaben und deren Folgen. © Anchor Academic Publishing ein Imprint der Diplomica® Verlag GmbH http://www.diplomica-verlag.de, Hamburg 2012 Printed in Germany Table of Contents 1. Introduction: John Donne and “American Girl-on-Girl Action” vs. the Strange Case of Female “Cross-Voyeurs” .................................................................................. 1 2. Theoretical Framework: Queer Theory Meets Feminism Meets Foucauldian Discourse Analysis .......................................................................................................... 5 2.1 A “Deliberately Disruptive” Challenge to Heterosexism: Queer Theory and Its Key Concepts .............. 5 2.2 Troubling Gender & Sexuality: Judith Butler “in the Interstices” of Feminist and Queer Theory ........... 9 2.3 Technologies of Power/Knowledge: Using Foucauldian Discourse Analysis ........................................ 13 3. “Cross-Writing” Female Novelists under Scrutiny: Mary Renault & Others in the U.S. Academic Discourses (1969 – Today) .................................................................. 16 3.1 Gay Male Fiction by Women – An Inventory ......................................................................................... 16 3.2 From Victims of “Misfortune” to “Fag Hags” and the “New Couple”: Speaking about (Heterosexual) Women and Gay Men since 1969 ........................................................................................................... 19 3.3 About the Three Ways to Conceptualize Your “Faghagging” Novelist: Interpretations of “Cross- Writing” Women and Their Works in U.S. Academia ............................................................................ 25 3.3.1 The (Heterosexual) Woman as Empathic Outsider and Mediator – Mary Renault and Patricia Nell Warren in Traditional Literary Criticism around 1970 ....................................................... 27 3.3.2 About “Fag Hags” on “Power Trips” and Their Fake “Ersatz Works” – Bradley & Others in the Works of Gay Male Intellectuals and Academics since the 1970s ......................................... 31 3.3.3 The Feminist and the Lesbian “Factor”: Interpreting Mary Renault & Marguerite Yourcenar from a Third Point of View in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s ........................................................ 34 3.4 Heresies, Girlfags, and “Faghagging” Novelists – A Conclusion Regarding the “Do’s and Don’ts” of the Academic Discourse(s) about Renault & Other Cross-Writers ......................................................... 39 4. Female “Cross-Readers”: Talking about “Textual Poachers” and Slash Fiction in American Fan Fiction Studies since the 1980s ........................................................... 44 4.1 Snape and Harry Sitting in a Tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G: Defining the Genre of Slash Fiction ....................... 44 4.2 A Fateful Encounter: Feminist Theory and Media Studies Meet Slash Fiction – The Beginnings of an Academic Debate (1985-1992) ............................................................................................................... 48 4.2.1 “Pornography by Women for Women, with Love”: The Pornography Wars, Joanna Russ, Patricia Frazer Lamb, Diana Veith, and K/S Fiction in the 1980s ............................................. 49 4.2.2 The “Guerilla Tactics” of “Textual Poachers”: Slash Fiction Fandom Meets Media Studies – Henry Jenkins, Constance Penley, and Camille Bacon-Smith (1988-1992) ................................ 55 4.3 “Let’s Talk about Slash, Baby.” Characteristics of an Academic Debate (1985-Today) ........................ 59 4.3.1 Shrieking Teens, Divorced Housewives, and Their Mediocre Fiction: Slash Writers/Readers as the “Other” Fans in Scholarly Accounts ..................................................................................... 61 4.3.2 Women’s “All-too-often Purple (Gay) Prose” – Genre and Gender Essentialism in the Academic Discourse about Slash Fiction ..................................................................................................... 65 4.3.3 Subversive/Queer Pleasures? Explaining “Normal Female Interest in Men Bonking” ............... 71 4.4 A Tale of Two Academic Discourses: Slash Fiction Fans vs. “Cross-Writing” Novelists ..................... 77 5. Boys’ Love for Women, Made in Japan: Yaoi and Shounen-ai Manga in the U.S. Academic Discourse (1983-2011) ................................................................................. 80 5.1 Beautiful Men and “Rotten Girls”: Boys’ Love Manga in Japan and the USA ...................................... 80 5.2 Female “Cross-voyeurism,” an Intrinsically Japanese Phenomenon? Yaoi and Shounen-ai in U.S. Scholarly Accounts since 1983 ............................................................................................................... 86 5.2.1 Robots, Samurai, and Pokémon: North America, Japan, and (Techno-) Orientalism .................. 86 5.2.2 The Threat of “Tentacle Rape” and Those Poor, Oppressed Geishas: The Portrayal of BL as a Medium of Empowerment for Japanese Women .......................................................................... 87 5.2.3 Queer Japan: Conceptualizing a “Strange” Sexual Culture, or the Benefits of Exoticism ........ 911 5.3 An Exciting “Import” and Its American Counterpart – Discussing Boys’ Love and Slash Fiction in the U.S. Academic Discourses ...................................................................................................................... 97 6. Conclusion: Theorizing Female “Cross-Voyeurism” in U.S. Academia – A “Vicious Circle” ............................................................................................................ 99 7. Works Cited .................................................................................................................. 106 1. Introduction: John Donne and “American Girl-on-Girl Action” vs. the Strange Case of Female “Cross-Voyeurs” “Chandler: I was just watching regular porn. Monica: [Relieved] Really? Chandler: Yes, just some old fashioned, American, girl-on-girl action. Monica: You have no idea how happy that makes me!”1 In the Friends episode “The One with the Sharks,” aired in October 2002, one of the sitcom’s main characters, Monica Geller, catches her husband, Chandler, masturbating – apparently, while watching a shark documentary. Convinced that her partner is secretly into “shark porn,” Monica tries to accept and even re-enact his “perverse” desires – only to discover with quite some relief that Chandler just changed the channel when she came into the room and that he originally was getting off on “some regular […] old fashioned, American, girl-on-girl action.” The feminist theorist Rebecca Whisnant has criticized this scene as being one of the “pop cultural references” teaching women “that men’s pornography use is inevitable and completely legitimate, and that the way to be a cool, modern, liberated woman is to not only tolerate it, but to join in” (Whisnant 16) – a harsh judgment which can be partly explained by the radical feminist, anti- pornography stance Whisnant takes in her paper “Confronting