Gay Panic (glossary term)

Synonyms:
See also:
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Gay Panic is a term which has undergone a lot of meaning drift.

In non-fannish contexts, the term originally referred to a homophobic legal defense strategy in hate crime cases: see Gay panic defense Wikipedia article.

In fannish circles, it has been used in several different contexts:

• Historically, to describe TPTB changing canon to counter fandom's interpretation of homoerotic subtext: see Homoerotic Subtext and TPTB

• Increasingly, the term appears in fanworks and discussion of canon to describe a moment where a character has a "gay awakening" or realizes their feelings for a same-gender character.

• Some fans appear to use the term simply to mean "a gay person/character is experiencing a moment of panic."

Examples of Fannish Use

As of July 2022, on AO3, the term had been used close to 10,000 times as a freeform tag: Gay Panic AO3 tag. Possibly most of its uses were positive (in one of the two "panicking while gay" or "panicking about having gay feelings" senses. However, its metatag was "Homophobia."

Gay Realization

#Haikyuu #BokuAka

Akaashi having a gay panic at his first training camp when he sees Bokuto break a watermelon with his thighs for a dare.

He WANTS to be that watermelon.

@erialighieri tweet, July 9, 2022

max experiencing gay panic when checo blew him a kiss is the most real thing i witnessed today

@aIphatauri tweet, July 8, 2022

fuck it deleted scene of daphne having a gay panic over hot velma on the tl

@marceIiness tweet, July 12, 2020 (7k RTs, 48k likes)

jungkook: [ winks at yoongi ]
yoongi: [ avoids eyecontact with intensified gay panic ]

@lilbadksw tweet, April 14, 2018 (3k RTs, 7k likes)

Panic While Gay

In the show Heartstopper (2022), one of the gay protagonists has a phone lockscreen which reads "[gay panic]". This might have led to an uptick in this usage.

You’re telling me this ISNT Steve having a full on GAY PANIC at how close Eddie got to him? Cuz my queer ass didn’t know how to deal with having people close to me like this when I found them attractive

random-piglet-on-the-run Tumblr post, July 6, 2022

Discussion

Many (older) fans have expressed discomfort with the "reclaiming" or re-use of the term.

remember when people tried to reclaim the term "gay panic"

@hustIerose tweet, Oct 27, 2017

I feel strongly that if you want to "reclaim" term you have to do it consciously and deliberately, not out of ignorance. I haven't seen evidence that this is what people who use "gay panic" to talk about crush anxiety are doing.

@theduality3 tweet, Feb 1, 2020

i say this all the time but please i am begging fandom to stop using "gay panic" to refer to cute moments of gay realization/overwhelm when it is still a legal defense for homo/transphobic violence in 40+ states

@crowkids tweet, June 19, 2021 (1k RTs, 2.4k likes)

There's probably an entire essay to be written about the contrast of Gen Z youth getting incredibly radicalized/worked up about "Queer is a slur!" despite how older queers are incredibly protective of the term's presence in our history [...] while also doing their damnedest to reclaim "gay panic" despite the incredibly awful history it has as an excuse to kill queer people and get off scot-free, because a movie had a memeable scene where a gay character panicked and that takes precedence over history the way that TERF rhetoric also takes precedence over history and in both cases the misinformed younger people are prioritizing what they imagine is a reasonable reaction to cultural trauma instead of what people who've gone through that are actually feeling--
I don't even dislike the reclamation of gay panic as a meme, I'm just invested in the idea that it's illustrative of the same-but-reverse logic as the 'queer is a slur--wait no I didn't realize this is what that phrase implied' crowd.

phoenixyfriend Tumblr post, Dec 28, 2021

Further Reading

• (“Gay Panic”): On Fan Subtitles by Devan Wells, published Dec 18, 2019 on anothergaze.com
• Courts in 39 American states still admit the “gay-panic” defence, The Economist, Nov 28, 2020