Slash fandom, sociability, and sexual politics in Putin's Russia

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University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
[0.1] Abstract-Russian slash practices are much more than a protest subculture-a reductionist term that implies an unchanging isolation from other public realms. The political significance of slash practices on the Russianlanguage Internet, Runet, is more effectively understood by examining how slash and slashers travel from fannish to other public spaces to shape everyday political conversations about sexual politics in Russia. own perceptions of working in a repressive environment and their growing anxiety that their activities will, in time, be completely silenced (Palash 2013). Slashers' posts across Russian social media platforms reflect this concern, and indeed, many forums have shown dwindling activity. In this context, the persistent production of slash fics, vidding, and art on the hitherto unfettered but now increasingly policed Russian-language Internet (Runet) is intrinsically political, its very presence a challenge to the heteronormative nationalism of Putin's Russia (note 1).

Introduction
[ Here, I extend the concept of meta from being simply fan discourse about being slashers to include online discussions by nonfans about slash. Because I was interested in how slash becomes embedded in discourses on freedom and sexuality, I did a Yandex (http://www.yandex.ru/) search combining keywords and phrases such as "slash" and "law on homosexual propaganda." This yielded hundreds of pages of online discussions that talked about slash and its fate in an increasingly repressive legal climate in Russia. By considering both slashers' reflective commentaries and the use of fan slash in nonfan discourses about gay rights, it is possible to chart the journey of slash as a discursive device from the realm of fandoms to other public spaces on the Internet (note 2).

Communication, sociability, and politics beyond subcultures
[2.1] Russian fan slash has typically been interpreted as a way for fans to assert individual choice and the self above the socially normative (Samutina 2014), or as a vital form of protest and resistance or an infrapolitical practice (Scott 1990) in a highly homophobic and nationalist political and social environment (Palash 2013). However, not all creators assemble or produce slash with an explicit political agenda underpinning their work. Defining slash as a subcultural practice limits our understanding of its significance as a phenomenon that has a powerful discursive role beyond fan conversations.
[2.2] Recent work on youth subcultures argues for such a revised view of youth practices in postsocialist spaces. Hilary Pilkington and Elena Omel'chenko (2013) make a case for a study of social context when examining youth cultural practices, rather than framing these as subcultural formations with fixed boundaries. They persuasively rearticulate theories of new youth cultural practices to posit that communication rather than style is central to "forming affective bonds" in youth cultures in postsocialist societies, allowing individual trajectories across the cultural scene (210-11). The Internet particularly enables the traversing of spaces that might otherwise be discrete, and it allows for the potential impact of young people's cultural practices on wider society.
[2.3] This shift of perspective from the structural to the cultural follows on Pilkington and Omel'chenko's (2013) recommendation that we study youth cultural practices as strategies that are embedded in whole lives, rather than social formations separated from these whole lives.
Subcultures have often been studied for their distinctiveness and in isolation of their social contexts, but framing slash fandoms as strategies allows us to acknowledge the fluidity and flow of conversation among these and other public spaces. As a strategy, slash or being a slasher occasions moments of interaction and sociability across the Internet that hold within them the potential to engender debates on human rights and on what constitutes Russianness.
3. Slash as political act: Both disengagement and activism [3.5] These slashers claim that they are able to bring to political debate that which civil society is generally unable or unwilling to table. Being a slasher also means finding a community where one's leisure interests and views coincide with those of several others; it means being part of a culture of socially and politically like-minded people. In the discussion threads on television shows in the Slashfiction.ru forum, for instance, slashers also share news on homosexuals' rights in other parts of the world, the rights of gay couples to adopt, and the issue of homophobia.
[3.6] Within slash communities, whether Web forums or social network groups, slashers have also been known to engage in activism, usually motivated by legislative moves that are construed as antagonistic to slashers' work. The administrators of the Slashfiction.ru group on VKontakte have frequently urged fans to support the rights of sexual minorities in an intolerant environment. When news of the impending law against "homosexual propaganda among minors" broke in 2012 (the law has since been adopted), slash communities on Runet began to circulate petitions about its implications. Slasher Marina Riabova posted the following petition in the VKontakte group: "Hello! We're gathering signatures for a petition against the passing of the law. In a nutshell, they could put a lid on slasher activity if they pass this law! This is very serious. Let's sign this!" (VKontakte, "Saito Slash," August 6, 2013, translated from the Russian). Slashers used social networking sites to garner support and agitate against the legislation being adopted. [4.4] Slashers make a case for their work solely within fandoms, but they also have their work cut out for them, as slash has increasingly become a bone of contention in public spaces outside fan forums. In forums peopled by nonfans, slash, with its implicit challenge to the mainstream narrative of sexuality, is held up as an example of moral depravity. In a LiveJournal entry on the new legislation against homosexual propaganda, this is what the writer has to say about how to deal with the threat of slash propaganda:

Slash at large: Conversations with detractors
[4.5] Sadly, there is propaganda. When one sixth grader sends the other sixth grader slash fiction on her mobile, through bluetooth, for instance. It is not propaganda as such, but information from which we need to protect our children.
[4.6] One exemplary (punitive-SR) act against slashers, and the phenomenon will not be as attractive anymore. Social disapproval alone does not work. (Vashima_midori, LiveJournal, August 8, 2013, translated from the Russian)

Conclusion
[5.1] The creation of slash and the imagining of alternative sexualities is intrinsically a political act on Runet. Yet framing slash communities as resistant subcultures in Russia conceals more than it reveals. In an essay about Indian Idol 3 (2007) and its audiences, Aswin Punathambekar (2012) writes about how the performance of a young man from the city of Shillong brought together plural groups that engaged with the show and came out in support of their candidate. Their show-centered conversations bridged many ethnic and social divides because they took place among diverse social groups that otherwise had little opportunity to mingle.
Punathambekar suggests that the test of the show's contribution to civic and political participation is to understand how these newly formed affinities endure and seep into everyday life and into various spaces and moments of sociability. Only then can we truly understand the impact that such participatory practices have on political life and society. We need to reconsider the political potential of public conversations that are triggered by the media event but then extend beyond it to "generate…alternative imaginations of public life that, in turn, are tied to the experience of everyday life" (2012, ¶3.2).
[5.2] In Russia, slash emerges in direct response to a media event or production but goes on to become a factor in shaping new conversations about being gay in Russiaconversations beyond the original context of fan media production. Framed this way, a study of slash can shift emphasis to the significance of moments of sociability outside the fan community, in everyday life, where slashers often speak to the converted but at other times engage with nonslashers and even those wary of gay rights and the liberal values they embody. When slashers engage with one another and with those with different and sometimes contrarian views on the subject, they inhabit "spaces and moments of sociability" that may not always turn into political participation in the ways that we expect but that may "generate new and sustainable ideas for social and political change" (Punathambekar 2012, ¶3.3). By looking beyond the immediate context of the slash fan community to examine the ways in which slash becomes embedded in other debates about individual freedom, legislative control, and social stability, we encounter moments of sociability that have tremendous political significance in a society where public proclamations about homosexuality appear to be increasingly fettered, both socially and legally.
6. Notes 1. I reflect on digital slash in this essay, but the world of slash extends beyond the Internet; slashers also hold annual conventions such as the Moscow Slashcon, last held in 2013.
2. Sources cited here are public. The only exceptions are the posts on the VKontakte page of Slashfiction.ru, the personal comments of the Glukhar slasher, and the personal comments of Ellie Cler; permission to use these were granted to me via e-mail.