The whole issue of criticism, critique, community, is incredibly complicated -- I'm thinking of how often people who write reviews of fanfic (or in one notorious case of a a RPG on LJ) are criticized; of how a few years ago, people who wanted to have full fledged literary analysis of fan fics because some of us LOVE doing that, caused major angst and conflict, and none of these even touched particularly on issues of race, disability, class, sexism. But somehow doing any of those instead of just LOVING everything was seen in some ways by some as a betrayal of fandom.

Think of how professional writers who should in theory be well used to negative reviews and criticism fling off their pants and have temper tantrums in public over criticism of constructions of race in their published works.

And Willow makes the very good point that a lot of this work has not been done with regard to source texts (and even then, when done, the attacks on people who point out racism, sexism, ableism, classism in media shows by fans of those shows can be horrific), add in the communal aspect of fandom (which some people translate to "never criticize me"), and......well, it's incredibly hard and painful.

Some of this work cannot be done in public, for multiple reasons.

And...I'm fumbling around.....because I think five years ago I would have loved/leaped on this idea, and I don't want to be a total arrogant ass...I wonder how much of this is going on that people don't realize already, and how much this sort of thing can be well...organized? Planned? I'm sorry, I'm now descending into babbling and wanting to not post, but I will shut up and post!