In the huge discussion going on around Fandom about the issue of women writing slash, there’s been a heavy use of the phrase “female space” or something like it, both in reference to slash and in reference to fandom in general. But while those words kept giving me the thrill of intrigue, I found myself disinterested once I started reading the posts. True, I’m not much of a slasher (I have a few pet pairings), but women’s issues are important to me. It took me a while to realize that this disinterest was because what I considered “female space” was not what was under discussion.

I’m not saying that they’re using it inappropriately, or even that my definition is better—this is really only tangentially related to any of that discussion. But my initial confusion and following introspection clarified a worldview that I’d never put into these kinds of terms before. So bear with me, this is probably mostly personal, but it’s important for me to lay out what “female space” in fandom means to me (and it means something very important), and why the slash focus only rarely fits in.

If I’m looking at the world in gender-binary terms, there has to be a default, and in my view, it’s female. Male isn’t unnatural, or alien, or lesser, or any of those negative terms; it’s simply not default. Along with that idea comes a variation of the Mother Earth idea, though stripped of spiritual or religious sensibilities. If female is the default, then male comes from female in a sense. And so in that case, “female space” in my mind represents most of the world. Men live in and shape the world just as much, but women bring it into being by being default, automatic, somehow. I suppose this could be considered sexist, but I don’t see a way to remove the idea that there is no neutral when it comes to being (as opposite living, or role choice, which can be neutral).

When it comes to contributing to fandom, this worldview can show up in fairly non-flashy ways. When I write stories that focus on male characters, there is obviously an underlying respect for women, but both as individuals and for the entire gender as belonging to the world. That men alone would be a kind of appropriation, ignoring the default setting on the world.

For example, in my huge AU project for "Stargate SG-1" that rewrote the plot of Season 2, Sam Carter was forced into the rest of the galaxy. Most of her conflicts and friendships alike became with female characters, despite the presence of two very important men in her life and slight canonical het pairings. And while the team left behind became a sausage-fest, the story drew on all the “minor” female characters available (and also some OFCs) to be, in a sense, the guardians/creators of the SGC world as well as active participants. I didn’t do this on purpose—I wasn‘t really thinking about gender at all while I wrote—and it’s not really the way that the show’s worldview operates, but since it was mine it came out automatically. There had to be women first and foremost for the universe to feel right and proper. (And please note, I'm only using myself as an example because I'm most familiar with my own work, not because I believe I'm excellent at expressing my worldview; in fact, I acknowledge that a good deal of my older fic especially is cringe-tastic when viewed from this standard.)

And this worldview affects, not only what I contribute to fandom, but how I consume fandom. I can’t connect to the show “Supernatural” primarily because it is clearly a male-default place—and therefore it does not strike me as real, but instead a surreal alternate universe that isn’t the fun fanfic kind. It’s why I prefer "Castle" to "Chuck", because the males are equals who may carry male privilege proudly in the former, but often the sense is of the men as kindly interlopers in the “real” world that is at the very least not male-centric; whereas "Chuck" gives an opposite view. It’s why I prefer "Leverage" to "Burn Notice", because despite the women who move and shake the BN world, they are never default, they are additions. It’s why for the longest time I kept reading Georgette Heyer’s works instead of Jane Austen’s, because while the former is almost certainly more attached to the idea of a strong dominant man who will eventually save everything (not a stereotype I endorse), the sense of the female world is always strong and (more importantly) varied and positive. Whereas Jane Austen’s heroines live in a male world that is also full of usually-antagonistic women. There may be a couple allies, such as a sister, but it is definitely stranger-in-a-strange-land for Austen’s women.

Now, it’s not hard to see that my worldview isn’t realistic. The idea of a world where female is default is not going to be accurate in modern or historical fiction, and I’m not trying to say that it is. But it’s my unconscious (or, well, not so much) ideal; it’s the way I see the world at its core, natural and without social conceptions. And it’s something that most slash, and a high percentage of het, fails to achieve, no matter how many female characters are present. It's not something that is easily articulated, but it can be compared to reading a fic about a certain pairing that's written by someone who normally writes a "rival" pairing—it never feels the same even if all the right "kinks" are there, because their backing worldview of the characters/world isn't the same. Likewise, fic written by people who don't have a female-default (or similar) worldview can't ever feel perfect to me. I'm not saying that that's wrong, it’s just how my sense of “female space” works.

Female space is almost the entire world, not just who's creating the fanfictional ones, in my view.