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

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

Mostly I agree with everything you say. And mostly you say it so well, I don't feel a need to stick my two cents in. I enjoy seeing someone who is so articulate and clear-thinking as an advocate for queer issues in fandom.

But here I think you're tilting at windmills, and I don't think you're making certain very valid points effectively, given predictable human responses to being "yelled" at.

I saw nothing in the original post that indicated to me that there was an intent to dis the very real and dangerous oppression that queer folk, religious minorities, and people of different skin colors face. The poster was talking about his or her own life and experiences, not yours.

Is oppression meaningless simply because it's mild instead of severe?

I've seen fans bully and belittle other fans, because they are "media fans" instead of "readers", or because they like "fantasy" better than "hard sf" or because they are religious instead of atheists or Christian instead of something "more cool". One convention even had a panel on whether some people were too weird for fandom, and I was later told that they spent a lot of time talking about my transgender sweetie, who couldn't pass on a moonless night during a power outage, in that context. (I didn't see that panel; I think I was on another panel at the time.)

The reason that I bring this up is that I have seen at least as many people hurt (emotionally hurt--the microcosm of fandom is far more into words than fists) for having people decide they were the "wrong kind of fan" as for being queer or of the "wrong" religion.

Also, my observation is that the people who were hurt for being the "wrong kind of fan" were hurt worse. I think this is because they don't have the life experiences that obviously queer people have, which means they don't have the emotional resources to deal even with that kind of casual playground-bully-style oppression.

So, the original poster has obviously led a sheltered life compared with yours. There's nothing inherently wrong with that--in an ideal world, all people could live a life like that. But the world isn't ideal, and queer folk, and Jewish folk, and Pagans, and so on, need allies, not enemies.

If this is the first time said poster has felt oppressed enough to rant about it, then this is his or her first chance to be able to imagine what it would be like if people were throwing beer bottles and bricks and rape threats. It's his or her first chance to have even a tiny inkling of what it would be like to walk in your shoes.

But I've noticed that when people are feeling defensive, they are mostly incapable of that leap of empathy--they're too busy defending themselves from you to put themselves in your shoes.

I certainly agree with you that in the large scheme of things, being fannish and/or liking speculative fiction is no longer being part of an oppressed minority (though I believe it used to be, before Star Wars first came out, and even moreso before Star Trek was aired).

But then, I also remember when gays were afraid to march in the gay pride parades in their own cities, and would call distant friends to trade, "I'll march in your parade if you'll march in mine". (I got asked to come to the first Gay Pride gathering in Milwaukee not because I'm bi, but because I was a student from out of town, and didn't have to worry about losing a job or having my family disown me if my face was broadcast on local TV.)

Today, it's not that dangerous even to be an obvious transwoman (or to live with one).

And we didn't get so far in my lifetime by becoming a majority. We got so far by getting many of the majority to empathize with us, to see us as people not so different than them, to see us as friends and neighbors and family.

And for many, fandom is their family of choice. If they are not feeling attacked by some segment of it, they are inclined to be protective of other fans--any other fans. (And this is especially true of fans who still think of fandom or some part of it as an oppressed minority, regardless of evidence that this has changed--that's part of the pattern of being, or having been, part of a pariah subculture.)