From two mousies on wank_report.

indefatigable42 posts an "Etymology of Slash" essay on fanficrants, explaining that slash has nothing to do with canon or non-canon relationships, because it's all about teh ghey.

It's all cool for a while. A few people express annoyance about the idea of it meaning only non-canon relationships, and partly_bouncy argues a few of the more meaningless points, but it's all cool until. . .

partly_bouncy turns around and posts in her journal that slash is ZOMG NOT GAY!!!!1!:

Edit to put this at the top: My definition of gay is not male boinks male so male is gay. My definition of gay involves a person's own defined identity, sexual preference, embracing of a label and belonging to a certain community. Who you're boinking is not a part of that definition. Please realize that as you read the thing below. If you define gay as boinking, you're obviously going to find this whole thing flawed. And as a fan historian, I have not seen evidence that most of the community defined boinking as defining a person as gay.

Early slash was not homosexual. It was not gay. The etymology of the term in no way implies a gay or homosexual connection. I wish people would not imply that. Please stop. Fan fiction history and terminology has enough problems with the well-meaning fan disseminating misinformation.

Slash and GLBT culture did not meet really for the first time until the Xena fandom. They finally met because Xena had a lot of lesbian fans writing lesbian stories, complete with discussions regarding things like butch/femme dynamics.

If slash had been about gayness, it likely would have not taken off. It would have been seen as really damaging, really challenging and offensive because of the urge to push an agenda.


cathexys: Because just because there was no gay agenda, just because there was homophobia in fandom, just because the orimary impulse of putting these guys together may have had everything to do with strong identifiable characters and little with GLBT politics...does not mean that it isn't gay!

strangerian: Except, of course, that *all* slash describes homosexual relationships or acts or desires. Male/male and female/female sexual pairings are the definition of "homosexual." The characters may be bisexual overall, or may not identify as gay or even homosexual (or their authors may not want to identify them so). This doesn't change what happens in the stories.

And more people than I care to quote take offense at the fact that her definition of homosexual is overly political.

It also gets a mention in metafandom.

First post, please tell me if I did anything wrong so I can correct.