Gendered fandoms

[salinea]

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 --

Comments

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Yes, Ran's boar has always had a lot of sexism despite the fact it's got a very significant female presence. It's really annoying.

I think in this case it's part of the fact it's always been very wanky overall politically. (I can't believe it's never been F_Wanked) There's always some very wacky, rude and completly outrageous discussion somewhere, even though there's also a lot of intelligent, sane and fun people ^^

But you're right about the archetypal "who'd win in a fight" threads vs. the shippy ones. There's also the fact fanfics were banned away from it very early on (thanks to GRRM's himself, I guess, but still).

Urgh on that thread. I can believe it's a woman, some women are too often using sexist tropes themselves. I think Sansa's wedding was, to me, the most traumatic reading of the whole series (!!!) so you can imagine how relieved i was Tyrion didn't have sex with her. I like Tyrion, but Sansa.... well. That'd been the most horrible kind of rape.

[redcandle17.livejournal.com]

I think ASoIaF can be called a feminist series in the sense that female characters get the same weight as the male characters; that we see women waiting and praying and fearing during battles, not just men fighting. That's huge. I've never seen that before in that genre. Most writers (and readers) think a few female warriors constitute gender equality and ignore the fact that that approach ignores the experiences of the vast majority of women. GRRM is phenomenal at characterization and I marvel that a middle aged man can write a young girl whose thoughts, feelings, and behavior is so realistic.

This is why I'm especially disturbed by the sexism or outright misogyny in the fandom. It seems like Arya is the only major female character who doesn't get extreme hatred directed at her...and she is prepubescent, which I don't think is a coincidence. Sometimes I think some of the fans are reading a different version of the series than the one I read; a version where the women and adolescent girls are all evil bitches whose thoughts and feelings don't matter. This manifests most obviously in people who hate Sansa for hurting Tyrion's feelings by not having sex with him nevermind the psychological trauma it would have caused her, and in the guy who insists that Catelyn is "evil" because of one comment she made to Jon.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

I think ASOIAF has a lot of good, feminist appeal. I think GRRM set out to use and subvert some of fantasy's archetypes among which the female characters stereotyps and was very successful with some but not quite so with others (I'm not very happy with the way he deals with Cersei, for one).

The number of people who hate Sansa is incredible and very annoying to me. Like the people who blame her for Ned's death, rather than, you know, hating Littlefinger, Joffrey, Cersei and Ned himself (Sansa was no smarter than Ned but she was certainly not worse, and Ned's also to blame for having a nice talk with his favourite daughter Arya and seemingly forgetting to have it with Sansa). The thing with Tyrion is totally ridiculous, especially given that Sansa rather recognizes the fact that Tyrion is kind to her (and tells him so!). Tyrion's issues with women and self-esteem issues overall are definitly not Sansa's fault nor her responsability to deal with!

The whole thing comes from the point of view that women only matters for how they relate to men, men's desires, men's angst, etc. blargh.

[generalblossom.livejournal.com]

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?

[purple-chalk.livejournal.com]

Off-topically, am I the only one that gets the desperate desire to shorten that to "fwanked"? It just sounds really cool in my head, with the fw- sound...

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

fwanked sounds like a very fun and a perfectly perfect word. Adjuged!

[purple-chalk.livejournal.com]

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

[the-corbie.livejournal.com]

Personally I can't be arsed with either shipping or 'who would win in a fight' threads. I find both equally uninteresting. ;)

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, at least not for the last few years. They're different species of troll, and I would know. :p The number of boarders who regularly post in both areas is small.

The sexism on the book forums tends to come from teenage boys mostly, and rightly or wrongly, I don't expect them to know any better. I think in their case it stems from the simple fact that they find characters like Sansa, Dany and Cat boring and are unable or unwilling to relate to them.

There's more to it, of course. There are, for example, the female boarders who hate these characters. Often this comes from what you might term 'internalised prejudice': the worst kind, in my opinion. Much less prevalent but more worrying.

Still, the amount of sexism isn't that bad, comparatively.

On Tyrion/Sansa, btw, one boarder has the following in his sig:

"I think I have officially become a Sansa/Shagga shipper now...
of course, that would mean Shagga stepping in and taking what Tyrion is rightfully entitled to recieve (Sansa's maidenhead)... so it does sadden me a little..."

*shudders*

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

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*