Fandom as a female space

[sqbr]

So there's a been a lot of discussion on metafandom about fanfic-fandom as a female space, both wrt OTW and (looking back) in general.

This has bugged me a bit, especially when I've seen some of the practical implications. Nothing I have to say here is all that new or exciting, I just feel better getting it out.

Now with respect to OTW my main problem is that they claim to be speaking for all creators of "transformative works", many of which (like machina, parody etc) do not come from "primarily female communities". But I'm assuming this contradiction will be ironed out one way or another in time (I asked on their feedback page, so we'll see) and don't feel too comfortable giving them crap about their policies until I'm sure of what their policies are.

(EDIT: I am so totally not accusing OTW of the stuff I'm complaining about below, it's just that discussions about OTW stirred up general-fandomy-people's nasty opinions.)

Unlike a lot of people, I have absolutely no problem with fanfic-fandom being a feminist space, or a safe space for women (I only wish it were true of sff fandom). And the fact that most fanfic is written by women is a basic fact that's silly to deny. Men who come in going "But..you guys should stop talking about kissing and start doing more explosions!" are being equivalent to a tourist complaining about those silly chinese people putting soy sauce on their pasta instead of bolognaise(*).

My problem is when fanfic-fandom is treated as equivalent to "women's spaces" like the women's room at uni. (EDIT: this isn't quite what people are doing, certainly noone says men aren't allowed. Here's the best essay I could find on the subject after a brief search, and here's the same basic idea expressed in a much dodgier way)

Unlike deliberately female spaces, fandom isn't defined as being female, it's just the
collection of everyone who likes fanfic etc. As it happens it has ended up mostly female for historical etc reasons, but that's different from a social group which was deliberately and explicitly created to cater to one group. There are plenty of all-gender social events for non-female people to go to, but if a man likes fanfic then it's not like can just go to the "mens fanfic club" and discuss it there, this is all there is.

I'm trying to think of examples...the best I can think of is that childrearing used to be "women's work" and is still pretty much done just by women. This has led to single fathers being excluded from parenting rooms and parenting groups which just assume that everyone who wants to use them is female.

Similarly, gay men and trans or genderqueer people are often excluded from fandom-y things along with the straight cisgendered men, with the argument that fandom is a women's space and they are not women, so they should shut up. I've seen it happen a bunch of time, and I don't like it.

On the whole, it seems to me that the not-women(**) in "female spaces" are more likely to be the sort to buck traditional gender roles and so be already marginalised in the wider society. Defining these spaces so rigidly that these not-women are excluded or marginalised here is beyond just defending ourselves from the patriarchy, it's perpetuating the patriarchy in it's oppression of a different group.

(*)And from the sound of things, a lot of male academics in this area are like italian chefs going on about how Marco Polo invented pasta, and who only reference the chinese at all to smirk about how they have no idea how to cook pasta sauce. To extend this metaphor past breaking: at the same time, that doesn't change the fact that spaghetti bolognaise is delicious, and not everyone who likes it hates China (or soy sauce) *is now hungry*
(**)And self identified women who don't fit the everyone's definition of "woman", like transwomen.

Note: I have a new policy of cutting down my internet time quite dramatically, so this was written on the fly. Sorry if it's all crap! EDIT: Haha, and now I've been metafandomed. Hi guys, I appreciate the comments but may be slow to reply :)

Comments

[penchaft.livejournal.com]

THEN WHY ARE THERE NO LESBIANS IN FANDOM

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

I asked the same thing of Cathy about OTW. There are so many areas that are equally transformative works, some of which have even worse copyright issues, that they have more or less ignored for now, and even somewhat biased themselves against by choosing to define themselves as a fancentric and feminist focussed organisation - mash-up DJing is another example.

As far as fanfic fandom being a womens space, angriest has already noted that this isn't even that true for all fandoms, Dr Who fandom historically featuring many gay men, for example. I agree with your viewpoint - men acting as if its male space are being obnoxious, and its only polite to acknowledge the nature and values of the community you enter, which happens to include it being mostly female and feminist. But that shouldn't be exclude anyone for who they are (though it may occasionally exclude people for the way they act - as all communities ultimately do).

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

My lesbian housemate with the towering slash collection is obviously imaginary.

[penchaft.livejournal.com]

God, next you'll be saying that you know a girl who plays MMOs. Check your pills, man.

[alias_sqbr]

Mmm, exactly. I got all excited to start with about the idea of an organisation that really was for all transformative works, but have since pretty much resigned myself to them being a things-fanficcers-like organisation with a fancy name :/ (This irks me somewhat as someone who does not-fanfic transformative works like skeletor_hordak)

What did she say when you asked her? I thought about commenting on one of her OTW-squee posts but it would have been horribly off-topic and kind of rude. I've gotten into a few discussions about it on general meta but not with anyone who really knows anything concrete, and have pretty much decided to just try to ignore the bazillion OTW metafandom posts from now on.

[david adam <zanchey> (from livejournal.com)]

Anyone coming in saying "less kissing, more explosions" is an idiot anyway - they should be asking for "less kissing sans explosions". Everyone loves a good pash during a novelty oversize explosion.

[deathwombat.livejournal.com]

Will someone, please, think of the Canon?

Me and "Fandom" don't go too well together. There are a certain series' I cannot not touch with a 10 foot science pole because of the fandom attached to it. It's mostly Anime and Video Games in which the fangirls have turned me away from. It's their overly enthusiastic interactions with series that plays the major part. For example: That one group of girls at Wai-Con who win the cosplay contest EVERY YEAR... Because of them I cannot not play/watch/read Kingdom Hearts, D-Grayman and almost Death Note(Which I decided to read after being given the live action movies). Harry Potter fandom just shits me.

What was the subject again, ah yes. No, I've forgotten again because I just thought what would possibilities of Portal fandom be besides the endless quoting of "The Cake is a Lie", like what would female Portal fanfiction be like, because all male outlets of fandom seem to be parody comics these days.

[alias_sqbr]

Heh, yes that does have pretty universal appeal :) (and indeed, a fair amount of fanfic has both kissing and explosions, admittedly not always concurrently and the latter is usually a thin pretext for the former)

[penchaft.livejournal.com]

And hell, it's pretty much LJ only-fanficcers. (Or it was when there was the big ruckus on the f_w comms.)

[penchaft.livejournal.com]

Only if the explosions are happening to the people kissing.

It would be like an STD! You could make a game out of it! *_____*

[alias_sqbr]

Mm, oh yes, all that too. But that can theoretically be blamed on the sorts of hiccups that happen at the beginning of any organisation, they at least have made some attempt to appear inclusive in that respect, even if they actually aren't (I'm only in lj-fandom myself, so can't say :))

[greteldragon.livejournal.com]

You have a strange strange mind dear.

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

It's just fallacious reasoning.

Being mostly female is an emergent, not an essential, characteristic of fanfic-dom. Demographics don't provide a basis for argument here - just imagine any man trying to delineate any historically male-dominated "space" - politics, say, or board memberships - as being for men only.

This is not to quibble with communities policing themselves and making their own standards. But turning "the way it's always been" into "the rules we must enforce" should usually carry a heavier burden of justification, I would've thought.

[alias_sqbr]

I didn't express the concept well enough (I've edited the post somewhat, will try again in the morning when my brain is less dead): noone says men aren't allowed, but they're often treated as visiting "our" space. This post was inspired by this conversation, for example, and the line "being a dude in fandom is kind of like being a straight ally at a queer social event".

[dr-jekyl.livejournal.com]

I have to agree with you. As a ficcer, and one who's witness a number of ham-fisted attempts by TPTB to stop fanworks, I love and support OTW for the archive and history project's sakes. But, at the same time, I have serious reservations about the way they're approaching the gender issue. It doesn't help that the fandom where I'm currently most active - comics - is dominated by men, and that the commentary I read is written by women who are analysing the ways comicdom intentionally and unintentionally excludes women.

In fandoms where women are the majority group, and, indeed, fandom as a whole, I don’t think we should be turning around and doing exactly the sorts of things we’ve been lambasting men in male dominated fandoms (or, for that matter, in larger society) for doing. I can’t even being to imagine the kind of uproar that would occur if, say, Dan Didio (head of DC Comics) said that he valued comic fandom as a predominantly male space, because it would tantamount to him telling all his female readers to take a hike. There seems to be a nasty undercurrent of ‘let’s see how you men like being the minority’ in the OTW support base. It’s hypocritical at best.

I'd be really interested to see where and when most of the board came into fandom, because I think that has a strong bearing on how aware they are of the true gender spectrum of fandom. A couple of them seem to be straight out of Harry Potter, and that's a 99% female fandom. Do we have any trekkies? Any anime-nuts? Much higher female/male ratio in those two. Any vidders? Artists? Modders? Traditionally, you'll find more men producing those sorts of works.

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I (thought I) got the point. I wasn't talking about banning or anything.

The straight ally analogy seems off the mark to me. Isn't gender rather more intrinsic to sexuality than it is to fanfic writing?

Anyway, I agree that OTW is a poor choice of name, the scope's quite blatantly too broad. And it seems preemptive for that community to formalise its "female space" status instead of just letting it continue of its own accord. I haven't noticed huge numbers of men wanting to inflict themselves on fanfic either as readers or as writers lately? Is that actually a problem in any sense?

[alias_sqbr]

Right, well then you understood me despite what I actually said :)

There actually is a problem with men complaining about fanfic not being aimed at them, though I personally haven't seen it happening TOO often. This essay goes into it pretty well. Unfortunately, it does take a certain amount of deliberate effort to protect enclaves of the internet from the usual grind of racistsexisthomophobicloudmouthtroll.

Something I've seen is gay men complaining that slash is unappealing to them, which is more complicated than straight out sexism in my opinion (I mean, it is about gay men).

But afaict there's more of an issue with journalists, researchers etc ignoring/belittling the female parts of fandom because it's silly icky girly stuff rather than the Serious Important Worldchanging Stuff done in the male parts of fandom, even when the female stuff has been around for twice as long (as with vidding)

[elaran.livejournal.com]

What dr_jekyl said.

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

Hmm. This complexifies.

I noticed the essay you linked to links to this post (http://community.livejournal.com/fanficrants/1313922.html) where some guy complains about the treatment of men in fandom. More accurately, it links to the braindead first response to that post. To be honest, my reaction to the post itself was quite favourable. Or at least, if there are sections of the fanfic community that:

"... will talk and talk about men. And they'll subtlely bash my wonderful gender. They'll say that isn't it wonderful that women can identify with characters regardless of gender and men can't do that."

then I question their purposes. You've got to suspect anyone when they're wandering around normalising the crassest of crass generalisations as hard fact.

Speaking as a guy I think I understand why some men might get upset with the prevailing norms of the fanfic community. After all, everyone's always been fairly accepting of the idea that slash gained popularity because it subverted the gender roles of the transformed works (buff male protagonists become gay, etc. etc.). It confronts the dominant view by flipping the table over. But if you spend your entire time within that confrontative space, it acquires its own offensive normativity which you're then inflicting on others.

And so some gay men object to having sexual acts that, in some sense, "belong" to them cheapened in slash fic in much the same way as I've heard lesbians rant about the wholly inaccurate treatment of lesbian sex in male-oriented porn. And why shouldn't they? It probably is rather offensive to them to have the scope of their sexuality abused by women who feel like blowing off steam about their own, sometimes queer but mostly hetero (sorry for the crass generalisation, but I'm reasonably certain it's accurate), lives, loves and sexuality.

The argument seems to go back to whether anti-discriminatory / liberation movements in general should allow themselves to become a reflection of what they were fighting against. If fanfic is a dialectic antithesis of the thesis presented by mainstream texts, is there enough synthesis going on that actual progress is occurring?

(Well, actually, I'd say there is because we now see the values of fanfic constantly re-reflected in mainstream TV etc., but eh. I'd guess there are some within the fanfic community who are interested in re-contributing their ideas to the mainstream, and others who want it to be, ideologically, an unchanging walled garden.)

Of course, as soon as one leaves the confines of fanfic one is back in the heavily male-dominated wider world. So it isn't reasonable for men within the community to pretend there's no oppressive external context for the playfulness of slash-fic.

I think part of the trouble is that on the internet, everyone's mandatory return across that boundary (fic-space --> "real world") is not apparent. Those encountered within the community of fanfic are generally never encountered outside it, so it's a struggle to contextualise the viewpoints they're bringing to discussion.

I probably shouldn't comment further because I don't really spend time reading fanfic. But if one reappraises polemic like:

"It should not be seen as "anti-male" to admit that I'm mostly writing for other women. And we shouldn't have to keep fighting for the spaces that, I have to say yet again, we made for ourselves."

from the obvious other-perspective of a man, it's quite clear that it can be expected to offend some men to the point of objection, in much the same way as, say, the male-oriented domain of TV sport tends to rile women. And yet, when confronted by women (my mother, maxfenig, random women with whom I've discussed my affection for sport) I don't defend my enjoyment of football on TV by saying "men created this space for ourselves and shouldn't have to fight for it". Usually I say "yeah, it is a shame it's so male-centric, because I don't think I enjoy it just because it's a guy thing, if you know what I mean". To me that particular gender boundary is mostly quite regrettable ...

[alias_sqbr]

Mm. It would be great if there was a metafandom type place which covered all such fandomy stuff (or at least the ones I care about :D) but I feel reasonably certain that the different groups would Not Play Nice. *insert the parable of scans_daily*

I think the "Boys are icky, and so is everything they like" attitude comes from a mix of an understandable siege mentality and the general human tendency to demonise the Other. It does make it annoying for girls like us who like "boys stuff" as well as "girls stuff".

That said, we live in a sexist society with a long history of women being marginalised. So a "women's space" really isn't the same as a "men's space", and imo can sometimes be a good thing. I personally think it's great that women can express themselves in fanfic etc in ways they generally can't in the wider world. But that doesn't give us lisence to be prats about it.

I have this metaphor about slashers being like drag queens, but it's probably best left in my head :)

I can't speak for the rest of the board, but have you met Cathy Cupitt? She's quite a local SMOF and a staple at Swancon, so I can't see her being unaware of the male aspects of fandom. But afaict all she writes is slash. Naomi Novik does vids, too, but not AMVs (which are where the men come into it in a big way afaict)

[alias_sqbr]

-what I said to her- :)

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Excellent post. Thank you. :)

[alchemia.livejournal.com]

*friending*

[dkompare.livejournal.com]

This is the best read on the "predominantly female space" bit that I've yet seen in all the OTW chatter of the past few weeks. I find I can't resolve my feelings on it as well.

I'm a het male who's been interested (and at times, fairly active) in several media fandoms for over twenty years. Most of them have been predominantly female-led, some of them have been predominantly male-led, some of them have been both (e.g., Doctor Who fandom in North America vs. Doctor Who fandom in the UK), and all of them have had an often prickly relationship with TPTB (e.g., remember Creation Cons back in the 90s?).

I'm also, these days, about 70% "aca" and 30% "fan" when it comes to fan studies, with a personal and professional investment in understanding fan cultures and asserting their practices. As a feminist, I absolutely get where the OTW organizers are coming from wrt the idea of a "female space," (and full disclosure, I'm on the editorial board of the journal), but as a media and cultural scholar who's studied and participated in loads of subcultures since the 80s, I'm wondering how that's going to jibe with the more universal claims of championing "transformative" works.

Anyway, this is all an ongoing discussion (all of it, that is; everything in your entire life), and I look forward to supporting the mission of the OTW as this discussion continues.

[alias_sqbr]

I actually have noticed some women in fandom being smug about how men's "transformative works" are, you know, nice and all, but they tend to lack the subversive blah-dee-blah of the stuff women make. Which, while less damaging (and usually less strongly worded) than the equivalent statements from men (there's a lot of odious attitudes towards women writers out there) is also rather sillier, since there's several thousand years of well documented evidence of male creators being able to think to think outside the box.

But, well, people suck. Look at the way sf fans act as if speculative fiction is the only genre to really explore the limits of the human spirit or whatever. It's certainly not an accepted fact that men aren't as good as women at fanfic, just a subtle implication. There's also an implication that people like dr_jekyl and myself are homophobic and sex negative 13 year old boys for preferring G rated fanfic to R rated slash. For all female fanficcers have a point about the toxic, misogynistic atmosphere of male dominated fandom, female dominated fandom has it's own toxicity to those who don't fit the norm. I'm inclined to say it's not as toxic and there's more of a culture of tolerance and diversity, but that may be because I'm a girl :).

I'd go into it further, but I've just been metafandomed. Eep!