Is slash a lifetime commitment?

Meta
Title:	Is slash a lifetime commitment?
Creator:	fan named [A] on Virgule-L
Date(s):	May 5, 1994
Medium:
Fandom:
Topic:
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Is slash a lifetime commitment? is a 1994 essay by [A] on Virgule-L.

It is quoted anonymously with permission here on Fanlore.

For additional context, see Timeline of Slash Meta and Slash Meta, as well as Meta Essays, List Surveys and Notable Discussions on Virgule-L.

The Essay

I've spent most of my life being extremely private and anti-social, going to great lengths to avoid clubs, parties, and large gatherings. While I did like ST and SF, I never joined a single ST or SF group. I went to my first SF con in 1976, and attended my second in 1989. Not once do I recall missing the con experience during that 13-year gap. At the same time as I was avoiding "fandom" in all its guises, I never felt a part of the mundane world, either.

I haven't been "in fandom" very long--I date my first exposure to slash fandom from that 1989 con; I didn't actually connect with other fans regularly until 1992. However, I do consider myself as having been a "fan of slash" for nearly 25 years (without a handy term for it), since private fantasizing about the sexual encounters between my favorite male TV stars has been an obsessive part of my life from my late teens on. In fact, when I first began talking with other slash fans, I was genuinely surprised to find that many, if not most, had *not* spent their teen years on privately fantasizing in this way; instead, someone else had told them about slash and *then* they got into it. This revelation made me feel like a Class A misfit and still an outsider even within the slash "community", as the majority of fans didn't seem to approach "slash" the way that I did. So "fandom" didn't click for me the way it might for others.

Slash, for me, is something that's been a necessary and intense part of my private life for a long, long time. Writing and drawing are private activities (until finished and shown to others, of course), and those are things I've always done, with and without fandom. I prefer watching the videos alone. I had to be pushed, prodded, and cajoled into attending my first local slash gathering, and it's a minor miracle I went to Zcon. I don't read very much fanfic, as I still vastly prefer my own private fantasies. It's only since finding Pros (THANK YOU, SANDY!) that I'm finally becoming more involved in the fan community, albeit kicking and screaming in protest all the way.

Yes, I can easily imagine life without fandom--I spent 20+ years there, and was quite happy. I cannot imagine a life without slash, as it has always been part of my mental makeup. I do enjoy many aspects of fandom, but I definitely feel that I don't quite fit in with the majority of slashfen, and thus my enjoyment of fan gatherings and fan discussions is somewhat limited. I just don't relate to a lot of things in fandom, like multimedia, current TV shows, 4th wavers, political stuff, the relentless search for gay-related items of interest, con panels of any sort whatsoever, strippers, people who dress like their favorite character, people who don't have any fan photos and/or fan art on their walls at all, people who have SO's, families, and lives beyond their particular fandom(s) and actually want to talk about something *other* than Pros, current activities of the actors and their real lives, academic analyses of any sort whatsoever, gay lit, gay porn, gay commercials, Star Trek, and Suzan Lovett's Wiseguy drawings.

Fandom has given me readers for my writing, and a few interesting people to talk to (very few), and that's about it. I'm grateful, but I'm far from overwhelmed.

And that's the cold, hard truth.

Fan Comments

I seem to be in close agreement with [A] about nearly everything she said in her post, including the part about being antisocial, preferring to enjoy my tapes, my fantasies, and my reading in solitude, not feeling much inspired by fannish social activities, and expecting my own interest in my particular fandom(s) to continue to be an important part of my life, as it has been ever since I can remember. I started with Jagger/Richard when I was twelve or so, and there have been a few shifts since then, but now it's mostly B7 and that's how, I expect, it's going to stay.

I'm not interested in reading about any 2 guys getting it on, or thinking about guys getting it on, in general. For me, being into slash isn't the same as being a faghag. It's a manifestation of my *own* polymorphous sexuality. Yet the focus is more on the characters than on the sex--but I prefer the sex down, dirty, and explicit as hell, to dovetail with a different thread. I get extremely frustrated when I talk about B7 with people who, though they may be very perceptive about the show and the characters in all other ways, find it utterly unbelievable, distasteful, etc. to consider that the men might have sexual feelings for each other. (to put it delicately).

So I'm betwixt and between, but I always have been, and I'm used to it.

On one crucial point, though, I must disagree with [A]. Nothing could ever dissuade me from engaging in my life's most fulfilling activity: dressing like Vila at all times.