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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Regarding ASoIaF, I don't know the gender ratio but there's still a lot of misogyny there. The female characters are judged much more harshly and for lesser offenses than male characters. And there are some opinions that are just mind boggling. I recently had spat with someone on Ran's board that took up two pages of the thread because "she*" was insisting that Tyrion should have raped Sansa on their wedding night and that Sansa would even have enjoyed it.

There's also subtle sexism such as scorn for shipping threads despite the ubiquity of "who's the best fighter" threads. I want balance. I want to be able to discuss who's the best fighter and who's in love with whom. After all, love and sex are the reasons for the wars in the series.

* The poster claims to be female but I don't want to believe that a woman would make such sickening statements. I also doubt that any woman would claim Sandor was less physically desirable than Tyrion.

If being a fangirl means being primarily in fandom to squee over the hotness of (insert character or actor name here), then that's not me.

And I've seen "fanboy" used to mean the sort of fan who doesn't bathe, has no social skills, and opens conversations with total strangers by telling them what his character did last night--I complain sometimes about lacking social skills, but that stereotype's not me either.

I see myself as a geek, who obsesses about certain fandoms because I love the plots and the characters. I don't think I look at the texts differently from the way men do, but a few male fen I've met assume that I do.

And the same guys who think I only read HP for the hot men? They're the ones who have posters of babes in chainmail bikinis all over their walls...

Bah, I'm rambling, and not very coherently...

Interesting observations.

I didn't realise that fandoms were gendered until last year, when I got my LJ. Hitherto, I'd only been in the Buffy fandom, which is just about as non-gendered as a fandom is going to get anytime soon, I think.

What stumps me is the need groups of fans (fang gangs) feel to destroy or chase away that which differs from their vision. I try to ride solo around the groups, but fandoms are not always comfortable place to be.

I don't know if you've read this already but in case you haven't,

unanon wrote a very nice Sansa/Sandor (http://nonanu.livejournal.com/29011.html) fic.

I'd be saying nothing that hasn't already been said (and more eloquently than I'm capable of) if I tried to actually formulate a reply to this, but I just wanted to put in that I'd really like to take you in to sociology for show-and-tell.

Nope, nothing wrong with wanting non-gendered fandom. It's something I've been thinking about a little...The thing is, though, that since I've been in the Tokyo Babylon/X fandom (and other fandoms like it) which are dominated by women, I've found it much more pleasant to interact with people in those than I have in other fandoms. In a way I've been thinking "Isn't this nice?" about seeing these mostly-female fandoms and the things they've created. It's a cosy sort of feeling, really.

Anyway, I've wondered about why that is, since isn't it wrong to be pleased that it's mostly female? And now that I've thought about it, it probably wasn't that at all. The men who are in the fandom are treated just like anyone else, as they should be, and it'd be fine if there were more of them. It's the culture of these fandoms that's the difference. The reason I've been more comfortable in my current fandoms is mainly that they don't tend to attract people who hold certain values which can't fail to irritate me. For example, it's is very, very difficult to be a homophobe in the CLAMP fandom. And because of that, there don't tend to be, say, ardent right-wing fundamentalists. In some previous fandoms of mine there have been plenty of those sorts of people, and they were amazingly irritating. Plus, my current fandoms tend to attract older fans, who tend to be more coherent. Any men wandering into theses fandoms are likely to be people who are okay by me.

Yeah, before online fandoms, I was pretty much into the male side, too. Roleplaying, collecting, etc. My interests are often patronized or dismissed, and having been sheletered by the more female-dominated side of fandom, it irritates me that it still exists. I'm not into sexual segregration. I would love it if more males hung out in our corner and more females hung out in theirs. I just wish I knew a way to bridge the gap...

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).

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.

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. :-/

If it's a bad thing to want, mark me down as a bad person. Honestly, I seriously thought and hoped that the fact that all we are to each other is a stream of text would get rid of all this gender baggage. Because yes, I'm an RPGer and a fanfic writer, and I think they're both awesome and equally fun. And actually I wanted just one area of life where I wasn't judged by my gender, thank you very much! Maybe I am odd (or even GenderQueer), but I've always wanted to be able to engage with people as just people, and not have to feel yet again excluded because I'm both, or neither, or whatever.

So thank you!

I think a non-gendered fandom space would be wonderful, it's a great thing to want, it's just not what we actually have. Yet.

Looking at the posts above there are obviously palces where it is true that tehre is an even mix of genders or where gender doesn't matter at all but taken overall there are definitely gender differences in fandom. I was at a Harry Potter con this weekend and which was something like 15% male... obviously that 15% was important and very much part of the community but it is a fact that overwhelmingly the online Harry Potter community (and specifically the LJ aprt of it) is rpedominantly female and that's something that can't be brushed away or ignored.

I've always found being online that it's itneresting to be able to speak to people before you know their gender, or race, or age etc. and perhaps we have to be careful we don't deliberately seperate female fans from male ones because obviously there is crossover but gender is an issue and it isn't going away.

So yes, good thing to want just not reality. Yet. *g*

Personally, I only recently come across the concept that fanfics are a female thing.

I've been reading fanfics for over 10 years, and in the various places I've hung out... none of them had more women than men. In fact, they have very few women at all, and it don't think it's because we men looked down on them.

Of course, I don't actually hang out on LJ, I don't even use mine, so it may be different here...

wow. I thought I was full of rants after all the spiderman/fanlib fiascoes but the links you've posted is adding even more fuel to the fire. In the past, I've had a few brain-spurts about gender, feminism and fandom and all that has been blown clear open. A non-gendered fandom in general would be a marvelous thing but with the niching and disparities in how progressive people are and what they expect out of fandom based on those disparities, I'm beginning to think it's not exactly conceivable at this point, beyond the isolated examples you've mentioned. I'm not sure how to get on a path where it might be conceivable or how to replicate those incidents not-in-isolation but as a shift in fandom approaches but the open space for discussion and debate is definitely a part of it.

There's a lot of food for thought here and I hope you don't mind if I link to this post as part of the rant/thought process.

(here via

metafandom)

nope, its not a bad thing at all. everyone is free to want what they want, and you wanting this, as far as I can see, is not hurting anyone.

I for myself, I am very happy in my mainly slash fandom, that is dominated by women. I don't that to change, but everyone is welcome to try to model their own fannish corner.

good luck:)

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(I've been trying to post this for ages but livejournal was all broken up)

Is that a bad thing to want?