Template: Royal A, Font: , Date: 07/09/2013; 3B2 version: 9.1.406/W Unicode (May 24 2007) (APS_OT) Dir: //integrafs1/kcg/2-Pagination/TandF/GEN_RAPS/ApplicationFiles/9780415527699.3d 41 Textual orientation Queer female fandom online Julie Levin Russo At the end of 2011, an editorial column on the pop culture blog AfterEllen.com posed the question: “Does lesbian subtext still matter?” (Hogan 2012). AfterEllen— named in tribute to the 1997 milestone when both US comedian Ellen Degeneres and her eponymous television sitcom character came out (Ellen, ABC 1994–8)—is a website that covers lesbian and bisexual women and characters in TV, film, enter- tainment, and independent media. This chapter exemplifies new questions facing LGBTQ audiences in the era of gay representation on mainstream television. In her book All the Rage, Susanna Danuta Walters chronicles the contradictions of what a 1995 Entertainment Weekly cover story famously called the “gay 90s,” writing that while “visibility has indeed opened up public awareness and an appreciation of gay and lesbian rights, it has also circumscribed those rights into categories that may themselves become new kinds of ‘closets’” (2003: 18). In the ensuing decade, the number and range of LGBTQ characters and figures in the mass media in the US has continued to grow, and so has the debate about the politics of representation. In the aforementioned blog post, this debate is framed in terms of an opposition between “subtext”—homoerotic elements of characterization, narrative, mise en scene, and their surrounding discourses—and “maintext”—explicit portrayals of LGBT individuals. In the several pages of reader comments on the AfterEllen post, some people insist on the social value of positive images. User WaxLionMonkey- Bookends, for example, argues that “AfterEllen has a responsibility to passionately put itself behind projects that promote progressive visibility … to openly encourage (or at least comment on) shows that DO portray gay women as maintext.” Other commenters agree with the piece’s author that “subtext matters because it creates a virtual playground for lesbian fans to interact with each other … because lesbians can use that subtext, that chemistry between two female characters, to create their own versions of the story.” Are we really, as WaxLionMonkeyBookends and others argue, on a path of historical evolution, wherein lesbians become ever more visible? Or do same-sex romances and same-sex subtext—relationships that are only implied or perceived to be more than platonic—serve different but simultaneously vital roles within our culture? Or might we wonder, rather, if the dichotomy this discussion 450