Spock's penis and the racial politics of feminist fantasy: Situating race at slash fan fiction's origins

Authors

  • Alexis Lothian University of Maryland College Park

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2026.3029

Keywords:

Gender, Intersectionality, Sexuality, Star Trek, Whiteness

Abstract

This article examines the absence and presence of race in the history of slash fan fiction. Taking critiques of the whiteness of the genre and the field as my starting point, I seek to understand slash fan fiction as a formation in which race has never not been present. I do this by taking up the ambiguously racialized figure of Star Trek's Spock (and his notorious green penis).

Author Biography

Alexis Lothian, University of Maryland College Park

?lexis Lothian is a PhD student in the English department at the University of Southern California. She writes about science fiction as written and read by radicals, feminists, queers and people of color; about utopia and futurity; and about sexual and racial formations in marginal geek cultures. Alexis has been a science fiction geek for at least as long as she can remember, a participant in online communities since she first got an internet connection, and obsessed with online fandom since she discovered Harry Potter slash in 2003.

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Published

2026-09-14

Issue

Vol. 49 (2026): General

Section

Symposium

License

Copyright (c) 2026 Alexis Lothian

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