dreamer_easy | (no subject)

Browsing through Enterprising Women over on Google Books, I found some evidence to back up one of my hunches: that a lot of fangirls are mutants like me. The author, Camille Bacon-Smith, recounts how many female fans have experienced "scorn" for their "masculine" interests. She describes Star Trek fangirls growing up during a time when, as teenagers, they were expected to give up any tomboy inclinations, and defer to and flatter boys. "Many women in fandom, however, did not make this transition". Some were outcasts because of their physical appearance; some refused to mask their intelligence. Even in fandom, some suffered ostracisation or harassment from male fans. (That said, as a teenager, I was far more bullied by girls than by boys.) It's possible this explains some of the sensitivity around issues of gender and inclusion into which I have poked my thumb.

Some data points on the gender makeup of fandom. Firstly, from Enterprising Women: in 1988, an index of 34,000 Star Trek fanzines included only 4 edited by men, and only 10% of contributors were male. Polls of readers of sexually explicit Trek zines found they were mostly women. Secondly, this list of 80s/90s fanzines gives a snapshot of offline Doctor Who fandom in the UK: there are women editing and writing, but they're a tiny minority.

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Certainly when I became an active fan at the beginning of the eighties in London it was a given that media fan groups were led and driven by women, with the sole exception (as far as I'm aware) of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society, of which we did not speak. (I never found out why.)

I wonder if Doctor Who fandom in the UK and here in Oz arose from pre-existing, male-dominated literary SF fandom? I shall investigate...

It's a distinct possibility - the Birmingham Science-Fiction Society, which I never joined but sort of orbited, had a distinct generation divide between the younger members who liked to read but were predominantly interested in Star Trek, Doctor Who, etc, and the elder statesmen who were centred around Roj Peyton and his magnificent bookshop Andromeda (sadly no more). They were pretty scathing about TV in general, apart from the single episode of Star Trek written by Harlaan Ellison, that kind of thing.

The difference between 1988 and today is the internet. Outcast fans no longer need to publish a zine in order to keep in touch with like-minded people -- they just make an LJ community.

That's a very true observation. If the internet was available at around that time I might have joined a LJ comm and written fic instead of staying in my room and reading books, day dreaming and building/customising merchandise that wasn't available for me. Pah, wrong country, too small village too far away from any fan groups.

I wonder if permanent cast size had anything to do with it. After all, the Doctor only had one companion at a time - usually - and if you weren't really a fan of that companion (or, as some feminine psyches might interpret a female companion as 'competition' at some subconscious level), the other alternative was to self-insert oneself into the fiction. Trek offered a wider variety of cast options and a lot more in the way of romantic subtext (unless you were reeeeeally reaaaaaally projecting/looking for it, with the possible exception of Romana II) that just wasn't visible in DW; not until 1996.

cast size

I think that's a really interesting point. The opportunities for slash were much reduced, too.

some feminine psyches might interpret a female companion as 'competition' at some subconscious level

NO NO IMPOSSIBLE THAT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN *ahem*

I wouldn't say there were flamewars on the level of Marfa/Rose craziness, but I do recall some measure of female fans being a little, "She's not good enough for him," or dismissing the moment as "post-regenerational crazy," which (while I didn't subscribe to it) was hellishly ironic, given that Segal had just done what female fandom had pined so long for. Of course, it sent the male fandom into near-apoplexy and instant denial of it even approaching 'canon'.

Which I found utterly hilarious, given how readily some fanon is absorbed into the complex ether of continuity.

Not so much "competition", as what Donna Lettow over on Highlander (talking about fan antipathy to Duncan MacLeod's love interests) once referred to as "Not Good Enough For My Dunkie Syndrome"...

When I was growing up a fan in the 80s in Oregon, all the fans I knew well were female, but then, they were my particular friend group and we were a bunch of total fangeeks. We gamed, read books, watched SF&F TV and movies, some of us squeed (some didn't), many of us wrote some rudimentary form of fanfic, etc. Since we pretty much kept to our little circle (by choice), we never really ran into discrimination issues. It probably helped that there was no organized fandom in the area -- we read about things like clubs and cons and all that, but it seemed like reports from another world that was depressingly far away.

The comic book stores were certainly all-male bastions, but I don't recall being particularly discriminated against -- I was pretty much there to just buy what I wanted and get it home ASAP so I could read and enjoy. The guys behind the counter were quick enough to take my money and hand the baggie of goods over, and that was all I cared about.

I will note that, based on what little I could see of larger-scale US Doctor Who fandom at that time (PBS fundraising breaks staffed by fans, correspondence with penpals, etc.), it was *overwhelmingly* female, especially when compared to the gaming and comics fandoms.

Since then, I've done a fair amount with regional cons, apas and some online fandom groups, and have really only experienced gender discrimination-type issues at stores; until just recently there was a gaming store in the mall that might as well have put up "no icky gurls allowed" signs (they would talk down to female customers, be slow to wait on us even when there was nobody else at the counter, etc.) so us icky gurls took our business and our money elswhere.

When I was beaten up or ostracized by peers as a teen, it was largely by other girls, and had nothing to do with fandom. It was the "too smart / not enough friends to travel in a pack 24 hours a day" syndrome more than anything else. One learned never to admit one's test scores aloud and to never be alone in isolated spots.

For me, fandom has been a welcome refuge - a place to socialise without Mean Girls. Until now.

As the dogpile proceeds, it's becoming clear that I have jammed my unsuspecting thumb right into a whole lot of fangirls' insecurity about their gender. Whoops.

Edited 2008-12-17 21:01 (UTC)

Hopefully I'm not adding to that dogpile inadvertantly, or coming across as insecure -- I was just adding anecdotal evidence to the discussion.

FWIW, there are Mean Girls (and Boys) in every hobby and special interest area, in my experience. the only real reason they're getting so obvious now is that the net allows for *vastly* increased sample sizes.

Shit, absolutely not, your thoughtful comments are very welcome.

Natch there are assholes wherever one looks, but not necessarily *networks* of assholes. Cliques at school or online magnify the power of the individual asshole many times over.

"The internet magnifies the power of the individual asshole."

-K.Orman

Edited 2008-12-18 03:47 (UTC)

"Like the data-umphs, he thought; individually stupid, but get a million of them together and they're a billion times as stupid."

Btw, I really enjoy reading your thoughts here and the discussions on this topic. And I'm still trying to come up with something that is typical female without sexual/birth flavor to it but I can only find clichees such as buying ones first heels *rolleyes* But then again, what's typical male?!?

*tips hat* The few arseholes who've graced us with their presence haven't managed to stop a good discussion. I've been especially interested by people's personal stories.

"Btw, I really enjoy reading your thoughts here and the discussions on this topic. "

[WAVES A HAND] Seconded! =:o}

(When someone said that a different approach might open "a larger discussion", I quickly checked how much further my scroll bar had to go to reach the bottom of the comments. "This one's pretty large already, actually..." =:o> )