Why Slash Stories Actually Matter

Slash stories are usually fan-fiction stories which depict a male-male relationship between two characters of a series or movie (who are usually not in a relationship of that kind in the series or movie itself). There are slash stories in every fandom with at least two male characters in more or less prominent roles, from Star Trek (where Kirk/Spock was the couple which prompted the ‘slash’ expression) to Harry Potter and far beyond. As with the rule that ‘there’s porn for everything on the internet,’ there’s a slash story for every possible male-male pairing in every piece of media ever conceived.

But why does the slash story exist? Because the internet is a weird place? I can hardly deny that’s true, but that’s not all. Fan-fiction has existed well before the rise of the internet - even though getting it circulating surely was harder then. People have always picked up the characters others made and imagined their own stories with them. And a very productive slice of the fan-fiction writers obviously thinks that mainstream media makes too few stories with gay protagonists, so they write their own instead.

I, personally, don’t think that a Kirk/Spock pairing would ever work and the very popular Harry/Draco pairing would probably end in a disaster (not that Harry/Ginny, which is the official pairing, is so much better). I recognize, however, that there is a dearth of same-sex relationships in media (including female-female relationships, which are called fem-slash) and always has been.

A lot of that, strange as it is, can be attributed to the three Abrahamic religions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Those three major religions see sex as something sinful and dirty which is only allowed for propagation - meaning that you’re not allowed to have sex unless you plan on having kids. While it’s understood that not every sexual act will lead to a pregnancy (especially since the female cycle was hardly understood when those religions came to be), you must be willing to have kids and, technically, have sex in a way in which it is likely for the woman to become pregnant (so, unfortunately for all true believers, anal and blowjobs are out, too). For the same reason, all three religions aren’t hot on contraceptives.

All three religions limit sexual intercourse to married couples (saying little about what if a couple is unable to conceive, although Abraham’s wife actually offers him her slave as a replacement for failing to bear him children). There’s no note about whether couples where the woman is past menopause (aka unable to conceive) should stop having sex, but especially the Catholic Church would have it hard to justify a breakup because of that (since the man could go on fathering with a younger woman) with their idea that the marriage symbolizes the bond between god and his believers. On the other hand, a lot of women at the time at which both the Bible and the Koran were written did never reach menopause, so it probably wasn’t seen as a big topic.

By definition, homosexual intercourse will never result in a pregnancy. You need two different sexes to reproduce and homosexual relationships only comprise of members of one sex. So their sex is especially sinful, because it can never be done for proper reasons (aka propagation).

Western society is deeply influenced by Christianity, which means our sexual norms were dictated by the Bible and the take the big churches had on it until relatively recently (second half of the 20th century is where it starts). Free love was a completely alien concept to people in western society (at least as something normal) until the Hippy movement gained speed. Contraception was considered something only for married women who already had a few children until well into the Seventies, too. An unmarried woman who wanted the pill was often turned away by her doctor. Both the Hippy movement and the second wave of Feminism changed that. Sex before marriage had always existed, but it became more of a norm the more women were able to protect themselves from unwanted consequences. Another big shift came with the late Eighties and early Nineties, when AIDS pushed the sale of condoms and made them more readily available. With less and less people belonging to a defined Christian belief, the influence of Christianity and its leaders is waning. People consider sex more normal and no longer see it as a sin. That surely has also helped to make people (religious bigots and extreme conservatives notwithstanding) more tolerant towards homosexual relationships. Hollywood, however, is highly conservative (which also shows in their shying away from making women or people from other ethnicities than ‘Caucasian’ - or whatever you want to call ‘white’ - the leads in their movies). Today’s Hollywood sticks to ‘what has always worked,’ instead of taking risks - and is then surprised when risks like “Wonder Woman” or “Black Panther” or “Get Out” pay off.

Islam is several centuries behind Christianity (not to mention Judaism) and has a huge hold on eastern societies. As a matter of fact, most Muslims do not live in Africa or on the Arabian Peninsula (as a lot of people presume), but in Asia. And, again, we have a religion where sex is only there for propagation and where (as in Christianity and Judaism) virginity and the right of the man to control the woman’s fertility are a basic part of the package. Naturally, conservative Muslims also abhor all kinds of ‘unnatural’ sex - specifically homosexuality.

As far as Russia is concerned … no, not going into my own opinion of men who hate gays and ride around bare-chested.

So, society as a such has grown more tolerant, but conservatives, such as the movie industry (and those it panders to), still try to keep to the status quo - and that is the white hero and the heterosexual lovers. And this is where slash comes in.

Fan-fiction is not written for the mass market. Nobody has to convince anyone to publish their slash story of Harry and Draco getting it on. It goes on the right site(s), where everyone can publish, and will be read and reviewed (with a little luck) by people. Because of this, no topic is really forbidden (provided you give explicit material the right rating). I’ve read some pretty dark stuff on the various fan-fiction sites. Some light and fluffy stuff, too, but also horribly dark stuff.

Also, many people don’t find themselves represented in the mass media: LGBT+ people, women who don’t want to play the stereotyped roles, other ethnicities than whites who want to be heroes. Fan-fiction writers have not only populated Hogwarts with more gay couples, but also with more members of different ethnicities. They have done the same for other fandoms, too.

As long as the slash writers can’t find enough same-sex couples in popular media, they will continue to make their own couples and create representation that way. And that is why slash stories actually matter.