How Slash Fiction Is Like Surprise Vodka

We spend a  lot of time in media fandom talking about warnings, worrying about warnings, and arguing about the morality of not including warnings.

But did you know that, early on, one of the reasons to label your fanfic was to prevent unsuspecting readers from being subjected to your slash stories? Back when fanfic was mainly in print, the only warnings you would get were whether the story was slash (and you had to include an age statement with your order to buy the zine).

“Labeling” your stories became even more important when media fandom migrated online, because (gasp) anyone could stumble across your gay porn without warning (“think of the children’” was literally  one of the arguments often used to argue that slash fiction should never be allowed online). The arguments over slash were so frequent that a few slash fans penned the “Generic Slash Defense Letter” to explain what slash is and to counter the many and repeated objections to the genre.

But back to warnings. Here is what one  fan - who objected to warning-less slash fic had to say. The essay was written in response to the Generic Slash Defense Letter in 1997.

“Here’s another analogy: suppose I’m thirsty and go to the refridgerator for some ice water. I see a glass bottle without a label, containing a clear liquid. I assume it’s water, because water bottles often don’t have labels. I pour myself a glass, and take a gulp, and discover to my surprise that I’d just taken a gulp of vodka. (For the sake of argument, let’s assume I had a cold so I couldn’t smell the liquid either). I didn’t know it was vodka until I’d already drunk it. Just as I can’t know the content of an unlabelled story until I’ve read it.”

“It is impossible to force anyone to read anything, so of course no one can be forced to read homosexual fiction. There are, however, such things as peer pressure and misinformation. Peer Pressure: this isn’t conscious at all, it’s just that if one’s peers consider homosexual fiction to be the thing that all tolerant and fun-loving people ought to be reading, it will be hard for some people to say no. It is only fair to give people an alternative view.  Misinformation: it is easy to mail-order (or buy in an auction) a homosexual (or adult) fiction zine without having the faintest idea that it is erotica, until you start reading the first story in the zine. (This has happened more than once to friends of mine.) Likewise, one could stumble across a slash story on the net (especially with a search engine), and if it isn’t labeled, then you can’t know what it is until you start reading it. Even for people who do know what the label of "slash” means, it doesn’t help if there is no warning about it. (I’m not talking about the zines/sites that do have warnings, they aren’t the problem. It’s the ones that don’t that are the problem.) By that time, it is too late: my right not to read homosexual fiction has been violated; my brain has been polluted with images I would rather not have been there. It is like going into a movie that one thought was rated ‘G’ only to find it is an 'NC-17’ rated movie.“

From: http://fanlore.org/wiki/Slash_Summary

*links go to Fanlore, the fan run non-profit wiki about media fandom