Slash Controversies

Slash, the practice of creating amateur art and stories in which two same-sex characters who are straight in canon have a sexual relationship, has been surrounded by controversy since its inception.
==Early Objections to Kirk/Spock==
After the publication of the first K/S fanworks (both fiction and meta) in the 1970s, there were vociferous objections, often by well known fans, to the idea of Kirk and Spock together romantically or sexually (known at the time as "the premise") A Short History of Early K/S, retrieved November 14, 2008. Some saw it as out of character, or inconsistent with the military-style regulations of Starfleet. Others were against explicit sexual narratives, or believed homosexuality was immoral or mentally ill. One fan recollects Bjo Trimble describing K/S slashers as a "bunch of twisted sickos". Other well-known and highly visible fans were just as vociferously in favor of slash and explicit stories, causing extensive and vigorous debate.
===The Probe Letter by Winston A. Howlett: 1976/1977===
In 1976, Winston A. Howlett wrote a review of the zine Alternative: Epilog to Orion and published it in his zine Probe #9.
An excerpt of that review: 
The review generated much reaction, both in his own zine, and in others. 
Howlett wrote a response to the the letters he had received and seen and printed it in the next issue of his zine See Open Letter by Winston A. Howlett Regarding His Review of "Alternative: Epilog to Orion" for more: 
Two of the many reactions to this open letter:
===The SeKWester*Con Slash & Porn Debates: 1977===
Main article: The SekWester*Con Porn Debate
In May 1977, in the midst of political and social turmoil both pro- and anti-gay rights in the everyday world,See Anita Bryant's anti-gay crusade for some history of what was happening in gay rights at the time.The Christian Right began the more publicized phase of its takeover of the Republican Party around this time. It had actually been working on this since the Republican anti-communist caucus of the early 1960s, but the Christian Right itself as a movement goes back to the 1920s. See the articles on Moral Majority and the Christian Right for more; also, God's Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right by Daniel K. Williams (Oxford Univ. Press, reprint edition, 2010); Holy Terror: The Fundamentalist War on America's Freedoms in Religion, Politics, and Our Private Lives by Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman (Delta, 1984), and Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party by Max Blumenthal (Nation Books, 2009) for some of the history and origins of this movement., the second SeKWester*Con was held in Kalamazoo, Michigan.See LGBT History in Michigan and Daniel Tsang, "Gay Ann Arbor Purges," Midwest Gay Academic Journal 1 (1977): 13-19, cited in the 'Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader' by Henry Ablove (1993)) for a look at gay rights in Michigan at the same time as the convention. It was the first convention to include panels specifically discussing "The Kirk/Spock Relationship" and "Porno and Sex in Star Trek Fiction". Although there were other panels at this gathering, these were the two sessions to cause controversy and highly emotional debate. 
Menagerie editor and convention organizer Paula Smith revealed that it had been difficult to find fan authors opposed to slash or porn who were willing to serve on the "anti" side of these panels. Fan author Theresa H., who did sit on the "anti" side, later confessed that she had been intimidated by some of the "pro" members and attitudes, and that she knew other "anti" fans who had been afraid to be involved. 
Several explicit stories were nominated for fan awards, and when Leslie Fish won one for her sprawling epic novel The Weight, which does not contain explicit sex, some fans mistakenly believed the piece that had won was Fish's notorious short story "Shelter." Numerous pieces of X-rated art were on display in the same area as non-X material. Additionally, a PA glitch resulted in the entire convention being treated to the voice of Connie Faddis reading an explicit sexual (non-slash) narrative. Some fans came away with the impression that the majority of ST fandom was now in favor of hardcore X-rated material. The now-familiar age statement and modern labeling practices ("gen", "het", etc.) were instituted as a result of this discussion.
===James T. Crawford: 1980===
While Crawford's zine, Universal Understanding, was a very low-circulation zine, his statement in the first issue is a sample of many comments that proclaimed the undesirability of K/S. It is unclear what he meant by "darker aspects"; did he mean homosexuality itself (a familiar concept in those times) or had he come across stories involving BDSM or other variant sexual behavior?
 
===David Gerrold: 1984/1985===
Star Trek writer and continuity advisor David Gerrold, who is gay, has spoken out against K/S slash many times.
In 1984, a fan wrote of her anger over Gerrold's actions at the U.F.P. Convention in Manchester, England, a convention he had volunteered to attend. Gerrold was invited to conduct the auctions, and the following theatrics ensued: 
In 1985, David Gerrold again commented on K/S, saying there were far bigger issues in the world, like AIDS, starvation in Africa and a blood donor shortage, and that he didn't consider K/S fans: 
See more at Gerrold and Remarks on Slash, DraftTrek Interview with David Gerrold (1985), and Open Letter to K/S Fandom by David Gerrold (1984/85).
===Roberta Rogow: 1980s and 1990s===
Roberta Rogow was a published slash writer in 1984 and 1986, having written stories in the H/J (Dirty Harry) universe: Timeline Press) and Mixed Media. She was also the dedicated editor of the Trekindex.
Captain's Log #6 (February 1982) has a letter of comment by Rogow in which she derides a popular zine series and its content:
 
In the editorial to Grip 23 (1986), Rogow described having been loudly opposed to 'the premise' back in the beginning:
Rogow was the subject of a two-page article in the New Yorker for December 12, 1988 in which she described slash books as "basically harmless" and "girlish romantic fantasy" substituting James Kirk for the usual romance novel heroine. However, she also said that slash was "threatening the zine universe" because it ignored basic characterization: Spock is sexually active only once every seven years, so that "when you ignore a rule like that, it seems to me you're not writing literature any more." Uncredited article, "Editor," New Yorker, December 12, 1988, pages 37-38. See The 1988 "New Yorker" Article. 
In 1993, she remained vocal in her opposition to slash. At the 1993 Worldcon she helped staff Bill Hupe's fanzine table. She refused to handle any money for the sale of slash zines and refused to sell gen zines to fans who had expressed interest in slash zines. Source: convention reports posted to the Virgule-L mailing list, reposted anonymously with permission.
===KLangley on K/S Controversies===
Klangley researched such early controversies in detail:
==Illegality of Slash==
===Slash as Obscenity===
Because of the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment, which states that Congress can make no law abridging freedoms of speech or press, there is no federal obscenity law in the United States. In each state, obscenity is determined by applying what the "average person" for that areaRead: middle-class, Christian and heterosexual, e.g. the National Legion of Decency., applying "community standards" deems obscene or not, and whether or not the work contains sufficient "artistic merit". This extremely subjective standard is called the Miller test after the author Henry Miller, whose book Tropic of Cancer was ruled not obscene after considerable scrutiny in Miller vs. State of California 1973.
Zine publishers in the United States were thus bound by the laws of their states and communities as to whether or not they could accept slash. Any and all fiction depicting homosexual relations at that time was generally considered obscene by the aforesaid community standards, even if non-explicit. In many places, it could be construed as using the mails to distribute obscenity or pornography, leading to a big court case which no fan publisher had the money to defend in court. 
It is difficult to convey to modern readers just how controversial this all was at the time. At the time of the Stonewall Riots of 1969 which sparked the gay liberation movement of the 1970s, being homosexual was illegal in most states. Before the sodomy laws were repealed, state by stateLawrence vs. Texas explains more about the legal situation for gay people at that time., most gay people, especially young people, lived in fear of discovery. Being gay was legal grounds for imprisonment and/or commitment to insane asylums. In many U.S. cities it was also illegal simply to wear clothing associated with the opposite physical gender, the rationale being "fraud"; in other words, to protect men from unwitting attraction to a man in drag.Advocate Editors, When Cross-Dressing Was a Crime. The Advocate, March 12, 2015. Groups such as the Mattachine Society had to be extremely discreet and nearly everything was published anonymously. It is unknown whether slash fan fiction made any sort of impression or had any influence on public opinion in favor of normalizing homosexuality. by Brent Hartinger (The Back Lot, August 11, 2010)For a summary of just how far things have come as of 2012, see Alex Ross, Love on the March.See also I Felt Like I Grew Up As A Criminal, Atlantic Monthly, June 28, 2013.The excellent film Before Stonewall is one of the best introductions to how gay people were seen in former times and how the gay community evolved.
From Bill Hupe, the editor of Mi-Anime in late 1988: 
There is a recent trend of new obscenity laws created in right-wing, authoritarian countries such as Russia and Hungary.Rita Beres-Deak. What Is the Hungarian "Pedophilia Act" and What Is behind it?, LeftEast, 16 June 2021. (Accessed 26 December 2021.) In June 2021, the Hungarian Parliament passed a law made infamous as the "Pedophilia Act", however it is also known as the homophobic law since the parts in question are not actually about pedophilia. The law effectively bans any content featuring LGBTQ people in materials to be made available to children. The law came into effect not long after the government ordered a publisher to put disclaimers on a children's book featuring diverse characters, such as lesbian princesses and ethnic minorities.Jennifer Rankin. Hungary passes law banning LGBT content in schools or kids' TV, the Guardian, 15 June 2021. (Accessed 26 December 2021.) 
Human rights organisation predicted that even with the passing of the law, it won't be enforceable as it doesn't define its terms clearly and the text also doesn't include a penalty in case someone goes against the law. Homo- és transzfób propagandatörvény Gyakran Ismételt Kérdések (Homo- and transphobic propaganda law Frequently Asked Questions), Társaság a Szabadságjogokért (Hungarian Civil Liberties Union), the Guardian, 07 July 2021. (Accessed 26 December 2021.) Reacting to the law, the Hungarian fanfiction site Merengő posted a statement that they don't intend to change their culture of diversity and that they are looking for a solution that will allow them to keep posting without changing their own internal system of age restriction. At the time, creators could set the age restriction of the works posted individually and the admins didn't want to raise every slash stories' rating to 18+. Lilyana Nyilatkozat (Statement), Merengő, 17 June 2021. (Accessed 26 December 2021.) Later, they placed a disclaimer on the entire page that one can encounter content that according to the recent law is intended for adults. The age restrictions on the individual stories are left unchanged. Admincsapat (The admin team) Tájékoztató oldal bevezetése (Introduction of a disclaimer page), Merengő, 07 July 2021. (Accessed 26 December 2021.)
===Slash and Other Fanfiction as Copyright Violation===
In 1982, a fan, thrilled with a new slash-only Starsky & Hutch letterzine, writes of copyright, fears of legal persecution, and the hope that when the hammer comes down, it's on someone else's fandom. 
The 1976 Fair Use doctrine was in effect by this time, but the fan may not have been aware of it. These complex issues were apparently not a general subject for fan discussion until the early 1990s.Signal to Noise, A Practical Guide to Fair Use Doctrine. Excellent introduction to fair use in creative works. For a brief, pithy examination of appropriation for art vs. the laws protecting the media industry, see this essay by Negativland's Donald S. Joyce; and The Artist's Rights at the Harvard Law School website.
No fanzine has ever been sued or shut down over slash. The only fanzine to receive a 'cease and desist' order was Dreadnought Explorations in 1977. This happened because the quality of the published work was so high, including a photo of the Enterprise on the cover, that Paramount's lawyers believed it could be mistaken for an officially approved Star Trek fan novel. See Dreadnought Explorations and the Cease and Desist Letters.
==Slash Zines at Conventions==
More than one young would-be fan has been prohibited from attending Trek-cons or reading Trek-zines because his/her parents have seen this material.
- David Gerrold in the 1984 edition of The World of Star Trek.
When fanzines were more common, slash zines were sold literally 'under the table' at some cons. Slash fans would wander around the dealer's room looking for zine sellers, and then ask them quietly if they had slash zines as well, or they would gently pull aside the convention-hotel supplied long tablecloths of dealer's tables to see if there were boxes of slash zines hidden beneath. One Usenet contributor reports having to be vouched for before being sold slash ‘A Usenet experience of the history of slash’, retrieved October 4, 2008. Being required by convention committees to keep slash under the table was aggravating, because zines depicting heterosexual relationships, with relatively explicit covers, were generally not hidden, even at all-age cons and actor cons. (There is a famous story of Mark Lenard, the actor who played Spock's father, wandering the Dealer's room with some handlers at a con. He came across a copy of Spock Enslaved, with its cover of a nearly naked Spock in chains, and stopped and stared long enough to worry his handlers, before sighing dramatically and mock whispering, "Oh my son, my son".) The editors of the zine Out of Bounds were asked to remove their slash zines from the dealer's room after an angry Disney publicist complained and someone later anonymously reported the convention to Tulsa law enforcement for selling pornography (see Banned from Tulsa).
However, at fan-run cons current and past, without celebrity guests (such as MediaWest*Con, ZebraCon, IDICcon, etc.), slash zines and slash art could and can be sold openly, in the Dealers Rooms and by "room dealers" (fans who sell their wares out of their hotel rooms instead of in the Dealers Room). 
And, of course, slash zines were advertised, sold, reviewed, and discussed side-by-side in the same publications as the gen zines. It was not necessary to "know" anyone to be let in on the "secret," although this may be where the practice of vetting newbie fans through a kind of mentor or gatekeeper process began.Described by Camille Bacon-Smith in her book Enterprising Women (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1991): "At Shore Leave [a Maryland fan-run science fiction convention ], Judy Segal led me through the fanzine rooms. In 1983 there were four parlor rooms filled with the fanzines for sale. She guided me to the more general work, and I bought fanzines from Roberta Rogow, who specializes in, among other things, fanzines from new writers; from Joanna Cantor, an ardent feminist; and from others, while eschewing some of the more controversial genres. This is typical for new members brought into the community. Mentors, particularly for complete neophytes like myself, are often more traditional members of the community and act as gatekeepers. They lead the new member to the art and literature that either requires minimal decoding for an outsider, or that will not shock the sensibilities of a reader who has not yet learned to decode the messages embedded in the community's product. Judy mentioned the hurt-comfort genre as one she found personally troubling; she dismissed the relatively new homoerotic fiction."
===Later Incidents===
 
Controversies didn't end in the early years; another fan states that as late as WorldCon in 1993, she was sneered at when she asked a zine ed where the slash was, directed to a box and told to give her money to the other person working the table, since she didn't want her 'dirty money'.1993 Worldcon convention reports posted to the Virgule-L mailing list quoted anonymously with permission.
Early Quantum Leap fandom had so-called 'slash wars' including some zine editors supposedly refusing to print general audience stories by fans who were slash writers in other fandoms, and the by-then usual threats to "send slash to the actors, if people don't quit writing it".
At Anglicon in 1993, Susan Lovett sent a set of original color drawings for the art show that the con organizers didn't hang "because they were art for a slash zine" (Harlequin Airs), even though they were not at all explicit, and they did choose to display a print of a completely naked Tasha Yar draped over a clothed Data.
==Which Pairings Should be Slashed==
Complicating the debate is the fact that there is disagreement even among slash fans as to "what is slashy" and "what should be slashed":
==On the Internet==
As fans moved online in the late 1990s, some used "slash" in their disclaimers as a warning in a derogatory way, assuring other fans that they were "safe" from slash on their site. An example: 
Some fans had extremely lengthy disclaimers warning fans over and over again that there was slash on their site and not to come crying to them about it later. 
Later, on the Web, some archives and email lists prohibited slash, or automatically gave it a more extreme rating than het or gen fic. In the 2010s, fans still discuss the phenomenon of slash getting rated higher, though it is unclear to what extent this problem persists in new slash fanworks, as opposed to older works that are still online.
The Blake's 7 mailing list Lysator hosted a debate about the pros and cons of slash so regularly that one member collated The Generic Slash Defense Letter, a collection of quotes from fans. The Slash Summary represents the opposing side of the debate. Both authors intended their texts to avoid the repetition of arguments on the list or as the author of the Slash Summary puts it: "a list of dead horses, so to speak, done in a non-inflammatory manner".
==The Argument That Slash is Inherently Out-Of-Character==
A lot of anti-slash proponents use an argument that it's OOC (out of character) for characters portrayed as straight in the source material to be engaging in homosexual activities and relationships. 
For them to suddenly switch sexual orientations is considered by these fans to be too much of a departure from canon, as well as being a kind of farce. Others think that making a canon friendship into a sexual relationship demeans or degrades the emotions being portrayed. At worst, stories in which canon-straight characters are portrayed as having a sexual relationship run the risk of becoming standard sex stories featuring generic characters labeled with the canon characters' names.
 
 
One argument: why is one thing "out-of-character" when another thing isn't? 
Another argument: there are many things not shown on screen or discussed, and the absence of those things doesn't mean they don't exist: 
Additionally, some fans feel that putting characters in a slash story, in a gay relationship, means also altering their behaviour to make them less masculine and more emotional.
 
And even though some fans consider all slash stories to be OOCForum comment, accessed February 24, 2015, others make allowances for AU [alternative universe] scenarios like being mind controlled by a sex crazed alienForum comment, accessed February 24, 2015, etc.
Other fans feel that TPTB should have a say: 
A fan disagreed, but only up to the point of slash, something that illustrates how "extreme" slash could be to some: 
Not all fans find this argument valid and/or applicable, making a point that "if changes to suit your needs for a story would make it an AU or OOC then everything ever written in fanfiction would fall under such an umbrella. As the story was not a part of the original canon, it is definitely AU." comment on the essay, Why I hate slash, July 30, 2011, accessed February 24 2015}}
==Slash vs. Gay==
Although sometimes just another meta discussion, the question of whether slash is gay or whether it objectifies and exploits male homosexuality has been a very contentious issue at times. Related topics: whether slash is homophobic and whether anti-slash arguments are homophobic.Alison "Boom" Baumgartner, on Loving the Alien, August 28, 2013.Kiri von Santen, On The Fetishisation Of Gay Men By Women In The Slash Community. The Mary Sue, January 27, 2015.
==Meta/Further Reading==
* What's Love Got to Do With It? A semi-sane analysis of 'slash' fanfiction (1991)
==Notes==
==References==
Category:Discussion Category:Slash Fandom Category:Fandom Wars