Why disliking slash is not homophobic

Originally posted May 5, 2003:

For the record, I do believe it's possible to dislike slash and not be homophobic. I say this from personal experience because I, who have, as my own mother informs me, been "obsessed" with gay rights my whole life, disliked slash for about two years, although I read it fairly frequently at the behest of friends, whose slashwriting habits I supported. I didn't see the appeal of slash as a genre, even though I frequently slashed characters myself and hunted for subtext. What I disliked was the feeling that the characters were being slashed for slash's sake, and for the sake of pure smut appeal, two cocks is better than one, etc. I know that there are many people who feel this way, and even though now that I myself am a slasher I can argue with those people that slash is about much more than that, I don't for any reason feel that the initial dislike of that preconceived idea of what slash is is homophobic. I think that logic is based not out of prejudice but out of a wish to preserve characterization.

It's just that that kind of logic, which can be debated from the standpoint of literary critique, is often left undebated. I'd guess that typically people with any kind of tact don't want to say, "I don't dislike slash because of X" because they know they stand a chance of being labeled homophobic. And so