a year ago
I did a femslash-fans survey for my bachelor thesis. So many of you helped me
and filled out the questionnaire. Again: THANK YOU!
Today I
wanted to share the results with you. There aren’t a lot of studies out there that
research femslash-topics but I do think it’s an important topic. I focused my
study on cyberbullying of femslash-fans and its emotional consequences. I asked
people if they witnessed bullying of other femslash-fans or experienced it on
their own.
Just to be
clear: I only asked about cyberbullying from outside the femslash-community.
This does not mean that everything is “rainbows and unicorn stickers” inside
the community. And I’m also aware that not all femslash-fans are saints, some
cyberbullying goes the other way around too.
And yeah of
course I knew that there is a lot of cyberbullying going on but I was still
shocked to see the results.
Why this is
so problematic: Femslash-fans see their community as their safe-space. A lot of
LGBT+ people need safe-spaces because life outside the internet is sometimes
cruel. So some find a safe-space (like a femslash-community), were they can
speak freely and openly. BUT even in this place they are not always safe.
If you have
further questions, don’t hesitate to ask me 🙂 My bachelor thesis is in German or
else I would publish it for you guys.
Yesterday we put up a tiny poll and took it down after .02 seconds because we realized ONE POLL WOULD NOT BE ENOUGH. So: Take this super tiny, unscientific poll either by responding to this post OR by voting on Twitter, then watch this space for TINY POLL PART 2 coming in a day or two! We’ll post all the results here and on Twitter when they come in…
This has generated SO MANY discussions, it’s delightful.
My initial thought was defining “in” for me was a distinction of *in* versus ~in. I still feel like I’m ~in Harry Potter fandom. But I am *in* Black Sails fandom rn—that is the thing I spend lots of time thinking about. Like…lots of time. Help.
Other people are finding that the tricky part is defining “fandom” on a personal level. One person said they wrote tons of fic for YOI but didn’t think they were in the fandom—but never read or wrote fic for something else but totally felt like they were in *that* fandom.
Some people have tried to gauge by time spent or merchandise purchased or pure “participation,” which like, go with God, folks, this is about self-definition, but for the record, Flourish & I are not placing any sort of gatekeeping parameters around “fandom” or “in fandom”! Just sayin. 🙂
Oh, and for the record, I can be ~in many fandoms at once—essentially the ones I was in in the past, specifically Harry Potter, since that was like 10+ years of my life. But I can only manage being *in* one fandom at a time! I am fandom-monogamous. It makes trying to reread old favorite fic from past fandoms hard—I really need to be *feeling it* actively to connect on an emotional level.
Keep telling us your thoughts (and voting in the poll)!
I appreciate the extra notes @elizabethminkel ! I am usually only *in* one fandom at a time (or none, which was the case for a few years) but am ~in TONS all the time.
In a different sense than how it works for you though I think–I’m obsessively in one fandom right now, in terms of being the most into it, thinking about it, creating content for it, but I still read a wide variety of fic. The impulse to READ ABOUT MY CURRENT OTP/FAV CHARACTER FOR THE FEELS is different than the impulse to read fic bc I want good writing (sometimes even regardless of whether I’ve ever been in a fandom) and just the experience of reading something of a certain length, or something that will make me smile–and I do have both impulses at around the same time.
“Ship means something you want to see happen.” Bitch, no it don’t. This weird-ass modern culture of lobbying show-runners to make your ship canon didn’t emerge until the advent of social media. (And recent social media like twitter, not shit-you-forgot-existed like MySpace.) Shipping and fandom in general have been around much longer, so you can stop acting like “this is the way it has always been uwu” right the fuck now.
Until relatively recently, most fans I’ve known have been perfectly okay with their ships never being canon. I, personally, would be actively offended if certain ships of mine became canon. That is not why I ship them. What I want from canon and what I want from fandom are often entirely different things that only intersect on the margins.That is why fanworks are called “transformative” ffs.
Someone put it into words.
ALL OF THIS.
My ships actually getting together is like a nice bonus. But some idea that they have to be together in canon or even that they should be together in canon is not the reason that I ship.
100% this! Varies for me though. Sometimes I’d really like it to be canonical and that would be amazing and change my life, sometimes I really wouldn’t like it to be canonical for a variety of reasons.
I feel like with the new ~fandom drama~ or whatever going around, I should re-introduce my favorite theory of fandom, which I call the 1% Theory.
Basically, the 1% Theory dictates that in every fandom, on average, 1% of the fans will be a pure, unsalvageable tire fire. We’re talking the people who do physical harm over their fandom, who start riots, cannot be talked down. The sort of things public news stories are made of. We’re not talking necessarily bad fans here- we’re talking people who take this thing so seriously they are willing to start a goddamn fist fight over nothing. The worst of the worst.
The reason I bring this up is because the 1% Theory ties into an important visual of fandom knowledge- that bigger fandoms are always perceived as “worse”, and at a certain point, a fandom always gets big enough to “go bad”. Let me explain.
Say you have a small fandom, like 500 people- the 1% Theory says that out of those 500, only 5 of them will be absolute nutjobs. This is incredibly manageable- it’s five people. The fandom and world at large can easily shut them out, block them, ignore their ramblings. The fandom is a “nice place”.
Now say you have a medium sized fandom- say 100,000 people. Suddenly, the 1% Theory ups your level of calamity to a whopping 1000 people. That’s a lot. That’s a lot for anyone to manage. It is, by nature of fandom, impossible to “manage” because no one owns fan spaces. People start to get nervous. There’s still so much good, but oof, 1000 people.
Now say you have a truly massive fandom- I use Homestuck here because I know the figures. At it’s peak, Homestuck had approximately FIVE MILLION active fans around the globe.
By the 1% Theory, that’s 50,000 people. Fifty THOUSAND starting riots, blackmailing creators, contributing to the worst of the worst of things.
There’s a couple of important points to take away here, in my opinion.
1) The 1% will always be the loudest, because people are always looking for new drama to follow.
2) Ultimately, it is 1%. It is only 1%. I can’t promise the other 99% are perfect, loving angels, but the “terrible fandom” is still only 1% complete utter garbage.
3) No fandom should ever be judged by their 1%. Big fandoms always look worse, small fandoms always look better. It’s not a good metric.
So remember, if you’re ever feeling disheartened by your fandom’s activity- it’s just 1%, people. Do your part not to be a part of it.
Think that fanartist draws your favorite character all wrong?
Wish you’d never hear about your least favorite pairing ever again?
Ask your doctor if Shutting Up ™ is right for you!
From the makers of Self-Control and Being a Decent Person, Shutting Up™ is the revolutionary new treatment, clinically proven to make sure you don’t end up looking like a heartless dickbag! Shutting Up™ will help you discover a whole new side of fandom – a life where you seek out the things that appeal to you and leave everything else alone. Nobody gets hurt, and everybody wins!
Users of Shutting Up™ may experience some temporary frustration and feelings of disgust. This is normal. Supplementation with Talking Privately With a Sympathetic Friend™ may ease those symptoms.
Long-term side effects of Shutting Up™ may include perspective, a sense of belonging, and a deep understanding that not everything in the fandom world is within your control or meant for your personal enjoyment. Shutting Up™ has been known to cause flare-ups of peace, friendship, and positivity. Not recommended for cases in which you actually like things and want to leave positive feedback.
Try Shutting Up™ today, and see how fandom can become a better place for you!
the following are concepts that i quickly learned my way around when growing up in fandom, but that seem to have fallen out of use recently. i’d like to propose a revival of…
NOTP: a pairing that, for whatever reason, you simply cannot stand. it can be because the ship repulses you morally, or because you hate one of the characters, or love them both but despise their dynamic – or just because looking at it makes you uncomfortable, for whatever reason.
different from labeling something a “bad ship” in that it implies an entirely personal preference.
calling a ship your NOTP informs others that you really, really, REALLY dislike it, while also acknowledging that you don’t know what other people’s reasons are for shipping it, or what interpretations they may have that makes it work for them.
a cool way of avoiding stuff you hate while also not morally condemning thousands of complete strangers for liking it.
squick: similar to notp, but goes for anything, not just romantic pairings. something you just don’t like, either for specific reasons or just because it irrationally repulses you.
not as severe as a trigger in the sense that it doesn’t cause any extreme and potentially harmful reactions – it’s just something you’d rather not see, because it grosses you the fuck out. and that’s okay.
decent people respect other people’s squicks, while also remembering it’s cool for other people to like things they personally are squicked by.
this works as long as everyone agrees not to be dicks and shove stuff in people’s faces in unwarranted ways.
crackship: a ship that just doesn’t make any sense. there’s absolutely no chance that these characters would ever end up together.
perhaps they’ve never interacted. perhaps they are on opposite sides of a war. perhaps one of them died a thousand years ago. for whatever reason, there’s zero possibility of this becoming canon.
still, you’d like to see how they’d romantically mesh, to explore their dynamic or a what-if scenario – or maybe they’re just two characters you really like to imagine smooching one another.
the fact that it isn’t and never will be canon doesn’t matter, and can even be part of the appeal. it certainly does not invalidate the ship’s existence. the ultimate form of doing something just for fun.
these words all help describe the cool concept of doing stuff you enjoy, while also realizing others may be doing things you hate, but not in order to victimize you personally. live and let live! give people the benefit of the doubt! it’s a good time. we should all try it.
Being an active participant in fandom requires a certain level of self-regulating in order to be a healthy activity. It requires the ability to say “Not for me,” or “Not today,” and walk away.
We can have conversations about patterns we see in fanworks. We can discuss how we portray characters and relationships, how to effectively convey what we want to in writing, how to sensitively approach representations of marginalized characters. But having those conversations productively requires that we approach each other in good faith, and it requires the ability to self-regulate–including recognizing that often there is no hard line, no black and white answer, and we won’t always come to the same conclusions.
It requires an understanding up front that eliminating all fanworks we don’t care for is not the end goal of these conversations.
I’ll give a personal example. There is a ship that deeply, viscerally upsets me in like 95% of its iterations. I can explain why I don’t like it if asked. I’ve written about why I don’t think it’s handled well in canon.
And if I wanted to–if I wanted to–I could make a very convincing-sounding argument for why that ship is objectively bad and wrong and no one should ship it. Not because that’s objectively right, mind you, but because I’m good at arguing. I could slap that together in like… ten minutes, probably.
I don’t do that. If I vent about it on my own blog, it’s as infrequently as I can manage, because I do my best to avoid the content that upsets me. I don’t seek it out to get riled up about it. I don’t seek out content that upsets me, read it in its entirety, and then leave angry comments and send my friends to harass the author. I don’t choose a high-profile writer for the content I don’t like and engage in a targeted campaign of harassment against them all while claiming to be addressing a general problem.
If you are deliberately seeking out content that you know will upset you and reading it anyway and then feeling that you need to take those bad feelings out on the creator, you are not taking care of yourself. You are not engaging in healthy behavior or productive coping mechanisms. You are not keeping yourself safe, and you are not helping to make fandom safer for others. You are not engaging in good faith.
If you find that you do this and you can’t seem to stop, you may need to take some kind of further steps up to and including taking a break from fandom. I’m serious. I’ve taken breaks myself for that exact reason. There’s no shame in it.
Please monitor your own ability to self-regulate. Please actively evaluate whether or not you are engaging in healthy and productive behavior, for yourself and for others.
If you are deliberately seeking out content that you know will upset you and reading it anyway and then feeling that you need to take those bad feelings out on the creator, you are not taking care of yourself.
Episode 55: Happy Anniversary #2. Flourish and Elizabeth once again welcome back the guests from the past
year to talk about what’s changed in fandom, on a global level, a
personal level, or both. Global topics included the recent crop of Hugo
winners, Marvel’s Secret Empire storyline, and the intersections between
fandom and U.S. politics. The more personal included the intersections
of fannish and professional identities and the experience of aging in
fandom. To round things out, Flourish and Elizabeth share their own
perspectives, discussing whether fandom ever really changes—or whether
it simply repeats the same patterns over and over again. (show notes coming soon | transcript coming soon)
Happy Anniversary Fansplaining! I’ve been listening to your podcast for about a year now (I think?) and also trying to get more into fandom again over the past year, and like, not direct causality, but hearing you both talk about fandom has been so inspiring and really helped me sort of… legitimize to myself that this is valid, and something I want to do with my time. And has also been so wonderful in terms of hearing about the broader fandom beyond my tumblr dashboard, which I really wouldn’t have otherwise.
Thanks for all that you do, and here’s wishing you another wonderful year!!
Question of Smoke 