I am super appreciative of your taking the backwards step before commenting! (I am, uh, not really great with angry comments. like, "retreat from the internet and stare at walls for hours contemplating how I'm such an awful person" levels of not great with angry comments.) I am definitely hearing that my fandom experience is/was not universal, and it's very enlightening hearing about how everyone else sees things. I hadn't seen that particular post - thank you for linking - but I've definitely seen a lot of fandom discussion about latent misogyny, and more and more as time goes on, which is great!
it's hard for me to articulate (which is maybe a sign that I should shut my mouth on sensitive subjects, womp womp) but I do think there's a certain... inherent misogyny in maintaining a misogynistic status quo? especially in not at least acknowledging that the status quo is problematic because of that misogyny. yes, absolutely, source material is almost all male-dominated and male characters are almost universally better-written or (in the case of RPF) better-reported, and it is really effing hard to write about women given those constraints. and I have seen and admired some women in fandom putting down their foot and saying "look, if the source material is going to be shitty about the people who are like me, I'm not going to get invested in that source material" but I'm not that strong or principled. I like football fandom, god knows why, and I want to stay here, so. but on the other hand, I'm not going to pretend to myself that I'm not perpetuating the system by saying I don't care that the source material is shitty in the way it treats women. if we just accept the system it's never going to change.
I think maybe my main point, if there was one in that humongous pointless ramble above, is that even in a fandom as male-dominated as this one, there is fic with ladies in it! there is great fic with ladies in it! and the people who write them often can't share them with the wider fandom audience, and I think that's shitty. I think the assumption that most of the people in the wider fandom audience won't want to read them is shitty, and I think it's also correct, which is even shittier. but I really hope that if people talk about it we can maybe come up with something? I have no idea, but I live in hope!
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2012-05-23 11:59 pm (UTC)it's hard for me to articulate (which is maybe a sign that I should shut my mouth on sensitive subjects, womp womp) but I do think there's a certain... inherent misogyny in maintaining a misogynistic status quo? especially in not at least acknowledging that the status quo is problematic because of that misogyny. yes, absolutely, source material is almost all male-dominated and male characters are almost universally better-written or (in the case of RPF) better-reported, and it is really effing hard to write about women given those constraints. and I have seen and admired some women in fandom putting down their foot and saying "look, if the source material is going to be shitty about the people who are like me, I'm not going to get invested in that source material" but I'm not that strong or principled. I like football fandom, god knows why, and I want to stay here, so. but on the other hand, I'm not going to pretend to myself that I'm not perpetuating the system by saying I don't care that the source material is shitty in the way it treats women. if we just accept the system it's never going to change.
I think maybe my main point, if there was one in that humongous pointless ramble above, is that even in a fandom as male-dominated as this one, there is fic with ladies in it! there is great fic with ladies in it! and the people who write them often can't share them with the wider fandom audience, and I think that's shitty. I think the assumption that most of the people in the wider fandom audience won't want to read them is shitty, and I think it's also correct, which is even shittier. but I really hope that if people talk about it we can maybe come up with something? I have no idea, but I live in hope!