Picking the Collective Femslash Brain: Femslash as a Fandom

[dagas_isa]

If there is in fact, a collective brain, I'd like to ask it a few questions. I've recently been wondering about Femslash fandom as a whole and thinking about whether it exists and how it manifests.

• Does femslash fandom (as a larger entity) exist?
  
• If it does, what, other than the obvious (having at least one f/f ship), are the central features of femslash fandom?
  
• How is femslash fandom culture different from (or the same as?) het fandom/guyslash fandom?
  
• What are the main fannish interactions in femslash fandom?
  
• Are there any femslash fans who are exclusively into femslash?
  
• What are the canons that you think most femslash fans would (or should) know through osmosis (that is, they might never have experienced them, but would know through discussion/meta)?
  
• What are your personal experiences being a femslasher in a (small/large/eastern/western/etc) fandom?
  

Tell me, what are your thoughts on femslash?

(I have thoughts, but it's easier to ask questions than give a hazy reply based on a limited sample and my experiences in small fandoms.)

Comments

[twtd]

Answering the ones that I can:

Does femslash fandom (as a larger entity) exist?

I think that there is definitely a part of femslash fandom that wants to believe that it's all one entity, generally centralized around passion_perfect and the femslash_today newsletter, and there are efforts to inspire more pan-fandom community interaction though the online femslash con and things like that. So in that sense, there is a femslash fandom, though it isn't all encompassing.

In reality, everything is far too fragmented for that, and there are large swathes of fandom specific femslash communities that exist without any knowledge of a "wider" fandom being out there.

Are there any femslash fans who are exclusively into femslash?

This question actually strikes me as really funny, because I feel like femslash fandom, moreso than any other 'genre' can be incredibly insular. People read and write femslash without ever interacting with fandom outside of that, barely knowing it's out there. There's a reason that you don't see a lot of meta about femslash, why femslash is so profoundly under represented on the AO3, and it's because the community isn't as plugged into fandom at large as much as slash/het/gen fandom seems to be.

There was a discussion a couple of days ago (I forget whose journal it was on) about how people feel uncomfortable linking stories on f_t that involve het or slash relationships because they feel like the audience there isn't interested in anything that isn't exclusively femslash.

So, yeah, there are totally people out there who read femslash exclusively.

What are the canons that you think most femslash fans would (or should) know through osmosis (that is, they might never have experienced them, but would know through discussion/meta)?

I think Xean and Buffy are both big enough and pervasive enough that people get them through osmosis. And Xena did so much to establish the habits of femslash fandom. Maybe Star Trek: Voyager, as I think all of fandom gets Star Trek through osmosis and Voyager was the real outpost for femslash within the franchise.

[littlebutfierce]

because I feel like femslash fandom, moreso than any other 'genre' can be incredibly insular.

This is interesting to me--as a relatively new fic writer (one who writes femslash among other stuff), I feel like it's easy for femslashers in some fandoms to be ignored, b/c everyone is sooooooo into the guys. And so to me, I see it less as a cliquey, insular thing, more something motivated by being tired of putting stories out for them to not find an audience that really wants to read them.

[dagas_isa]

Thanks you for your perspective; it's definitely not a part of the femslash fandom that I've seen up close. (I've heard of femslash_today but usually in reference to yuri_today not taking off) The part of 'femslash fandom' I'm a part of doesn't necessarily have the critical mass or inclination to be exclusively into femslash, but it's interesting to see that exclusively femslash fandom exists.

I think Xean and Buffy are both big enough and pervasive enough that people get them through osmosis.

I definitely agree with that. Buffy is just one of the fandoms that I think anyone reading meta would know (and it has femslash and women to ship), while Xena is the one that always seems to be used as a reference point in meta or discussions on femslash. I haven't seen Voyager around so much, but I can see where it would be the preferred Star Trek for femslash.

[pseudo_tsuga]

Wow, I've actually never heard of either of those journals. *goes off to check it out*