hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast
Description of a panel planned for the Gallifrey con next February:
When Did the Shippers Take Over Online Who Fandom?: It was only a few years ago that hardcore Doctor Who fandom online was ruled by the ubergeeks, the techno-savvy nerds debating continuity and canon... you know, us guys. No longer. Thanks to LiveJournal and the new networks of fans, Doctor Who fandom is more female, more ‘shipper’ (relationship-oriented) and raving about David Tennant. When did the shippers finally take over? We’ll take a look.
drho's indignation at the above, shared by numerous commenters, has me fascinated. Some of the pique is just sloppy reading and Internet Maths, but there's a more telling thing going on. It'd be ridiculous to say that online Doctor Who fandom isn't more female, waaaay more female than it used to be; it'd be ridiculous to say that shipping is not overwhelmingly a female pasttime; and ridiculous to say that the influx of female fans into online Doctor Who fandom has not meant an unprecedented amount of shipping. RTD set out to get women to watch the show. Caitlin Moran ships and squees all over the Guardian. Existing fandom, predominantly female on- and off-line, simply colonised the mostly-gay-male little corner that was Who fandom. (1996 saw a similar, if much smaller, influx of women into Who fandom, with the TVM, Paul McGann, and the romantic subplot.) Besides, the panel description is not intended to insult fangirls, but in fact is conspicuously self-deprecatory. Far from denying female involvement with Who fandom, the con has a panel with two women who were involved with LA-based fandom in the 70s.
So why such defensiveness about the association between fangirls and shipping and squeeing?
Searching for an old posting of mine to stick into the argument, I came across an academic discussion of gender in Who fandom which I found extremely illuminating. Rather than try to summarise, I'm just gonna quote a big chunk of it:[A bad experience with male sports fans makes DK] wonder if I looked around the much more female space of livejournal fandom if I would find people attacking practices that they think are particularly male. I don't think so, actually. Far more of the practices that get attacked based on unwarranted assumptions of the "bad fans" backgrounds assume that the bad fans in question are 16-year-old girls.
AM: So sports and academic cultures both attack feminised fan practices - I think that's true. Again, the Doctor Who comparison is interesting. I think there are gendered practices here too. I've never heard a female Doctor Who fan recite the production story codes for every episode of the program, but I know boys who can do it. [...] So there are differences there. But I don't see the same kinds of attacks on gendered cultures in the DW community. Because of the revamp, we now have a huge number of female fans coming in to the Doctor Who community who weren't there before - and I haven't seen much evidence of resistance to that from the men. Indeed, I'd say there's almost a gratitude. For a long time we've been seen as sad, geeky nerds, in this exclusively male hobby whose very maleness seems to show how sad and geeky it is (it's very different from Star Trek fandom). And so the fact that women are joining the fan community - many of them focussing on the emotional relationships in the program - is seen as something of a relief - we are becoming like normal people rather than geeks.
But what caught my eye about your final comment wasn't the gender - but the age. 16 year old. Because although I haven't seen any resistance in the Doctor Who community to women joining, I have seen resistance to young people joining. There was recently a poll for 'the best Doctor', which was won by the current incarnation (David Tennant. Also a favourite with female fans for his 'floppy fringe'). This led to some venomous outbursts from older fans against the (presumed) young fans who had voted for him from a position of (presumed) ignorance. The young fans have become an enemy, without the proper historical knowledge of the program, who haven't been here for 40 years like we have, watching every story and learning the nuances of the program. (as I'm writing this, I can see that as many of the new fans are female, there could be an overlap between the hatred of young fans, and the hatred of female fans - but I can honestly say I haven't picked up any of this in the discussions that I've seen. The attacks haven't drawn on language that is gendered either in the imagined bad fan, or in their supposed interests in the series).
DK: I'm fascinated to see you say that. Mostly I've avoided online Doctor Who fandom since the new series began. I know the quirks of the female fan community which has adopted the show wholeheartedly, and I remember the craziness of rec.arts.drwho, and I was looking forward to watching those two communities meet like matter and antimatter. I know that there have been enough conflicts in my own off-line life between those who are fans of the old show and new show both, and those who discovered the show with the new series. Primarily we argue about 'shipping, about relationships and whether or not the Doctor can be romantically involved with a human Companion (the Eighth Doctor movie never happened I've got my fingers in my ears I can't hear you la la la la). And I know from tidbits I've picked up that our conflicts mirror many of the conflicts between old-school fans and new-school fans of the show in general.
But I have to admit I would have assumed the conflict would be more gendered in tone. After all, you've got a fandom that (me notwithstanding) is primarily male, heavily gay. And suddenly it's interacting with a new group of fans who are primarily female, many of whom eroticize male homosexuality. I guess I would just expect that to turn into a gendered conflict.
Buried in there is, I think, the explanation.
Something I have noticed over and over in online girlfandom is a squeamish contempt, a positive horror of adolescent behaviour - I guess it's the young adult equivalent of a teenager's contempt for childish behaviour. If one sees shipping and squeeing as immature behaviours, then it becomes an insult to describe women as participating in them, to characterise them as a primarily female activity - even though this is in fact true.
If I'm right, then fangirls need to stand up for our own culture instead of cringing from it or apologising for it. Have we internalised a gendered version of mundane culture's contempt for fandom - because we're grownups, but we still get to play?
(NB. Anyone who comments that I am saying all fangirls ship and squee and do nothing else, and that fanboys never ship or squee, or indeed remarks that they don't exist, will be referred to the Internet Math posting.)
When Did the Shippers Take Over Online Who Fandom?: It was only a few years ago that hardcore Doctor Who fandom online was ruled by the ubergeeks, the techno-savvy nerds debating continuity and canon... you know, us guys. No longer. Thanks to LiveJournal and the new networks of fans, Doctor Who fandom is more female, more ‘shipper’ (relationship-oriented) and raving about David Tennant. When did the shippers finally take over? We’ll take a look.
drho's indignation at the above, shared by numerous commenters, has me fascinated. Some of the pique is just sloppy reading and Internet Maths, but there's a more telling thing going on. It'd be ridiculous to say that online Doctor Who fandom isn't more female, waaaay more female than it used to be; it'd be ridiculous to say that shipping is not overwhelmingly a female pasttime; and ridiculous to say that the influx of female fans into online Doctor Who fandom has not meant an unprecedented amount of shipping. RTD set out to get women to watch the show. Caitlin Moran ships and squees all over the Guardian. Existing fandom, predominantly female on- and off-line, simply colonised the mostly-gay-male little corner that was Who fandom. (1996 saw a similar, if much smaller, influx of women into Who fandom, with the TVM, Paul McGann, and the romantic subplot.) Besides, the panel description is not intended to insult fangirls, but in fact is conspicuously self-deprecatory. Far from denying female involvement with Who fandom, the con has a panel with two women who were involved with LA-based fandom in the 70s.
So why such defensiveness about the association between fangirls and shipping and squeeing?
Searching for an old posting of mine to stick into the argument, I came across an academic discussion of gender in Who fandom which I found extremely illuminating. Rather than try to summarise, I'm just gonna quote a big chunk of it:[A bad experience with male sports fans makes DK] wonder if I looked around the much more female space of livejournal fandom if I would find people attacking practices that they think are particularly male. I don't think so, actually. Far more of the practices that get attacked based on unwarranted assumptions of the "bad fans" backgrounds assume that the bad fans in question are 16-year-old girls.
AM: So sports and academic cultures both attack feminised fan practices - I think that's true. Again, the Doctor Who comparison is interesting. I think there are gendered practices here too. I've never heard a female Doctor Who fan recite the production story codes for every episode of the program, but I know boys who can do it. [...] So there are differences there. But I don't see the same kinds of attacks on gendered cultures in the DW community. Because of the revamp, we now have a huge number of female fans coming in to the Doctor Who community who weren't there before - and I haven't seen much evidence of resistance to that from the men. Indeed, I'd say there's almost a gratitude. For a long time we've been seen as sad, geeky nerds, in this exclusively male hobby whose very maleness seems to show how sad and geeky it is (it's very different from Star Trek fandom). And so the fact that women are joining the fan community - many of them focussing on the emotional relationships in the program - is seen as something of a relief - we are becoming like normal people rather than geeks.
But what caught my eye about your final comment wasn't the gender - but the age. 16 year old. Because although I haven't seen any resistance in the Doctor Who community to women joining, I have seen resistance to young people joining. There was recently a poll for 'the best Doctor', which was won by the current incarnation (David Tennant. Also a favourite with female fans for his 'floppy fringe'). This led to some venomous outbursts from older fans against the (presumed) young fans who had voted for him from a position of (presumed) ignorance. The young fans have become an enemy, without the proper historical knowledge of the program, who haven't been here for 40 years like we have, watching every story and learning the nuances of the program. (as I'm writing this, I can see that as many of the new fans are female, there could be an overlap between the hatred of young fans, and the hatred of female fans - but I can honestly say I haven't picked up any of this in the discussions that I've seen. The attacks haven't drawn on language that is gendered either in the imagined bad fan, or in their supposed interests in the series).
DK: I'm fascinated to see you say that. Mostly I've avoided online Doctor Who fandom since the new series began. I know the quirks of the female fan community which has adopted the show wholeheartedly, and I remember the craziness of rec.arts.drwho, and I was looking forward to watching those two communities meet like matter and antimatter. I know that there have been enough conflicts in my own off-line life between those who are fans of the old show and new show both, and those who discovered the show with the new series. Primarily we argue about 'shipping, about relationships and whether or not the Doctor can be romantically involved with a human Companion (the Eighth Doctor movie never happened I've got my fingers in my ears I can't hear you la la la la). And I know from tidbits I've picked up that our conflicts mirror many of the conflicts between old-school fans and new-school fans of the show in general.
But I have to admit I would have assumed the conflict would be more gendered in tone. After all, you've got a fandom that (me notwithstanding) is primarily male, heavily gay. And suddenly it's interacting with a new group of fans who are primarily female, many of whom eroticize male homosexuality. I guess I would just expect that to turn into a gendered conflict.
Buried in there is, I think, the explanation.
Something I have noticed over and over in online girlfandom is a squeamish contempt, a positive horror of adolescent behaviour - I guess it's the young adult equivalent of a teenager's contempt for childish behaviour. If one sees shipping and squeeing as immature behaviours, then it becomes an insult to describe women as participating in them, to characterise them as a primarily female activity - even though this is in fact true.
If I'm right, then fangirls need to stand up for our own culture instead of cringing from it or apologising for it. Have we internalised a gendered version of mundane culture's contempt for fandom - because we're grownups, but we still get to play?
(NB. Anyone who comments that I am saying all fangirls ship and squee and do nothing else, and that fanboys never ship or squee, or indeed remarks that they don't exist, will be referred to the Internet Math posting.)