Queering Popular Culture: Female Spectators and the Appeal of Writing Slash Fan Fiction

The advent of the internet has provided a larger forum for and brought increased visibility to a number of alternative writing practices. One of the more curious ones is slash fan fiction, a particular type of queer fan fiction which is written almost exclusively by women of all sexual orientations for a predominantly female audience, featuring same-sex relationships between (mostly) male TV characters. In my essay I argue that this particular type of fan fiction is a communal and grass roots critique not only of popular culture but also of heterosexual hegemonic notions of gender and sexuality.