oh fandom, NO!

[rm]

http://community.livejournal.com/jackxianto/3668643.html
in which someone says something that sounds an awful lot like "die-hard SF/F fans are an oppressed minority."

http://community.livejournal.com/jackxianto/3668643.html?view=12636067#t12636067
In which I yell.

thanks for the heads-up from starstealingirl

Subcutlures, because they are by definitions not the mainstream dominant culture, are technically minorities.

But here's the deal, I'm a minority because I'm queer, because I'm Jewish, because I am not as white as look.

Engaging with enterainment in a non-culturally dominant way may be responsible for affecting the tone of huge swathes of my life, but it doesn't define it. Being a member of an actual minority does.

I am not a minority because I like SF/F or because I cried and cried and cried for Ianto or even because I have an unpopular fannish opinion in the sense that I'm not all worked up about RTD and whether he respects fandom or not -- I don't care, I don't need his approval.

Believe me, I get what you are saying. For older fen in particular, there is this very real sense of being in this small, sort of looked down upon subculture and since many of us interact with the world differently than the mainstream (there are studies on the high incidence of the non-neurotypical in the fannish community), I do sort of get why you chose this angle to frame your point.

But with things like Harry Potter, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Comic Con, Dragon*Con, and, yes, the Children of Earth miniseries, fannishness is now a pretty nearly mainstream activity.

But more than that: no one ever threw beer bottles at me for being fannish. No one ever threatened to rape me for being fannish. No one fucking threatened to beat my face in with a brick for being fannish. They have (the first two) because I was gay and (the third) because I'm Jewish.

Considering one of the biggest plot points and now fandom controversies relates to the show's handling of Ianto's sexuality, you really might want to check yourself here.

I am a minority and it's not because I loved a man who never was, even though I did.

Comments

[bluejeans07.livejournal.com]

I'm assuming that this is the 'backlash' of what RTD said at the SDCC panel? Dude, I WAS THERE. RTD is in a place where the number of viewers can be monitored whereas people in fandom seem to see things in a skewed view. Plenty of people in the world watch and enjoy things loyally and not take part in internet fandom, and this is something BBC Wales and other major television networks can monitor.

The hilarious thing overall about all this wankfuckery is that I totally found RTD at the panel charming and hilarious! He was REALLY REALLY FUNNY and my friend and I laughed hysterically at all his jokes! There was nothing about him that was malicious or cruel at all. If people can't handle any of this, then they're clearly watching the wrong show.

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

Some things that are funny in one tone of voice are offensive in another.

And I think people who have been physically harmed or threatened for things they can't help and can't change, like their skin color or ethnic identity, have been taught to be wary of words, words that might be a pretense of a joke, words that could, if they're taken seriously by anyone, any reader or listener, lead to danger.

____

Don't we all have a view that is from our own perspective, rooted in our own experiences, and therefore skewed from the views of people whose experiences are substantially different? We all see only part of the picture, after all. (Unless there's an omniscient God, and if there is, he's not talking.)

[bluejeans07.livejournal.com]

Oh I'm quite sure that not everyone agrees with me and that the things he said could be taken offensively, but so can anything. People misunderstand each other all the time, but I was just putting forward the fact that I was there, I had the opportunity to watch his mannerisms and listen to the things he had to say. He didn't say anything horribly offensive, mainly what he said that he takes full credit for the Ianto's death and he doesn't mind taking the blame because it served the purpose of his story. To me, he clearly didn't mean any harm or insult, but he was standing by his decision and not regretting it and he shouldn't have to at all.

And I have been physically harmed and insulted due to my ethnicity, and there are certain words that I do become wary of that can be used as threats to hurt me directly because I'm Asian-American. However, at the panel, RTD didn't use any of those words, his tone was relaxed and playful, and I thought he was a lovely person. I do admit that I don't completely understand the point you're trying to make though and it would be great if you could clarify it because I don't see how RTD saying "Blame me, I killed Ianto as a creative decision" would offend me like being called a "gook" or a "chink".

The point of view I was trying to convey was merely statistical, I've worked for a major television channel before so I know that there is technology and people available to keep track of viewers and numbers, and how they would monitor reactions to shows and things.

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

Ah, you did misunderstand my intent. I'm sorry I wasn't clear. I was assuming that your in-person assessment was almost certainly more accurate, both because in person assessments usually are more accurate than an impression just from a post someone wrote, and because the writer self-labeled this post as a "rant", which tells me it was written in a state of strong emotion, probably frustration.

However, in reading any written text, each of us supplies a vocal tone, and often an image of body language. And you only have to have two people read a story or poem to know that we do not all supply the same emphasis, tone, and body language to any single set of words.

I think this is because our personal experiences--including our fears and memories of being hurt--can and do affect what vocal tone we read into someone else's words.

To put it another way, I was trying to say that the contrast between the RTD you saw in person and the RTD other people saw only through words on a computer screen is probably due to the fact that they didn't get to interact with him in person, so they didn't have those extra clues about his personality and meaning and intent.

As to Ianto, I'm a writer, I know that the things one does to ones characters, up to and including death, are creative choices. I might well make different choices than RTD or any other storyteller, but then, that would be a different story. But I don't think that issue is at the heart of this controversy. IMHO, anyway.

[bluejeans07.livejournal.com]

Ahh, I see. I kept going back to the panel because I thought the reports from the panel were the reasons why it fueled all this controversy about the word 'minority'. RTD said himself at the panel that the number of angry fans were very small, which got taken out of hand those few people in that post in the jackxianto community.

I do agree that definitely, people do take different reactions to regarding 'tone' of texts, but in truth I don't feel that there's a reason for people like the writer of the original post (not RM) to feel justified of their immediate, knee-jerk reactions in this situation.

I think the whole "Ianto death" was the trigger for the controversy, but the fuel is coming from people's reactions to it and the reactions other people have to those people. Using the word 'minority' as a social status in this instance was probably used in haste and ignorance.

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

I agree that "minority" can be a button-word, one that hits people where they're hurting and gets knee-jerk reactions out of proportion to (and sometimes only peripherally related to) the rest of what a person is saying.