Chris Williams Responds to Our Questions about FanLib
First, I hafta just add my voice to those saying: What's this we, white man? "Chris Williams Responds to OUR Questions" ... well, yes, but first he avoided responding (civilly; he did real well at the other) to fans politely inviting dialog with the FanLib exec who's all about fandom. It's MIT's Henry Jenkins who CW was willing to talk to,
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Why does Chris Williams stress that Henry Jenkins has "credibility and integrity" when we know dozens of LJ people who speak cogently and consistently, reason well, engage others with civility, cite their sources, display good judgment and strong critical thinking skills over and over again?
The only significant differences between HJ and these "female critics" appears to be (1) the latter aren't faculty members at MIT and (2) they're not men. Of course, we really don't know that, in the same way that we "know" (ie agree) that HJ is a middle-aged male MIT faculty with credentials and publications out the wazoo.
It appears HJ's authority to speak is established by the strength of his academic identity. But in fandom, identity and any consequent recognition of authority, credibility and integrity are established differently (Cassie Claire is one example that rules *do* exist).
CW wouldn't speak *to* fandom, but instead only to one who speaks *about* it. As a result, the terms, content, and the very topic of the discussion contest fandom's right to speak for itself. Now, speaking for oneself is a main way you have "identity"; to have a voice, to be heard, is to have your identity acknowledged. Some would even say that acknowledgment by others, in fact, is what *creates* your identity.
In fandom, that seems to be the case, but as you say, Williams is "so far away from the realities of fandom that he can't even conceive" of how this works, and thus has been offensive. It may not be just the perception of sexism, but also (or even at bottom) this misperception of fandom reality.
To fandom, William's reasoning on "credibility" or right to speak becomes a circular way to shut us out. He grants the right to "speak" only to one with previously established "identity." Identity must precede authority to speak. In LJ fandom, however, it's the reverse: speaking constructs one's identity. In fact, it's the only real means to do that: does an lj with no posts "exist"? Thus we see a clash between speaking as the means to identity (in fandom) versus identity as the means to speak (RW "credentials," I believe CW regards HJ's faculty status and his own company ownership as equally empowering).
Fandom challenges this traditional mode of "authority." Conferences like the recent Phoenix Rising show a mix of all levels of academic, professional and fan status - even within individuals. (Dammit, I need to go to these. Stupid dissertation!) I agree, comprehension of this change is probably beyond Williams's ken.
So it may be that he is not sexist per se, just nervous about dealing with anyone whose credibility he must actually assess through direct interaction and evaluation of their record. He'd rather take HJ's faculty identity as a proxy. (I say proxy not because I don't respect HJ, but because academic status is no guarantee of authenticity, as one of MIT's own deans just proved.)
Reframing this as an issue of identity, its creation and its consequences, thus allows me to bracket off the gender issue from the question of identity (a longtime philosophy favorite), and the related aspect of "voice" or standing:
1. How are "integrity and credibility" - or as Williams also says, "citizenship" - established in fandom? How does this differ from the "RW"?
2. What is the difference between being an authority *on* a community and one *in* that community? How does this affect fandom's "voice" to outsiders?
#2, the issue of secondary sources, or outside observers, also has academic coverage, e.g. in anthropology (who speaks for the natives?), in art (does a critic know "more" than the artists?) and in law (is a spokesperson or "guardian" just a convenience, or are those spoken for really "incompetent"?) None of those analogies look good for Williams's case, but your prompting has led me to reframe the issue in a more broadly meaningful way - so thank you, very much! My brain feels all awake now.
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But all the ways and ends it serves are what I'd never really gotten "thinky" about till now. Is privacy the only end served? Leaving Williams in the shallow end where he's comfortable preferably face down, do women professionals *only* use aliases to protect their RL, even at the cost of segmenting these parts of their identity?
Or is this a flourishing of identity - not splitting it, but taking on new, more, more, more? Film, literature, social analysis show how limited and effacing and *anonymous* women's identity has been, historically. "The wife," "the little woman," the one who has his name now. Mother, wife, homemaker - as though there's only one task involved: no "real work" here, not like you had to get a degree or job training or somethin. Women have fought to have the complexity, diversity, and grandeur of their lives, work, and personhood acknowledged.
LJ fandom has been praised for allowing the freedom for teens, especially, to explore their creativity and refine communication and participation skills. For adult professionals, whether women or men, it creates a place for continuing, or developing, personal interests that can't be shared with RL contacts. It can be argued (and certainly has been for slash) LJ and LJ fandom are a safe space for women, especially, to express and be and interact in ways that society still won't allow.
Yet LJ fandom also lets women do this differently than men. This is the thought that was new for me (oooh, shiny). Rather than be the singular center of one's life - like, for instance, the man who as CEO and Paterfamilias and Mayor and Troop Leader and Deacon and Club President, unifies all his roles as merely different aspects of his Authority - the internet lets me, for instance, split the part of me that betas male erotica from the part of me that reads and talks about slash written by and for women from the parts of me that are in academic and other comms and list-servs, of various sorts. I can let all kinds of "me" out to play on the internet without worrying whether they contradict each other. In fact, there are multi-lj members of one of my snarkiest academic comms whose identities have done that from time to time, to all our amusement.
However, I don't actually *have to* use an alias for all of my internet activity. Why, then, do I? I'll submit that it's to have the freedom to let those multiple parts of me flourish without expecting that some "controlling Ego" or whatever Freud called it has to take charge and turn them all into facets of my godhead. (ooh, freudian. and phallic. but i repeat myself.)
So I'm going to suggest that Williams's irritation at people who aren't "standing behind their words" with a unified, patriarchally endorsed identity is not just because they are wisely keeping a screen over private matters. (We could talk about the Gaze here too, come to think of it: How dare you *women* hide your physical bodies from me behind this electronic identity.)
It's also because these identities *are* multiple. Fandom is multivocal, the comm is multivocal, and even these users are multivocal; they have *big* lives and Williams is just seeing part of them.
The screening of LJ fandom lives exists in defiance of the conventional western ideology of the subject, which demands that everyone aspire to individuality if they want authority, and integrate all aspects of their existence into that one identity, which is then ratified and reified by public (i.e. male) acknowledgement. In LJ, we do "stand behind our words," just not in the conventional patriarchal way. We have multiple identities, and not necessarily any intention to ever merge them. It's new, and done by women, and I'm not sure it's a bad thing.
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I'm also not posting chanslash under my legal name... but if I did, it probably wouldn't have much impact; my legal name's not unique, and I live in the S.F. Bay Area, where if questioned, I could just say, "oh, my therapist recommended it as a form of anxiety relief" and the subject would be dropped.
While I know that safety/anonymity is very, very important for a lot of online fandom, it's not universally so--but still, very few fen use their legal names here. There's a cultural matter of choosing and shaping an identity in a way that can't be done with a name given to you by parents, and there's establishing a unique identity that's not possible if you've always been the second Jennifer in the room.
Refusing to deal with all the "funny named" women and replying only to the legal named academic says very clearly "I reject your culture and its norms; I will instead treat you all like kids playing dress-up and only speak to the person who is acting like I expect an adult to act."
Sexism ties to that, but isn't the core of the problem. Unconscious sexism probably made it easy for him to convince himself to do it; he'd've probably felt mildly guilty answering a professional *woman's* blog, knowing he was practicing some form of prejudice but being unable to state what it was. But this way... he talks to the "grown up," ignores the "costumed freaks," and feels completely vindicated, because all the checklists he uses to establish "person in authority" have been met.
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Of course, if he wants to sell product to them, or even more so persuade them to *give* FanLib their product so *he* can sell it, he's gonna have to get over that squick.
But then he talks to the "grown up," ignores the "costumed freaks," and feels completely vindicated, because all the checklists he uses to establish "person in authority" have been met.
Yep, I'm thinking too that this is the crux of the problem: not that fandom are female, but that they're "dressed" wrong -- not wearing the costume of authority he expects. Now, that's fine from LJ's internal perspectives: the place exists precisely to dress as we choose! But for external relations with idiots like this, it presents a problem: does LJ go through a "spokesfan" like Henry Jenkins, who wears the academic robes that reassure (or is it actually the publications, and being quoted right and left by journalists?) That cedes control back to the patriarchy/mainstream culture. Or do LJ people come out from behind one or more online identities to "prove" themselves? That sacrifices our purpose. Perhaps we find some other way to deal with outsiders like Williams. like ignore him completely
Thanks much for your comments!
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I don't think FanLib will survive more than a few months, because they failed to figure out what makes an online fanfic archive work, and what actually draws new stories. They seem to be under the impression that they could (1) get a huge number of FF.Net people to transfer their stories (not realizing that a great deal of ff.net is long-abandoned) and (2) get a huge number of *new* writers, enough to keep an active archive going.
They didn't know that convincing people to post (once) at your archive is (relatively) easy; convincing them to keep creating new stuff for it is much, much harder.
And already, they're having problems keeping up with the site; they had no idea how much interaction it was going to take--that if you open an dialog with users, every tiny bug or hard-to-spot link on the site is going to be reported, and that's aside from the political/meta questions they're getting bombarded with.
They have "featured stories"--which means someone has to *select* those stories, which means it's the staff's job to read submissions. They're new enough that they're not yet being pestered with "why isn't (my or my friend's) Story X a featured story 'cos it's Really Really Good?"
This one'll go down as "the test case for How Not To Make A Fanfic Archive Site."
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I have not bothered to check FanLib out. Like a great meta-wanker (is that a possible state of being?), I'm finding far more amusement and education in analysing the responses to their maneuvers. Hell, I already avoid ff.net; I'm a fan, not a fool with more time than taste.
Sounds like FanLib has walked into a ... um, a pit of voles, no?
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It's easy to say "a great deal" as abandoned, because there's LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS of stuff there; a great deal can be 10,000 stories and not really make a noticeable impact on the site.
I gather that Fanlib looked at ff.net and thought "wow, what a huge fannish archive" and not "OMG infinite ficdump."
It's frightening how well fanlib lives up to the wank.
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SNORT. I'm having to wipe my eyes, I"m laughing so hard! You write humor *perfectly* - a sort of cheery cynicism that breaks me up laughing. I'm visualizing a namechange for ff.net: fanficdump.net. ::snorfle::
still laughing to hard to hit "post"
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*too hard
::laughing still::
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The memes re "how I picked my LJ name / fannish pseud" are often really interesting. It's something that many fans give a lot of thought to.
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I will look at those memes. I hadn't known about them. Thank you for telling me!
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And in most established online communities it is how a person behaves that matters, not their outside credentials. The subject of internet lawyers comes to mind, with one particularly glaring example I wont name, those people in fandom who identify themselves far and wide as a lawyer are generally those who substitute a professional credential for behaving like a human being. To the point where I know a half dozen other lawyers in fandom who don't self identify that way online because of her behavior.
My reasoning is quite different. I'm in the middle of building my career, and my academic field has absolutely nothing to do with fandom, but I can easily foresee having someone discrediting my work (my main interests are in public policy, an area where people play dirty) by bringing out fanfic I wrote ... and I don't even write much. I did however write a Battlestar Galactica/West Wing fic that had a lot of political overtones that I really would rather not seep into my "regular" work.
In an age when employers including universities are regularly Googling the names of perspective employees and graduate students asking people to identify themselves and list their credentials in an online community is unwise, unreasonable, and unconscionable. I think Williams should be ashamed of himself.
But than again I think Chris Williams should step away from the computer because he's become too emotionally involved to effectively manage the crisis he created.
I think what bugs me most in all of this is that we as fan fic authors aren't Fanlib's targeted customers. The customers are those who are buying Fanlib's advertising. We are their suppliers. Even if you buy into Fanlib's business model (which I don't), it's rather self destructive of this company to behave the way it has with potential suppliers. Publishing companies don't denegrate their authors, retailers don't insult their suppliers, and developers don't belittle their contractors. So why should this business (Fanlib) behave any differently than any other business in that regard?
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