Further critique on wlw genderswaps that are derived from mlm media

[shrimpchipsss]

Featuring an imperfect case study using my own fanart.

Toxic yuri had a moment on the ailing Twitter/X app over the summer which is very exciting and [ariana grande equality gif] to see, but I want to put forth some critical thoughts for people to consider as part of the yuri zeitgeist.

Because the toxic (I’m being real broad here, think anger, aggression, etc, not just abuse or manipulation) aspect of toxic yuri is something that is comparatively hard to come by in wlw fanwork as opposed to in mlm fanwork, particularly in wlw femswaps that are derived from mlm media.

x_los wrote a critique on the state of wlw femswaps in MDZS fandom circa September 2020 that I think really gets at the odd loss of athleticism and physical capability as part of the alchemical genderswapping, and the tendency for cis wlw femswaps to be domestic, mundane, and soft when the couple that the genderswap is derived from is blatantly not. It’s the kind of genre or tonal shift that isn’t a Thing on its own but is an annoying trend across entire fandoms, the cozy-fying of athletic, martial ships as you turn them into women, and therefore worth examining.

I’m going to branch off from the [physicality] aspect of this critique into a [violence and aggression] sub branch because it’s interesting to me and I think it has implications on the original argument. Let’s go.

Take for example Lesbingqiu (lesbian BingQiu from Scum Villain). BingQiu are perfectly set up to be angry and fraught and toxic which they definitionally are in the Jin Lan Arc in the story. During this arc, they have an angry confrontation in an alleyway where Binghe chokes Shen Qingqiu against a wall, stops the blade of Shen Qingqiu’s sword with his bare hand, drags Shen Qingqiu up by the hair, and feeds him his blood (x_los has a GREAT angry fraught lesbingqiu fic that takes place during this arc which I highly recommend).

I have also drawn a scene from this arc. Sorry to use my own fanart but like, it’s right there.


As well as a modern AU wlw scene that is spiritually from the same source


Like if you have any visual literacy at all you can see that the two are the same.

But I’ve found that the angry fraught bathtub drowning lesbingqiu is less popular (by a factor of 7x tumblr notes at time of posting) than the angry fraught blood feeding mlm bingqiu.

I think this is partly because it’s a modern AU and so people see it and go “!!! domestic violence!” which is understandably uncomfortable. But fanart of violent modern AU mlms don’t give people the same pause.

Which is where we get into the societal stuff. Men are culturally permitted to be violent while women are not. The book Odd Girl Out by Rachel Simmons is all about the way that aggression among girls is suppressed from a young age which just makes aggression among girls secretive and vicious and insane. There’s a notable study on girls being hushed in a classroom for raising their voices when boys in the same class had been speaking more loudly. Big thanks to pallas_rose for recommending this book to me in our discussion on this topic.

(As an aside, there’s also a weird association between women and violence necessarily meaning that the woman is a victim of violence which is a gut reaction I’ve noted in myself and am extremely suspicious of as it is some gender essentialist shit that would be very nice to unlearn.)

But to get back to girl aggression, which is an actual useful term unlike all the awful and misogynistic “girl dinner,” “girl math” stuff people are peddling these days. Women aren’t allowed to be openly violent or aggressive even though women are no less violent or aggressive. So in society, aggression among girls and women becomes hidden. In fandom, aggression among girls becomes a mythic creature, the platonic ideal of toxic yuri that people keep talking about but which is harder to actually come by.

I think this is because people are uncomfortable with overt aggression (see the bathtub drowning scene) on the one hand, but also can’t seem to come up with good ways of portraying alternate aggression on the other.

Allow me to introduce tshirt’s essay on girl yaoi, which can be found on page 55 in Yaoi Zine 2. This essay differentiates girl yaoi from yuri and provides some interesting alternatives to the sad, defanged lesbians that proliferate in fiction.

Because it isn’t that domesticity or mundanity is inherently less interesting, it’s that people portray domesticity or mundanity in such a way that is entirely about aesthetics and set dressing (COZIFICATION) and has little to do with the characters’ social roles as the women they are supposed to be now. The thing that makes girl yaoi girl yaoi is that it is about femininity and the identity and social roles of the women involved.

Which is a useful thing to consider for genderswaps because genderswaps have to be ABOUT gender (at least if they are going to be satisfying to me). Otherwise what’s the point? Choose any two other already-existing fictional women and write about them. Which, I guess this is a good moment to say that my critique has mostly been about cis wlw femswaps, as femswaps with even one trans/nb partner tend to have something interesting to say about gender and social roles.

I keep getting off track and now I’m angry but like femswap wlw doesn’t even have to be toxic to be compelling or to have something to say! I don’t know, tell me something about how the characters embody their gender! Consider Nana which is all about personal style and amatonormativity and the slow creep of being influenced by someone else’s taste until you become them, or The Handmaiden and the mirroring and identification of self in the other.

Lesbingqiu is perfectly primed for such a situation, what with Binghe needing to be socially respected in order to be a worthy partner to Shen Qingqiu. What does that mean for a Bingqiu that are lesbians, a Bingqiu in which Binghe is making herself in Shen Qingqiu’s image? There is oh so much to explore.

And for those who /want/ to portray the secretive aggression, can’t that play out in the context of social roles and relationally, in keeping secrets and threatening ties and stealing someone’s signature scent, copying their outfits and gossip and haughty looks and betrayal?

For people who want that good wlw media, tshirt and I compiled some recommendations from people based on enjoying The Handmaiden and made it into a zine. I’ve taken a few of the recommendations and they have been excellent.

Disclaimer: this wasn’t really a critique on the state of Lesbingqiu fic, my frustrations with them are that I am not a writer and I wish I could write the modern AU fic where Binghe steals Shen Qingqiu’s taste and mannerisms and social positioning to become the best girl. It’s girl yaoi. It’s transgender allegory. It’s everything idk

Comments

[x_los]

'a Bingqiu in which Binghe is making herself in Shen Qingqiu’s image? There is oh so much to explore' see one of the things genderswap does for me is give me a richer pov on the source text and the role of gender in that, because TO AN EXTENT right Binghe IS trying to Be SY's version of SQQ, like that's what he Thinks He Does at Huan Hua, and where is the fic pushing that?

And in some ways--and this is not that I think art is easy, I can't do it--I think it doesn't fully answer this question to have suggestive pieces hinting at the complexity of these wlw relationships, bc I at least, and also I honestly think fandom as a whole, doesn't have the same struggle with the pictorial imagery of that Kpop video about killing pizza delivery boys as it does with like--imagining the lived reality and psychology of a raw story about women, Chloe Ruined Olivia's Fucking Life.

[sweettiramisu]

Okay so stumbled on this randomly and wanted to reply to it so bad that I went and made a Dreamwidth account. Whoops. For context, I am a pretty prolific wlw genderbend (femswap?) author on ao3 (at least by my reckoning). I prefer writing it to canon, m/m stuff, because I think the canon dynamics are More Interesting when they are Women (cis or trans), but mostly because I am a Huge Lesbian and this is the genre that I have fun writing in. Especially long, multichapter works. So this whole subject is pretty personal to me.

Your commentary calls to mind some critiques I remember seeing years ago about the side of the beefleaf fandom that was primarily into the two of them as women, actually. The idea that because they were women, now they were pure and UwU so cutesy and holding hands instead of the novel's far more complex reality, and that this was the lens through which they were being viewed by the Lesbian Beefleaf Contingent. What I couldn't tell was whether or not it was the actual state of things (I am not very good at keeping up with Fandom) or just a perception that people had come up with based on the fact that they were being depicted as women at all. That people just percieve women as less capable of violence and less threatening, and so read that perception onto any f/f couple they see, regardless of if it is actually valid.

I know for a fact that as an avid reader of yuri, I am constantly starved for less fluffy, 'pure' content and yet feel put off by the perception of yuri as something that is all about purity, because it isn't. Not sure what to do with that or where to put it. Just something I've been thinking about for a while.

Either way, from my own fairly comprehensive reading, both of lesbingqiu and of wlw genderbending in general, I really see your point. I think people tend to put their femswapped versions of mlm couples into modern aus, ones where oftentimes I don't actually see any writing about sexism or what being a woman means at all. It's often domestic, or very explicit, or both. If there is conflict, it is either unrelated to the actual conflict of the original narrative, or very fluffy conflict, or making up some third new thing. But rarely do I see any outright violent or aggressive stuff. That's very interesting to me! I hadn't actually been able to put it into words before I read this, but I think you're right that people are way more uncomfortable depicting outright violence when it features women in fandom spaces. I have to wonder if the placing of a female character into the usually male spot breaks the fantasy of it and the escapism. So while m/m-focused fic is all about escapism, the femswapped version is forced to either take place in a world made of pillow-stuffing, or outright address and explore it. And because fanfiction tends to be more about self-indulgence than exploration, pillow-stuffing it is.

I've noticed in me at least that I tend to really think through implications with my f/f reading and writing in a way I can sort of shrug and ignore with m/m fics. Though, with my own writing, I do tend to skew opposite of the norm (everything m/m I've ever written is fluff or hurt/comfort or something, while I've written and continue to write a lot of f/f stories with far more complex situations). I don't mean to make the discussion about me, btw, it's just that I am coming to this from a very personal place.

As a somewhat apologetic side note that I hope does not come across badly, I would love to add onto your reccomendation and say that I think people who liked the Handmaiden would also be interested in reading the book the Fingersmith! It is, after all, the book that the Handmaiden is based on, and is also very good, and I stayed up til four in the morning reading the last 250 of its pages because it was so enthralling and also upsetting and gripped me so hard. It's got some good, actual toxic yuri. With a happy ending.

Anyway, I hope I didn't leave too long or weird of an essay here. I just think about this a lot. Also I am excited to read the Yaoi Zine and have now bookmarked it for when I am less busy. I am very intrigued by this Girl Yaoi concept. Finally, thank you for writing this essay, as it really got me thinking! Also I adore your art.

[x_los]

Btw Douqi suggested I refer people to the new DW baihe com and its extensive resource posts: https://baihe-media.dreamwidth.org/866.html

[dreamofmystery]

Thank you for writing this about this topic, because I agree. I have definitely noticed my aversion to wlw cisswaps as they tend to be so fluffy and plotless I get bored whereas stuff that deals with non-cis identities has more meat there. I studied depictions of violent women in cinema for my bachelor's degree, and while that was talking about US & UK cinema and not prose, there is definitely the same theoretical undercurrent that underpins the reasons behind the lacking depictions of violent women. 'The Violent Woman Femininity Narrative and Violence in Contemporary American Cinema' by Hilary Neroni is a great read on this, specifically on the idea that a violent woman reveals the antagonisms in the social order and therefore has to have their violence reduced in some way to reduce their destructive social power e.g. violence through brainwashing, militarised violence etc. This isn't even necessarily an active choice, just that the idea of an active woman who holds agency in her choice to commit violence is one that is hard to comprehend for anyone growing up in a world with sexism.

[jajalala]

This was an interesting read! I'm not really into MXTX (read the 1st Heaven's Official Blessing book but have not read anything else and not in the fandom at all), but I've def seen similar phenomenon in other fandoms. I'm currently a femslash-lover deep in My Hero Academia, which is kind of like saying I'm an egg lover at the vegan convention.

I've specifically often avoided genderbent-MLM couples turned into WLW in that fandom... and I think this post about the reduced violence articulates part of why that is. The summaries I see and the few I've read tend to be AUs with the original violence/physicality of the original superhero canon very reduced... or when canon universe, focus on something gentle (life in the dorms, going shopping, a sweet date, low-stakes drama). The non-genderbent femslash ships honestly have the same issue (issue for me, anyway, who like violent/toxic stuff lol, I'm sure great for fluff-lovers), but I never made the connection that there's like... there's a square that's like

Canonical Men | Canonical Women
F/F: gets fluffier | Fluffy
M/M: Rich violent human experience | ?????

And in my head I always thought of it as a "the canonical women have less development/interest and get shafted by the narrative and fandom", but now I'm like "Oh wait is the F/F aspect IMPOSING this in some way? Even on originally M/M couples with more violent canon?"

Additionally though I think the specific act of changing the gender from canon very much inserts an individual author's conception of "What IS womanhood? What is gender?" into the story which... depending on the reader's opinion there is a lot of room for a mismatch. "WHAT exactly changes when someone is a woman now in the story?" is a question that has multiple answers, and the story has to make a thesis on the effects of womanhood while telling a story... which could be VERY RICH AND INTERESTING in a skilled author's hands whose done a lot of interrogation about gender, but when treated clumsily means the author's sexism or flawed understanding of gender take center stage of the reading experience. And based on this post, author's carrying the unconscious feeling of "woman = less violent or less capacity for violence" I think drives the toothless feeling of a lot of these stories.

Thank you for sharing these thoughts! A great read that brought up interesting thoughts for myself as well.