femslash

English

Alternative forms

• femmeslash

Etymology

From fem +‎ slash.

Noun

femslash (uncountable)

1. (fandom slang) Slash fiction that focuses on romantic and/or sexual relationships between female characters.

   Synonyms: altfic, f/f slash, girlslash

   • 2005, Phyllis M. Japp, Mark Meister, Debra K. Japp, Communication Ethics, Media & Popular Culture, page 178:

     The demographics of femslash are a little more complicated than regular slash; stories are written by straight and lesbian women and sometimes straight men.

   • 2010, Stacey Abbott, The Cult TV Book, page 245:

     One of the driving forces behind slash and femslash is the pervading heterosexism of commercial media – if television will not give us the due proportion of same-sex eroticism we are entitled to expect, then we will make it for ourselves.

   • 2013, John Lennard, London Review of Books, letter, vol. 35, no. 6:

     The point of slash is that the orientation of one or more canonical characters is changed, which is why slashing is strongest in fandoms where the source parades heteronormativity or machismo. Kirk/Spock, Bodie/Doyle, Aragorn/Boromir, Darcy/Bingley and Harry/Snape stories all slash their canons, but a story featuring, say, Sebastian Flyte and Anthony Blanche in bed would not be slash, nor would a relationship between two lesbian characters in The L Word qualify as femslash.

Derived terms

• femslasher