How Fandom Keeps Saving Me by Wendy Never (Aged 38 ½)
This is kind of a reaction to the recent racefail! and the various reactions to it as well as the reactions to the reactions that I have been reading and reading and trying to shut up and listen to, but not commenting on because 1) I'm always kind of late to the party because of my schedule 2) I went to college, but I've been out of academia for 20 years and currently unpracticed at that type of critical thinking and writing and 3) I'm a white woman married to a dude who makes far more money than we need- we live in the suburbs and while I run into the occasional idiot who thinks stereotypically about women and expresses it loudly, mostly my day does not involve experiencing oppression of any sort (I in fact see and hear much more of that type of thing happening to and about people around me instead). I am pretty damned privileged and I have always been.
But to really say what I want to, I have to backtrack to my personal beginning in fandom:
About eight years ago I was involved in a weird (okay here was my moment of being pushed down by The Man) breastfeeding kerfuffle with the pastor of my church- basically he said it was icky, could you not do it during the Mass and I said- um- no. And he gave three or four sermons about people being so caught up in being right and not seeing other's perspectives and how it was a way of hurting people (he meant me doing that to him, not as I felt it should have been applied, him doing that to me). I stood my ground, continuing to feed my son in church and eventually he asked for a meeting during which breastfeeding was compared with wearing too short a skirt to church and really, this whole thing was just a pain in the ass for him, could I just shut up and do what he said already? We found another parish after that, since I came to the conclusion that this man was not ever going to be able to open up his mind and consider he might be wrong.
Up until that point in my life, the church was kind of big for me- I went weekly, I was in the choir for six years, I made my husband look at converting when he asked me to marry him. And yeah- depression is a thing I have. So, breaking with the parish where I was confirmed, got married and baptized both my kids brought on a terrific bout of it. For years I still cried when I had to drive past the church building.
Enter fandom. (Harry Potter fen saved my life!) I found a place where being different was valued, where feminist issues were worth talking about and talking about and talking about, a place that was decidedly female friendly and valued creativity. That was the first way fandom saved me- it was the way I worked back out of my depression.
The next way fandom saved me was slash (Harry/Ron saved my life!). As stated above, I was raised Christian and never really questioned the idea that homosexuality was a sin. Not that I was taught to hate gays in any way- love the sinner, hate the sin, but the idea that something other than one man- one woman could be a healthy, happy way to live one's life was an something I couldn't fathom until I started reading slash. So, fandom opened my eyes to that and opened my heart too. I am a different and more thoughtful person since I learned that lesson- in many was I felt like a new person.
More recently, fandom meta about racism has been making me feel saved again (The Angry Black Woman and
zvi saved my life!). The idea of white privilege was absolutely foreign to me until the last few months. When first I encountered it, I just couldn't grok it- the idea that minorities were oppressed I got, but the idea that not being oppressed because I am white was a privilege (and by extension not a right that everyone had) didn't compute. But, I saw fans whose work and ideas I respected buying into the concept, and because of my previous experience with slash and how it changed my understanding of human relationships, I hung in there and kept reading, kept trying to understand how and why this concept was so important.
I think I'm getting it now and you know what? It's worth the time and effort I put into reading about it. It's worth it because the discussions I read in fandom change the way I think and the way I react to the people around me who are different than me. They help me guide my kids in how they interact with the kids they know who are different than them- to help them find the balance between everyone is (should be) equal and everyone is different and that difference has as much value as the similarities. This is a hard thing to get across to them- the balance thing- I work on it every time it comes up.
It helps me better see the beauty and potential in the Black and Hispanic kids I know through my kids and their school and it breaks my heart to think about them growing up with all that is/will be heaped on top of them by our society. I want to hug each one of them and protect them from it. I never used to feel that way- I used to just kind of glance past those same children, now I want to make the world better for them. I am so damned lucky to have learned this! I owe so much to the poc who put themselves out there to educate the rest of us because I already had such a good life and they, who endure so much crap from the world, give me something wonderful and help me grow. I don't deserve to get this given to me so easily, but I'm gonna take it and run with it.
But to really say what I want to, I have to backtrack to my personal beginning in fandom:
About eight years ago I was involved in a weird (okay here was my moment of being pushed down by The Man) breastfeeding kerfuffle with the pastor of my church- basically he said it was icky, could you not do it during the Mass and I said- um- no. And he gave three or four sermons about people being so caught up in being right and not seeing other's perspectives and how it was a way of hurting people (he meant me doing that to him, not as I felt it should have been applied, him doing that to me). I stood my ground, continuing to feed my son in church and eventually he asked for a meeting during which breastfeeding was compared with wearing too short a skirt to church and really, this whole thing was just a pain in the ass for him, could I just shut up and do what he said already? We found another parish after that, since I came to the conclusion that this man was not ever going to be able to open up his mind and consider he might be wrong.
Up until that point in my life, the church was kind of big for me- I went weekly, I was in the choir for six years, I made my husband look at converting when he asked me to marry him. And yeah- depression is a thing I have. So, breaking with the parish where I was confirmed, got married and baptized both my kids brought on a terrific bout of it. For years I still cried when I had to drive past the church building.
Enter fandom. (Harry Potter fen saved my life!) I found a place where being different was valued, where feminist issues were worth talking about and talking about and talking about, a place that was decidedly female friendly and valued creativity. That was the first way fandom saved me- it was the way I worked back out of my depression.
The next way fandom saved me was slash (Harry/Ron saved my life!). As stated above, I was raised Christian and never really questioned the idea that homosexuality was a sin. Not that I was taught to hate gays in any way- love the sinner, hate the sin, but the idea that something other than one man- one woman could be a healthy, happy way to live one's life was an something I couldn't fathom until I started reading slash. So, fandom opened my eyes to that and opened my heart too. I am a different and more thoughtful person since I learned that lesson- in many was I felt like a new person.
More recently, fandom meta about racism has been making me feel saved again (The Angry Black Woman and
zvi saved my life!). The idea of white privilege was absolutely foreign to me until the last few months. When first I encountered it, I just couldn't grok it- the idea that minorities were oppressed I got, but the idea that not being oppressed because I am white was a privilege (and by extension not a right that everyone had) didn't compute. But, I saw fans whose work and ideas I respected buying into the concept, and because of my previous experience with slash and how it changed my understanding of human relationships, I hung in there and kept reading, kept trying to understand how and why this concept was so important.
I think I'm getting it now and you know what? It's worth the time and effort I put into reading about it. It's worth it because the discussions I read in fandom change the way I think and the way I react to the people around me who are different than me. They help me guide my kids in how they interact with the kids they know who are different than them- to help them find the balance between everyone is (should be) equal and everyone is different and that difference has as much value as the similarities. This is a hard thing to get across to them- the balance thing- I work on it every time it comes up.
It helps me better see the beauty and potential in the Black and Hispanic kids I know through my kids and their school and it breaks my heart to think about them growing up with all that is/will be heaped on top of them by our society. I want to hug each one of them and protect them from it. I never used to feel that way- I used to just kind of glance past those same children, now I want to make the world better for them. I am so damned lucky to have learned this! I owe so much to the poc who put themselves out there to educate the rest of us because I already had such a good life and they, who endure so much crap from the world, give me something wonderful and help me grow. I don't deserve to get this given to me so easily, but I'm gonna take it and run with it.