Misogyny in Gay Fiction?

Well, don't know if anyone's talked about this before on here, but I'm going to hash this out because it REALLY makes me mad. And this is completely an opinion I've formulated after quite a few years of being a slash writer myself and seeing other people's writing as well as their explanation as to why they like slash rather than hetero fanfic/original fic. Also, for the intent of this rant, I'm specifically just talking about boyxboy relationships and not femmeslash.

Before I get into that, I was thinking as to why a lot of young girls like slash/gay fiction/whatever. From what I've seen a couple girls here and there state: slash is more romantic and it's nice to write from a completely different perspective. I agree.

But, I have come to a very interesting conclusion when it comes down to these two reasons for liking slash. First and foremost, slash being more romantic than hetero can be chalked up to a few things. When I first told a friend of mine why I think slash is more romantic than heterosexual romances, I told them it was because I don't usually get a look into how romantic and sensitive a guy can be and a lot of times in slash guys are portrayed that way. Fair point. I also said it was because I really love boys, and having more boys the merrier--hence why slash would be more fitting for me, boys are everywhere in slash fiction for the most part. Only, I don't think this is the main reason anymore.

Myself as well as a couple girls I know (and many others I've just seen ranting on the internet) have this deeply seeded and unrealized hate toward women--mostly feminine women. I see this mostly when girls claim to be "different from other girls" because they don't do this, that or the other. I think a lot of girls who are 'different' from what 'norms' suggest is a 'regular girl' actively don't want to associate themselves with the title of women at all sometimes. I don't meant they want to up and switch genders or anything. Just that they have this strong dislike from the perceived 'normal girl' because it's sometimes portrayed (in TV shows, books, all outlets of media basically as well as in everyday life) that 'this' girl is annoying and undesirable. Now, I'm also not saying that these 'different' girls who don't want to associate themselves with the 'normal girl' (who giggles, flocks around boys, tends to be 'catty' and has a high-pitched voice) are yearning after male attention. They are just routinely spoon fed that 'these' kinds of girls aren't desirable people to be which is very degrading.

Now, how does that tie into slash? Well, every slash reader has stumbled upon a story or two where almost every female character, friend or foe, is portrayed as the 'normal girl'. You know, the one that has claws for fingers, ruins everything, snake-like or she's a bimbo with no substance to her personality, etc. The picture is clear. So much of slash fiction and fanfiction portray women to where they are degraded to these two-dimensional, paper figures that don't compare at all to the complexity and realness of the male characters. And the male character, in his inner monologue of judgmental prose, is annoyed by her feminine ways or how sassy or rude she is (and daftly says this is a result of her being a woman)--also, never at all is the gay guy a 'typical gay guy' which as the norms say is quite similar to a female (odd to me how one norm is embraced systematically, but not the other, but that's a rant for another time).

The very adjectives and verbs used to describe most or all of the females in the story underscore the very issue that the women in the story or not welcome or are just a small, unimportant blip in the story. This might be shocking, but not every gay guy is revolted by the very idea of girls, sometimes even translating that into full out dislike of everything that being a women apparently entails. I understand if misogyny is written in a story (unfortunately, it's a real thing, so adding it into a story isn't wrong or anything) but I assume young writers of slash don't even know they're doing it. I used to do this kind of thing a lot when I was younger and I have realized I did participate in misogyny in a lot of small, but over all very impacting ways that I didn't even understand then.

I just think it's very problematic that girls, writing slash, often write gay fiction that has many underlying themes of misogyny and don't even think twice about it. Again, I'm just ranting here, so I'm probably missing a lot of my other key arguments about this or other things like that. It's just been really irritating to me lately, but I think worst of all, is that I used to participate in this kind of thinking too.

I mean, if you don't want to write about women then just don't. Not very realistic (unless for some reason no one has a mom or sister?), but at least there's no bashing of women who are subjected to being categorized under society's norms and hated because of it.