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alias_sqbr(separated out as a tangent from Old school fandom: Can we fix it?)
There's a difference between "here are some flaws in X group"/"Here are some awesome things about my group" (both of which are valid) and "Let's think about the differences between X and my group. Well.. X has all these flaws. And my group is awesome. Because we are awesome people, and they are flawed people (apart from the ones who eventually realise how awesome we are and change sides)."
There is a jump from "there is an undertone of misogyny to some slash"/"There is an undertone of homophobia to some non-slashers behaviour" to "slashers are misogynistic"/"non-slashers are homophobic" to "If you really cared you'd write (fem)slash"(*).
One of things which made me feel excluded from fanfic fandom for years was this attitude that "A lot of fanfic works this way"->"This is What Fanfic Is"->"Everything that is not This sucks and is probably written and enjoyed by misogynistic and/or dull men". Yes, a lot of fanfic takes canon characters and puts them into a romance, but that doesn't mean that I'm Missing The Point of fanfic if I take the setting and write gen about some original characters. And the fact that male dominated fandom tends to be sexist and dismissive of fanfic doesn't mean there's a direct correlation between having tastes in line with conventional fandom and being sexist/narrowminded. Acting this way means female fans with "male" tastes get treated badly in both fandoms.
I'm not sure I've ever seen any "Let's compare stuff from fanfic fandom to equivalent stuff made by people outside" meta that didn't spend every second paragraph talking about how much more awesome and creative and feminist and postmodern "our" stuff is.
One of the things about online fandom (especially on lj) is it's much bigger and more finely delineated which makes it easier to avoid really obnoxious people and create your own space but also makes it easy forget that your like-minded friendslist is not all there is to fandom. When I see a comment like Ursula LeGuin fans could demonstrate a little of the progressive social values of Stargate:Atlantis fans I have to wonder if they count all the fans in mainstream male dominated fandom who think Teyla is hot and enjoy the explosions or whatever. And if they don't count, why don't I get to redefine "Ursula LeGuin" fans the same way? (And here I start shading into my next post :))
nb: I realise one of things fanfic meta does is tend to focus exclusively on fanfic (and specifically, boyslash) to the exclusion of other sorts of fannish creativity and I've kind of done that here. I guess I can't break out of the very mindset I'm criticising!
(*)These arguments annoyed me a lot less once I wrote some femslash, since now I'm one irrational-smug-moral-superiority level above the smug m/m slash writers :)
There's a difference between "here are some flaws in X group"/"Here are some awesome things about my group" (both of which are valid) and "Let's think about the differences between X and my group. Well.. X has all these flaws. And my group is awesome. Because we are awesome people, and they are flawed people (apart from the ones who eventually realise how awesome we are and change sides)."
There is a jump from "there is an undertone of misogyny to some slash"/"There is an undertone of homophobia to some non-slashers behaviour" to "slashers are misogynistic"/"non-slashers are homophobic" to "If you really cared you'd write (fem)slash"(*).
One of things which made me feel excluded from fanfic fandom for years was this attitude that "A lot of fanfic works this way"->"This is What Fanfic Is"->"Everything that is not This sucks and is probably written and enjoyed by misogynistic and/or dull men". Yes, a lot of fanfic takes canon characters and puts them into a romance, but that doesn't mean that I'm Missing The Point of fanfic if I take the setting and write gen about some original characters. And the fact that male dominated fandom tends to be sexist and dismissive of fanfic doesn't mean there's a direct correlation between having tastes in line with conventional fandom and being sexist/narrowminded. Acting this way means female fans with "male" tastes get treated badly in both fandoms.
I'm not sure I've ever seen any "Let's compare stuff from fanfic fandom to equivalent stuff made by people outside" meta that didn't spend every second paragraph talking about how much more awesome and creative and feminist and postmodern "our" stuff is.
One of the things about online fandom (especially on lj) is it's much bigger and more finely delineated which makes it easier to avoid really obnoxious people and create your own space but also makes it easy forget that your like-minded friendslist is not all there is to fandom. When I see a comment like Ursula LeGuin fans could demonstrate a little of the progressive social values of Stargate:Atlantis fans I have to wonder if they count all the fans in mainstream male dominated fandom who think Teyla is hot and enjoy the explosions or whatever. And if they don't count, why don't I get to redefine "Ursula LeGuin" fans the same way? (And here I start shading into my next post :))
nb: I realise one of things fanfic meta does is tend to focus exclusively on fanfic (and specifically, boyslash) to the exclusion of other sorts of fannish creativity and I've kind of done that here. I guess I can't break out of the very mindset I'm criticising!
(*)These arguments annoyed me a lot less once I wrote some femslash, since now I'm one irrational-smug-moral-superiority level above the smug m/m slash writers :)
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Re: no race, but I think I'm allowed here
Date: 2009-06-12 04:25 am (UTC)I do have a lot of troubles with considering any fandom 'main' fandom (even for me personally!) so I confess I'm taking an issue, perhaps, where context should have made it clear to me it was a more particular definition.
I had a discussion about this before in another lj--where there was people who argued that. I don't think so, but of course there are no statistics. I think there are less male OC Mary Sues, simply because there are less male writers, and thus, yes, female OC Mary Sues are reported more, but that doesn't mean anything about female centred texts, as canon female characters povs don't get called Mary Sues, except in extreme cases, as male ones do (I'm talking about the fandoms I'm most in, which would be HP, and Austen).
It could be true for other fandoms, though.
Now I leave it here and I apologize if it's completely gibberish, because it's 1:30 am and I have to go sleep. Damn final.
Re: no race, but I think I'm allowed here
Date: 2009-06-12 05:33 am (UTC)Some of that may be because the feminists in fandom are going to be attracted to meta-ing male-dominated books and shows that have fandoms (?) and meta-ing fanfic is just a corner of that.
Oh and if there's a whole feminist meta about Jane Austen fanfic, I'd be really interested in seeing what it's about. Or another female character dominated canon that has a lot of fanfic.
Re: no race, but I think I'm allowed here
Date: 2009-06-15 11:48 pm (UTC)Uhm, I actually don't know. I know that in sci-fi, and HP the percentage is actually more even than in Jane Austen fandom, for example, but
I don't know if it's the elephant in the room, in the sense that I everyone is quite aware of that fact, in all fandoms I'm in. It's not clear why that is, of course, that's the thing everyone discusses. Why fanfic? Why slash? Why het? Why UST? Why, why, why? There are no easy answers, and my feeling is that I've far too little information to say anything about it.
JA fandom has a lot of feminist meta about the books themselves, but not all online. (Some of it quite... wacky.) JA fandom in particular has a very strong (and old!) canon discussion only branches.
If you are interested, I will ask a friend that always has the links on hand and pass them along. :D
Re: no race, but I think I'm allowed here
Date: 2009-06-13 05:44 am (UTC)One of the things meta writers from the part of sff fanfic fandom that THINKS it's the main fandom do is make all these unstated assumptions and then when called on it go "Oh, yeah, I was just talking about slash/scifi/tv/america etc, I thought that was clear from context". And this irritates the heck out of me, so you're totally justified in calling me out on it for doing so myself, it's even on topic for this post :)