[Note to newcomers: It’s been brought to my attention that the below essay is causing some minor waves in the slash community, much as my trilogy The Reckoning did with Voyager (and especially Janeway) fans some years ago. Certainly the below material is not intended as an assault, but merely expresses my carefully-considered and well-supported perspective on the subject. Does that make my position inviolate or unassailable? Certainly not. I welcome replies to the contrary, if they’re both thoughtful and respectful. Flames, though, will be ignored as the flailing of a child.

That said…

…I recall the flap over Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses some years ago, and how the Shi’ite Muslim community declared the guy, for all intents and purposes, a “dead man walking.” They were apoplectic at his (perceived) offenses. Now, the Sunni Muslim leadership considered Rushdie’s material, and, in my opinion, handled it the right way, saying in effect, “This is an insignificant work by an insignificant author; who gives a crap what he thinks?”

If you find my opinion offensive or nonsensical, you’re certainly welcome to do the same.]

“Is Slash Really Trek?”

Well… yes and no.

I’ve had innumerable discussions over the years with fan fiction readers and writers—the former running the gamut from barely self-aware to incredibly discerning, and the latter ranging from hacks laboring to excrete occasionally coherent prose to those effortlessly and consistently producing professional-caliber material.

Now, one has to be careful to make certain everyone understands the above question. I’m not here to say people have no right to create slash. I’m not saying certain of these stories are anything short of brilliantly composed pieces of literature. They do and they are.

Yet the question remains, and it’s a legitimate one. Authors with prodigious skills have employed them to produce stories in which it’s either established or a given that James Kirk and Spock, Janeway and Seven of Nine, or Bashir and Garak (to name three of the favorite slash pairings) are lovers.

To me, it’s ridiculous, and frankly, a bit offensive… not, though, for the reasons one might expect: I’m neither a raving homophobe nor planning to march in support of them at the next Gay Pride Parade. It's possible that sexual orientation is far less a choice than a genetic mandate, which means exploration of it is a matter between a person, their lover and God.

The issue isn’t, believe it or not, one of sexuality, but of characterization. I take exception to certain slash not because homosexuality is either an abomination or an absurdity, but because, in most cases, the particular pairing requires a suspension of reality I’m just not willing to make... and one that, moreover, shouldn’t be made at all.

Let’s look at the above relationships objectively, without an agenda to push or an axe to grind:

There is little or no canon evidence to support the idea that either Kirk or Spock possessed even the barest homosexual inclinations… or that, if they did, it manifested with each other. Kirk, for example, went out of his way to avoid Janice Rand, despite the well-established first season mutual attraction (cf. “The Enemy Within”)—which means, since we’ve seen him with women, that he was strongly against any shipboard romance, the better to maintain professionalism. Hate to tell you, slashers, but … if Kirk’s animal side didn’t go hunting down Spock to “get wit’ ‘im” then, it means that proposed attraction is just not there. All the wishful thinking in the galaxy doesn’t change the fact that these guys are both ladies’ men.

Insofar as Bashir and Garak are concerned, well… more of a case can be made here. Andrew Robinson, who played Garak, was supposedly offended when originally asked if he intentionally portrayed the character with homosexual tendencies. I’m not quite buyin’ that, because there did seem to be an undertone of “Want some candy, little girl?” interest in Garak’s behavior towards Bashir, especially during DS9’s first few seasons. While one could dismiss this as a spy’s attempt to disguise his true nature, a writer would easily be able to defend his choice by citing both these instances and Garak’s obvious unease when dealing with Ziyal’s romantic/sexual fervor in later episodes.

As to Bashir’s reciprocation, though… um, no. While I concede the fellow is rather an effeminate little twerp, we never see any evidence that he returns Garak’s “interest” (if such it is) with anything but a vague sense of unease. Sorry again, slashers: Bashir likes girls; goodness knows, he “examines” quite a few of them during the series run, including both the luscious Leeta and the creamy little Ezri Dax. No sexual tension here, unless it’s simply the tension of wondering whether calling security will be necessary to maintain your “virtue.”

Finally, we come to Seven of Nine and Janeway. Again and again, I’ve had Voyager fanatics (usually, but not exclusively… ahem… disciples of Sappho) insist that there’s a huge undercurrent of sexual tension between Kathryn and Annika—that it’s right there on the bloody screen, if you’re not just too dumb or too male (for many of these people, the two are synonymous) to see it. Eventually, I started to seriously consider whether it did, indeed exist, and I had just been too dimwitted to see it.

Upon further review, I finally decided that…

…yeah, it was there.

Could one extrapolate a relationship from that?

I couldn’t, because I believe Janeway too straitlaced and morally conflicted to engage in sexual behavior with a woman to whom she clearly has a mentor/student, mother/daughter relationship. I’m not a big Janeway fan, but… come on, people, she has more class than that.

So… the final tally reads “Hell no” for Kirk and Spock, “heck no” for Bashir and Garak, and “Heavens no” for Janeway and Seven (that last admittedly based more on my opinion than canon or cold, hard fact).

But is there place for slash in Trek?

My answer: Why the hell not? If you create a character, or employ one from canon whose sexuality has not been overwhelmingly established (as I’ve done with Erika Benteen by making her bisexual), writing slash is just as legitimate as writing more conventional erotica… and we’ll leave alone for the moment the question “Is Erotica Trek?”—though considering I wrote Nature of the Beast, I think we all know where I stand on the matter.

Slash, though, when written about a Trek regular who we know isn’t gay, is not only a subversion of the established character, it’s an attempt at revisionist history… something for which, as a historian, I have little but contempt.

In short, hijacking’s a crime in the real world…

…and it’s as much a crime in fan fiction.