I just watched, Before Stonewall and realized that slash fandom is sort of mirroring -- in a very minor way -- the whole gay liberation movement.
Please understand that I'm spouting off, and I'm only half serious about this. The sort of persecution that has followed being gay in the past century (including murder and the destruction of one's career, shunning by family and one's community, etc) is a far different matter than being flamed for entertaining oneself by reading and writing stories about fictional characters having non-canon sexual orientation.
First, a brief summary of the video:
1)Before Stonewall -- an okay documentary, although
not a great one, talks about how, from about the turn
of the century till the 1930s, homosexuality was
part of the Bohemian lifestyle, right along with
prostitution, starving poets, drug addicts, rich
wastrels, the whole Falstaffian lot.
Not something nice or respectable people got involved
with, but more disreputable than demonified.
There weren't so much, "Queer Bars" as there were
"Bohemian Clubs" where being homosexual was an
acceptable vice.
2)With WW II, the guys joined the Army, and the women went to the city or into the WACs, and within these great concentrations of people, homosexuals found each other and built networks and the beginnings of communities. (There's a lovely interview with a woman who was in the WACs, who got to tell Eisenhower that she would, of course, comply with his order to root out the lesbians in her battalion, but that he'd have to be prepared to replace all the officers, all the file clerks, all the truck drivers, and by the way, her own name would be the first on the list. Then her commanding officer added that she too was a lesbian. Eisenhower withdrew the order. I can see the beginnings of the don't-ask, don't-tell policy, right there. But that's besides the point.)
3)After WW II, there were a few years of liberalism before McCarthy and Co. demonized homosexuality. During the early post-war years, the Mattachine Society started publishing One a magazine for homosexuals, the first and only one that they knew of. Copies were mailed clandestinely (at the time, I'm told, it was illegal to use the post office for this because homosexual content was automatically considered obscene), and passed hand-to-hand. The editorial offices would get letters and calls from people who had no other contact with other gays, thanking them for being a lifeline.
4)In the 1950s, being outed could result in being disowned, fired, considered a probably Communist, and possibly being involuntarily confined to a mental institution until "cured". One short section of the video deals with someone in an early gay support group, who recalled the arguments *within* the group about whether homosexuality was a mental illness or not.
Right. On to the parallels with slashdom.
1) Media fandom is a fringe subculture and fanfic
writers fit within it.
Gen fanfic was/is considered weird (Bohemian) at
least, and both illegal and immoral at worst. But
early gen fanfic writers were largely isolated
eccentrics who while they might be considered
misguided weren't actually seen as threats to the
greater social order of our society.
2)And then there were the first Trek conventions.
And fanfic writers met, and began to converse and
build communities.
Trek, and other fandoms emerged, tied together
by conventions and fanzines. But slash was still
the fic that dared not type it's name. It existed
(I'm told) but didn't yet have a name.
3)This is what really sparked my throwaway comment. During the latter 1970s, a group of Starksky & Hutch fans started publishing Code 7 a slash fanzine, the first and only one that they knew of. Pennames and PO boxes were used, and copies were mailed clandestinely because the editors and writers had every reason to believe that they'd be sued by the owners of S&H or charged with distributing obscene material through the mail, if anyone noticed what they were publishing. Copies were passed hand to hand. The editors would receive letters from people who had no other contact with other slashers, thanking them for being a lifeline.
The section of Before Stonewall and the history I read of Code 7 paralleled remarkably.
4) Within fandom and in society in general, the mere existence and mention of slash has occasioned flame-wars, accusations of mental instability, and all sorts of nastiness. We've yet to see whether the current openness of slash fandom on the Net will continue and lead to more general acceptance within the fannish subculture and within society in general or whether it'll be attacked with the same fervor as the McCarthyite gay-bashing. Will we have a Stonewall of our own?
See why I use a nom-de-Net?
Gearbox
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