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perceiving such characters as threats. Fan activity extolled as emancipatory might, on the
other hand, serve hegemonic ends, as the inquiry undertaken here reports. If the labor
involved in reading against the grain mitigates determinations of resistance, then such
exertion in the service of hegemony is even more troubling.
In the case of Farscape, Stargate SG-1, and The X-Files, female heroes who are more
than merely ornamental are devalued by some fans with Mary Sue and/or slash
perspectives, despite the fact that sentiments such as “this is a bimbo and not me” (qtd. in
Bacon-Smith, 1992, p. 240) have been used by some slashers to explain why they do not
write about female characters. The claim that these fans, in the words of one, were “raised
in this culture and...do not believe that women are equal,” is more telling (qtd. in Bacon-
Smith, p. 240). Scholar and slash enthusiast Constance Penley (1992, p. 491) has been
unnerved by her sister fans refusing to embrace feminism, which she argues is as integral
to their devotion to the subgenre as it is to hers. However, when television creators do
fashion pivotal female protagonists, many such fans imply that they do not care to
champion their equality, “bimbos” or not, at least in terms of screen time, multi-
dimensionality, and/or romantic agency. So, should recognizing women’s subordinate
position within patriarchy without hoping to remedy it be considered forever and always a
resistive posture? Perhaps not, since it seems as if many of these fans might be just as
happy if their favorite shows involved no principal female characters at all. As an early
slash author justified her proclivity: “Who wants to be role playing between two underdogs
in the slave pit. I mean, let’s be equal and the top of the heap” (qtd. in Bacon-Smith, 1992,
p. 242). Yet, when creators try to grant a heroine more parity, it can be anathema to those
whose penchants might give rise to purposeful efforts to curtail the array of mechanisms
by which television texts might interpellate women viewers.
At times, such fans give lip service to an egalitarian vision in a general sense while
campaigning against it in a specific case, as do those whose fervent goal is to preserve the
primacy of the Jackson/O’Neill dyad on Stargate SG-1 and mislabel Carter as a “Mary
Convention