Writing the fables of sexual difference: slash fiction as technology of gender

Authors

Ika Willis, University of WollongongFollow

RIS ID

108889

Publication Details

Willis, I. "Writing the fables of sexual difference: slash fiction as technology of gender." Parallax 22 .3 (2016): 290-311.

Abstract

In this paper, I examine historically and subculturally specific writing practices associated with slash fiction: fiction written by women involving man-on-man (m/m) sexual and/or romantic relationships. I see these writing practices as a postpornographic technology of gender involving and enabling a transformation of 'the body one feels oneself to have' (to anticipate a turn I will take to Gayle Salamon's theorization of gendered embodiment later in this paper).1 I argue that certain fantasmatic, identificatory and bodily practices associated with slash fiction cut across (trans-) existing categories for sexuality and gender; I also argue that theorizing these practices in relation to gendered embodiment helps us to understand the way in which practices of gender identity both require and refuse a stable boundary between gendered categories like male/female and cis/trans.