Fandom as a female space

[alias_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]

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

[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).

[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.

[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]

Only if the explosions are happening to the people kissing.

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

[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.

[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.

[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)

[elaran.livejournal.com]

What dr_jekyl said.

[alias_sqbr]

-what I said to her- :)

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Excellent post. Thank you. :)

[alias_sqbr]

You and alchemia's posts and comments did a lot to help me understand this stuff, so thank you :)

[alchemia.livejournal.com]

*friending*

[alias_sqbr]

Cool! Be warned, I post a lot of weird random crap :)

[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]

Mm, oh yes I like most of what OTW is working towards (I've yet to hear a single compelling argument against the archive), and I agree that there's something really nice about the way fanfic/media fandom works vs a lot of other fandoms which is probably not coincidental to the gender balance, but they have some way to go before I feel comfortable with how they express themselves.

As someone on the journal: are you expecting there to be many articles on non-female communities like machina and AMVs?

[paradox-dragon.livejournal.com]

I have been known to insist on fanfic fandom as a community of women. Not exclusively that, and not necessarily that for all eternity, but I think it's a relevant distinction. I haven't really been following the OTW debate, but I was paying attention back when the focus was on Fanlib and the exploitation of fandom, and in that case it made a lot of sense to acknowledge the parallels between the aforementioned exploitation of fandom and the historical exploitation of women and marginalization and discrediting of women writers.

I have to admit, I get really fed up with the double standard applied when association with women seems to automatically devalue a genre (I would include fanfic in this, but for a "real world" example, take romance writing), but any insistence on a genre being "women's space" is seen as exclusive and inflammatory when it is used in a positive way or brought up by the women themselves.

I by no means think that men or anyone who steps outside the traditional definitions and roles of gender should be excluded from fandom, provided they don't go about swirling a metaphorical cloak of patriarchy and privilege behind them, in which case I think they should be excluded because they're dicks, not because they aren't women. On the other hand, I don't see how calling fanfic fandom a primarily female space excludes men (marginalizes them, maybe, but I think it's more a matter of acknowledging their conspicuous absence and the reasons for that) or that there's any giant female conspiracy to boycott guys in fandom.

In my point of view, fanfic fandom is a tiny female-dominated space in a ginormous male-dominated space called Earth. I don't think the women of fandom go around hunting for males to identify and then exclude. I think that issues of gender in fandom get brought up mainly when there are issues of oppression and privilege (i.e. Fanlib) that disadvantage those women and are perpetuated mainly by men (not even male fans, but often outsiders). I see the definition of fandom as women's space as being more about preventing male intrusion (from the larger world, where men are hugely privileged and prone to act that out when stepping into communities that don't grant them that privilege) than male participation (and yes, I do think a male fan is being intrusive if he demands that fandom change to suit his tastes; if he doesn't make such demands, I think he'll be largely gender-invisible). No one's stopping fanboys from writing what they want and posting it, but if they are upset that female fans are not interested in reading what they're interested in writing . . . well, I don't care, frankly. Tough shit. Also, yes, some of those men are oppressed in other ways (i.e. queer), but that doesn't negate their male privilege.

This all makes me sound far more confrontational than I actually am, and I'm not writing this to argue with you, or to talk about how women are pure and good and inclusive and men are intrusive brutes. In short, I think that gender is largely a particularly nasty sort of fiction, but it's a fiction with great significance in the world in which we live. I don't think that the risk of men feeling excluded outweighs the need to analyze and challenge the ways in which women and their work are perceived, commodified, marginalized, and degraded.

I take your point, however, about how "transformative work" is not limited to fanfic, and I do believe that presents a problem. However, I think that consideration of the role that Fanlib played in the creation of the OTW sheds light on that; I do not know enough about the continuing debate to say whether or not gender is a consideration that should be reduced as the organization broadens its focus.

[alias_sqbr]

I have to admit, I get really fed up with the double standard applied when association with women seems to automatically devalue a genre (I would include fanfic in this, but for a "real world" example, take romance writing), but any insistence on a genre being "women's space" is seen as exclusive and inflammatory when it is used in a positive way or brought up by the women themselves.

Same. In fact I think we agree on a lot of things. We may even agree on pretty much everything and be shouting past each other :)

And as I said in my post, I'm definitely not objecting to fandom being called a "primarily female space" (well, except with the fact that this gets a bit ambiguous when we're talking about OTW, but I think we agree there)

I'm not entirely objecting to it being labeled a "female space" (which is different), though I'm still figuring out quite how I feel about that. I've seen lots of people who see it as a female space express themselves in very inclusive ways which affirm the role of women without trying to belittle or marginalise not-women, and I'm sure you do it that way too. I certainly enjoy having a female dominated nerdy place to hang out from time to time after the fierce maleness of nerd circles in general, and see how precious and rare that is and why people want to protect it.

What I'm objecting to is the minority of women who do define fandom as a "female space" in an exclusionary way and who automatically pigeonhole anyone who doesn't 100% fit their idea of "female fanficcer " as male/part of the patriarchy and thus the bad guy (heck, this has happened to me as a gen fan)

The world may "belong to men". But it belongs, specifically, to straight cisgendered men, and gay/trans/genderqueer etc "men" don't tend to get the full force of male privilege. And a man who is being all obnoxious and priviligey doesn't deserve our time..but that doesn't describe all not-women with a dissenting voice.

Look, I agree that people whose taste doesn't match that of the majority of fandom (and this includes myself) have to just put up with it. But if it's not a matter of taste but of heterosexism or whatever then I think people have a right to speak up and rock the boat, even if they are male.

To give an example: I think gay men and transpeople etc have a right to express an opinion about how the group they're a part of is presented in fanfiction in the same way that women have a right to express an opinion on how they're presented in fiction aimed at men, especially since it's not like there's a subgenre of fanfiction aimed at gay men or whatever that they can go read instead.
That said, I think presenting it as a simple case of straight people fetishising homosexuality is as wrong as seeing it as a simple case of men putting down women's writing. I'm not saying we have to agree with their opinions, just that they have a right to express them without being shouted down or ignored, and this doesn't always happen.

[moon-very-thin.livejournal.com]

"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. "

I'm curious. Do you (or anyone else here)have linkable examples of this phenomenon? It's just that in my own experiences of various fandoms over the last decade I have never seen it arise, and I'd like to educate myself.

It may be that my female privilege in fandom space makes me blind to it. Heaven knows, I'm aware enough of the frustration of male friends not *getting* how exclusionary so many spaces can be to a woman on the basis of gender.

I respect OTW's acknowledgement of the feminine-nature of fandom because things like FanLib and the official BSG vidding challenge etc have so frustratingly ignored the experiences of the feminine majority by super-imposing a masculine-centric view of fandom.

However, in those cases it's a case of foreign affairs rather than domestic - dealing with non-fannish organisations who have certain ill-informed assumptions about the gendered nature of many aspects of fandom. I'd be very grateful if I could hear the opinions of men in media fandom who feel unfairly excluded.

[alias_sqbr]

Well, I'm a woman too so am not the best person to ask :) (I actually feel a bit weird answering the question for this reason, so anyone with a better grasp of this stuff is free to correct me)

The perception has been growing for a while, to be honest I first noticed the "the only people who aren't women who like what I like are male chauvinist pigs" attitude when it was (indirectly) used against me (as a woman who likes plotty gen and science and other boyish things), and this meant that when people like alchemia complained about this sort of attitude marginalising them I had a certain base sympathy, and I started to think about what fandom would look like from a gay male/transgendered/genderqueer perspective. (For example, telling someone who was born a woman and has gone through hell and high water to gain any acceptance as a man that they're an "honorary woman" for liking fanfic and not being a misogynist is kind of rude..)

The only ones I have an actual link to are the rant I linked to above, and the comment that sparked this rant, where a (I think) FTM transexual was talking about feeling marginalised and was told that "being a dude in fandom is kind of like being a straight ally at a queer social event" (which I won't link to since I think the person who posted it feels a bit embarrassed about it now in retrospect :))

In general women are a lot less directly aggressive than men, so it's more subtle than the open misogyny you get in male spaces. But there have been several times I've seen gay men or trans people say that they're not comfortable with the way their group is portrayed by slash and they got an immediate reaction of "This is by women for women, if you don't like it then sod off" and "It's impossible for me to be prejudiced against gay men because I'm a lesbian" without any attempt to look at whether or not slash perpetuates homophobic/transphobic etc attitudes. I mean there is also a lot of very intelligent discussion about the gender/sexuality etc issues in fanfic, but that doesn't negate the bad stuff.

[parthenia14.livejournal.com]

I think this is the most interesting and calm discussion I've seen of this issue. You all rock.

[alias_sqbr]

Why thankyou :)