Queerbaiting

noun, slang

noun, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    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

    "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."

Synonyms

All synonyms
gaybaitgaybait

Example

More examples

"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."

Etymology

From queer + baiting.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.