Queerness in Fandom: Does it Matter?
brooklinegirl has an interesting post over here about fandom and sexuality. She brings up a lot of points that really struck home with me, and I think it's fascinating how the complex issues of gender and the sexual orientation of fanfic authors get worked out in various fandoms. Judging from both my own experience and having read anecdotes from others, I've come to the conclusion that there is absolutely no consistency from one fandom to another about how the sexual orientation of fic writers effects their role in the fandom community. brooklinegirl (responding to this post by strangecobwebs) talks about how participation in a fandom can help people come to terms with their sexual orientation because it provides the kind of supportive and understanding environment necessary to figure that stuff out. She argues that this is especially true of a slash-friendly community where you have women (who often identify themselves as either bi or gay) writing fanfic about male romantic or sexual relationships. brooklinegirl is all about the due South fandom, so her experience is very different than mine has been in the DC comics community. I've never found the fandom circles I've traveled in (Star Trek: DS9, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) to be particularly queer-friendly in terms of author orientation, so I'm wondering if those wise souls on my f-list want to weigh in on the way author orientation plays out both in fic and in the fandom community. Those of you who identify yourselves as bi/gay/transgender: do you feel your fandom has provided a welcoming and supporting environment for you as a writer? Or do you feel it insists or assumes that you are a heterosexual author writing slash pairings for a largely het audience?
I've been involved in DC comics fandom for *counts on fingers* about 5 years now. I've never been very active in terms of output or meta commentary because a lot of my energy for that stuff gets sapped by school. I really feel like I'm missing out on a lot because I'm not really part of the community. I don't do the con thing or make a lot of personal connections online; I have my small LJ f-list, and most of those posts are about life/work/school stuff rather than fandom stuff. Sometimes I get feedback from readers who've liked the few things I've posted and that is pretty much my only connection to my fandom. Perhaps my sense that the DC comics fic-writing community isn't particularly supportive of the whole coming-out thing is a result of the isolation I feel from the community at large. Or perhaps everyone and their dog is a little queer in the fandom and I'm just not aware of the fact. I know of a few BNFs who identify themselves as g/l/b/t, but for the rest of my favorite authors/artists/vidders their sexual orientation doesn't seem to play much a role in their fandom output or meta commentary. I wonder what the reasoning is behind that silence. From the way brooklinegirl talks about the due South fandom it seems that a lot of personal connections in that community are formed through flirting or engaging in otherwise sexualized encounters online or at cons (not to say the dS fangirls are slutty...they're just a little more close-knit than anything I've seen in the DC community). Things seem to be a little more out in the open in the dS fandom, since there's a rather public recognition that most online interactions and fanfic output is characterized by girls writing p0rn for other girls to get them off. There's more to it than that, of course, but that's a bare-bones assessment of what a large portion of fandom is all about. It's just that the dS fangirls acknowledge it.
So what about DC comics fandom? I'm a het writer myself and I tend to be known mainly for my long, plotty fics like Children of the Night. I've written exactly one slash story, a Birds of Prey fic called Canary Air that exactly two people seemed to have read. When I first posted that fic it was a bit of a rarity in the fandom because a) it featured Dinah Lance (this was before the character started popping up on the Justice League cartoon and Gail Simone took over the BoP monthly) and b) it slashed Dinah Lance with an OC. (She wasn't even slashed with Barbara Gordon that often in fic!) I remember thinking it was very strange at the time that the story didn't pop up on anyone's radar. It was all about the kind of covert sexual orientation issues I hint at sometimes but never really discuss openly, and in a way the fic was my coming-out statement. It didn't draw a peep from anyone in the online community, with whom I was much more friendly at the time.
...This might be a product of something brooklinegirl talks about in her post - there are so many queer girls writing fanfic for various fandoms that it's just not that shocking when someone makes a statement using a specific fic. Do we assume that the girls (and the guys - I haven't forgotten you!) writing m/m or f/f slash are queer? I've always been under the impression that most people writing Dick/Tim or Bruce/Dick are straight women, except for those notable BNFs I mentioned earlier. Does the orientation of the writer even matter? What kind of community/audience do we assume we're writing for - a queer-friendly audience? A het audience who can see teh hotness of slash pairings? For all that these issues are so all-consuming in RL they're not often discussed online, so I'm curious about everyone's reaction to this issue.
x-posted to meta_salon, nos4a2no9
I've been involved in DC comics fandom for *counts on fingers* about 5 years now. I've never been very active in terms of output or meta commentary because a lot of my energy for that stuff gets sapped by school. I really feel like I'm missing out on a lot because I'm not really part of the community. I don't do the con thing or make a lot of personal connections online; I have my small LJ f-list, and most of those posts are about life/work/school stuff rather than fandom stuff. Sometimes I get feedback from readers who've liked the few things I've posted and that is pretty much my only connection to my fandom. Perhaps my sense that the DC comics fic-writing community isn't particularly supportive of the whole coming-out thing is a result of the isolation I feel from the community at large. Or perhaps everyone and their dog is a little queer in the fandom and I'm just not aware of the fact. I know of a few BNFs who identify themselves as g/l/b/t, but for the rest of my favorite authors/artists/vidders their sexual orientation doesn't seem to play much a role in their fandom output or meta commentary. I wonder what the reasoning is behind that silence. From the way brooklinegirl talks about the due South fandom it seems that a lot of personal connections in that community are formed through flirting or engaging in otherwise sexualized encounters online or at cons (not to say the dS fangirls are slutty...they're just a little more close-knit than anything I've seen in the DC community). Things seem to be a little more out in the open in the dS fandom, since there's a rather public recognition that most online interactions and fanfic output is characterized by girls writing p0rn for other girls to get them off. There's more to it than that, of course, but that's a bare-bones assessment of what a large portion of fandom is all about. It's just that the dS fangirls acknowledge it.
So what about DC comics fandom? I'm a het writer myself and I tend to be known mainly for my long, plotty fics like Children of the Night. I've written exactly one slash story, a Birds of Prey fic called Canary Air that exactly two people seemed to have read. When I first posted that fic it was a bit of a rarity in the fandom because a) it featured Dinah Lance (this was before the character started popping up on the Justice League cartoon and Gail Simone took over the BoP monthly) and b) it slashed Dinah Lance with an OC. (She wasn't even slashed with Barbara Gordon that often in fic!) I remember thinking it was very strange at the time that the story didn't pop up on anyone's radar. It was all about the kind of covert sexual orientation issues I hint at sometimes but never really discuss openly, and in a way the fic was my coming-out statement. It didn't draw a peep from anyone in the online community, with whom I was much more friendly at the time.
...This might be a product of something brooklinegirl talks about in her post - there are so many queer girls writing fanfic for various fandoms that it's just not that shocking when someone makes a statement using a specific fic. Do we assume that the girls (and the guys - I haven't forgotten you!) writing m/m or f/f slash are queer? I've always been under the impression that most people writing Dick/Tim or Bruce/Dick are straight women, except for those notable BNFs I mentioned earlier. Does the orientation of the writer even matter? What kind of community/audience do we assume we're writing for - a queer-friendly audience? A het audience who can see teh hotness of slash pairings? For all that these issues are so all-consuming in RL they're not often discussed online, so I'm curious about everyone's reaction to this issue.
x-posted to meta_salon, nos4a2no9