Queerbaiting and the Stereotyping of Male Relationships

I think we can all agree that if there was a Universal Declaration of Fan Rights, the right to ship whomever and whatever we want, no matter how strange, disturbing and/or ridiculously adorable the pairing, would be at the very top of that list. Shipping, especially when in regards to non-canonical couples, often reflects what we as individuals desire in relationships, and our own subjective views of what would be cute, sexy or funny to see in a romantic pairing. However, shipping isn’t something that is simply based on our own individual views and desires alone. Fandoms are essentially interactive communities among which ships are professed and shared via fanart, fanfiction, gifs, blog posts and videos. Fans who are engaged in these wider community discussions are therefore subject not only to the influence of their own preferences and expectations, but to those of the wider fandom community. This is not necessarily a bad thing. There isn’t a fan on earth who can claim they haven’t once been swayed to ship a pair due to the content produced or arguments levelled by fellow fans, and haven’t enjoyed the thrill of converting others to their ships in turn. However, in this collective behaviour there resides an inherently sinister side of shipping, and that is how it creates an echo chamber which furthers the societal expectations of the larger community with no room for fresh or different practises, as is seen with any community of like-minded people.

Many an article has been written and examination conducted as to the fetishisation of gay couples in popular culture, and so this is not an issue I will exhume in this post. Instead, I believe there is another, largely ignored projection of societal expectations and stereotyping in shipping that needs to be addressed, and that is the stereotyping of male behaviours and relationships.

Before we get into some statistics and analysis, I feel I should take a moment to discuss my inspiration for this post, so as to vividly portray the kind of stereotyping I intend this article to draw attention to.

(Warning for spoilers of the 2008 TV series The Adventures of Merlin)

“I think Merlin was one of the worst examples of queerbaiting I’ve ever seen. Just look at how Merlin held male Arthur as he died, and like, how he cried and screamed over him. I mean – if they weren’t going to be gay then shouldn’t Arthur’s wife have been there for him as he died? Total queerbaiting.”

These words were my inspiration, shared with me by a girl with some very passionate views on the issue of queerbaiting. They bothered me for weeks as I attempted to unpack the implications of them. The suggestion that men could not be sad for the loss of each other, or even touch affectionately in such a moment of devastation without the necessity of a romantic inclination, in all honestly, appalled me. But it got me thinking. She did not state this assumption in regards to the genders of the characters outright, but I began to wonder if she would harbour the same thoughts had the characters been female. I acknowledge of course that her view was a somewhat extreme one that not all or hopefully many gay shippers hold, but these thoughts led me to thinking of shipping and accusations of queerbaiting as a whole, and whether or not this same thinking was, in essence, at play in the majority of cases. So I did some research, and it yielded the following results:

The first figures above show the pairings that produced the most fanfiction in 2017 one of the most popular fanfiction websites, Archive of Our Own. Among them, there are seventeen M/M ships, one F/M ship, one gen pairing and two F/F ships. Five of the M/M ships involve celebrities. Of the M/M couples, only two of the eighteen involves canonically gay characters, whereas both of the two F/F ships, (both of which are from CW’s Supergirl) involve at least one canonically gay character.

The second figure shows statistics provided by Tumblr user Destination: Toast! of the modes of shipping again on Archive of Our Own. A whopping 46.2% of fanfiction is tagged as M/M, compared to roughly 3.8% which is tagged as F/F.

And the final figure shows research from the Archive of Our Own 2017 census that of the Archive of Our Own users that chose to reveal their genders, 80% of respondents were female, compared to 4% that identified as male.

I am no statistician; I must of course acknowledge any potential shortcomings in the statistics I have gathered, first and foremost that none of my statistics come from official Archive of Our Own sources, but mostly Tumblr users’ independent work. However given the trends and methods employed, I believe these to be accurate. I also acknowledge regarding my final figure the inherent danger of using statistics based on who chooses to respond to the census, as societal pressures may influence one gender to respond differently or more openly than another. However, though I do not believe the graph wholly accurate, I do believe that a large gap exists between the numbers of male and female fanfiction writers to be accurate.

These graphs indicate a clear preference by fanfiction writers, and clearly readers, for M/M shipping over F/F shipping – and that the vast majority of fanfiction authors are female. So why do so many women prefer M/M shipping over F/F shipping? Fetishisation has already enjoyed a good deal of attention and description, but I believe that it is not solely due to this predilection. I believe that women’s expectation of male behaviours and gender roles is a heavy factor in these shipping choices.

Female friendships are often depicted on screen as they are seen in real life – rife with hugs, hand holding, sleepovers, laughs and general physical and emotional intimacy, yet this seems to have produced little buzz in the shipping world unless one of the characters involved is in fact openly LGBT themselves. This can be seen in the popularity of Alex Danvers-related ships from Supergirl, which managed to score the only F/F spots on Figure 1’s top 20 list in 2017. In comparison, when men do display intimacy for one another, be it emotional or physical on screen, fans rush not only to ship them together, but to posit theories as to the true sexualities of the characters, and even state point blank in some cases, that the characters must in fact be gay (Supernatural's Dean Winchester being perhaps the most notorious example). When these characters are not subsequently portrayed the way they have been lobbied for, is where the accusations of queerbaiting arise.

Queerbaiting is when a television show uses the false implication of a gay relationship in order to attract LGBT viewers and shippers. Any popular show you can think of involving two men in the main cast has likely been subjected to aspersions of queerbaiting. However, I would argue, upon review of the statistics, that the copious number of these accusations is not proof of queerbaiting’s ubiquity, but rather evidence of the term’s gross misuse and, dear I say it, abuse.

Merlin perfectly illustrates this. Both main characters Merlin and Arthur care deeply for one another, as exhibited by their banter, trust, and willingness to die for one another. Despite Arthur being married and very much in love with his wife, and neither character ever confessing feelings for or suggesting they hold romantic interest in one another canononically, the show has faced multiple accusations of queerbaiting (a classic example of which being the aforementioned conversation). Some would, naturally, argue that Arthur and Merlin’s bantering is in fact flirting, that comments as to their care for one another is intended to be interpreted as romantic, and that their willingness to die for one another is evidence of their romantic interest and not platonic. I would certainly never argue that choosing to interpret these moments as such is wrong, or therefore that shipping the characters together is wrong. Insisting however that the intimacy of their care for one another means that both characters must in fact be gay for one another, and it is therefore queerbaiting if they are not, is indicative of a very sinister and currently almost completely unaddressed form of stereotyping.

The assumption that two men cannot be intimate with one another physically or emotionally, cannot be sad for one another when they die, or even look at or touch one another without being romantically inclined toward one another by default, is in itself a discriminatory manner of thought, as evidenced by how little accusations of queerbaiting arise over intimate female relationships in comparison with male. It proves an expectation as to the stereotypes and gender roles of men as macho and emotionally withdrawn, only able to show affection for those toward whom they are romantically inclined, and this is indeed a prejudice held mostly by women, if the Archive of Our Own census is to be believed.

I do not deny the existence of queerbaiting. Actors and writers have a nasty habit of teasing fans with such rhetoric in interviews and when taking fan questions at panels and the like with the obvious intention to excite and essentially mislead their fanbases in order to maintain them. However, I am stating a belief, based on careful and for the most part unbiased analysis, that many accusations of queerbaiting are in fact invalid due to their root in inherently discriminatory behaviour from women as to the ludicrous expectations of male platonic and romantic relationships in society. And I do believe that there is a great danger in this that can be translated into the real world. Men are undoubtedly already challenged by society’s expectations of them as stoic husks of machismo, and as the obsessive and aggressive nature of shipping culture is already growing to encompass real, celebrity men, we have to worry that it may inevitably sabotage male friendships as much off screen as it will the depictions of male friendship on screen.

So to conclude, if you see two male characters on TV that you think would make a cute romantic couple, by all means, ship away. But if you’re going to accuse that show of queerbaiting when your ship doesn’t become a reality, I implore you to take a moment to ask yourself whether what you're watching is actually queerbaiting, or whether you are merely guilty of furthering another, just as sinister form of discrimination.

Do you agree with the views expressed in this post? Be sure to leave a comment.