What is a proghet?
Proghet is short for progressive heterosexuality, hence the pormanteau of prog(ressive)het(erosexuality). A proghet is someone who pushes the idea men and women in a relationship is more “progressive" than gay relationships. It has nothing to do with one’s own personal sexuality or gender. Proghets come in different forms and may use different arguments, but all of them push the idea that a man and woman in a relationship is better or more revolutionary than a gay relationship.
Proghets may proclaim they are interested in het due to it containing a woman, all the while saying the absence of a woman in a m/m ship is misogynist in nature simply because of this. This completely ignores how many het fanworks contain a great deal of misogyny, and may mostly focus on the male characters rather than the female characters. They may even say slash is unfair to women because she “deserves” to be with a man. All the while using these defenses, they will somehow completely ignore or “forget” the idea that said female character could be paired with another woman.
Proghets will often times use red herrings taken from valid discussion such as race, representation of women in the media, fetishization, and misogyny in order to promote relationships involving women and men together. They might comment that an unconventional or rarer depiction of heterosexual ship in canon is subverting gender roles, hence it being a “more progressive” form of a heterosexual relationship.
Proghets heavily push the idea that a majority of women who write or read slash have internalized misogyny. In some cases, proghets may insinuate lesbians who write slash are self proclaimed, possibly lying or being confused about their sexuality. Proghets may outright ignore the fact many slash fans also ship femslash. Some might even demand slash fans to produce content containing women in order to prove they are not misogynists and “appreciate” female characters. Proghets will often use the popularity of slash in some other fandoms and apply them to fandoms even if heterosexual ships are the most popular.
You will see some proghets use femslash as a shield and deflection point. Some proghets might create femslash fanworks or occasionally support femslash. This can be earnest or performative, as overwhelming in the end they create and support heterosexual content. Some will proclaim how much they love women is based of what they create. Proghets will put slash and femslash against each other, all the while ignoring het ships and writers. This framing of slash versus femslash is a falsehood used to ignore the real issue of the overwhelming presence of het content. In fact, slash and femslash compliment each other. Proghets rarely if ever ask hetshippers to write more femslash or slash. Instead, the blame is usually shifted to slash creators or femslash fans who do not contribute fanworks.
