Slasher Girls

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Fictionalized characters have long acted as surrogates for our hopes, fears, loves, and losses. And now, in an era when cameras are constantly trained on celebrities, perhaps fictional characters are becoming less necessary. We can play with images of real people to serve our cultural and personal needs.

And for many women, part of that psychic need is served by . . . man sex.

Homosexuality, especially male homosexuality, is still considered relatively taboo, and, like so many taboos, is therefore more conducive to fantasy.

Keeping it strictly between men, says sidewinder, makes the fantasy easier to share. Including a woman in a bandfic fantasy, presumably a surrogate of the author, makes it too specific, too personal. By writing only about male rock stars, she says, “I can stay detached. I’m the observer, the reporter.”

Women don’t need to be a part of the fantasy to make it potent, says Pepper Schwartz, a sex columnist, author, and sociology professor at the University of Washington. “Women can genuinely imagine that men prefer each other,” she says.

But while the focus is on the masculine, many of the men in bandslash take on a distinctly androgynous glow. Stories proliferate about groups like Panic at the Disco and Fall Out Boy, whose heterosexual members aren’t afraid to don makeup and even occasionally kiss their male bandmates onstage. In the world of bandslash, it’s all about girls who like boys who prefer boys who look like girls.

This mild androgyny is attractive to many women, says Schwartz, because more sexually ambiguous men “don’t cross the line. The ability to submit as well as dominate is an attractive cover for them.” Many women find male-on-male erotica attractive because “most of the time it depicts an equal relationship,” says bandfic writer Claire.

In an online world where rock stars become fictionalized and turned into fantasy, the instant ability to communicate those fantasies has become a bonding tool for many women.

“Women are better communicators—they play with language more,” says Schwartz, but “fantasy is a fairly new thing to talk about among women. It’s the next new frontier.”

Reprinted from Seattle Sound(Feb. 2008). Subscriptions: $12/yr. (12 issues) from Box 24365, Seattle, WA 98124; www.seattlesoundmag.com.

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