Dunmurderin's backup journal

Bisexuality, Visibility, and Fanfic Labels, or, Being the Blue M&M:

There's been some recent discussion as to why bisexuality tends to fly under the radar in fandom, particularly as it relates to slash fandom where characters with canonically heterosexual love interests/relationships/tendencies are frequently written as being closeted homosexuals rather than bisexuals.

My pet theory is that, in part, this has to do with how fandom labels fics with romantic/sexual pairings. As it stands, there are only two widely accepted labels for romantic/sexual pairing fics: Het and Slash, both of which tend to imply/reinforce monosexual portrayals/attitudes in fanfics. We'll get to my reasoning in a moment but first...

( Long Ass Disclaimer Time )

That's right, I've written a Ship Manifesto! Posted here for archive purposes and to make sure my html isn't borked. This will also be posted at ship_manifesto@LJ in a day or so.

Title: High Tech Just Turns Me On: Techrat/Minx from Jem and the Holograms
Author: dunmurderin
Spoilers: Some minor spoilers for Season 1-3 of Jem and the Holograms.
Email: dunmurderin (at) yahoo.com

( High Tech Just Turns Me On: Techrat/Minx from Jem and the Holograms )

Because somebody asked again over at FFR and because LJ wouldn't let my long-winded ass post it in comments, I'm posting this Too Long thing here.

Note: This has become something of a work in progress. Links and additional information are still being added as I think of them or as things are suggested to me in the comments. Any new additions after this will be tacked on as appendixes to the end of this post. (Actually, not entirely true, in most cases the references have been worked into the original text of the article.)

Updated 09/18/07

( Transformers Sex: The Back story )
( Okay, Okay, So HOW do they Do it?! )