queerbaiting

• queer-baiting, queer baiting

queer +‎ baiting

queerbaiting (uncountable)

1. (LGBT, fandom slang) The practice of creating homoerotic tension between two characters in a narrative work (particularly a television series) without the intention of ever developing it into an actual same-sex relationship or explicitly addressing the question of either character's sexuality.
   • 2013 October 7, Matthew Ellison, “Queerbaiting”, in Salient, volume 76, number 23, Victoria University of Wellington, page 39:

     Queerbaiting is erasure. It’s telling queer people that they don’t exist, or that our stories aren’t worth telling, and it’s harmful.

   • 2013 November 20, Mollie Forman, “Eat the executive”, in Post, Brown University:

     Some feel that fan pressure to emphasize Buffy and Spike’s relationship spoiled the last few seasons of Joss Whedon’s show, and many fans were alienated by Teen Wolf’s recent queer-baiting.

   • 2014 June 29, Maneesha Dullewe, “A brief guide to queerbaiting”, in Ceylon Today:

     Criticism of queerbaiting also does not imply that creators need to be dictated to by fans on how to run their show; […]

   • 2024 January 10, Laura Snapes, “Taylor Swift’s people shut down speculation about her sexuality – but risked rebuking her LGBTQ fans”, in The Guardian‎, →ISSN:

     And as a much better NYT comment piece on queerbaiting put it last year: “As self-serving as some celebrity caginess can be, you can’t build a world in which everyone feels free to self-identify by ordering everyone to self-identify.”

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:queerbaiting.

• queerbait
• queerbaity

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