A brief history of “Queerbaiting”:
I’ve seen multiple people say they think my article on slash fandom was wrong to claim that “queerbaiting” was around before Tumblr.
It was, but absolutely not in the specific context that fandom now uses it, which is indeed a Tumblr invention.
"Queer-bait" as a concept is associated historically with the contempt other people show for queer identity. The historian Allan Bérubé, who wrote about queer men and women in mid-century America, detailed in a work that was presented posthumously by feminist Estelle Freedman that “queer-baiting” was a term used by the gay male stewards of a certain cruise liner company to describe the derogatory nicknames that other people in the industry gave to their ships. Because the company wanted all-white staff on its ships, they gave jobs that traditionally went to black staff on other ships to queer male staff (because the thinking went, what other white men would want those jobs?). The stewards, according to Bérubé, described the offensive nicknames they and their liners endured as a result as “queer-baiting.”
Today, outside of fandom, calling someone ”queerbait” is essentially (occasionally a super-offensive) descriptor comparable to “jailbait.” But the reference usually involves the person being closeted or purporting to be straight while pandering to the appeal they have to gay men. There’s a single fandom reference to that use of the word in this 2006 VM fic, and another one in this 2010 SPN fic. Here's a Shakesville contrib identifying himself as “biracial queerbait.” There was also a GLBTQ anthology called Queerbait that ran for a few issues starting in 2007.
There is 2009 reference to “queerbaiting” in this blog post that uses it in the context of Republican attempts to smear political opponents by floating accusations (L O L) of their sexuality, ie. “baiting” them about their queer identity. I can’t find any other instance of this use of the word apart from one other blog post.
I think all of these ideas rolled together—the sense of posturing + the attempt to use queer identity as a hook, and especially the contempt—brought us the fandom concept of queerbaiting.
On Tumblr, the earliest direct reference that I can find to queerbaiting is a post made on January 3, 2012, by warpfactornope. It’s a heartfelt reaction to Jensen Ackles’ perceived homophobia at JibCon, along with, well, SPN in general:
We do exist—and they know we do. Everyone knows we do. But we live in a time of cis-hetnormativity—where anything is other. And the horror genre otherizes marginalized communities by making them monsters—but what’s going on now? the jokes, the queerbaiting, the laughter?
The assumption in this post seems to be that queerbaiting is a term already understood by fandom in general at this point. I believe it probably was, but I’ve dug through Tumblr and I’ve dug through google and I’ve dug through countless Unix timestamp backlogs of Tumblr tags, and if it’s there before that post, it’s securely hidden away from my prying eyes.
The Tumblr blog queerbaitoohhaha was created in March of 2012, with its first post on 3/11, and I’m just going to use this GIF, because, what.
On Tumblr, the earliest use of the word “queerbaiting” as a tag is this post from May 13, 2012, by tenebrica In August of that year thefakegeekgirlblog wrote a post responding to an article After Elton wrote on “slashwink” to point out that AE (now the Backlot!) was missing the point and that the phenom was also called “queerbaiting” for a reason.
The earliest single reference I can find to queerbaiting outside of Tumblr, anywhere, is this brief mention on July 27, 2012 over at fandom-friendly-ish ONTD on LJ. Two days later, this feminist blogger used it in a post about attending a panel discussion of fandom and queer culture as part of Stockholm Pride. An anonymous fan explains queerbaiting in comments to this blog post on 8/20, and then a week later, we get the first media outlet reference I can find to “queerbaiting,” which is an article I wrote about Sherlock fandom. This blogger got asked by a commenter about queerbaiting in September, and ONTD used it a couple of more times re: Sherlock that month, too. I wrote again about queerbaiting in a larger pan-fandom context in October, a week or so before Sparkindarkness crossposted a blog post that was widely read and passed around Tumblr: “A Furious, Semi-Coherent rant about Subtext.” (Vers. 1) (Vers. 2) A month later, in the introduction of Hypable’s “Battleships” poll, there’s a heated debate in comments about queerbaiting (brought up in the context of Merlin!) vs canon ships ala Klaine.
These are all very early references, but again most of them are using the word “queerbaiting” with the assumption that people reading will get it. Meanwhile, the word “queerbaiting” doesn’t even appear on Google Trends until May 2013:
I would absolutely love it if someone with Arthur-like research skills could dig further than I’ve been able to and unearth a Tumblr post that’s earlier than warpfactornope’s that’s actually from 2011 or before. As far as I can tell, “queerbaiting” sprang fully formed both from and into the fandom hivemind in early 2012, and never left.
(eta: oh crap i’m sorry this post is a zillion words long, I GET VERY EXCITED BY ORIGINAL SOURCES, I’M SORRY. /o\)
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