History of anti-slash
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Contents |
A historical perspective on anti-slash
Issues and trends
By Michela Ecks
Homophobia. Anti-gay. The negative slash feedback. These things are present at various times, in various communities in fan fiction culture. Situations flare, are acted out and then disappear. At other times, anti-homosexual, homophobic attitudes lay just under the surface of a community; everyone knows the attitudes are prevalent in that community but so long as waves aren’t made, the outsider won’t see it.
America, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia: these four countries have people that make up a large contingent of the English speaking fan fiction community. What happens in these countries can and does effect what happens in various communities. A recent example of this involved the implications of Australian law as it pertains to child pornography and the fan fiction genre known as chan. This relationship of what happens in these countries and how it effects the related fan fiction communities begs the question of, given the big blow ups pertaining to slash, what the relationship between the political and cultural situations in these countries and the presence of anti-slash, homophobic attitudes in the greater fan fiction community.
The 1970s
The slash debate was present in the Star Trek community during the mid-1970s in the United States. In the United States, during the late-1970s, the period would feature an issue regarding adult material as a means of putting down some content, including slash, in the Star Wars community.
While the Star Trek fan fiction community had been around since 1967, slash did not begin to appear on the scene in zines until around 1974. In this year, “A Fragment Out of Time” by Diane Marchant was published. (Langley, Curtin) This story used coded language and was vague enough that the people involved were not immediately identifiable as Kirk/Spock. (Boyd) It was not until later, in an another zine, that Diane Marchant stated that this was indeed Kirk/Spock. (Verba) The period that followed this would see an increase in the amount of slash. At the same time, it also saw a degree of resentment regarding this material. It was one of the reasons that it took so long for the material, distributed in some cases by hand, to start to circulate in fanzines. Star Trek Lives! By Lichtenberg, Marshak and Winston was published in 1975 and mentions this material, discusses that some of this material is so “flaming” that many authors do not remove the stories from their drawers. One assumes with this reading that the writers were aware of the potential reaction of that community during that time to that material would be.
Giving a backdrop that material, in the United States in 1973, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its official list of mental disorders. Prior to this, in 1969 in New York City, the Stonewall Riots took place. These riots with the police were, what some people call, a turning point in the gay rights movement in the United States. The incident helped to empower the community to act, to demand equality. This event helped spur the creation of a number of gay and lesbian groups. It was why, by 1973 when the homosexuality stopped being listed as a mental disorder, there were over 800 clubs and organisations for gays and lesbians. It was a period when people were beginning to feel comfortable about finally coming out of the closet. This was a time period when a number of states were beginning to decriminalise sodomy and homosexuality. (The Reader's Companion to American History) That was political and cultural backdrop in which the fan fiction community dealt with the first large-scale presence of slash in their community.
In 1977, Star Wars was released. Almost immediately, the fan fiction started. The first story appeared in Warped Space that year. (Boyd, Langley) Among other fannish communities, members of the Star Trek one were crossing over and bringing their traditions with them. They brought with them their tradition of adult material and slash. This material would, like early Star Trek adult material and slash, initially circulate quietly. Lucasfilms Ltd. was aware of this material, had been prepped for it to emerge though contact it had with producers of other material on which fan fiction had been based. They generally let it be known that they wanted their movie to be viewed as family friendly and were quietly discouraging the existence of that material. As this attitude on the part of Lucasfilms Ltd. became more well known in various fannish communities, people in American fan fiction communities hoping to avoid that material began to join the Star Wars community. This created an interesting dichotomy.
Against the backdrop of Lucasfilms Ltd. quietly discouraging slash and fen still quietly writing and publishing it anyway, there was a backlash in the United States to the gay rights movement. In 1977, the same year that Star Wars was released in theatres, Anita Bryant began a campaign to repeal a gay rights ordinance in Florida. (The Reader's Companion to American History) This campaign would be a defining point, galvanising conservatives to counter the steps made by the gay rights movement. It would continue on into the 1980s and the events that were to come.
The 1980s
In the United States, the Star Wars issues would carry over into the early 1980s. The anti-slash attitudes also occurred in the United Kingdom in the early part of the 1980s in the Starsky and Hutch community. Similar attitudes would find themselves being expressed in the same community, across the pond in the United States. The Blake’s 7 community would find itself doing their own slash related shuffle, but this was later than the other stuff, occurring around 1987 and 1988. During the late 1980s in the United States, an aura of anti-slash sentiment would permeate the Robin of Sherwood community. This aura would continue into the present day. (Shomeret on FCA-L)
By 1981, the Star Wars slash situation got to the point where Lucasfilms Ltd. felt they needed to act to protect their interests. The community was primed and this year would be the one remembered. In May, Guardian #3 was published. This fanzine contained two version of a story called “A Slow Boat to Bespin.” One story was by A. E. Zeek. The other story was by B. Wenk. While both of these stories featured heterosexual pairings, Zeek’s story contained material that would, in today’s society, likely garner an R rating. This story was the reason that the publishers of Guardian #3 likely received a cease and desist letter from Maureen Garrett, the first president of the Star Wars fan club. Several other zines during the same period, including ones that had published slashed, received similar cease and desist notices. In response to the demand for clarity on what was acceptable to publish and not publish, Maureen Garrett promised guidelines. None came until October. When they came, they were not viewed as being particularly helpful. The guidelines were nothing more than a statement saying Lucasfilms Ltd. would not tolerate pornography, vulgar material, and material that was excessively violent or gory. (Langley) The net effect of this incident was that it shut down almost all production of slash in the Star Wars community. This created an increase of people from other communities where slash was more prevalent but who did not like this material joining the community. Fen who did not leave or who were active in both also began campaigns around this time, trying to convince the powers that be in their fannish communities to crack down on slash, like Lucasfilms Ltd. had done.
Elsewhere in the United States during the same year that the Star Wars incident was going down, the Starsky and Hutch American contingent wrestled with their own slash related issues. (me_n_thee on LiveJournal) Code 7 would be published this year. The zine was published anonymously as there was a real fear in the American fan fiction community that the anti-slash component of the fan fiction community would send the material to the producers of the show and create other problems for those slash writers in their real lives. According to me_n_thee, the zine contained the following disclaimer: "This is a privileged and private publication; it was sent to you because you know the value and need for discretion. You are being trusted; if you misuse this trust, you will be harming not only the contributors, but all of S/H fandom. Please keep this zine entirely to yourself! Thank you." Slash fen in the community felt very threatened by others.
The political and cultural backdrop in terms of the gay rights movement and attitudes towards homosexuals in general in the United States were not much better than those seen in the fan fiction community. In 1980, the Human Rights Campaign was founded to fight for human rights. One of their first big issues was equal treatment for homosexuals in American society. Gay rights activists start working on an effort to use the Democratic Party to support their political agenda of equal treatment. In November of 1980, a former New York City police officer shot up two gay bars. He killed two and injured six. AIDs had appeared on scene in the United States. Initially, in 1981, it was being called “Gay Cancer.” It would be officially named AIDS in 1982. (David Johnson) The year after the initial events in the Star Wars and Starsky and Hutch communities, in 1982, Massachusetts passed a law barring homosexuals from adopting children or becoming foster parents. (CBC News) Conservatives in the United States continue with their effort to try to suppress the gay rights movement. Some of the key early figures in this movement included Jesse Helms and Jerry Falwell. The situation was rather complex, not easy to figure out, with growing hostility, agitation and concern growing on the part of all sides involved.
A similar situation was happening across the pond in the United Kingdom in the Starsky and Hutch community. Predating the American fan fiction community by a year, the first slash was published the United Kingdom in 1980. According to Langley and Boyd, the story “Forever Autumn” was published in March of this year. The reaction of British fen was almost identical to what American fen would feel a year later. There was a lot of open hostility in regards to this material. Fear was going on, with slash writers being concerned that this material would end up in the hands of the producers or be used to launch a personal attack, disrupting the personal life of the writer. This anti-gay, anti-homosexual, anti-slash attitude would heavily influence this community for a few years.
The climate in the United Kingdom during this was similarly turbulent. Things were happening. In 1978, the first gay rights protest were taking place. (Hawkeye7 on LiveJournal) In 1980, the House of Commons extended the Sexual Offenses Act to cover Scotland. This resulted in the decriminalising of most private consensual sex acts between men. In 1981, a case was brought to the courts. Northern Ireland Gay Rights Association member Jeff Dudgeon brought the case to the courts. The European Court of Human Rights ruled that Northern Ireland violated basic human rights by criminalising gay male sex. Advances were being made legally but cultural attitudes had yet to catch up.
Starting around 1984, American fen began interacting with the actors from the show Blake’s 7. Slash was also present around this time. By 1987, the presence of slash in the community would start to come to a head. Some fen were agitating for the removal of this material. They saw their chance to do so by bringing the material to the attention of the actors from the show. The actors did react, and react in the way hoped for by some of the agitators. They let their opinions regarding the writing of their characters as gay not being right be known. The fandom kerfluffled over the subject, with the issue playing a big part in the community for the next two years before it began to die down.
In the United States, the gay rights movement had grown bigger with more people involved. The subject continued to be a polarising one. The opposition to the movement was become stronger and more vocal. By 1987, a gay rights parade, which had only 5,000 people at its inaugural march in 1970, now had as many as 600,000 people marching in it. This parade, held in Washington DC, commemorated the Stonewall riot. Two years prior to this, in 1985, Rock Hudson had died of AIDs. This event brought additional focus on the community and its plight. Not all of it was sympathetic. Ronald Reagan, president at the time, refused to take steps to combat AIDs because it a problem that effected the gay community; it was perceived as punishment for immoral behaviour and you got what you deserved. In 1986, there was the case of Bowers v. Hardwick. The United States Supreme Court examined the case and ruled that the United States Constitution gave states the right to regulate and proscribe same-sex relations. The Supreme Court cited as the precedence for the Judeo-Christian prohibitions and Anglo-American sodomy laws in supporting their position. That same year, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the man who would later become the Pope, released a letter regarding the Roman Catholic Church’s stance on homosexuality. The letter condemned the "homosexual inclination" as a “tendency toward an intrinsic moral evil” and an “objective disorder,” and criticised Catholics who had been guilty of "an overly benign interpretation of the homosexual condition.” (http://www.aaronsgayinfo.com/timeline/time80.html) That was the climate in which the actions of fen in the Blake’s 7 fan fiction community happened.
The 1990s
There were a number of incident during the mid and late 1990s involving negative attitudes towards slash that resulted in blow-ups. In 1995, 1996, some Trek Usenet groups would revisit the wrongness of slash. One incident occurred in 1997 in the Doctor Who fan fiction community in Australia. An on going situation regarding real person slash was present in a variety of fan spaces in the United States and Australia. Figure skating fen in the United States kerfluffled over the issue of writing fan fiction where skaters’ orientation was explored. There was bitterness in the Rescue Ranger community over slash being written featuring Chip and Gadget. The Star Wars attitudes would flare again in the United States in 1997. In the same year, Mulder and Scully shipper fen on alt.tv.x-files.creative in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom did that wail of “Waaaah! We’re being overwhelmed by slash!”
The anti-slash movements of the early 1990s were not very memorable, with their fan fiction community references not appearing across the Internet, not being discussed years later. People remembered the big incidents of anti-slash in the 1970s and 1980s. They remember the incidents of the late 1990s and the current decade. There seems to be an absence of fannish recall of events in that period. There are a number of possibilities as to why this period between 1987 to 1995 was absent large fannish anti-slash activities. One is that this period was a period of transition: fan activity was moving from almost exclusively zines to the electronic frontier. This movement demanded a change in behaviour, in adapting that sidelined other fannish squabbles. Added to this, the new format was even more exclusive than zines in terms of who could plug in. Your average fan just could not get on and neophyte fans seem to be the ones most likely to be at the centre of anti-slash, ew, I’m squicked! attitudes that would help fan flames of other discussions. The power structure in this new medium was also different. It took a while for it to become established, to recognise who those people were. Another highlight of this period is that a number of fen seemed to be taking time off from fandom, doing things like getting married, having children and finishing schooling. Their interests were diverted elsewhere.
At the same time that various changes were happening in the fan fiction community itself, there were a number of external pressures on the fan fiction community that made dialogue on this topic less likely to happen, less palatable, less important that such dialogue take place. Things were happening in the United States, in Canada, in Australia and in the United Kingdom. Internationally, in 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. Most of the big English speaking countries in the fan fiction community had troops involved in what would turn out to be the first Gulf War.
Californians in the United States would remember 1990 as the year of the Loma Prieta earthquake. The Gulf War would continue to dominate the national agenda in 1990 and 1991. In the United States, in 1992, attention would be diverted by the riots in Los Angeles that came in the aftermath of the Rodney King trial. That same year in the United States, there was a presidential election that would see Bill Clinton come into office and there was Hurricane Andrew in Florida. In 1993, there was the first World Trade Center bombing and the Waco siege. 1994 in the United States would see the Northridge Earthquake. That same year, NAFTA was a big issue on the political landscape in both the United States and Canada. Another turbulent year would follow in 1995 in the United States. That year saw Oklahoma City Bombing, and the Republicans gaining power in both houses, the first time since 1955. It also saw the downing of the TWA flight over Long Island.
Canada has similar issues dominating their national consciousness during this period. The things going on with their American neighbors would effect them. This included the Gulf War in 1991 and the riots in Los Angeles in 1992. They had their own internal problems. There was the Oka Crisis in 1990. In 1992, there was the Westray Coal Mine explosion. That same year, in the world of sports and not as politically upsetting, the Blue Jays won the World Series. By 1994, the seeds of more active Quebec separatism were at play. And various constitutional issues dominated this whole period between 1987 and 1995.
Things were no less hectic in Australia. A lot of things were going on. In 1988, there was increases agitation on the part of the aborigine population for equal rights, equal treatment, concession for past behaviours, which adversely effected their community. The Long March would take place this year. This march was organized by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders from around Australia. They converged on Sydney for protest on 26 January. In 1989, a resolution on Aboriginal prior ownership and dispossession is passed at the opening of the new Parliament House in Canberra. In 1990, the first election conducted for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission was held. In 1991, the Federal Cabinet in Australia announced that there would be a complete ban on all political advertising on television and radio. In 1992, two Australian nationals would die in a bombing targeting Americans in Yemen. In 1993, Sydney was selected to host the 2000 Olympics. In 1994, fires were sweeping across parts of Australia, specifically in the area near Sydney. In 1996, the first conservative government came in to power since 1983. In that same year, Martin Bryant killed thirty-five tourists visiting a colonial prison on the Australian island of Tasmania and the first voluntary suicide law was passed.
The United Kingdom had a lot going on too. This whole period would face continuing issues of independence for Northern Ireland, with the government battling against the Irish Republican Army. In 1987, Margaret Thatcher won her third term in office. In 1988, animal rights activists bombed Herrods in London. In 1989, Iran ended diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom over Salmon Rushdie's book. In 1990, Margaret Thatcher stepped down and work on the Chunnel would begin. During the period between 1990 and 1991, efforts would be focused on the Gulf War and general stability of the region. In 1991, the British Communist Party folded. In 1992, the Anglican Church began ordaining women. In 1993, two ten-year-old boys beat a two year old to death. In 1994, the Labour party gained power and British troops left Hong Kong. In 1994, Western troops formally withdrew from the western part of Berlin. In 1995, it began to look like Prince Charles and Princess Diana were finally going to split.
The above situation may help to explain the lack of anti-slash activity. It might also explain why and how the vigrule mailing list arrived on the scene in 1993 in the United States. (morgandawn on LJ) The list was born out of a feel that a lot of the current net activity on Usenet was dominated by men. In much the same way that early female Star Trek fan fiction felt a need to carve out a fan space that was uniquely their own, that addressed their needs, so did virgule. The list was founded, in part, because of a general anti-slash vibe felt on-line. Members were concerned “how slash was being perceived by mainstream fan communities.” (morgandawn on LJ) Anti-slash attitudes at the time included being flamed for posting Kirk/Spock stories to the male dominated Usenet. To ensure a certain level of comfort and security for list members and to avoid the anti-slash backlash, a rule for the group was that the list was not allowed to be mentioned on-line.
During this period of 1989 to 1992 in the United States, several things were happening in the battle against homosexuality in the United States. In 1989, Shadow in the Land: Homosexuality in America was published by U.S. Rep. William Dannemeyer, a Republican from California. Among the quotes is one that says gays and lesbians will “plunge our people, and indeed the entire West, into a dark night of the soul that could last hundreds of years.” In 1990, University of Colorado football coach Bill McCartney founded Promise Keepers. This all-male organization was founded to promote “traditional” male masculinity, and did so by calling homosexuality an abomination before God and ridiculing efforts for equal rights, for equality of homosexuals in the United States. In 1991, Pat Robertson Founded the American Center for Law and Justice. This organization would eventually be key in leading the fight against gay marriage in the United States. (Southern Poverty Law Center) 1992 would be a big year in terms of ratcheting up the rhetoric against equality for homosexuals in the United States, as Republicans began to more closely embrace a conservative Christian viewpoint of intolerance towards homosexuality. This relationship was most evident when Pat Buchanan said at the Republican National Convention “There is a culture war going on in our country for the soul of America” with supporters waving signs “Family Rights Forever, 'Gay' Rights Never” in the background. The film “The Gay Agenda,” created by Ty and Jeannette Beeson, would air on the 700 Club this year. This piece of propaganda film would become a staple in the anti-gay movement. (Southern Poverty Law Center)
In the early part 1995, there was blow up on alt.startrek.cardassian regarding slash. (mtgat on LiveJournal) Most of the Usenet community at this time was still largely American and Canadian centred. Some of the backlash appeared to be using an argument of this isn’t good fan fiction because it is out of character, no one in any incarnation is gay. This anti-slash backlash would continue to be confined mostly to that Usenet group. When parts of it wandered to alt.startrek.creative or other parts of the on-line Star Trek fan fiction community, the conversations largely ceased. Most of the Big Name Fans of that era had been involved in the Star Trek community long enough to know the history of the material or “were either gay, bi, or gay-friendly, and issued quick smackdowns for stupid people.” (mtgat on LiveJournal) While the conversation eventually ended, this type of discussion would continue to pop up in Star Trek Usenet groups for the next few years.
1995, in the United States, was largely quiet. The big issue of the year involved the publication of The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party, by fundamentalist activists Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams. (Southern Poverty Law Center) While it was repudiated for being factually inaccurate, it would continue to circulate for years in anti-gay circles. In Canada this year, the Supreme Court of that country ruled in Egan v. Canada that “sexual orientation" should be 'read in' to Section 15.” (Wikipedia) Also in Canada that year, a court in Ontario ruled that gay and lesbian couples wishing to adopt jointly should be allowed to do so. (Wikipedia) In Australia, the Keating Government introduced “interdependency visas” allowing same sex partners of Australian citizens to migrate to Australia. That same year, Australian Democrats introduced the Sexuality Discrimination Bill. The other two parties failed to support that piece of legislation.
In the period around 1996, various fen in the United States and Canada began discussing f/f. (Keri on Usenet) These discussions included some slash fen having a real hatred of f/f in the slash community and not wanting to see it mainstreamed with the rest of the slash community. There was a movement to make certain that this material was not defined as slash. This would be one of the first big divides in the slash community. This discussion would not always be pretty and would lead to a lot of resentment of some f/f fan fiction writers and readers towards the greater slash community due to issues of feeling marginalized.
1996 would be another building year in the anti-gay movement in the United States. This year, the National Pro-Family Forum would meet for the first time. It was a group with representatives from twenty largest anti-gay groups in the United States. Here, they would begin to define their agenda. First on their list was to push for the passage of the Defence of Marriage Act. (Southern Poverty Law Center) The Southern Baptist Convention started their boycott of Disney parks and products. They were angered because Disney gave insurance benefits to partners of gay workers. Focus on Family jumped on the bandwagon. Gay Day protests would become a staple of the anti-gay movement during this period. (Southern Poverty Law Center) In Australia, the Howard Government slashed the number of “interdependency visas,” making migration for same sex couples far more difficult. (Gay & Lesbians Rights Lobby) Labor MP Anthony Albanese would react, later in the year, by speaking out about discrimination against same sex couples in federal Superannuation laws. (Gay & Lesbians Rights Lobby)
During the late 1990s, an on going situation regarding real person slash was present in a variety of fan spaces in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia. The contention was that slash based on media based products was acceptable but real people were off limits. This was an invasion of privacy, wrong. In some places, real person slash was being described as tantamount to raping an actual person. It was not to appear in a number of high profile fanzines, nor at multifandom fan fiction slash conventions. It was not to be hosted on some servers like SlashCity. It was not to appear on certain fan fiction archives. It was taboo, along with the non-slashy ActorFic, Real Person Fic in Usenet communities like alt.tv.x-files.creative and alt.startrek.creative. For the most part, the material would generally only be referenced in the slash community and refer to it as Real Person Slash.
This period was one where outing of homosexuals became more prominent and used or were threatened to be used as political weapon. In 1989, ACT UP in Portland, Oregon outed Mark Hatfield, a conservative Republican U. S. Senator from Oregon. Assistant Secretary of Defence Pete Williams was outed in 1991 by the Advocate. (glbtq) In 1990, Chastity Bon was outed by the tabloid, The Star. (Queer Serbia) In 1994, Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner was outed after he divorced his wife for former Calvin Klein employee Matt Nye. In 1994, one of the first outings happened on the floor of the United States House of Representatives when Californian Republican conservative Congressman Robert Dornan outed himself. (glbtq) The New York Times would, in 1996 as Steve Forbes sought the Republican presidential nomination, out his father. This outing had been out there, though not featured in as politically mainstream sources, since 1990 when Out magazine featured Forbes. Republican political strategist Arthur Finkelstein was outed the same year, in part to point out his hypocrisy in working for people who ran on platforms of homophobia: Jesse Helms, Launch Faircloth, and Don Nickles. Ellen DeGeneres was outed that same year, 1996, after the producers of her television show debated outing her character. (OUT Magazine) The character outing would take place in 1997. Also in 1996, Senator Barbara Mikulski, a Democrat from Maryland, and Representative Jim Kolbe, a Republican from Arizona, were outed in order to put pressure on them to not support the piece of 1996 legislation, the Defence of Marriage Act. These were just a few of the people outed during this period and most of the people subject to such outings were not happy. The trend would continue and lead to increased speculation about people’s private sex lives, with accusations and innuendo of who was a homosexual becoming part of the cultural dialogue. A lot of people were uncomfortable. A lot of people were uncomfortable with the idea that some one could accuse them of being gay and then having to deal with the personal and professional fall out.
But the more obvious and less squicky anti-slash was still present. And in some cases, still tied to adult fic material. One incident occurred in 1997 in the Doctor Who fan fiction community in Australia. While the details seem to be somewhat sketchy, the gist of it was that one Doctor Who fan club in one city in Australia wrote and published a fanzine for their club. It was both slashy and adult in nature. A club in another city gained access to said zine and immediately tried to crack down on it, trying to have it removed or advocating a boycott of this zine in their city. (Usenet, 1998) The general gist of it was that it was an unpleasant incident all around.
And in Australia, there were things happening on the gay rights front. In January of 1997, John Howard refused to offer a message of support to Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. He told the television show, a Current Affair, that he would be “disappointed” if found out that one of his children was a homosexual. That same month, in response to a lawsuit by Queensland lesbian involving discrimination, the Federal Minister for Health threatened to remove Medicare rebates for lesbians who access fertility services. The Federal Attorney General also threatened to amend the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 to prevent unmarried women from adopting or receiving fertility services. (Gay & Lesbians Rights Lobby)
In 1997, figure skating fen in the United States began a kerfluffle over the issue of writing fan fiction where skaters’ orientation was explored on the Usenet group rec.sport.skating.ice.figure. This kerfluffle was part of a broader discussion about the appropriateness of skaters’ private lives and such issues as orientation, abusive parents and coaches, drinking, drugging and eating disorders. (SkateFic.Com) The discussion would eventually cause a split in the community, with a number of people vacating the group and creating their own mailing lists on egroups or creating their own websites.
The Star Wars attitudes would flare again in the United States in 1997. This flare went up after Marc Hedlund, the director of Internet development for Lucasfilms Ltd., said in an October article in Wired magazine that Lucasfilms Ltd. tolerates the publication of fan fiction, so long as the stories are not for commercial gain and do not sully the image of Star Wars characters. This had long been established to mean no adult material, and no surprise, no slash, no depicting characters as homosexuals.
In the same year, Mulder and Scully shipper fen on alt.tv.x-files.creative in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom did that wail of “Waaaah! We’re being overwhelmed by slash!” While slash had been present in the community since 1995 when authors like Laura Cooksey had been published their stories, it had not begun to take off. The slash community began to take off in 1996 when the Mulder/Kryceck Romantics Association and the Mulder/Skinner Slash Society were created. Still in 1996, only fifty pieces of slash were posted to alt.tv.x-files.creative (rosalita on LJ), the Usenet group that was, during that pieces, central to most of the community’s fan fiction activity. One of the more notable pieces of that year was Brenda Atrim’s “Krychek” which was published on July 31, 1996. (rosalita on LJ) Mulder/Scully fan fiction dominated the fannish landscape, both shipper wise and as a backdrop element to a number of gen stories. This dominance would continue into 1997. By December of 1997, slash began to reach a critical mass, especially in terms of posting to alt.tv.x-files.creative as a number of slash fen had felt marginalized for too long. They waged a campaign to make slash a more normal and accepted part of the wider X-Files fan fiction community. This campaign involved a concentrated effort to post slash to the group in December of that year. It was, to a degree, very successful. One of the side effects of the event was that it led to the Mulder/Scully fen feeling overwhelmed and marginalized in their own right. There was a certain degree of wanking, kerfluffling and then more redefining of fan space.
All of this stands as somewhat baffling if the events are looked at only in the context of their own year. These attitudes and situations would carry on into the next year and the future but they were not as big as 1997. The gay rights movement and anti-gay activity was not as prominent as it had been in previous years and as it would be in coming years. The United Kingdom would extend immigration rights to same-sex couples akin to marriage. (Wikipedia) In the United States, Ellen DeGeneres' character would be outed on her show. (Southern Poverty Law Center) Nothing of note seemed to have happened in Canada. Australia had just two big incidents already discussed.
And then the anti-slash attitudes, prevalent in such a diverse number of fan fiction communities took another hiatus, not reappearing on a large fannish scale until 2001.
