[ SECRET POST #7026 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #7026 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 12 secrets from Secret Submission Post #1003.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

While obviously fandom has a misogyny problem because SOCIETY has a misogyny problem, I think going to war about the very EXISTENCE of trends within fandom is not a useful or interesting debate. If fandom is largely straight women, and straight women are more inclined towards ships with men they find appealing in them, then M/M and M/F are just going to be more popular than F/F. I don't see that as a crisis or anything worth all of the discussion it gets.

One thing that I DO think is worth discussing, though, is how fandom treats the female characters broadly. You can't tell people what they need to find interesting or compelling, and I think there are some valid reasons for finding female characters less compelling. But broadly female characters aren't rewarded a lot of respect by fans vis-a-vis their male counterparts, which feels much more actionable and important than increasing the percentage of F/F fics on AO3. As if people who can't be baseline normal about women would write good F/F ANYWAY.

[(Anonymous)]

+100

[(Anonymous)]

Well said!

[(Anonymous)]

OP here.

Hm. Well, this would need to be its whole own secret I guess, but I don't really find the idea that female-dominated fandom has a misogyny problem that compelling either, to be honest. I mean, I agree with it in the sense that it is kind of impossible not to be at least a bit misogynist in a society that is misogynist -- you can't fully unlearn that, and if that is all that people meant by it, I would agree. I also am not saying you can't find examples of outright misogyny by women in women-dominated fandom, because you absolutely can.

However, I don't think people are saying JUST that. I think usually people are saying that the low attention given to female characters and F/F ships is itself a sign of / example of fandom misogyny and I just don't agree with that. The reason behind this skepticism is because ALL the social spaces I have ever been in, IRL or online -- whether it's leftist political orgs, hobby clubs, including all-female book clubs, choirs, etc., schools, companies, academic departments, online forums, etc. -- none of them have ever had the same level of (1) buy-in to feminism, and (2) knowledge of feminism, as female-dominated fandom spaces have had for me. I am not joking. I cannot think of a single social space I've been in where I've felt as comfortable voicing feminist opinions and where people are feminist by default and where people are actually fucking informed about feminism and have intelligent opinions on it. I guess the only thing that could probably rival fandom is IDK, a gender studies department, maybe, but that's not a social space I regularly hang out in. In other spaces, including very leftist spaces I've been in, and very liberal spaces online, saying I'm a feminist or voicing a standard feminist opinion like giving an example of something that contributes to rape culture or whatever, will at the very least get me uncomfortable reluctant agreement and may get me serious pushback or outright dismissiveness of my intelligence. Female-dominated fandom can be sexist, but boy it is doing leagues better than the rest of society. So I don't really see why female-dominated fandom is being singled out as having a misogyny problem when it's basically the only social space that I feel has a credible case for NOT having a misogyny problem. (And I'm NOT saying it's perfect -- I am saying it is just the least sexist social space I have ever encountered in my life.)

Meanwhile, I know so many male-dominated parts of fandom that are obsessed with female characters and F/F ships, which I would not call feminist in any way (just to list a few: MLP/brony fandom, PMMM fandom, Umamusume fandom, Touhou Project fandom, etc. etc.). I just think if we are using "interest in female characters" and "interest in femslash" as yardsticks for measuring misogyny, that is an incredibly poor yardstick that seems to be leading to low-quality/inaccurate conclusions.

I don't disagree that you can point out and call out misogyny in fandom where you see it. It feels a little bit to me, though, like focusing on a leak in a bucket when the whole wider ship is sinking.

[(Anonymous)]

OP again. Just wanted to add that actually, a deep irony is that the very existence of this perennial forever-debate about slash vs. femslash and internalized misogyny in fandom itself illustrates what I'm talking about, which is that female-dominated fandom is unusually feminist and concerned with misogyny compared to any other space I can think of. In any other space, if I were to flag an issue of internalized misogyny, first, most people would not know what that even is because they don't have knowledge of feminist theory (misogyny, sure, but not internalized misogyny); two, even if they knew it, a substantial portion of the group would just not care about it as a problem (because they're not invested in combatting misogyny); that's if, three, the group isn't actively engaged in advancing an agenda of external misogyny...

I just don't know any spaces where a serious debate about internalized misogyny could get off the ground, let alone have the level of passion behind it that female-dominated fandom brings to it, and that illustrates my point that I don't think misogyny is a good lens of analysis of the issue here. I guess the fact that fandom is so concerned about this issue is a good thing but I feel like I'm going crazy seeing a circular firing squad of the most feminist social circle of women I know all accusing each other of misogyny...

[(Anonymous)]

SA here.

I apologize for being unclear; I actually agree with you completely. I meant to say that I don't think uneven quantities of M/M and M/F vs. F/F is a useful topic for feminist-minded people to focus their energy on, if their goal is to tackle misogyny in fandom.

I agree that female-dominated fandoms are probably more aware of feminist topics than most other spaces. But traditionally, there HAS been hostility for female characters and actors that doesn't seem to be completely coming from the male corners of a given fandom. I don't mean to say it's worse than (or probably even equal to) whatever male fans are doing, but it certainly exists. Anecdotally, I've had multiple (recent!) conversations with female friends who were VERY weird about female characters in various shows. I don't think those friends are likely to ever be persuaded to be invested enough in female characters to write F/F, but treating characters with baseline respect is a much lower bar that might actually be achievable, ykwim? I'm speaking as a man here, so I acknowledge that I'm out of my depth with this topic, but if someone wanted to speak about misogyny in fandom, that seems like it would be a more useful project than trying to guilt people into writing more F/F to prove that they don't hate women.

That being said, that circular firing squad you've described here feels pretty reminiscent of a lot of feminist thought. A through-line in especially second-wave feminism was trying to makes sense of the problem of, "If patriarchy is an oppressive force, then how do we reconcile a feminist woman's romantic/sexual interest in men?" I think this tension continues to play out in current conversations around male-centered women and the lack of F/F in female-dominated fandom spaces. I might be off-base here, but the latter seems like a bunch of women still grappling with the question, "If we care about women and their stories, then why aren't we compelled to write F/F?" I think your answer to that question is correct: it's an expression of aesthetic interest, not political thought.

[(Anonymous)]

OP here.

Thank you for coming back and clarifying! And yeah, I do think you've got the right theory about the reason why this debate is so prominent in fandom. Ironically, I think that tension between wanting to destroy patriarchy and being attracted to men -- and recognizing that being attracted to men does have the effect of lowering women and raising men in people's priorities -- all that has a gender-flipped expression in manosphere/Red Pill parts of the internet too. Obviously a very different form of politics, but Red Pill parts of the internet also crash hard on the rocks of trying to assert male supremacy over women while ALSO being attracted to women and being aware on some level that this gives women a LOT of power over them and their happiness. The political goals are very different in the two camps but I think feminist women too struggle with resolving that contradiction of attraction to men getting in the way of achieving their political program. (Even the MGTOW strain of thought in Red Pill is VERY similar to political lesbianism...)

But yeah, I don't think the solution through that contradiction is to treat it as very very bad and unfeminist to be attracted to men and constantly self-flagellating about it but rather to just acknowledge that most women ARE going to be mainly attracted to men and that will sometimes affect their emotional/motivational state, priorities, attitudes, etc. -- once aware of this, then you can find ways to minimize how much attraction or aesthetic appreciation negatively affect or compromise your political commitments and basically keep the two as separate and independent as possible. And as the person below said, it's also good for fandom to have a bit of a sense of perspective and keep in mind that how people treat fictional female characters matters way less than how they treat real women (which fandom has less access to).

[(Anonymous)]

I'm a little bit misogynist in my consumption of fiction because I don't need to turn to fiction to find amazing, interesting, lovable women. Those are called my IRL friends. Amazing, interesting, lovable men? Much easier to find in fiction than IRL.