Your fandom is not Fandom
Coming Clean: 2009 & The End of Dumb Things, by 2-perseph
I imagine that those of you who are interested in this sort of thing have already read the post. I found it a few days after the fact, via a post on my flist. I haven't been keeping up with things, what with being sick, but I made time for this, since it's Relevant To My Interests.
Fandom was a subcultural mental space created initially by artists and writers, and then vidders, for the reason of creating works that were against the grain of mainstream culture, to satirize, criticize, and flaunt conventions and things held sacred. We’ll get to the why at the end, though of course we all know why.
It was a place without windows or doors to the outside world, as the creations, like certain seeds needed a dark, warm space to grow. The nature of fandom, its ultimate goal was nothing more and nothing less than entertainment.
My initial response to 2-perseph's post was quite simply, NO. But plenty of people had already pointed out the factual inaccuracies in her model of fandom history, so I passed on adding my two cents. ( This comment, by ithiliana is particularly good for background). What I'd like to do here, is talk about how we model fandom, and how we can do it in a less blisteringly exclusive fashion. I'm going to lay this out really plainly: it offends me when my fellow fen model fandom in such a way as to invalidate my fannish experience, and that of my friends.
Some starting points:
1. Your fandom is not Fandom.
2. Fandom is made up of smaller fandoms centering on particular OR groups of creative works, sports teams, public figures (etc.).
3. Those fandoms contain smaller camps of fans, which can be distinguished by their ways of doing Fandom (ie. discussion Fandom, fanworks Fandom...).
4. Connections between fans and groups of fans are both intra-fandom in nature, between camps of fans doing fandom differently, and inter-fandom, both between those who do fandom the same way (one fanworks fandom to another), and those who don't (one fanworks fandom, to a discussion fandom).
That is to say: everybody does fandom differently. Fandom is not fanworks fandom. It is not media fandom, SF fandom, or whatever fandom. It is all of these things and more. There exist fandoms and ways of doing fandom that you have never heard of. Fandom is mindbogglingly huge and varied - I'm constantly discovering new fandoms, and new fannish activities. All of these ways of doing Fandom are valid.
So why does it ~offend me when fen talk about, say, fanworks fandom being the be all and end all of Fandom?
I'm tired of these ridiculously narrow definitions of Fandom that make invisible me, my friends, or some part of our fannish activity. Even seemingly innocuous statements like, 'Fandom is a female space', and 'Fandom is a creative mental space' are making people invisible. They are invalidating fannish activities. And for no good reason. You can blah blah about fandom not being srs bzns in the comments all you like, but the fails of last year should have at least taught us that models do matter. How we define Fandom matters and cause material harm to fans.
But I'll give you a personal example:
I dabble in lot of different fandoms, and different ways of doing Fandom. My primary fandom is western comics, and my primary activity in that fandom is talking about comics. Things are changing but it remains a fandom dominated by middle class, white, males of a certain age.That's not to say that there aren't awesome places to hang out in comics fandom - there certainly are! And among these, include my beloved
scans_daily (which is of course, not without its own internal problems). We've had fights with people who think we're too female-dominated, fights with people in the grips of queer panic, fights with people who think we're too srs bzns, too lulz, and nothing more than dirty pirates, who are singlehandedly destroying Fandom.
Let me tell you how much I hate coming across the attitude in fanworks fandom, that what we do, and everything we've been fighting over, is not a part of fannish history. Does not exist. Is insignificant, because it's part of ~boys fandom.
That's a mild example. Here's a more serious one:
'Fandom is a female space.' To a lot of slashers, this can seem like a foregone conclusion. It's a statement of unity. It's powerful. It's also mindbogglingly offensive. It makes invisible cis men, trans men, trans women and gender queer people in fandom. It's stake claiming, excluding, and it is harmful. It is every bit as harmful as those fanboys trying to kick the girls out of their clubhouse. I'm not ignoring the history of tension inside fanworks fandom, and the importance of having a 'female space' in Fandom. But that safer space cannot come at the expense of other fen. Sorry, it doesn't work that way. [ETA: I make a distinction between creating say, an explicitly woman-friendly, LGBT-friendly safe space, and calling Fandom a female space. One is about safety and support, the other is about exclusion.]
So here's the thing, whether the stakes are big or small, there's no real need to police other people's fannishness. There's no need to erase them. Theorizing and modeling Fandom is one thing, but excluding someone's fannish activities, or their presence, because it's strange to you, is a dick move no matter how you look at it. Fandom is changing. New fannish activities are cropping up all the time. New connections, between previously disparate fandoms are being forged. Web 2.0, social media - we know the causes. Things are changing, and there's not a damn thing any of us can do to stop that change. Whether we're talking about Twilighters at Comic Con, the intermingling of celebrity and media fandom, or Fandom on sites like MySpace and FaceBook, these are facts of life. The n00bs are always coming, and along with them come new ways of doing Fandom.
Things are changing. Your fandom is not Fandom. Get over it.
Alternate: http://schmevil.dreamwidth.org/208916.html.
I imagine that those of you who are interested in this sort of thing have already read the post. I found it a few days after the fact, via a post on my flist. I haven't been keeping up with things, what with being sick, but I made time for this, since it's Relevant To My Interests.
Fandom was a subcultural mental space created initially by artists and writers, and then vidders, for the reason of creating works that were against the grain of mainstream culture, to satirize, criticize, and flaunt conventions and things held sacred. We’ll get to the why at the end, though of course we all know why.
It was a place without windows or doors to the outside world, as the creations, like certain seeds needed a dark, warm space to grow. The nature of fandom, its ultimate goal was nothing more and nothing less than entertainment.
My initial response to 2-perseph's post was quite simply, NO. But plenty of people had already pointed out the factual inaccuracies in her model of fandom history, so I passed on adding my two cents. ( This comment, by ithiliana is particularly good for background). What I'd like to do here, is talk about how we model fandom, and how we can do it in a less blisteringly exclusive fashion. I'm going to lay this out really plainly: it offends me when my fellow fen model fandom in such a way as to invalidate my fannish experience, and that of my friends.
Some starting points:
1. Your fandom is not Fandom.
2. Fandom is made up of smaller fandoms centering on particular OR groups of creative works, sports teams, public figures (etc.).
3. Those fandoms contain smaller camps of fans, which can be distinguished by their ways of doing Fandom (ie. discussion Fandom, fanworks Fandom...).
4. Connections between fans and groups of fans are both intra-fandom in nature, between camps of fans doing fandom differently, and inter-fandom, both between those who do fandom the same way (one fanworks fandom to another), and those who don't (one fanworks fandom, to a discussion fandom).
That is to say: everybody does fandom differently. Fandom is not fanworks fandom. It is not media fandom, SF fandom, or whatever fandom. It is all of these things and more. There exist fandoms and ways of doing fandom that you have never heard of. Fandom is mindbogglingly huge and varied - I'm constantly discovering new fandoms, and new fannish activities. All of these ways of doing Fandom are valid.
So why does it ~offend me when fen talk about, say, fanworks fandom being the be all and end all of Fandom?
I'm tired of these ridiculously narrow definitions of Fandom that make invisible me, my friends, or some part of our fannish activity. Even seemingly innocuous statements like, 'Fandom is a female space', and 'Fandom is a creative mental space' are making people invisible. They are invalidating fannish activities. And for no good reason. You can blah blah about fandom not being srs bzns in the comments all you like, but the fails of last year should have at least taught us that models do matter. How we define Fandom matters and cause material harm to fans.
But I'll give you a personal example:
I dabble in lot of different fandoms, and different ways of doing Fandom. My primary fandom is western comics, and my primary activity in that fandom is talking about comics. Things are changing but it remains a fandom dominated by middle class, white, males of a certain age.That's not to say that there aren't awesome places to hang out in comics fandom - there certainly are! And among these, include my beloved
scans_daily (which is of course, not without its own internal problems). We've had fights with people who think we're too female-dominated, fights with people in the grips of queer panic, fights with people who think we're too srs bzns, too lulz, and nothing more than dirty pirates, who are singlehandedly destroying Fandom.
Let me tell you how much I hate coming across the attitude in fanworks fandom, that what we do, and everything we've been fighting over, is not a part of fannish history. Does not exist. Is insignificant, because it's part of ~boys fandom.
That's a mild example. Here's a more serious one:
'Fandom is a female space.' To a lot of slashers, this can seem like a foregone conclusion. It's a statement of unity. It's powerful. It's also mindbogglingly offensive. It makes invisible cis men, trans men, trans women and gender queer people in fandom. It's stake claiming, excluding, and it is harmful. It is every bit as harmful as those fanboys trying to kick the girls out of their clubhouse. I'm not ignoring the history of tension inside fanworks fandom, and the importance of having a 'female space' in Fandom. But that safer space cannot come at the expense of other fen. Sorry, it doesn't work that way. [ETA: I make a distinction between creating say, an explicitly woman-friendly, LGBT-friendly safe space, and calling Fandom a female space. One is about safety and support, the other is about exclusion.]
So here's the thing, whether the stakes are big or small, there's no real need to police other people's fannishness. There's no need to erase them. Theorizing and modeling Fandom is one thing, but excluding someone's fannish activities, or their presence, because it's strange to you, is a dick move no matter how you look at it. Fandom is changing. New fannish activities are cropping up all the time. New connections, between previously disparate fandoms are being forged. Web 2.0, social media - we know the causes. Things are changing, and there's not a damn thing any of us can do to stop that change. Whether we're talking about Twilighters at Comic Con, the intermingling of celebrity and media fandom, or Fandom on sites like MySpace and FaceBook, these are facts of life. The n00bs are always coming, and along with them come new ways of doing Fandom.
Things are changing. Your fandom is not Fandom. Get over it.
Alternate: http://schmevil.dreamwidth.org/208916.html.