[ 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)]

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).