This is *my* clubhouse: Comics fandom, slash fandom, comics-slash fandom, and gender.

[buggery]

(The text of this post originally appeared in slightly different form as a response to harriet_spy's comment in Te's journal here.)

Sarah said, in part:
I think women's presence in the clubhouse is going to make many otherwise decent guys somewhat uncomfortable


See, here's the thing.

I don't think the women (and others) in comics-slash fandom ARE in the comics fanboys' clubhouse.

We have our OWN clubhouse, and boys from the older, bigger clubhouse over there keep coming into OUR clubhouse and trying to act like they're in charge just because we're all sitting around reading comics in here.

We're a lot more welcoming to new people than the big clubhouse is, because we WANT as many people as we can get in here with us enjoying the same (set of -- I don't begrudge Ang her fixations on Boostle and Guy, nor Sarah or Livia their interest in the Ultimates, and I don't think anybody points and laughs much at my tastes) fun stuff that we do. It gives us more people to talk to, and more people who will hopefully contribute fiction, art, meta, or something else to the community.

You present OUR clubhouse with a new way of looking at something in canon, and -- even if we don't agree -- our response tends to be, 'Ooh, interesting! Shiny! Sit down and have some scans/meta/fiction/chatcrack!'

You say something that goes against 'conventional wisdom' someplace like the DC boards, you're likely to get smacked down: 'Batman's not gay, you weirdo!' 'Why would you like Kyle better, he's a total pussy!' 'A girl Robin was a stupid idea but at least she's dead now!' etc.



Now I have an odd perspective on this current battle of the sexes precipitated by scarfe's comment: I don't identify as male or female, but as something other. I probably respond to people in what's a culturally 'male' mode more often than not -- Te and I have laughed about the way I have to remember to give emotional support when friends are having problems, not just practical advice -- but I identify as a feminist (in the sense that I believe "feminism is the radical notion that women are people") and I like to think I'm a good one.

I'm not a Jackie-come-lately. I was the one who nudged Te into the comics side of DC slash fandom, and I've watched this fandom grow up around us with glee and awe.

I came from slash fandom, not from comics fandom -- I started really reading comics a little over three years ago, but never felt an urge to get fannish about them outside a fanfiction context -- so I'm used to an almost complete absence of males. In all of my past slash fandoms, you were lucky if you could find two males to rub together (though they often wouldn't have minded; as far as I can remember none of them were straight).

I find the presence of a substantial male minority -- still a minority, but a good-sized and growing one -- in this fandom exciting, and as amazing in its way as the fact that the fandom is here at all. (I said for years I'd give my left nut for a large, active Batfamily slash fandom full of talented writers, even before I started reading the comics... Of course, the only one I have is on the right, but maybe that's why...) Hell, we even have those couple of real live straight boys here, meta-ing about the homoerotic subtext and reading and even writing the occasional slash story.

In my book? That all these people are in our fandom means that we WIN.

As for the party-crashers... I don't have any practical advice to suggest for dealing with them. We're going to keep wanting new people who are interested in hanging in our clubhouse to be able to get in. Having a password to keep out boy cooties (or even rude cooties -- oh, for the days when the flamewar-fanning trolls were all female) is not going to work.

But what we can do, when they come stomping into our clubhouse and wanting to throw Te's porn in the trash or pull Houie's pinups off the walls, or even just point and laugh and call us names, is point them right back to their own clubhouse. It's bigger anyway, and if they don't enjoy what goes on here they're *welcome* to go elsewhere.

Hm, I guess I came up with practical advice after all. q:

There is NO reason whatsoever for people who don't like our club to hang out in our clubhouse -- and scans_daily was never a room in the big clubhouse to begin with. If anybody is only unnerved or disgusted by the few things we do here that the fanboys in the bigger, older clubhouse RIGHT over THERE don't do, then they should go there and leave us in peace. We're not here to be a convenient target for anybody's pent-up frustration at years of marginalisation (been there, done that, show of hands? yeah, thought so), and we're not here to be the subjects of anybody's armchair psychoanalysis either. We're here in OUR space to do what we enjoy doing.


scans_daily post in which the original incident occurred
Livia's reaction in her journal
No, I am not linking to the fandom_wank post that followed.


(Icon relevancy note: Two of the five fandoms in this icon are ones I actively participated in in the past (Smallville and due South) and which had more slash-fandom-normative demographics ...and that's Dick Grayson in the Batgirl costume.)

Comments

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

I've been following this via my unholy addiction, Fandom Wank, and what honestly springs to mind is the sort of thing my mother used to tell me when other kids were being mean.

Just. Ignore. Them.

You guys (sorry, girls) are in the majority. Just ignore it when Scarfe or whoever says "OMG whut is wrong with you sikk females and your sikk desire for cartoon men and women?!?!?!" Ignore them and they will get bored and go away.

[buggery.livejournal.com]

That's a nice idea, in theory.

Unfortunately -- without even getting into the point marici made above about needing to feel we can speak up for ourselves and defend our own spaces -- it's the equivalent of trying to ignore the big bully who kicks sand on you at the beach. He might get bored and go away eventually, but that's no reason for you to suffer in silence waiting for him to decide when you've been humiliated enough.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I agree to a point; but where, really, is the humiliation? You have a community which has a dominant ideology - one where slash is cool and perving at cartoon characters is considered normal. And being female is the status quo. What's humiliating about a marginalised person (that is to say, a male comics fanboy) denigrating your views, when your views are those the majority holds? I understand the concerns of women who feel attacked and marginalised in their offline lives, feeling that somehow they're now being attacked and marginalised in their own space - home invaded, as it were - but they're not *alone* in those communities. You - I'd say "we" but I'm not in that fandom - rule the school. In fact one could stretch the argument further and say those guys are the "queers" in your society. Being that upset by them points to fundamental disbelief in the strength of the dominant ideology.

As for "needing to feel we can speak up for ourselves and defend our own spaces" - I concede, that's important for a lot of people, particularly women. It's a bit different for me, possibly, because I'm a middle class educated white New Zealander and nobody ever told me to shut up because nice girls don't talk back. We have sexism, of course, but I really don't suffer in any way shape or form from being female, and never have. Maybe if I was a third world woman it might be slightly different. But then I wouldn't be on the internet.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

Well, not always. It's very hard not to argue, or get upset, and I've left communities myself because I've felt severely picked on. But ultimately you choose your battles; if all something does is make me shitty, then I withdraw. Because I have enough reasons to be shitty without some random strangers on the internet making me shittier.

As I said to jack above, your community has a dominant ideology and guess what? It's yours! The only people failing to take their medicine are the trolls.