OTW: Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves
We're nearing the end of 14valentines and it's got me thinking about the Organization For Transformative Works again, especially since yesterday was a celebration of "Arts and Education" causes.
For those of you who don't know, 14valentines was invented by rageprufrock in 2006 based on the idea of fandom as a community largely composed of women and their allies. The project generates stories and essays and other works, and is meant to raise awareness of organizations devoted to women's causes.
As someone who's been a huge proponent of the OTW from the beginning, I--well, I really can't tell you how much the OTW means to me. Actually, one of the ways I can tell you is by giving you a bit of backstory. In the Reagan and Bush I eras, I was involved with a number of feminist and queer political causes: organizing and marching and public protesting, etc. One of the things I did was to escort women into and out of abortion clinics (these were the days when 'Operation Rescue' was really active, even in NYC). Anyway, I used to have these insane conversations with myself (usually in the shower) where I would imagine that I had to go before the Supreme Court and plead for abortion to stay legal. And I remember that desperate feeling: the idea that I had to beg some group of people in power to see me as a person who ought to have the right to govern what went on inside my own body.
When fandom is threatened, I feel a similar sense of panic, because now, it's like they want to govern what goes on inside my head. I mean, check out this exchange from the ICv2 Graphic Novel Conference at NY Comic Con: (Ira Rubenstein is an executive VP at Marvel, Roman is with Nickelodeon, Levy with Tokyopop:)
Rubenstein: But Dave, I think there’s a difference. No one can write about Spider-Man or X-Men except for us.
Roman: I disagree.
Levy: Totally.
Rubenstein: Those are our characters. How could someone else write another Spider-Man story?
Roman: Because fan fiction is becoming so powerful. I’ve seen the power of fan fiction. Working at Nickelodeon, there are people out there doing ‘Avatar’ comics that are soooooo much better…
Rubenstein: But that’s like saying YouTube is a real entertainment channel. It’s not.
Roman/Levy/like five people in the audience: It is.
Yes, it is! But the idea of saying, "No one can write about--"--it's inhuman, isn't it? Maybe not "denying women their reproductive rights" inhuman, but inhuman nonetheless. Human beings are natural storytellers. But this exchange shows that we're winning, and it's totally worth clicking through to the comments, because there's some interesting stuff among the Bingo responses; like:* "Just because you haven’t yet figured out how to separate the wheat from the chaff doesn’t mean the entire enterprise is worthless."
* "Ultimately, fanfiction feeds money into content producers' pockets. Anyone who thinks otherwise should explain to me in a 10,000 word essay how Star Trek doesn’t make any money for Paramount. The problem is that it’s dirty icky girl money."
* "These days, it’s not always easy to distinguish fanfic from the published stuff. With so many creators having grown up as fans, it’s easy to see where an issue of SUPER GUY vs ANCIENT GOD ... could have been something they’ve been waiting to write since they were 12 and buying the title at a 7-11 or LCS."
I used to be someone who searched out arguments defending fandom. I was looking for a hero, I think: who would it be? Henry Jenkins? The ACLU? Livejournal will give us a home! And the thing is, the OTW started with the realization that we could maybe all BE the heroes we were waiting for. Wouldn't it be great if fandom could get lawyers and journalists and scholars and designers and professional writers and coders and systems people and people who build and run social networking sites and graphic designers and librarians and people who understand tagging and HTML and CSS to organize and--wait, hey, we ARE THOSE PEOPLE.
Of course, we always were these people. This is why fandom is as awesome as it is! But there are some things that fans can do by spontaneous, uncoordinated action and some things that need a concerted, sustained, multi-year effort. Conventions. Software design. Serial publications. Server maintenance. Legal advocacy. Encyclopedia-building. An infrastructure that's market- and gafiation-proof.
There's going to be an OTW membership drive in early March. If you're a member, please renew! If you're not a member, please become a member! If you haven’t volunteered, think about volunteering! I think it's seriously, totally, unequivocally awesome.
For those of you who don't know, 14valentines was invented by rageprufrock in 2006 based on the idea of fandom as a community largely composed of women and their allies. The project generates stories and essays and other works, and is meant to raise awareness of organizations devoted to women's causes.
As someone who's been a huge proponent of the OTW from the beginning, I--well, I really can't tell you how much the OTW means to me. Actually, one of the ways I can tell you is by giving you a bit of backstory. In the Reagan and Bush I eras, I was involved with a number of feminist and queer political causes: organizing and marching and public protesting, etc. One of the things I did was to escort women into and out of abortion clinics (these were the days when 'Operation Rescue' was really active, even in NYC). Anyway, I used to have these insane conversations with myself (usually in the shower) where I would imagine that I had to go before the Supreme Court and plead for abortion to stay legal. And I remember that desperate feeling: the idea that I had to beg some group of people in power to see me as a person who ought to have the right to govern what went on inside my own body.
When fandom is threatened, I feel a similar sense of panic, because now, it's like they want to govern what goes on inside my head. I mean, check out this exchange from the ICv2 Graphic Novel Conference at NY Comic Con: (Ira Rubenstein is an executive VP at Marvel, Roman is with Nickelodeon, Levy with Tokyopop:)
Rubenstein: But Dave, I think there’s a difference. No one can write about Spider-Man or X-Men except for us.
Roman: I disagree.
Levy: Totally.
Rubenstein: Those are our characters. How could someone else write another Spider-Man story?
Roman: Because fan fiction is becoming so powerful. I’ve seen the power of fan fiction. Working at Nickelodeon, there are people out there doing ‘Avatar’ comics that are soooooo much better…
Rubenstein: But that’s like saying YouTube is a real entertainment channel. It’s not.
Roman/Levy/like five people in the audience: It is.
Yes, it is! But the idea of saying, "No one can write about--"--it's inhuman, isn't it? Maybe not "denying women their reproductive rights" inhuman, but inhuman nonetheless. Human beings are natural storytellers. But this exchange shows that we're winning, and it's totally worth clicking through to the comments, because there's some interesting stuff among the Bingo responses; like:* "Just because you haven’t yet figured out how to separate the wheat from the chaff doesn’t mean the entire enterprise is worthless."
* "Ultimately, fanfiction feeds money into content producers' pockets. Anyone who thinks otherwise should explain to me in a 10,000 word essay how Star Trek doesn’t make any money for Paramount. The problem is that it’s dirty icky girl money."
* "These days, it’s not always easy to distinguish fanfic from the published stuff. With so many creators having grown up as fans, it’s easy to see where an issue of SUPER GUY vs ANCIENT GOD ... could have been something they’ve been waiting to write since they were 12 and buying the title at a 7-11 or LCS."
I used to be someone who searched out arguments defending fandom. I was looking for a hero, I think: who would it be? Henry Jenkins? The ACLU? Livejournal will give us a home! And the thing is, the OTW started with the realization that we could maybe all BE the heroes we were waiting for. Wouldn't it be great if fandom could get lawyers and journalists and scholars and designers and professional writers and coders and systems people and people who build and run social networking sites and graphic designers and librarians and people who understand tagging and HTML and CSS to organize and--wait, hey, we ARE THOSE PEOPLE.
Of course, we always were these people. This is why fandom is as awesome as it is! But there are some things that fans can do by spontaneous, uncoordinated action and some things that need a concerted, sustained, multi-year effort. Conventions. Software design. Serial publications. Server maintenance. Legal advocacy. Encyclopedia-building. An infrastructure that's market- and gafiation-proof.
There's going to be an OTW membership drive in early March. If you're a member, please renew! If you're not a member, please become a member! If you haven’t volunteered, think about volunteering! I think it's seriously, totally, unequivocally awesome.