I sure think a femslash fandom exists - I'm in it for sure, after all! Well, it mostly is for japanimation/manga, not for western media, because anime usually is easier for femmeslash. Female characters actually interact, for one. Sure, manga characters often face sexist tropes, but so do characters in western media, equally so, if not worse. I generally find that female anime characters have it slightly better, as long as you don't go for big shonen fandoms.
The central feature is a kind of wish to have canon ships and focus on them. The femslash/yuri fandom I am a part of really likes canonical(ish) ships and latches to canons where it can get that. Like the Nanoha fandom, for example, where two women end up with a career in the military, raising a kid together, and sharing a bed, and being called a family unit by everyone else. Fandom obviously takes that as canon enough ^^
I am not sure how much it differs from het fandom/guyslash fandom, because I am mostly an exclusive femslash fan. I generally cannot stand het (because I get bombarded with heteronormativity IRL, thus I avoid het ships in stories, and even make a conscious choice to avoid media that mostly is het).
The main interactions I have seem to be forum based.
The canons most femslash fans I know are familiar with are Mariasama ga miteiru, Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha, Kannazuki no Miko. Less so Strawberry Panic, Utena, Aoi Hana, and Sasameki Koto. All those do have canonical lesbian characters, or at least VERY deep subtext.
My personal experiences as a femslasher? Avoid big fandom communities like the plague. Only recently have people stopped bashing femslash on principle. A couple years ago, people at, say, animesuki.com would routinely deny that even canonical lesbian characters could be lesbian. A decade ago, people would make up fake interviews to "prove" that a lesbian character was, somehow, actually a guy and thus didn't count ("Prince Uranus", a campaign to purge those scary lesbians from Sailor Moon). Since I started to be in fandom back then, my experience with non-femslash fandom has been very negative, and I generally shy back from it. I greatly prefer the smaller, femslash oriented places.
Those are my thoughts, anyway. ^^; Hope they aren't too boring or useless.
Here by metafandom
I sure think a femslash fandom exists - I'm in it for sure, after all! Well, it mostly is for japanimation/manga, not for western media, because anime usually is easier for femmeslash. Female characters actually interact, for one. Sure, manga characters often face sexist tropes, but so do characters in western media, equally so, if not worse. I generally find that female anime characters have it slightly better, as long as you don't go for big shonen fandoms.
The central feature is a kind of wish to have canon ships and focus on them. The femslash/yuri fandom I am a part of really likes canonical(ish) ships and latches to canons where it can get that. Like the Nanoha fandom, for example, where two women end up with a career in the military, raising a kid together, and sharing a bed, and being called a family unit by everyone else. Fandom obviously takes that as canon enough ^^
I am not sure how much it differs from het fandom/guyslash fandom, because I am mostly an exclusive femslash fan. I generally cannot stand het (because I get bombarded with heteronormativity IRL, thus I avoid het ships in stories, and even make a conscious choice to avoid media that mostly is het).
The main interactions I have seem to be forum based.
The canons most femslash fans I know are familiar with are Mariasama ga miteiru, Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha, Kannazuki no Miko. Less so Strawberry Panic, Utena, Aoi Hana, and Sasameki Koto. All those do have canonical lesbian characters, or at least VERY deep subtext.
My personal experiences as a femslasher? Avoid big fandom communities like the plague.
Only recently have people stopped bashing femslash on principle. A couple years ago, people at, say, animesuki.com would routinely deny that even canonical lesbian characters could be lesbian. A decade ago, people would make up fake interviews to "prove" that a lesbian character was, somehow, actually a guy and thus didn't count ("Prince Uranus", a campaign to purge those scary lesbians from Sailor Moon).
Since I started to be in fandom back then, my experience with non-femslash fandom has been very negative, and I generally shy back from it. I greatly prefer the smaller, femslash oriented places.
Those are my thoughts, anyway. ^^; Hope they aren't too boring or useless.