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It is raining out, and I feel like doing absolutely nothing today. So far, I seem to be on track to accomplish my goal :P The kids are home today due to schools being closed for Rosh Hashanah. I let them play Minecraft for a few hours. If there was a good day for them to play videogames, this is it
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Even without kids, I know this feeling. This inability to finish work at the end of the work day, always bringing work home, has really exhausted me mentally after 12 years. I would so jump at the chance to be at some kind of job where I could just go home at night and be done until the next day.
It's interesting that much of the academia on fandom says that it's gendered, but the most popular show on television is about mocking four males for being geeks. In the famous Shatner SNL skit, every single one of the "fans" in that convention audience were male. I don't really understand it either, because male sports fanatics' behavior mirror so much of tv fandom - more than average interest in detailed knowledge about the object of the fan's affection; facepaint and all the fan paraphenelia that people wear to games aren't all that different from and cosplay, in that they are ways to connect emotionally with the source material and to show belonging. Both sports and fandom allow fans to express intense emotion, one of the very few outlets safely allowed to men.
Sometimes I think that the only reason men get to have sports fandom and all other fandoms are ridiculed is because men carved out one outlet for that sort of emotionality for themselves, so they don't go crazy. And because they have the privilege in our society, they get to do that. I dunno.
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I do think that fandom acceptance is complex. I think sports are as much an industry as they are a fandom, and because there is money to be had (and people really know it), that makes it more socially acceptable. As people discover there is money to be had in more female-favored fandom activities, the stigma starts falling away a bit. I do think the sex factor plays in, because the exposure our fandom gets is things like 50 Shades of Gray, instead of more gen-like stories. I mean, screw no-kink shaming- I'm in fandom and I get weirded out by some of the stuff that gets written. (Although rarely in BSG. We're a pretty vanilla fandom.) And I definitely think that sexism is a huge factor. But even in the sexism aspects, it's not always as simple as "eww, girls do it." (Although sometimes it is, especially when male geeks into fandoms mock women for doing the same damn thing.) But I probably am not proficient enough to discuss that well- just enough to say "it's more than worrying about cooties."
It's definitely complicated and interesting.
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