oh, what the heck. I stayed quiet about the fanhandling kerfuffle...

[buggery]

For some reason or another, they would read a slash fic or two. They wouldn't like it. But, either because a friend of theirs wrote it or an author they liked did, they'd keep reading it. And, eventually, they'd learn to like it. They would begin reading solely slash. They would eventually become almost anti-shippers of Spuffy (and any other het pairings) and would be 'converted' entirely to slash. It wasn't their original taste, but they acquired it over time, and came to prefer it over what they'd originally enjoyed. The same was true for writers; almost everyone I read who stopped writing Spuffy didn't go for another het pairing, but went straight to slash.

Ladies, gentlemen, and other denizens of my friends list, meet kantayra and her theory of How Spuffy Traumatized Fandom and Made Fans Gay For Slash.

Lucy was admirably diplomatic: "You seem to have constructed a very elaborate theory here that is hinged on one very simple thing: you don't get slash."

I went a different route: "Congratulations. You have rooted out yet another sub-plot of The Homosexual Agenda. And soon enough we will RECRUIT YOU TOO." And then I appended a "/sarcasm" tag to the end of my comment, and frankly I'm worried that the post's author still may not get it, given the track record displayed just in this post. (Said post goes on and on and on, BTW, without making much if any more sense.)

It almost disturbs me more that so many of the comments are along the lines of "ZOMG you're so analytical I never thought of that" than that anybody would concoct a theory like this to begin with.

Did WAR GAMES turn anybody into a slasher? How about IDENTITY CRISIS, with its message of heterosexual relationships equalling doom? Or maybe it happened back during BRUCE WAYNE: MURDERER?

But wait, slash has been around for a long time. How did the first slashers get traumatised into it? Maybe it was seeing Kirk lose his space-babe-of-the-week week after week...

Comments

[ingridmatthews.livejournal.com]

I don't think the people reading this have the life experience necessary to realize just how *damaging* this line of thinking is.

The Queer Agenda model has caused more grief, injury and death in the community than can be imagined, as you and I well know. Applying it to slashfic just perpetuates this stereotype in a place where it last needs it.

The OP seems more confused than malicious, which I why I didn't rip into her. Still, it hurts me to see this myth take on a new and unwelcome life in the guise of fic meta.

Just ... ew.

[buggery.livejournal.com]

Thanks for commiserating, both here and on the original post.

She certainly did seem confused. Man, my head hurt so much reading that post I had to stop after every couple of paragraphs.

She never came right out and said 'Agenda' and yet she'd clearly been influenced by that model... the paragraph I picked on to quote reads like a fannish-language paraphrase of something Pat Robertson's speechwriters came up with. Which is both why I picked on it and why it impelled me to say something.

The fact that kantayra et al. don't grasp the dangerousness of the idea they've put forth and praised doesn't make them less dangerous -- if anything, it makes them more so.

::pulls nice safe cosy SANE corner of fandom round self::

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

It reminds me of a recent post on James Dobson's website:

He (dad) needs to mirror and affirm his son's maleness. He can play rough-and-tumble games with his son, in ways that are decidedly different from the games he would play with a little girl. He can help his son learn to throw and catch a ball. He can teach him to pound a square wooden peg into a square hole in a pegboard. He can even take his son with him into the shower, where the boy cannot help but notice that Dad has a penis, just like his, only bigger.

And this will *encourage the son to be heterosexual*!!!

So, the best way to avoid getting into slash would be reading a lot of slash that really emphasizes the penis.

[buggery.livejournal.com]

He can even take his son with him into the shower, where the boy cannot help but notice that Dad has a penis, just like his, only bigger.

And right there level with the boy's face. And doing what penises naturally do in the shower, one expects. Perhaps 'level' was a poor choice of term.

Well, at least we understand something about why Dobson turned out the way he did...