According to DreamWidth member Melannen, the long-held claim that slash is primarily for by and for straight women may be very wrong.

Melannen did some digging, looking at both academic citations and user statistics available through online sources, and was surprised by the results. In nine polls taken over seven years in a variety of slash fandoms, participants who self-identified as queer were in the median of total participants, at 60.8%.

I highlight this finding here because much of the discourse of slash studies (and fan studies in general, which in many ways is a fusion of ethnography and feminist scholarship) creates the “slasher” subject position by asserting that straight women enjoy depicting sexual situations between two men as a means of transcending their own marginalization. As a result, criticism of slash culture relies heavily on accusations of mis-appropriation of queer culture by straights. Naturally, this dynamic is of great importance to anyone doing fandom research. But if the numbers Melannen has collated are correct, then scholarly discussion on slash has been off-base, to say the least.

I think the question of how queer women can appropriate queer men’s identity, and the damage that can be done when gay men speaking about themselves are drowned out by women, are valid discussion topics, and worth addressing. That is not a conversation that is going to happen as long as THE MAJORITY OF SLASHERS, WHO IDENTIFY AS QUEER, are being erased from the discussion. fyi.

And SO when people say things like “slash is a legitimate way for straight women to express their sexuality”, what THE MAJORITY OF SLASHERS, WHO IDENTIFY AS QUEER hear is either “you aren’t queer enough, your queer identity isn’t relevant” or “straight voices are the only ones qualified to speak for the slash community”.

I think the question of how straight women’s sexuality interacts with queer sexuality, and the ways straight women’s sexuality defines slash, are valid discussion topics, and worth addressing. That is not a conversation that is going to happen as long as THE MAJORITY OF SLASHERS, WHO IDENTIFY AS QUEER, are being erased from the discussion. fyi.