Romancing Destiel: Women Writing Gay Supernatural Fanfiction

Written by cehammock

I’ve been reading Supernatural fanfiction for a while now. When I first started, I didn’t know anything about fanfiction and the people who write it. I started by looking at m/m (male/male) romance and eventually found my way to Destiel slash (Dean/Castiel). I love Dean and Cas as a gay/bi couple especially because the TV show on which this pairing is based got so close to making them a canonical couple, stopping just short, and leaving the rest to the fan’s imagination at the ending of the show’s 15-year run. I hated and felt traumatized by the show’s finale (I wrote about that in a different post), and made my own ongoing attempts to write my version of the end of the show.

In investigating m/m romances and slash fiction, I discovered that it’s mostly written by women, not gay men. Some gay men write m/m romance, but the field is completely dominated by women writers, both the formally published m/m romance and unofficial slash fanfiction, including Destiel fanfiction. I discovered that the closely related genres of m/m romance and slash fanfiction were essentially created by women writers for women audiences. Gay men had very little to do with them. In fact, gay men produced a separate genre of fiction all their own that had little to do with what women were writing. Gay male fiction has a long tradition in its own right and grows out of literary fiction. Whereas, m/m romance grew out of slash fanfiction and has become a full-fledged sub-genre of traditional romance with all of its tropes. It’s important to make a distinction between m/m romance and gay male fiction. Failure to do so will lead to a lot of confusion on the part of readers, and anger and resentment between women and gay men over who has the right to speak and write on behalf of gay men.

The dominance of women in reading and writing m/m fanfiction is demonstrated in the Fansplaining Shipping Survey (conducted in April 2019) that focused primarily on m/m slash fans. Of the respondents, 72% identified themselves as female, whereas only 9% identified as male and another 9% as transgender. Respondents were allowed to select multiple categories, of those categories, 21% identified themselves as non-binary/genderqueer and only 20% identified as cisgender. It seems reasonable to conclude from these numbers that the vast majority of m/m slash fans are women, and of those women, they are generally evenly divided between women who identify as cisgender and those who identify as non-binary/genderqueer.

When it comes to sexuality (presuming that the vast majority of respondents are women) 43% identify as Bi/pan and 24% as queer. Only 13% identified as gay (I’m presuming that most of the men in the survey will probably fall into this category). Like with gender, respondents were allowed to select from multiple categories. Of the remainder, 19% identified themselves as straight and interesting 29% identified as asexual. What is most notable here is that of the women who make up so much of the m/m slash fanbase, the majority of them don’t identify as heterosexual and a sizeable minority identify as asexual. Women who do not identify themselves with traditional gender classifications make up a substantial portion of the m/m fanbase.

In researching for this project, I ran afoul of many of these women, many of them objected to being labeled as women since they understood the word “woman” to mean a heterosexual cisgendered female, and considered the word woman to be biased and exclude them. In the following, I will be using the word women in its broad general sense, which many nontraditionally gendered people will find objectionable. This is mostly a matter of convenience and not an attempt to be offensive. Furthermore, not all people who accept the designation of woman were born female, and some persons who were born female don’t consider themselves to be women: non-binary, genderqueer, and trans people for instance. Generally, my understanding is that “women” is considered acceptable for cis-heterosexual females, but beyond that, the word becomes contentious for other people who identify with other non-cis or non-heterosexual genders and sexualities. Even this statement itself will be considered controversial by some persons. I will be using “women” as a loose designator, generally in the sense of female embodied persons who are not gay men, which readers may or may not identify with.

Warning. This post may be triggering to intolerant people.

This post has four companion pieces::

Click here for links to all my Supernatural posts.

Due to the length of this post, I have provided a table of contents. Click the heading to jump to that section:

Reasons Women Give for Writing M/M Romance:

Women use all manner of justifications for why they write m/m romance. In the following, I’m going to use the phrase “m/m romance” to also include slash fanfiction (although the two can be conceptually differentiated, slash can generally be understood as a form of m/m romance). When explaining their attachment to m/m romance, women often declare the redemptive nature of love from social discrimination, they point to the greater ability of gay men to show emotion and vulnerability than heterosexual men, and also that some women just enjoy seeing two attractive men together because they are hot and sexy.

I tried asking women writers of Destiel fanfiction why they wrote their stories, but this turned out to be a mistake. There was a significant level of suspicion and distrust in the community toward someone like me asking questions, which only produced defensive and hostile responses from the women to my inquiries. After some further research, I was able to discover some of the reasons that women offer for why they read and write m/m romance. These are summarized from Kacey Whalen’s Master’s thesis

  • M/m romance teaches about acceptance. While this may seem pretentious, for many women, writing about two men in love promotes the value of acceptance to broader society, and allows queer readers to feel more acceptance towards themselves.
  • Writing m/m romance allows women writers to engage in political activism through their writing and advocate for causes that affect the LGBT+ community.
  • Women writing m/m romance help people to better understand the different experiences of gay people. Furthermore, reading about these different experiences also prompts readers to understand themselves better through self-examination. M/m romance is a mirror for readers to reflect on themselves.
  • Women writers prefer to dispense with heroines. This is partly because the typical female in m/f romances is annoying, whiney, TSTL (Too Stupid To Live) bitches (not my words), but more to the point, not having female heroines allow for women writers to have more freedom in creating storylines that are free from traditional representations of women in romance. Also, removing women from m/m romance relives the issue of the abuse of women by straight men, and evens out unequal gender roles that force women into subordinate and powerless positions.
  • Having two attractive men is more appealing than having just one. Also, m/m romance allows women to write about men being both strong and vulnerable at the same time and expressing emotions that straight men can’t. Gay men don’t get stuck into traditional male/female roles. Women who write m/m also find two men falling in love and being sexually intimate together very arousing.
  • Writing m/m romance allows women to create more equal relationships between two men. In straight romances, a man usually holds the power in the relationship, and the woman is rendered weak in comparison. Women cannot be equal for physical reasons and cultural traditions. Two men can be equal and avoid potential sexism and abusive relationships that concern a largely female audience.
  • Writing m/m romance allows love to be love without social complications and regardless of gender. Love between two men feels the same as love between a man and woman.
  • Writing m/m romance allows women writers to explore other sides of their sexuality that might not be allowed in other aspects of their lives. M/m in a safe place for sexual fantasies that women readers can imaginatively participate in.
  • Writing m/m romance offers new opportunities for storylines that have not been explored in traditional m/f romance.
  • Writing m/m romance can change or save someone’s life by showing that other people like the reader exist and they are not alone.

As a gay male, I’m a little bit suspicious of some of these rationales. Some of these offerings sound more like women trying to make their writing into a noble and charitable cause for the downtrodden of society. For instance, “change or save someone’s life by showing that other people like the reader exist and they are not alone” seems more like the business of gay male fiction, where gay men talk to each other about the struggles of their lives, not the preview of women who romanticize gay men for the pleasure of women. Although, I’m sure that many of the women who offer these reasons are sincere. One does want to find honor and value in one’s work, but as we will see below, some of the motivations of women writing m/m romance and Destiel slash seem a bit more hypocritical and troublesome.

For the time being, we will let these women declare the redemptive nature of love on behalf of gay men who have been historically discriminated against and criminalized and need of the redemptive love that these women offer. With this love, the traditionally depressing gay male fiction and the men who write it can finally be liberated with love, positive emotions and happy endings that women writing m/m romance can bring to the dark broodings of gay men. I’m not kidding; I’ve read this before. Cringe.

Traditional Romance and Heterosexual Tropes:

It’s common to hear in discussions about romance writing that women have been socialized by our culture (and is consistent with their female nature) to prefer romance stories as proper for women but not for men. The cultural presumption is that women should (and do) prefer stories about relationships where romantic couples are emotionally honest and vulnerable with each other: they fall in love, get married, and have happy endings.

In romance writing, this is all contrived through the deployment of a set of formulaic tropes. Romance writing, like all genres, have rules, which determine the ways in which characters are constructed and interact with each other. Typically, there is an alpha male who must rescue a floundering female heroine and is aided by side characters, who all fit into one-dimensional roles. What guides the development of the story is the working out of a set series of tropes.

A trope is usually defined as a common theme or plot device (that is often overused to the point of a cliché). While a trope may not be specifically male or female, gay or straight, but certain tropes are more likely to be deployed by women writers compared to male writers. The choice of which trope to deploy may reflect something about the sensibilities and expectations of the authors and their readers. To give an obvious example, an MPreg (male pregnancy) trope (a trope that would seem to reflect the sensibilities of women) is an m/m romance plot devise to dramatize a male character becoming pregnant, carrying a child, and becoming a parent in a relationship with another man. Women have been accused of fetishizing this trope, and it’s most commonly seen in paranormal or supernatural contexts, and often deployed to explore dominance/submissive themes.

Critics of women who write m/m romance observe that women writers often transpose traditional m/f romance tropes into m/m contexts, so that gay couples are presented just like straight couples. These women may argue that there are all no substantial differences between gay and straight couples. Being in love is the same for gay men and straight women, and they react to emotional and sexual intimacy in much the same way, so traditional romance tropes are just as adequate for expressing m/m romance as it is for m/f romance. Tropes that parallel gay and straight relationships shouldn’t be objectionable. These parallels can include idealized male (and female) bodies, binary dominance and submission of partners, the femininization of one partner and the masculinization of the other, and the focus on penetrative anal/vaginal sex. This last one is often accompanied by the “I want to see your face” trope, and probably reflects a female desire for intimacy, which is projected into m/m romance that is written by women.

When it comes to depictions of sex, most m/m romance portrays gay sex as a mirror of straight sex, focusing on anal sex as the corollary to vaginal sex, and where anal penetration becomes the culminating moment of complete connection between men and proof of true love. Another trope borrowed from straight romance is couples climaxing at the same time that proves the couple’s love and sexual compatibility.

Other women who write m/m romance approach the issue of traditional m/f tropes from a different angle but end up with similar results. For them, it’s a matter of combating “toxic masculinity” in their writings. These women argue, that because so many male heroes are presented as hypermasculine, it’s up to them to counter this “toxic masculinity,” and write stories that allow men to show vulnerability, to talk about their feelings, explore sexual gratification with other men, and do so in a way that doesn’t call their masculinity into question or look down on traditionally feminine attributes like sensitivity, empathy, and softness.

Because women writers are (supposedly) more in tune with emotions and feelings, women can view m/m relationship in a more wholistic (female-centered) way; through a different or more informed lens. Women are thus more likely to identify homoerotic subtext, be more attracted to angst and emotional intimacy, whereas men are more likely to read the same material as brotherly to avoid any kind of homoerotic stigma on their identities. Because women are the vast majority of m/m romance and slash fanfiction writers, their readings of m/m relationships are most likely to be the dominant ones.

As a consequence of women casting gay relationships in heterosexual and female-centered terms, gay men complain that their love lives get reduced down to the traditional terms of m/f romance, but gay men don’t necessarily experience their romantic lives in the same way. In gay culture, gay men often date and have sex with more than one partner at a time, and gay men don’t always engage in “compulsory pairing” as is commonplace in traditional romance. This formulation is more of an expectation of a female sensibility and readership than it reflects the actual pattern of gay dating.

Women, Smut and Kinks, and The Dubious Excuse of Male Patriarchy:

Above, I listed some justifications that women offer for writing m/m romance. Here are a few more that come up specifically in a sexual context that I want to comment on separately.

The first reason women give why it’s acceptable for women to write about gay men in a sexual context is because straight men make lesbian porn into a fetish. If straight men can fetishize gay women, then it’s only fair that women should be able to write about gay men sexually. In my opinion, this is just a lame excuse for women to be smutty and shouldn’t be taken seriously. Surely, if you think it’s unacceptable for straight men to fetishize lesbian porn, then it shouldn’t be acceptable for women to do the same thing to gay men. Women will argue that it’s not the same; theirs is not a fetish. Men make fetishes; women make romance.

Another more substantial reason women offer for writing about gay men in a sexualized way is that some women may feel uncomfortable with reading and writing stories that depict women having sexual pleasure, but find reading about men’s sexual pleasure to be more enjoyable. This is because some women have internalized from prevailing culture a sense of shame about women’s bodies experiencing arousal and pleasure, whereas men’s bodies haven’t been so shamed. This would be an instance of women identifying with gay men, so umm, ok.

The most important justification that women make to render writing m/m romance acceptable for women, both sexuality and in a broader societal context, is that gay relationships between men don’t have built-in power imbalances, unlike traditional male/female relationships. Women argue that writing m/m romance gives women an opportunity to write fictions that challenge the structure of dominant male patriarchy. I find this justification to be a bit dubious. My take as a gay male on this matter will obviously be unwelcome among women m/m romance writers. I will try to explain why I think this below, but first the argument.

A particularly aggressive version of this argument goes as follows. M/m romance reflects an equal power balance between two men, whereas male/female relationships are inherently imbalanced because of physical differences, social practices, and cultural assumptions about men and women. Any romantic or sexual relationships between men and women are grounded in some form of coercion and thus lack consent from the women. Male/male relationships don’t exhibit that power imbalance. Therefore, any relationship between men that is grounded in dominance and submission, top/bottom, or masculine/feminine is considered consensual by comparison. Men can consent whereas women can’t. Women can only be forced. For this reason, women insist that they can read, write and enjoy sexualized stories of Bdsm and s&m between men because these stories are not a threat to women and her independence and autonomy. The degradation of one man by another is treated as fantasy and as mutual consent.

Furthermore, (see Megan Derr’s post below) some women justify writing m/m romance on the grounds that women should be able to enjoy their own sexuality as much as men, even if it means using gay men as their vehicle for arousal and pleasure. This is because women’s sexuality has been historically treated as non-existent or shameful in the past. While gay men may have been punished for having the wrong form of sex, women were punished for wanting sex at all. For this reason, women cannot appropriate gay men or gay sex because both gay men and women have been the objects of sexual oppression. Using gay men to explore female sexuality is acceptable because it allows women to be free from the cultural baggage of being a woman and free from the cultural tyranny of straight men over them, something that straight men have never had to deal with and wouldn’t understand. Even gay men have treated women, and other gender-diverse people such as transmen, in horrific ways but not as badly as straight men. For many women, both as readers and writers, they simply prefer m/m romance because it comes with less misogynistic patriarchal norms. M/f romance is too difficult or painful for some women to encounter.

As a gay male, this argument just strikes me as reeking of a kind of female victimhood privilege. Now, I’m sure many women do sincerely feel victimized by male-dominated culture but that’s not my point. This argument feels like an excuse to deflect women’s own sexual anxieties about what arouses them into a more suitable scapegoat, gay men. Something that some women feel ashamed of getting off on, so they have to redirect it into a different channel, deflecting women’s perceived sexual deviance into an acceptable target of perversity.

The simple fact of the matter is that women love smut too; women have bondage fantasies but don’t always want to admit it, so they need other bodies, gay bodies, to act it out on their behalf and need a suitable cover to justify their kinks. The pretense of challenging the patriarchy gives them this cover. As we saw in the previous section, most m/m tropes are simply repurposed versions of traditional m/f tropes. There is nothing particularly challenging or revolutionary about recasting men for women, except maybe making traditional straight men squeamish about gay sex and women enjoying reading about it.

Another thing I find objectionable, and for me, this is far more personal and problematic, is the rendering of sexual degradation of one gay man by another into something consensual. While the sexual behavior between men may technically be by consent, many gay men have also internalized a lot of what is usually called self-hatred, that other, less scrupulous gay men take advantage of for their own sexual satisfaction. These men who have internalized a lot of their own self-directed homophobia (unconsciously or not) feel as if they deserve to be treated as inferiors and submit to be degraded by other men who they perceive as more powerful, superior, and manly. Women’s insistence on equal power and consent between gay men simply exploit these troubled gay men and the relationships they find themselves in, willing or not.

This all raises questions in my mind: Is the resistance of women to “kink-shaming” another manifestation of the impulse to scapegoat “shameful” women’s pleasures onto gay men? Is “resisting the patriarchy” just another excuse for women to be nasty and perverse? Especially when it’s not your body or your vagina that is in danger? Why does displacing sexual arousal and pleasure onto gay men’s bodies make pleasure feel distanced enough from women’s bodies that make abuse acceptable?

We just have to face the fact that some women just like being kinky. I’m trying to get used to the idea that women love smut too, and they can be just as bad about it as gay men. No wonder women get so upset about being “kink shamed.” They love kink! M/m romance is not just tame chaste romance; it’s kinky/smutty romance, which gets projected onto gay men because the women don’t want to take responsibility for their own sexual arousal over exploitative “power-differentials.” They may want to deny it, but it still turns them on. What can I say? Women like gay smut, and fighting the patriarchy is a good cover for making gay smut look respectable.

Criticisms by Gay Men:

My criticisms of women writing m/m romance are not the only ones that gay men have made about this phenomenon. The foremost complaint that gay men make about women writing m/m romance is that as women they can’t accurately depict the true lives and experiences of gay men.

Gay men complain they are often presented as what women imagine gay men to be like, which often cast them into stereotypes. For instance, women who write these stories don’t actually know how gay men relate or communicate with each other. They make gay men act and talk like women, say things gay men would never say, and talk incessantly about their feelings and engage in angsty hand-wringing. Another criticism is that these women writers move gay men into settings that don’t reflect the actual lives that gay men live. Most gay men don’t live in small idyllic towns where things like AIDS and discrimination never existed. These characterizations of gay men reflect the implicit assumption that gay men and women are essentially the same, and think, behave and react in the same ways.

Gay men thus question, why these women believe that they have the expertise to write gay romance. They don’t, many gay men would argue. Women make the mistake of seeing gay men as being like themselves. Women see gay men as being neutered and not “toxic” like domineering straight men. Gay men are tame and sensitive, and women idealize them as the kind of men they would want to have relationships with. Women believe they understand gay men. Gay men are their “best friends” and “one of the girls” who make women feel good about themselves. He becomes a gay man as interpreted by women. His own real queerness is erased and replaced with women’s imaginations of his queerness, who then act out her emotional and sexual desires.

The issue here, for these gay men, is who gets to represent the lives of gay men, actual gay men or women who think they are in the know (but really are not). Gay men criticize women’s m/m romance books because they tend to reduce gay men to a small set of handsome sexy (occasionally flamboyant) men, all the while, transmen, non-binary men, and asexual men just get erased out of existence. Gay men in these books end up being not much more than “women with dicks” or straight men in disguise. Some gay men suggest that m/m romance books feel like two straight men in a relationship with each other, or that the female heroine has been deleted and replaced with a gay man.

Other gay men argue that women have “appropriated their voice” thus taking away gay men’s ability to speak for themselves, and replacing their voice with women’s voices that have little experience or understanding of gay men. Women counter this complaint by arguing that women have an “imaginative empathy” and with sufficient research, women can be just as competent speakers on behalf of gay men. Some women validate their work as a form of “LGBTQ representation.”

Many gay men perceive women’s attempts to engage in activism on their behalf in order to bring awareness of the lives of gay men as (ironically) patronizing. They see these women as reducing gay lives (and other queer identities) down to just gender and sexuality (and the hot sex that men have with each other). Many gay men don’t see women writing erotic stories about gay sex to be all that radical or progressive, while women believe in the validity of their own social activism through writing m/m romance books.

Women shoot back, that gay men who disapprove of women writing m/m romance are just privileged and sexist, which is demonstrated by their hostility toward these women. Gay men make everything all selfishly about themselves to exclude women from their own female sexual lives, just like straight men do. Gay men try to suppress female sexuality with their own gay trauma, showing their own misogyny. Even as gay men, they still have male privileges as men that women don’t possess as women.

Some gay men say they experience m/m romance as a threatening and hostile space where women create images of gay men that show contempt, disrespect and project dehumanizing portrayals of gay men who exist solely as objects of women’s pleasure. They feel attacked if they don’t conform to women’s expectations and act like compliant gay boys who should know their place and be grateful for these women who have given attention to their lives and needs by writing their books, especially when these women have gone out of their way to “strike a blow” for gay men’s equality. Gay men are so ungrateful.

We should look beyond all the acrimony and keep in mind that m/m romance books are largely written by women for other women, and thus reflect women’s sensibilities. It doesn’t really matter if women writers “get it right.” Women audiences will perceive the gay relationships that are presented to them through the lenses of women, and m/m romance writing will always distort to some extent how women understand gay men, which some gay men might find misleading or harmful. M/m romance is a genre that women created for themselves. These books really weren’t for gay men to start with. Gay men are not their audience. Women are. Some gay men will never be happy with that. A woman’s ability to accurately write an m/m relationship is largely beside the point. Gay men will have to write their own romance books and make it clear that gay men are writing. In fact, most (women) readers don’t care if the author is a woman or a gay man.

Supernatural Fanfiction: Destiel in Love, Patriarchal Challenges, Sexual Fantasies:

After reading a lot of Supernatural fanfiction written by women, I have concluded that my own fanfiction doesn’t have an audience, not among women anyway. Women seem to prefer to read and write stories filled with emotional angst and sentimental fluff, and they like smut, lots and lots of smut, gay smut. I don’t like to write smut. Supernatural slash fanfiction is not my genre, not the way in which it has been constructed by women. Despite how much I love Dean and Cas, I’m highly unlikely to write about them in the ways that women like to write about them. I don’t find women’s Destiel stories to be particularly objectionable. Mostly they are cute and sweet; they are romances of Dean and Cas meeting, falling in love, suffering some angst and separation, finding their way back to each other, then having sex, and becoming a couple. Typical romance fare. Occasionally, some women will push their fanfictions into abuse and sexual fantasy that feels gross and demeaning, and there is an audience for that too among women.

Out of Character and Out of Context:

I will have to say, I had the wrong idea about fanfiction. When I first encountered it, I assumed that fanfiction would be about the canonical characters in canonical settings that extend the stories of the franchise. A lot of fanfiction is like that, but a lot is not. Sometimes, the characters of Sam and Dean and Castiel get displaced into worlds not their own. It can be fun and interesting to reimagine them. Dean and Cas have been recast as chefs and police officers, school teachers and college professors, hitmen and mob bosses, poets and rock stars, marine biologists, mechanics, and wealthy businessmen. I have seen them become assorted doctors, soldiers, knights, hustlers, prostitutes, sex slaves, witches, sorcerers, shapeshifters, and werewolves. Sam is almost always a lawyer.

Dean’s ‘67 Impala, “Baby” is a constant in Destiel fanfiction, but the bunker often disappears to be replaced with penthouse suites or brothels, fancy mansions and business offices, sex dungeons and bdsm playrooms, swanky restaurants, ski lodges, and sunny beaches. I have even seen oil rigs, royal castles, and the insides of churches where Dean and Cas have their romantic marriages (with Sam as best man). Their wedding nuptials may, or may not, be a prelude to Dean (or Cas’) male pregnancy (most often the pregnancy is accidental) and they happily bear children and come together as parents, then they move into their ideal home with white picket fences, or an idyllic small town with cozy romantic cabins, or fancy townhouse in the exciting big city.

Sometimes the characters are Sam and Dean and Cas with some of their canonical backstories; sometimes they only bear Sam, Dean, and Cas’ names but are nothing like them. You could change their names and the story would make just as much sense.

Women may insist that their stories are character-driven, not trope-driven, but this isn’t true, the representations they make of Dean and Sam and Cas are often just romance caricatures bearing their names, which repeat the same traditional romance plot lines, settings, and themes over and over. They mistake the “character” of Dean with the “character type” they name Dean so that “Dean and Cas” play out their fantasies. The canonical character of Dean (and Sam and Cas) from the show is largely wiped out in the retelling (replaced by token references to the original canonical material).

There seems something unscrupulous about all this, but I will defend the act of storytelling.

Guilty Pleasures:

Let’s get this one over with. I do enjoy reading Destiel fanfiction by women. I do love the emotional angst of Dean struggling to express his love for Cas. I love the fluffy kisses and giggles and the hugs and glances (blue eyes meeting green eyes) when they fall in love. I don’t really like the smut that much, and I think some women way overdo it. Most smut, whether written by women or gay men is not that sexy and is often just gross. I admit I’m a sucker for Omega Dean stories where Cas gets him pregnant. So, it might be a guilty pleasure like Dean’s Dr. Sexy, but I wouldn’t write a story like that. Well maybe. We’ll see.

Demeaning Real People for Sexual Arousal:

This is not a guilty pleasure; this just feels like exploitation: the so-called RPF or real person fiction. In this case, stories that use Jared, Jensen, and Misha as characters in fanfiction, not the fictional Sam, Dean, and Cas. I could cite several examples, many of which involve Dom/sub pairing between the three actors. Here is one notable instance I read: Jensen is an unmated Omega forced to undergo a publicly degrading mating ritual before an audience of his family and strangers who come to watch him be anally raped by an Alpha male in order to claim and own him. That story made me feel a bit squeamish. Not because it was an A/B/O story, but because it took Jared and Jensen as its main characters. When Jared contests the forced mating, fights the other alpha, and rapes Jensen instead of the stranger, thus claiming Jensen for himself. Jared’s intervention doesn’t really make the story seem any more noble. This is just an exploitation fantasy and not a very good one. Why was the female author of this story writing that? Was the ending of this story really as affirming as this female author seems to thinks it was? At least have the decency to make the story about the fictional Sam and Dean instead of the real-life Jared and Jensen. I can only imagine what the real live actors must think about “fans” writing these kinds of stories. This was written for no other reason than for someone to get off on a rape fantasy at the expense of celebrities that the author presumably admires. Yuck.

* * *

In reviewing women writing m/m romance, two issues stand out for me: patriarchal challenges and sexual fantasies. Let me return to these topics in the context of Destiel fanfiction.

Patriarchal Challenges:

As we saw, one reason women give for writing m/m romance is that women believe that m/m slash fiction evens out power differentials between men, whereas m/f romance forces women into subordination to men. This begs the question, do Destiel stories that women write present Dean and Cas as a co-equal couple that challenges patriarchy, or do these stories by women reinstitute traditional gender dynamics that essentially turn Dean and Cas into male/female couples where they both have penises?

While I suppose there may be stories that women write to “challenge the patriarchy,” far too many of their works turn Dean or Cas into chicks with dicks.

One storyline I frequently encounter is Dean as the abused boy(girl)friend who the (compassionate) manly and noble Castiel (who always has an enormous penis) has to rescue from his abuser. In this case, Dean is feminized and made weak (this is not the character of Dean from the TV show). In these scenarios, we have gay men being beaten up instead of women. This is just a gay twist on the hurt/comfort trope from traditional romance. Less often, Cas is the venerable one in need of Dean’s rescue, especially when reckless Dean accidentally gets Cas pregnant and has to take responsibility.

Both Dean and Cas frequently get pregnant in women’s Destiel fanfiction. While it may be sweet for men to bear each other’s children, this is a challenge to patriarchy how? Showing men engaging in female behavior? But doesn’t Mpregs simply eliminate the need for females all together, and find a (usually weaker, more vulnerable) man to take the female’s place?

The motives of these kinds of narratives become very obvious in OmegaVerse or Alpha/Beta/Omega (A/B/O) fictions. The A/B/O trope is common in Supernatural fanfictions, where it originated. It plays on the idea of wolfpacks made up of Alphas, Betas, and Omegas. In this trope, all people are born into one of these three designations. Alphas are dominant but also protective of their Omega mates. Betas are secondary, mostly in support roles to Alphas, and Omegas are usually subservient and submissive to Alphas and used as sex partners and sometimes slaves. Sometimes people are organized into packs, sometimes not. Alphas and Omegas scent mark and mate each other, and go through rut and heat cycles. Omega men can be impregnated through anal sex by an Alphas.

Most often Dean is characterized as the submissive, inferior omega (sometimes Cas but to a lesser extent), and Dean is sometimes sold off by his uncaring father, or has to be defended and protected by his brother Sam, who is usually portrayed as an alpha. I admitted earlier that pregnant omega Dean is one of my guilty pleasures, but as a gay male, I should be appalled by this. I should find this jarring and insensitive to read. After all, stories of women being raped and forced to carry children are considered misogynous and dystopian, but in women’s fanfiction, if it’s done to an omega man then it seems to be acceptable. Furthermore, this is not Dean Winchester. These are beaten down abused houseboys with self-esteem issues that bear Dean’s name.

These are not strikes against the patriarchy. I can’t say I know what women are thinking when they write these stories, but I have a suspicion that women are attempting to make some kind of empathetic solidarity with gay men by casting gay men into roles that women also see themselves and gay men as occupying: roles of oppression and abuse. So, when turning Dean and Cas into a gay couple, women come to understand their relationship through the lenses that women interpret their own relationships with men, while trying to persuade themselves that Dean and Cas’s relationship is free and equal because they are both men.

Women complain about rape culture, but then write stories about Dean getting raped by Alistair. They write A/B/O stories about alphas doming and raping their Omega against their consent. Women would never write rape fantasies about themselves, but if it’s gay men getting raped then it’s acceptable. Women say they love these characters, but then submit them to dubious consent and sexual slavery. They turn gay men into sexual predators (because they are in heat/rut and can’t help themselves). Then these same women yell at me and call me a misogynist because I complained about gay men getting raped (because they are in heat/rut and can’t help themselves). They explain that it’s acceptable because it’s consensual (but they are in heat/rut and can’t help themselves!). They say it’s a necessary plot complication so Cas can come and rescue Dean deploying a hurt/comfort trope. OK, Fine, but it’s not about challenging patriarchy anymore. These m/m relationships have not broken free of traditional male/female roles. The relationships between these men (who bear Dean and Cas’ names) are in fact not equal relationships between men.

Sexual Fantasies:

So, if we can reject patriarchal challenges as a rather dubious excuse for women writing Destiel fanfiction then what other alternatives can we suggest? How about, because Dean/Cas slash is a medium to carry women’s romantic and sexual fantasies that they can displace onto gay men. I say displace because a lot of these sexual fantasies center on dubious consent and dominance/submission scenarios that would make women far too uncomfortable to write about themselves in straight male/female narratives. Thus, women need to use patriarchal challenges and gay bodies as cover.

I will suggest that women are indeed correct with their claim that m/m romance is a “safe space” to explore sexual fantasies (in the role of gay men rather than women). Women may feel safer reimaging themselves as gay men in order to be with another man. That way they can explore kinks and even rape fantasies without endangering their own physical and emotional wellbeing (and it doesn’t hurt that Sam, Dean, and Cas—or the actors that play them, are all handsome sexy men). Now women can enjoy bondage and humiliation fetishes through the bodies of gay men. As well as, all the fluff and angst, and the traditional tropes of romance leading up to and preparing us for the intimate sexy moments.

For many reasons, women could never write these kinds of stories about themselves as women, without being accused of internalized misogyny or selling out feminism, or having poor self-esteem and in need of therapy for writing narratives that degrade women. Other women would never tolerate having those kinds of stories being told about women, so these stories get projected onto gay men’s bodies, the closest kinds of bodies most similar to women for contemporary (but not always historical) cultural reasons.

Dominance/submission narratives are common among Destiel fanfiction, and once again Dean is usually the one cast into the sub role. There seems to be an unspoken trope that men can only be aroused by displaying their dominance, and women are aroused by witnessing these displays, consequently, gay men are particularly drawn to these kinds of relationships since they are saddled with both male and female qualities. Among gay men, these traits do tend to get exaggerated in real life. I realize that a lot of bdsm is ritualized role play, but images of bdsm are powerful and disturbing. There is a lot of fantasy and sexual arousal by women being acted out here, but as a gay male, I’m at a loss to explain why women actually like reading and writing these kinds of stories. I have the suspicion there is some kind of yearning for the good protective dom as opposed to the bad exploitative dom, good alphas and abusive alphas, real men women can surrender to and bad men who are no better than rapists, but I don’t dare ask that question of women.

Women’s Destiel fanfiction is not all smut and abuse. I have read stories where women writers develop some lovey, thoughtful themes. Ones that stick in my mind usually involve gay parenting where Dean and Cas take on the responsibility of raising Jack and Ben and Claire. There is the lovely trope of Castiel’s wing maintenance, where Dean takes on the obligation to help care for Cas’ wings as part of his devotion to his angelic mate, and of course, all the “fix-it” fics that women wrote to give the series finale a more satisfying ending that makes Dean and Castiel a formal and devoted loving couple rather than the ambiguous (or outright betrayal) ending that fans got from the writers.

Conclusion:

We have to conclude that m/m romance or even Destiel slash is not a genre for gay men. Gay men are the interlopers there if they are looking for representations of the erotic and romantic lives of gay men. I think many gay men make the mistake that they should be welcome there, but not really. Welcome only if they don’t put themselves too much into the spotlight, don’t complain too much about how women write about them and conform largely to the accepted m/m romance tropes that women enjoy. Many gay men do like silly romances and A/B/O tropes. These do resonate with lots of gay men who identify with women’s romantic fantasies of sex, marriage, home, and children.

I know I’m projecting my own ideal of a perfect gay couple into Dean and Cas (and it’s not one where they are fucking all the time). In my fantasy, they are mutually supportive partners that have each other’s safety and happiness in mind (and not the kind that requires a “safe word”). They want to be a family who hurts and suffers when the other is in danger or pain. Dean has a relationship like that with Sam, but Sam is his brother, not his beloved husband.

I know that suffering has to happen before the rescue. Who wouldn’t want to be rescued by a handsome, caring angel, with a silly grin and a gravelly voice, when we are at our lowest point in our lives? It’s the story we want to be true. The rest is just posturing.

To read my other posts about Supernatural go to the My Supernatural page.

Selected Sources:

A Consumption of Gay Men: Navigating the Shifting Boundaries of M/M Romantic Readership — Kacey Whalen (Master’s Thesis)

About Who Writes M/M Romance — lloydmeeker.com

Why Are So Many Gay Romance Novels Written by Straight Women? — electricliterature.com

Women and MM Romance — meganderr.blogspot.com

The Romance Genre, Gay Fiction and M/M Romance – cehammock

The Fansplaining Shipping Survey — (fanfiction survey)

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