salinea | Gendered fandoms

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Gendered fandoms

While browsing, today, I happened onto a link to this essay on Why do fanboys hate fanfics, especially slash and This is Our Garden. We Like It.. The article fits in a context of several commentaries a few weeks ago about the exclusion of the female experience of fandom by the majorly male fandom - some of which I saw at the time, some of which I missed.

cupidsbow's essay How Fanfictions makes us Poor which I already linked to was part of it too, I think.

Anyway, there's a lot of stuff on these discussions that made me angry as a woman against the systemicized sexism in fandom... but there's also something about the issue of gendered fandoms that really upsets me.

I've spent a majority of my "fandom life" within male dominated fandoms - first generalist Science Fiction newsgroup then Roleplaying Games clubs and forums. The kind of places where women make about 10 to 20% at most of the overall population. I've had to suffer to a lot of sexism, outright misogyny and sexual teasing. I went along with it because I wanted into the fandom and I didn't know anywhere else to get it and also because I'd been ostracized and bullied enough previously that the attention as the token girl and object of sexist and sexual jokes seemed actually an improvement.

Later on, I found some previously more mixed fandoms. ASOIAF has got, I think, about 40% of women at Ran's board. The part of Buffy's fandom I frequented, Masq's awesome ATPoBtVS had, I believe, a majority of women with a very significant male presence as well.

But it's only when I joined the Clamp's Tokyo Babylon/X's fandom in 2004 on Livejournal that I really found myself within female dominated fandoms. Fanfics as a fandom is extremely majorly made of women, I don't think men make more than 5% of it. In many ways the resulting dynamic rather surprised me. There's a lot I enjoyed from it. The welcome of feminist and queer-friendly values for one, and the warmth of people. No more dissing the female SF writers, or fantasy as a whole, or other ridiculous stuff.

There's also some things I disliked, such as the frowning upon any kind of disagreement/non positive comments, and all the things people sometime characterize as the "Cult of Nice". I'm not sure I'm so much more a fan of the Cult of Mean either, which is often horribly self-entitled, but I love debate, and I love getting helpful constructive criticism, and sometimes I'm being an ass in a discussion and I need someone to point it out to me politely (after which I can cool off then appologize). I also miss a bit of the obsessive mapping out details and powers and worldbuiling elements and stuff. Actually screw this, because people do it just as compulsively in female fandom, what I do miss is obsessive symbolical and thematic analysis which seems to catter to specific fandoms regardless of the gender makeover. What I do occasionnaly miss in female fandom is the way people don't seem to get the inherent kicking-ass awesomeness of ninja and pirates (unless talking of Jack Sparrow I s'pose) and Kung-Fu Jesus and heroin-pissing dinosaurs*

So when I get annoyed with that side of fanfic fandom and want a little bit of the other side I miss, I get back to lurking at, say, the RPG.net board, where I can see someone explaining his dilemna about one of his player telling him "No bitches at the table"

Insert visual of me face palming.

Lately it feels like I've seen more and more people talking in terms of fangirls and fanboys. The categories were new to me, but apparently they come with specific, different stereotypes where the fanboy is your everyday Dork and the fangirl squeals a lot about characters/actors being hotties. I've seen at least one person say she wouldn't like to identify as a fangirl but that it was okay for the fanboy because the stereotype had somewhat mellowed and become more hype and cool since big geeks like Joss Whedon, Kevin Smith and Tarantino started taking over Hollywood or something whereas the fangirl stereotype was still depraciated as hell which rather rejoined the whole point of the essay I mentionned at the start of this post.

But behind this I also get the impression that it's true to people. That women and men are whole different brands of fen, that they want something radically different from the text, that they play differently with the toys. That they don't fit in the same sandbox.

I'm not a fangirl. I'm certainly not a fanboy either. I'm a fan. Period.

I'm a fan who likes fanfics and roleplaying games, obsessive symbolical analysis, sociological meta, compulsive reviews of details and powers and worldbuilding stuff, and occasionnaly even fanart and fanvids and of course, the books/shows/texts too. It's all one for me.

It's not that I disaprove of what the essay talks about, about the whole fact that women said 'it's a big internet', took their stuff and the toys given by the text, and used them to play with it in their very own female space. I think that's really cool and proactive and awesome.

It's the fact that what I'd like to call my garden would be a place with equal parts of male and female point of views and welcome them all - just for the sake of diversity. (And gays, and non Americans, and gender queers, and Blacks, and people who don't have always a very correct syntax, and, and, and, too)

There's the question of whether it'd be even possible. If being just an even fraction of "regular" fandom would mean that the female part be co-opted and the female experience of fandom end up marginalized as it's once more 'All about the boy'.

I'd like to believe that it is. I've known places on the internet that were at least a little bit like this. That doesn't mean that they should not be female spaces as well...

But I'd really love to belong, myself, to a non-gendered fandom. I think that's the place where I'd be the more at ease.

Is that a bad thing to want?

* this is an obscure reference to the Role Playing Game Exalted which has canonically dinosaurs who eat Opium and pisses Heroin. It's a lucrative business. Exalted isalso an awesome game where homsexuality, gender queerness, bestiality, incest, and reincarnated magical bonds are all canon. It's a bit like the Harry Potter fandom of roleplaying games that way.

ETA: -- Spoilers for A Song of Ice and Fire - A Storm of Swords in the comments --

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What, as an object of study? XD

I'm glad you find the fandom as a female space cosy and comfortable, that's great! I think there's nothing wrong at all about that. I think what I want is what you say, a fandom with feminist values without being necessarly all female, a fandom with progressive and tolerant values generally speaking, and where all kinds of differences are welcomed and token as given. A feeling of kinship despite the diversity because we're all into the same things - even if the specifics isn't always the very same ^^

Yes! I imagine video games and Star Wars tend to be a bit more "male" as fandoms?

It's frustrating how the female experience is often dismissed, especially when it's against the interest of the overall fandom (think how much the RPG industry could use the benefit of plenty of female gamers!)

I'd like to find a way to bridge the gap, definitly! I'm not sure where to starts. It would require an effort from everyone. I need to think about that.

I haven´t checked the book boards in many years - ok, since AFFC came out, but the one feeling I get all the time, book boards or the other ones is plus ça change, plus c´est la même chose. Nevermind Sansa ( who annoys me, though of course she is not guilty of anything excepting being dreamy and naive) poor Dany, what does a woman have to do to be a hero?

You know, I had been making distinctions in my mind of fangirl and fanboy behaviour as applied to something completely different ;) football yeah. Neither being that desirable in my mind, though I find myself having traits of both of those ( as defined by me). I have not been on enough fandoms to really understand the dynamics ( plus honestly, if I love some characters I do not want other people´s versions of characters, in writing or visually messing my concept of them) I am just an observer , but have you considered the crucial in defining fangirl and fanboy might be not the gender thing difference but the girl/boy implying teenage? The most extreme types of fanboys and fangirls to my mind sound like teenagers ( or teenagers in maturity levels). Though sabotaging that theory I can think of setups with older fans formed mostly of one gender where it sort of fits those stereotypes :(

Interestingly enough, the first fandom I had ever been in was probably non-gendered, but I identify more with gendered groups. As for being a fangirl, it's more of a stereotype that I grew into, but originally didn't feel as if I fit at all. I felt a great shock when I went into GameFAQs (which is mostly male) and saw how touchy/bitchy (I thought LJ was bad) they were, and also how sexist.

As for being a fangirl or fanboy or just fan, I think they're all separate things. Many girls I know are not fangirls, but are just fans. Same with guys/boys/whatever.

The "not saying anything to your face" is something I have a personal problem with, since I'm really unable to give much criticism to anyone over anything, and so I cannot say anything for or against.

I read this yesterday and it's really made me look at my experiences. I consider myself a newcomer to fandom since I only started writing (and to a lesser degree reading) fan fiction a little over a year ago yet when I think about it I've really been involved for years in the world of comic book collectors and film geeks though it was never defined as fandom per say. As a teenaged comic book fanatic in the late 1980's I often found myself as the "token girl", the only female in the room yet this was never an issue for me. Because I was overweight and sexually attracted to women it was easy for me to be regarded as "one of the boys". I seemed to have more in common with them then with women. Yet at the same time it does seem like there was something different about my approach to comics-- I was more interested in interpersonal dynamics then action. With the exception of Batman I preferred titles that focused on superhero teams- X-men, New Mutants, Teen Titans, the Legion of Superheroes- over series focusing on individuals. I also had to have an element of identification with a character to get really into them. Further, I did a lot of drawing at the time and a lot of my art was pin-up/cheesecake pictures of my favorite super heroines (Catwoman, Psylocke, Magick from New Mutants). Many of the male fans were actually uncomfortable with my overt sexual interest in these characters. While they might be attracted to them, they seemed to separate their devotion to a series from personal or sexual interest in its characters whereas I never did. I can't help wondering if this was something personal or gendered. As for fan fiction in a lot of ways I do see it as being in part of a larger feminist/queer tradition of revising and reclaim mainstream material. When started writing fan fiction my models were Angela Carter's and Anne Sexton's dark fairy tales, the skewed revisions of The Wizard of Oz by Geoff Ryman and Gregory Maguire and even Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea. I saw fan fiction as a neat way to analysis books, movies and comics books as well as exploring my own psycho/sexual issues. Of course I've come to realize that even in the female dominated world of fan fiction I'm still a bit of an odd girl out (more so in the anime fandoms then Harry Potter) because of my aversion to popular OTP's, fluffy romance and SQUEE!!!!! (and of course my love of minor and obscure characters, rape, incest and overt pessimism). This in mind I do think that the ideal sort of fandom would combine male and female perspective and energy-- emotion and pretension, personal identification and a certain degree of analytical distance (my worst experiences in the world of female-centered fan fiction have been the result of me "desecrating" a favorite character or pairing. Identification is one thing but nobody should be that invested in a fictional character).

Maybe that too. I could get a nice display case if you like...

We need to use it in a sentence (and submit it to urbandictionary) now.

Lol football is very interesting comparison because it's such a different field of interest, yet so similar a fodder for fannish behaviour. How comparable is it? What do you have to say abouut people's discourses and attitudes about this?

Well, the great majority of people are fannish by simply watching/reading and discussing a little bit between friends. But some people like to do something more interpretative, creative, systematic or participative. That's where you get fanfics, fanarts, filks, RPGs, collections, etc. from. All of it is fandom, just different kind of, IMO.

I think your point about teenage is very well taken and important, especially about the fangirl/boy as stereotypes. Both are caracterized as immature in many ways.

Female fandoms are often less overall wanky at least in terms of outright flames, yeah. But I also find that mixed fandoms (like BtVS) can be the most well behaved.

I'm not sure what 'being a fangirl' means, by difference with being a fan, beyond the derogatory stereotype.

I find both equally uninteresting. ;)
Lol. They're hardly the most interesting kind of disucssions, but they have a sort of guilty pleasure aspect to them. It's a very social kind of pleasure to. About aknowledging kinship in the way you deal with stuff, and various tastes. A bit like "what singers/bands do you like" discussions.

As for sexism... there is some on the book forums, yes, but it certainly doesn't usually come from the same people who express some of the rather distasteful political views that you get on General Chatter
Hum interesting, it's true, I haven't been around the book forum in a while either...
On the other hand, I would assume that most people who end up on General Chatter did start at the Book forum in the first place, so maybe there is some kind of continuity?

they find characters like Sansa, Dany and Cat boring and are unable or unwilling to relate to them.
How lucky to be female and wholly bitextual, able to relate to both womena and men's PoV :p

Often this comes from what you might term 'internalised prejudice': the worst kind, in my opinion.
Total agreement there. It's a typical strategy for people coming from discriminated/opressed group but it's one of the worst thing to have to struggle against.

*shudders too*

Is that a bad thing to want?

God no. But it's kind of revolutionary--the possibility of non-gendered fandom (it deserves italics, it's that awesome) had never even crossed my mind.

Thank you so much for this post. See icon for what you do x eleven zillion.

I posted to that discussion - actually i keep meaning to go back and comment. I'm a slash fanfic reader, but I think see it as an interest that tends to be female rather than an interest that is defined by femaleness. I'm close to a number of fanfic-reading guys who quite frankly struggle with being part of the female-dominated group here on LJ just as you have had tricky experiences elsewhere.

I do see us all as fans, who tend to express things in different ways, with this group over here tending to do X more than the other group I wonder if women write men out of their part of fandom because it makes life simpler; but personally I like the interaction and I value the difficult questions that it makes me ask myself about my interests.

I struggled with the responses on that blog because the writers are pretty hardline about their views. I can see why some people might see it that way, but yes, I'd prefer ungendered.

It's funny the things call fandom or not! It often puzzles me. What's the definition? Surely if we're enthousiast about something and spent a lot of hobby time discussing and creating for it, it's a fandom? I really don't like it when "fandom" is used as a word meaning "American women who write slash fanfics about media shows" as it seems it sometimes is.

Having more in common with the boys than with the women, that's something I knew as well. Mostly out of lack of social graces. There's a part of fandom on LJ among women which is all networking and... I don't know how to characterize it, but it seems something very female, and it feels great being part of it, for once, and at the same time it feels something alien which I can't recognize myself within.

But word! I also was interesting in things that the male fandoms didn't often give me, the focus on the interpersonnal dynamics, the shipping! There's this SF fen monthly gathering I went to (and still do) which at one piont was ending as all the girls (5 or 6 out of 25 at the highest point ^^) in a corner talking about Buffy while the others were totally puzzled and mocking us!

It's funny, I also discovered my sexual attraction to women by drawing naked and sexy women XD

As for fan fiction in a lot of ways I do see it as being in part of a larger feminist/queer tradition of revising and reclaim mainstream material.
You know, I really love that aspect of fanfics, too. It's sort of different, transversal to the pure fannishness. But it's something I love being able to find in fanfics.
That's the kind of thins I'd be afraid of losing with a more mixed fandom, it's true.
But maybe, as

sakanagi said, it's more about the values within the fandom. Some fandoms are just progressive and tolerant enough to make that dynamic works.

Thank you ^^

Yes, I was a little bit upset by the way they treated the guy named alex in this discussion. He came out as really sweet, polite, well spoken, and they mostly dismissed his point of view without much thought. I do get where they're coming from about it. It's not about alex as much as it is the fact that anytime someone writes about sexism and feminism a guy will come over and says what he said - more or less nicely, and more or less honnestly.
It's a very grey area. I'm not sure there's an ideal way to deal with that. Probably more nicely at least.

The way we're talking about women and the female experience is a bit upsetting. It not only rejects in words at least the experience of male gay or straight who write and read fanfics, it also does that to gender queers, a point people like

alchemia have often emphasized. I'm pretty sure Feminism is about being inclusive. It's about letting male play with female roles and occupations - since fanfics is seen as one, as well empowering women. But I understand its tricky to find the way to do it without getting back to the very sexist initial situation.

but personally I like the interaction and I value the difficult questions that it makes me ask myself about my interests
Yes! Defiitly! Difficult questions are always worth asking. Even without answers, questions matter so much!

I'd love an ungendered fandom.

I am a girl and I am in fandom, but I certainly don't feel like a "fangirl." Mostly, this is due to the fact that I hate slash and yaoi just as much as fanboys (though I am certainly not a fanboy). Maybe it's all in my head, but it seems like slash is one of the big thing that fangirls see as unifying them as a group and separating them from the boys, a huge part of "the female experience of fandom"... but what about us female fans who don't like it? I am not sure where in fandom we fit in. I would feel more at ease in a non-gendered fandom as well.

I've been involved in the local sff community (uni clubs, cons etc) for about ten years, and find it somewhat ungendered, and I do prefer that a lot of the time to the rather girly vibe of this fanficcy bit of fandom.

My brain mixes some very feminine traits with some very masculine ones, so I always feel out of place in groups which don't have a mix of both. I find the complex social hierachies and rules women build rather scary and incomprehensible, but I also can't stand the macho posturing and aggression a lot of men exhibit. Thus, depending on context, I identify with either men or women(*), but mostly with "people who work rather like I do", and such people can be found in both genders (and presumably in the continuum in between)

That said, the sexism inherent in our society means the situation is not symettrical. I have the advantage of being the right mix of nonthreatening, intelligent(**) and pretty-but-not-striking to be taken reasonably seriously but not seen as a threat/possible lay, I have seen other women have Serious Issues with men in fandom if they were seen as too aggressive or too ugly, or had to fight off lots of sleazes.

I get the impression a lot of female fans have had Very Bad experiences with entitlementy men online trying to take over or invalidate their girly spaces, so I can understand their defensiveness. I think the boys have as much or more of an "Us vs Them" attitude than the girls, but that doesn't mean I have to like it in either case. Especially when, as has already been stated, there is this tendency to go "fandom=women=fanfic=slash=porn" which is a little annoying as a gen-reading woman who is more involved in the non-fanfic parts of fandom.

On the other hand, there are things which really only seem to get discussed in female dominated spaces, either online or in subcliques of the larger multigendered fandom, and I have really enjoyed having my mind opened to things like feminist theory as I discover and engage with these spaces.

So I shall enjoy my ungendered discussions where I can get them and try to be open to the not-female voices in this branch of fandom, and speak up for the non-male POV in the others.

(*)That said, I am a woman and mostly take a fairly female-gendered-stance, if not always the one all the other women are taking
(**)I used to have men in fandom not take me seriously, but this happens a lot less since I got a Phd in maths :D

My first fandom, Digimon, was a pretty even mix of male and female, and gender really never came up. No one cared. We just did our thing, whether that was fanfic, fanart, canon analysis, etc. I really find myself missing it.

One thing that really bothers me is the continual use of gender stereotypes, describing this act as masculine and that as feminine. I would love if that language was completely rejected and we just talked about people as people and stopped trying to box them up and label them. (Not to mention, I will never understand how certain things can be male or female if a large number of people of both genders do them.)

Thank you for posting, "How Fanfictions makes us Poor." It was very thought-provoking. I am one person who can't seem to take my writing seriously. I enjoy it and would like to become professional - but that's more a matter of lack of confidence in my own abilities, and nothing against a male-dominated publishing world.

I don't think that it's a bad thing to want a non-gendered fandom. I remember when I used to work at a tutoring center, I gave away flowers made of ribbon to the children there on my last day. When the head teacher saw them, she told me she didn't think the boys would want them. I offered them to the boys anyway. Two of them were happy enough to show them off to their parents when they were picked up. ^_^

But perhaps the whole idea of the gendered fandom goes back to childhood, with the whole idea of a "no-girls" boys' only clubhouse, or how girls are expected to play quietly while boys are more active, like in sports, etc. I think exclusivity makes people feel better about themselves in fandom - sort of like how "old" fans look down on "newbies." The gender divide might be something like that.

Of course, certain media are geared toward a certain audience. Things like shojo manga and anime are made for girls in mind. It's also interest though, that calling something "shojo" makes it automatically uncool for a male fan to proclaim himself as one. Perhaps in so-called gendered fandoms, there are a lot of fans of the opposite sex lurking around. I remember a post in one community dominated by women asking that fanboys show themselves, "we don't bite". XD And then the responses came.

As for "fanboy" and "fangirl," I always thought they were used in a joking way. I see no difference in being called a fanboy or fangirl. To me it just means being a very excitable fan who goes crazy over new releases, etc. I call myself a fangirl sometimes, not to bring out the fact that I'm a female, but to make fun of myself when I get starry-eyed over some new fandom thing. (Like someone posting up parts of the movie version of Tokyo Babylon with real actors on You Tube. *shock*) Society has tried to change gendered terms - firemen are now called firefighters, stewardesses are now called flight attendants. However, in some languages, gender is part of the structure. For example "la" and "el" in Spanish both serve as "the" but "la" is considered feminine and "el" is masculine. In Japanese, only girls call themselves "atashi" and get the "-chan" suffix (with a few exceptions).

I think it's hard to have a non-gendered fandom when gender in general seems very important in society. As it is, I'm a cynic. For example, while it's all nice and good to point out a first female politician, astronaut, etc, the fact that it's news just because the person is female (what are her other credentials?) makes it seem like gender is still very much in our minds. And young girls will want to find a woman in a field they want to excel in to take on as their role model. I remember in one interview, one Asian reporter said she felt she could only become one after seeing an female Asian newscaster on television as a child.

Whew. Okay, that's all I have to say. XD

But I'd really love to belong, myself, to a non-gendered fandom. I think that's the place where I'd be the more at ease.

I totally, utterly, completely agree with you! And I wish I had time to say more but I have to run off to a conference. :-/

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one there ^^

(you really have the best 'say my name and I appear' technique ever XD)

I'm not sure I'd have defined slash as the big unifying thing of fangirls. I think it's rather fanfics in general. Lots of women prefer het or gen to slash. But fanfics in general seems to be majorly female dominated.

However I'm not surprised some women like you still feel excluded from the "female space" thing of fandom because they don't totally identify with those activities :/

I'm glad lots of people would like a non gendered fandom ^^

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