Let's Throw Down About Rule 63
Dec. 21st, 2018 11:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
isozymeI had no idea that genderbend was as common a fic exchange dislike as mpreg and abo, but survey says: possibly.
Before you say this is a matter of frequency bias, genderbend isn't a super common trope. A survey of the 5 genderbend tags on AO3 (genderbending, genderswap, gender or sex swap, alternate universe - gender changes, and rule 63) turns up about 12,000 fics after they're filtered out for duplicates, while the mpreg tag has about 34,000 entries, and the alpha/beta/omega dynamics tag has 46,000.
I think it's interesting that all three of these tropes have to do with introducing female-ness to (usually) all-male ships. In abo and mpreg in particular, they allow gay relationships to be mapped onto a heterosexual paradigm. Genderbent fiction can transform a pairing from gay to straight but also often from gay to lesbian. Looking at AO3 categories for genderbend tags, there's a 2:1:1 ratio of F/M:F/F:M/M. For a random popular tag -- I picked future fic -- the ratio is 16:8:1 M/M:F/M:F/F.
I'm not wild about trends that un-queer gay relationships. However, as a lesbian, genderbent fanfiction is a pretty good way to scratch that femslash itch. The fact that genderbending is so out of vogue is sort of odd to me. I find that it's a lot more likely to engage with things like misogyny, transness, and gender presentation than most fics. Importantly, genderbent fanfiction is much less likely to write women out of the world entirely.
Fandom fucks this trope up sometimes. There's a Kevin Wada illustration of a female version of Tony Stark that made me so incandescently angry I spent the next couple hours after seeing it drawing my own version.
Here they are side by side, Wada on the left, me on the right.
Wow, still angry. Women know how to hold screwdrivers. Women are capable of sitting on stools like normal fucking humans. Muscles? Hello? Where are the muscles? Tony Stark in every universe is ripped. Not Captain America ripped, but still, he lifts. How come she's so young? Who wears jeans that tight in a garage? More subtly, the way she holds herself away from the gauntlet, frowning at her own technology in disgust, rubs me completely the wrong way. It implies that a female Tony is disconnected to her creations and enforces the idea that women are less comfortable in STEM.
However, being pissed about the infuriating genderbend on the left doesn't mean I'm willing to give up the one on the right. Old butch buff sweatpants girl!Tony please and thank you.
The feeling I get is that genderbend has been lumped in with a number of Problematic Fandom Tropes and become socially unacceptable, while for me it's an important trope that gives me things I want (namely, women in my fanfiction, in a way that's already connected to a large, engaged audience).
I personally have imagined many times about what it would be like if I were genderswapped. I'm a butch lady, okay! I think about it! I will always want to work through my personal feelings via fanfiction, and genderswap AUs are one of the ways for me to do it. Maybe as a side bonus I will get some actual F/F porn that doesn't feel like it's included out of some kind of limp obligation!
It sucked to discover that so many people hate this relatively rare trope that's so near and dear to me, so here I am, hackles up, looking for a fight on the internet. Come at me, bro.
Before you say this is a matter of frequency bias, genderbend isn't a super common trope. A survey of the 5 genderbend tags on AO3 (genderbending, genderswap, gender or sex swap, alternate universe - gender changes, and rule 63) turns up about 12,000 fics after they're filtered out for duplicates, while the mpreg tag has about 34,000 entries, and the alpha/beta/omega dynamics tag has 46,000.
I think it's interesting that all three of these tropes have to do with introducing female-ness to (usually) all-male ships. In abo and mpreg in particular, they allow gay relationships to be mapped onto a heterosexual paradigm. Genderbent fiction can transform a pairing from gay to straight but also often from gay to lesbian. Looking at AO3 categories for genderbend tags, there's a 2:1:1 ratio of F/M:F/F:M/M. For a random popular tag -- I picked future fic -- the ratio is 16:8:1 M/M:F/M:F/F.
I'm not wild about trends that un-queer gay relationships. However, as a lesbian, genderbent fanfiction is a pretty good way to scratch that femslash itch. The fact that genderbending is so out of vogue is sort of odd to me. I find that it's a lot more likely to engage with things like misogyny, transness, and gender presentation than most fics. Importantly, genderbent fanfiction is much less likely to write women out of the world entirely.
Fandom fucks this trope up sometimes. There's a Kevin Wada illustration of a female version of Tony Stark that made me so incandescently angry I spent the next couple hours after seeing it drawing my own version.
Here they are side by side, Wada on the left, me on the right.
Wow, still angry. Women know how to hold screwdrivers. Women are capable of sitting on stools like normal fucking humans. Muscles? Hello? Where are the muscles? Tony Stark in every universe is ripped. Not Captain America ripped, but still, he lifts. How come she's so young? Who wears jeans that tight in a garage? More subtly, the way she holds herself away from the gauntlet, frowning at her own technology in disgust, rubs me completely the wrong way. It implies that a female Tony is disconnected to her creations and enforces the idea that women are less comfortable in STEM.
However, being pissed about the infuriating genderbend on the left doesn't mean I'm willing to give up the one on the right. Old butch buff sweatpants girl!Tony please and thank you.
The feeling I get is that genderbend has been lumped in with a number of Problematic Fandom Tropes and become socially unacceptable, while for me it's an important trope that gives me things I want (namely, women in my fanfiction, in a way that's already connected to a large, engaged audience).
I personally have imagined many times about what it would be like if I were genderswapped. I'm a butch lady, okay! I think about it! I will always want to work through my personal feelings via fanfiction, and genderswap AUs are one of the ways for me to do it. Maybe as a side bonus I will get some actual F/F porn that doesn't feel like it's included out of some kind of limp obligation!
It sucked to discover that so many people hate this relatively rare trope that's so near and dear to me, so here I am, hackles up, looking for a fight on the internet. Come at me, bro.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-21 09:15 pm (UTC)OTOH it certainly has the potential to engage in that kind of examination! It's a must for me in heavily male casts, anyway, and IMO it's more interesting to do fem!characters that includes trans women, and nb!characters in general, than it is to simply relinquish Rule 63 to the confining corner of "cisswap". (Like, don't get me wrong, that's useful terminology for that specific phenomenon, but I'm personally more interested in expanding the base idea of conceptualizing characters with noncanonical genders.)
Having said that, I do want to push back a bit against the idea that unappealing F/F porn is that way simply because it is created out of obligation. Sometimes people just have different tastes! It is regrettable when one's own taste isn't at all represented, but it does not mean that all those other people are just insincere fakers. (Brought to you by: excitedly participating in a female-character-centric exchange, only to be told that anyone writing about female characters was just doing "dutyfic" to look good.)
no subject
Date: 2018-12-21 09:48 pm (UTC)I've read a lot of Obligatory Boring Background Lesbians in my time, and I think I'm allowed to bitch about it, tbh. I can tell the difference between sex that's not my thing and sex that's written by somebody who's trying really hard but is just absolutely not horny for it. It's not everybody, but it shows.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-21 11:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-22 06:19 pm (UTC)Sadly I think there's a smaller audience for turning everyone into lesbians, but I need it really bad. You're doing the lord's work. (And if you wrote 616 fem!Tony/fem!Steve I would write a comment on every line, it would be amazing. You don't need any more things on your fic-to-write list, but I'm just saying.)
no subject
Date: 2018-12-26 04:24 am (UTC)Which is to say, yeah, I think Rule 63 is great but has had the feet cut out from it by the Fandom Inquisition. Instead of getting more people to write trans/nb characters it just chased everybody off because they don't want the trouble.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-27 05:53 pm (UTC)I'm definitely not going to stop writing it!
no subject
Date: 2018-12-27 04:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-27 05:56 pm (UTC)I'm more than 0% invested in having some sex scenes where I can write some different genetalia in (the pitfalls of being a lesbian writing a lot of porn in fandom) but my favorite parts are definitely the what-if of it all, looking at how you can change the plot and the reactions of a character based on their gender experience.