Disclaimer: talking out of my ass, based on personal and anecdotal observations over the years.
From what I understand, "slash" originates from the literal slash in the name/name convention of indicating pairings. Which in turn originated from Star Trek fanzines and Kirk/Spock, which is why it still mostly only means m/m pairings. I'm guessing femslash arose organically because that's how our society operates (male is default, add female prefix to indicate otherwise) and probably femslash fans wanted a more specific term to aid in searching for f/f pairings only.
Because both terms evolved when people still mostly regarded gender as binary, and when fandom/fanfiction was so firmly underground and regarded as unacceptable in mainstream pop culture, they don't really encompass all the nuances of queerness that you're talking about with the questions you raise. Which is probably why, as far as my personal fandom experience goes, they've really receded in popular usage. They're kind of legacy terms, because now it's all just put together under the general umbrella of "shipping" - because people are less likely to regard non-cis-het pairings as weird or other, they don't need specialized terms for them anymore.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2019-01-03 03:37 pm (UTC)From what I understand, "slash" originates from the literal slash in the name/name convention of indicating pairings. Which in turn originated from Star Trek fanzines and Kirk/Spock, which is why it still mostly only means m/m pairings. I'm guessing femslash arose organically because that's how our society operates (male is default, add female prefix to indicate otherwise) and probably femslash fans wanted a more specific term to aid in searching for f/f pairings only.
Because both terms evolved when people still mostly regarded gender as binary, and when fandom/fanfiction was so firmly underground and regarded as unacceptable in mainstream pop culture, they don't really encompass all the nuances of queerness that you're talking about with the questions you raise. Which is probably why, as far as my personal fandom experience goes, they've really receded in popular usage. They're kind of legacy terms, because now it's all just put together under the general umbrella of "shipping" - because people are less likely to regard non-cis-het pairings as weird or other, they don't need specialized terms for them anymore.