I am (personally) ok with excluding slash fiction for a couple of reasons:
1. Slash does not (necessarily) equal gay fiction or real gay people. It can, most definitely, but not always. One of the main reasons I'm not a fan of most slash fic is the way a lot (not all, and by no means even most) of it fetishizes and others gay people. There is some slash fiction that is the fandom equivalent of "lesbian" pornos made for and by straight men.
2. Het-only comms do not necessarily exclude gay people, as I think lesbian, gay, and bisexual readers are just as capable of reading and enjoying m/f pairings as heterosexual readers. This is where the environment of the comm itself, and whether the tone is welcoming of LGB people, is most important in my distinction between "OK" and "Not OK."
Now, the biggest criticism I can see of my own arguments is that they're too sterile and detached, and not taking into account the way most people would view a het-only comm. The tone of fandom and het vs. slash debates as they exist in the real world will necessarily color any and all attempts to single out slash fiction from its het counterparts.
Full disclosure: I co-mod a het-only comm for Sherlock, sherlockhet. (I don't mention it to be all "but I have a het comm, and I'm not a bigot!" I welcome any and all criticism of my involvement with that comm.) We set it up because I was lamenting the difficulties of finding an audience for my Molly/Moriarty stories, and also having trouble finding that pairing elsewhere. I asked, jokingly, "What's a het fan like me doing in such a slashy fandom?"
We set up sherlockhet mostly as a rare pairs comm. With no female leads and a juggernaut ship like Sherlock/John, basically any het pairing in the fandom is de facto a "rare pair". We don't exclude slash from the comm: we just ask that each story feature at least one m/f pairing.
Now, could we have set it up differently? Made it a "women of Sherlock" comm, or a an actual "Sherlock Rare Pairs" comm? We probably could have.
In any case, it gives me something to think about!
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1. Slash does not (necessarily) equal gay fiction or real gay people. It can, most definitely, but not always. One of the main reasons I'm not a fan of most slash fic is the way a lot (not all, and by no means even most) of it fetishizes and others gay people. There is some slash fiction that is the fandom equivalent of "lesbian" pornos made for and by straight men.
2. Het-only comms do not necessarily exclude gay people, as I think lesbian, gay, and bisexual readers are just as capable of reading and enjoying m/f pairings as heterosexual readers. This is where the environment of the comm itself, and whether the tone is welcoming of LGB people, is most important in my distinction between "OK" and "Not OK."
Now, the biggest criticism I can see of my own arguments is that they're too sterile and detached, and not taking into account the way most people would view a het-only comm. The tone of fandom and het vs. slash debates as they exist in the real world will necessarily color any and all attempts to single out slash fiction from its het counterparts.
Full disclosure: I co-mod a het-only comm for Sherlock,
We set up
Now, could we have set it up differently? Made it a "women of Sherlock" comm, or a an actual "Sherlock Rare Pairs" comm? We probably could have.
In any case, it gives me something to think about!