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

[vashtan.livejournal.com]

Looking at this whole clusterf*ck, I'm honestly glad I will never make it mainstream, or big budget. The crazy, the passive-aggressiveness, the rants, the death threats... I mean, really. I'm sure the writer had his reasons, and he can do whatever he darn well pleases. It's his characters. Playing the passive-aggressive card is, in my humble opionion, pathetic.

I'm writing this from the perspective of somebody who's been called a bastard and a horrible writer on the basis of the fact that my characters did what they did and I didn't let them have a happily-ever after one third through the story. Just because I failed to do what some people wanted me to do, I was called all kinds of names. I can't even imagine what the writer of CoE went/goes through.

It's those passive-aggressive, self-entitled "fans" that make reaching out and contact with your readers such a very precarious thing.

(Plus, co-opting real minorities for your little passive-aggressive spazzing? Not cool).

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I saw that and thought how it connected with what I wrote about the whole K/S thing and I couldn't help but feel those fans really do not GET IT.

I don't know why, but I feel that it's a waste of my time to tell people, in a comm, that they're doing it wrong because I know I'll be told that I'm "harshing their squees" even if the "squees" are idiotic fan entitlement.

I may have to comment on that in any case, just to show that fandom is not a monolith.

[rm.livejournal.com]

It's so..... argh! Also, it's disrespectful to the fucking character in this instance, which is sort of the punchline of that one!

[juniperus.livejournal.com]

you're dead-fucking-on, as usual.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, your final two sentences are really important as is the fucking reality check you give them (by bravely) talking about your own experiences.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I wrote a hostile comment (http://community.livejournal.com/jackxianto/3668643.html?thread=12636835#t12636835).

Dude...

[lefaym.livejournal.com]

*headdesk*

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

There seems to be a perception, among some people who's only understanding of real oppression comes from the media, that the struggle of minorities has a kind of glamour and beauty about it - which, we can all be beautiful people, and I think actually SF fans are beautiful people in their own way - but it rather overlooks the daily grind, and the part where you don't get to opt out if things get a bit hot.

[tod-hollykim.livejournal.com]

I posted a mini rant myself. This is it:

Yeah, minority is kind of a strong word here, specially with all the real minorities out there.

Now, I have been a science fiction fan practically since I could read. Way back in the bad old days when we got a few movies a year and only had Twilight Zone and the Outer Limits (the original series) on regular television. I remember the first episode of Star Trek.

Now a days, we ain't a minority. My favorite genres are mainstream. The number of top grossing movies and prime time TV shows show that.

Did I hate the fact that a fictional character got killed off to tell a story? Yeah. I liked Ianto and I was very upset that Jack used his own grandson and wound up killing him, too. But it fit the story and made it more real. Because let me tell you something:

In real life, people die.

I know. In the past few years, I've lost my mother, my stepfather, in-laws, dear friends, and people from the media I was fans of that I will miss terribly.

Besides, Torchwood isn't your toy. It's RTD's. And he can do with it what he wants. Including killing off characters as he has done. Not everything can end on a happy and fluffy note. Deal with it.

If you really want to do something positive with that emotion, turn it around and do something in the real world. Support some charity, some human rights cause, something!

But to get your knickers in a twist over a fictional character's death- not cool. It only upholds the nerd living in his/her parents' basement stereotype. And that is something we have been fighting for years to get rid, from even before I was a fan.

[jackolantern.livejournal.com]

Sad to see that that whole "fans are slans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slan)" thing--that the popular kids make fun of us, but deep down inside we're really the X-Men--is surviving when you can't turn around without hearing about a new SF or fantasy TV show and Comic-Con is rivaling two wars and a major financial crisis in the daily news feed. Liking the works of Terry Pratchett--the best-selling author in Britain before that other fantasy author, whats-her-face, came along--doesn't retroactively earn you a triangle badge to pin on your PJs.

[axeslade.livejournal.com]

Oh geez *headdesks*I'm so glad you and others all ready said what I would say with so much eloquence and so little swearing. As a fellow queer, non-christian, gender non-conformer...yeah. Those make me a minority. Fandom just made it hard to get a date.

[tod-hollykim.livejournal.com]

I'd bet, if we took a survey of the age of all the protesters in this mess, they would all be young.

IE not around during the civil rights marches and protests, the Stonewall riots or have been attacked because they are different.

Not that I was ever at a march or riot. Mostly, I was too young back then. But I remember watching the news reports and wondering why is this happening to people. I just saw other human beings, not their differences.

Hey, I was a naive, young science fiction fan who still didn't know her own sexual identity yet.

Younger fans just have no idea what it was like. It's all too far in the past and glamorous and heroic. They haven't seen the blood on themselves, their friends or loved ones.

[51stcenturyfox.livejournal.com]

I totally get your point, but I think she's saying that the invested fandom subculture is being dimissed/ignored, not oppressed. Subculture might have been a better and less loaded term than minority, though it seems to me that she likely means it in the statistical sense.

I'm with you on RTD. I don't care if he gives a damn about my opinions or not.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I don't know if age has anything to do with it.

I'm a baby! And even before I had the concept of myself as a political/social minority (I'm Queer) I knew that being in a community based around genre that is/used to be marginalised wasn't the same as being a person who lives a marginalised life.

Then again, us fans are known to be pretty narrow minded people. I (and obviously others, including yourself :-)) are just kind of sick of that.

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

Wow, this makes me itch in about seven different ways.

I could comment further, but it would be rambly and potentially derailing.

Pfeh.

[eac.livejournal.com]

...I'm having such a problem relating to this relatively loud voice of fans who feel so betrayed by RTD...

[supergee.livejournal.com]

It's fun to think of oneself as a fighter against the Establishment. Richard Nixon thought he was one while he was president.

[oncomingscone.livejournal.com]

Bravo.

[iterum.livejournal.com]

'I'm in a minority! And there's more of us than you think!'

Given that the OP leads off with a bunch of Whedon shows as favorites, one might imagine a higher tolerance for beloved character death.

[laughingacademy.livejournal.com]

Wow. Someone has reinvented “Fans are slans”. *headdesk*

...although I have made jokes about “passing for a mundane,” fandom is not some kind of unacknowledged and oppressed elite.

[laughingacademy.livejournal.com]

Oh man, I am so happy someone else remembered "Fans are Slans."

[karnythia.livejournal.com]

OMFG. They are determined to appropriate *everything* aren't they?

[godofstrife.livejournal.com]

Oh dear, I commented.

[all the comments flying around about how it is only a very few of us that are upset over CoE, I found myself thinking about the fact that I have accepted the fact that I am part of this worldwide minority.

While I agree that there are less SF/F fans in the world than, say, white, straight males, you are clearly confusing numeric minorities (e.g. subcultures) with the contemporarily political and social meaning behind the term minority. I'm part of subcultures like SF/F, FPS games, gothic scene and I belong to minorities (mixed ethnics, gay, living in a foreign country), only being part of the latter has ever subjected me to discrimination.
Please think about different meanings many words in our language have before you apply them to yourself or anyone else.

From the comments: I'm a minority.

We are Pope! (Please, someone get this reference)
]

[tod-hollykim.livejournal.com]

See, now I am use to the fannish community here in NYC that showed we were not narrow minded. Matter of fact, most of my activism was started from the fannish community. So many of us supported different causes. Multiple causes for that matter. So there was usually one person who was the 'pointman' for a cause who would let us know when we were needed for an event or fund raiser and we would join in.

Almost every Trek actor's official fan club had a club charity that the actor supported and the club raised money for. The few that did not have a regular one supported what needed to be done at the time.

[godofstrife.livejournal.com]

At CC RTD himself said that the internet fandom and the fans that want Ianto back are just a minority. I'm convinced they are just using the same term RTD used without thinking about other implications, which doesn't make it less annoying.