queerbaiting
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.31 in modern English
24
Scrabble Score
12
Letters
3
Syllables
10
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
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.
Slang; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "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."
- "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."
- "Criticism of queerbaiting also does not imply that creators need to be dictated to by fans on how to run their show; […]"
- "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.”"