I can't believe some of these old chestnuts are still kicking around.
I don't think that arguing for an aspect of romantic love in any given relationship is inherently reductive. How can it be? How is romantic love any more, or less, meaningful or complex than any other kind of connection between people? I do think that a person who looks at the rich human tapestry and sees nothing but romantic love has a reductive viewpoint. That, however, brings us to the tired error of logic that drives so many of these slash debates.
If you took every slasher who ever slashed and treated them as a gestalt, then, yes, you could argue that "slashers" reduce every relationship to a romantic one and "slashers" can and will slash anyone. Except, of course, that there's no slash credo which all or even a majority of slashers adhere to that states such a thing. Further, if you take any given slasher, who will, after all, be writing the individual story about the individual character that ought to be what you care about if you're reading the story with an eye to fair judgment instead of merely reinforcing your prejudices, you will almost never find that she believes such a thing. If you take Sarah T. as your J. Random Slasher, you will find that she believes wholeheartedly in about five or six slash pairings and can be sold by a good writer on several others. The rest, she either doesn't care for or can read only with the mental reservation that it just doesn't fit her view of the canon. With most slashers, you'd get a similar result--not some wacky view where any two people of the same sex can be thrown together just for the shock value of the gay. Yes, you can construct an arbitrary category for which your derogatory description is true. But you don't read a category, you read stories, and when your categorical description fails to accurately represent the people who are imputed to it, then your category is just an artifact to support your argument, not a fair description of anything.
It's just a really, really, really stupid fanboy argument. Can't we put it to bed?
Oh, and P.S.: You are right to worry, though. We are planning to turn you gay next. Better defend those idealizations of your own masculinity fiercely! Once Superman cracks, what hope do you have???
Posted by Sarah T. at January 12, 2004 01:18 PM | TrackBack