fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #4067 ]

[ SECRET POST #4067 ]

⌈ Secret Post #4067 ⌋

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Not really.

Nah, I've always been liberal (shockingly considering I was born and raised in small town SC).

My politics have changed slightly over the years, and I have been in fandom throughout those years. Was it fandom or simply me getting older and learning more, I don't know.

Probably the general liberalness of fandom spaces had an indirect impact, but no specific fandom event comes to mind where I was like, "ah, my mind is changed now."

It might have actually made me a little more conservative. Not in any real sense mind you - I'll always have more in common with the left - but I've definitely come to realize I'm not as "anything goes, you are what you say you are, words don't matter because language evolves!" accommodating as a lot of fandom.

I deal with that by drawing a line at "I believe that you believe you're whatever you say you are, and I'll try to be polite about it."

^ for the words that people make up for themselves, I mean. Stuff like "lesbian" obviously has a historic meaning.

Ayrt
I agree and that's a good practice in general. Some things just seem so ridiculous. I try to retrain myself to rolling my eyes and scrolling away though.

If anything it's solidified them, but no more than anything else in my life. I didn't find online fandom until well into adulthood and politics/social justice were totally absent in my early fandom days.

politics/social justice were totally absent in my early fandom days

Same for me. I wish it was still like that.

Having some trans friends made me understand their issues much more fully. That's about it. Not really a political view though, because I was already in favor of rights and protections for them. Just made me more informed.

Edited 2018-02-22 00:30 (UTC)

Nah.

A bit I think. I grew up in an extremely conservative environment. Fandom was my first experience with liberal politics. Fandom was also my first experience where homosexuality wasn't discriminated against. So fandom wasn't the only thing working on me, but it definitely helped push some of the changes in views.

Significantly, and for the better.

Pre-fandom, I was a born-again christian, far right, voted Republican, the gays were evil and Harry Potter was witchcraft.

Post-fandom I'm agnostic, liberal, and transgender. Honestly, being able to accept people for who they are is much better than clinging to my old beliefs.

I'm glad you've been able to accept yourself, too.

This. Denying part of yourself really sucks, at least in my experience. Pretending it doesn't exist doesn't work in the long run. And yet feeling guilt every time you can't ignore it is the worst feeling. Hating yourself hurts, physically as well as mentally.

Glad you are in a better place anon.

thanks anon - and philstar too. I'm old and crotchety and sometimes the kids need to get off my lawn, but I'm a much better person now than I was in 99.

When did you realize you are transgender?

don't know if you'll check for an answer, anon, but about 06-07. not directly through fandom, but rather, through contact with people who were also in fandom who were living examples of how reality was so different from my old assumptions. nearly 10 years after my first brush with fandom.

AYRT

(Anonymous) - 2018-02-22 23:51 (UTC) - Expand

No. I've had the beliefs I have for a long time. It's just been nice to find others in fandom who agree with me, basically :).

Not hugely, it's opened my eyes to things I didn't know about but I've always been pretty left-leaning because my parents raised me to be open-minded and I do my best to keep to that way of thinking.

That and fandom didn't really have much in the way of social justice talk when I first got into it, or at least if it was there it wasn't where I was poking around.

Not really. I've always been pretty open-minded, but I did use to feel weird about it because I grew up in a family that wasn't very tolerant (thankfully, they've gotten better about it). I guess fandom made me feel less weird because I met people who shared the same views as me.

Hell yeah. I did all the typical YA SFF in high school: Tolkien, Lewis, Le Guin, Piers Anthony was unavoidable and not a well-known creep yet, Yolen, Bradbury, all the Oz books including the ghostwritten ones, John Christopher. That along with Star Trek and Star Wars kinda primed me for utopian fiction.

Then in college, the sexuality stuff crashed around me. There wasn't any real books on bisexuality that were not SFF until '92 I think. So I ended up reading all of the Journal Entries series off usenet which started off as furry Ringworld with enough serial numbers filed off to avoid being sued. It's the first fiction I encountered that wasn't either deeply coded in subtext or yet another AIDS tragedy. (I'm not alone in fanfic as one of the few places to find LGBT rep at the time.)

Then I found post-New Wave feminist science fiction, Le Guin (again), Slonczewski, Bujold, and Tepper although I wouldn't necessarily endorse her. Same-sex romance mods for BG2. A bit of D&D (I still approach game fic like D&D setting fic, it's a crying shame that MMORPG and CRPG player-character fic got buried by the min-maxers). Vonnegut and Heller solidified my religious pacifism. Now Queer SFF is definitely a thing via Mandelo, finally discovering Chip (it doesn't help that his most recommended is his least accessible), Yang as my new love, and Meadows. The Puppy snafu pretty much cemented my view that those forms of SFF are needed, and if you don't like it, there's plenty of other books.

It's made me more aware of some that I wasn't aware of, before, and given me a lot more information and differing perspectives on a lot of things.

Still a hard-core hippy liberal, though.

Not really. I've always been very left wing on social issues.

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[ SECRET POST #4067 ]

Has fandom changed your political views?

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SA

Re: SA

Re: Has fandom changed your political views?

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Re: Has fandom changed your political views?

Re: Has fandom changed your political views?

Re: Has fandom changed your political views?

Re: Has fandom changed your political views?

Re: Has fandom changed your political views?

Re: Has fandom changed your political views?

Re: Has fandom changed your political views?

AYRT

Re: Has fandom changed your political views?

Re: Has fandom changed your political views?

Re: Has fandom changed your political views?

Re: Has fandom changed your political views?

Re: Has fandom changed your political views?

Re: Has fandom changed your political views?