While many computing studies have a male bias this one has, in all probability a female one. The stereotype of the ‘Fan’ as portrayed in the media tends to be along the line of ‘white, male, socially inept virgin’. This image has been frequently contested and
7
It would be nice to think that the respective gender of the romantic leads was immaterial however evidence suggests that in many countries this is not the case and it is for this reason we must acknowledge that slash has a controversial element.
8
85.53%
13.47% 0.43%
0.57%
Q3.10 - Fan and Original Author Representation (of 698 respondents who specified)
Fan only Fan and original Fan and ori- ginal for pro- fessional Original only
Figure 3.1: Distribution of ‘Fan’ and ‘Original’ Authors
discredited and yet it endures. It is perhaps for this reason that a significant proportion of the social studies done on media fans noted the level of female involvement.
“While a few activities... may be resistant to including women equally, those same women find themselves an overwhelming majority among media fans who create, read and discuss their community’s own fiction and art based on the characters and situations in their favorite television, movie and even book series.”(Bacon-Smith, 1992, P. 22)
“This group [media fans] is largely female, largely white, largely middle class, though it welcomes into its ranks many who do not fit this description” (Jenkins, 1992, P. 1)
“Members of television fan networks are overwhelmingly female; women control the activity and production.” (Gillilan, 1998, P. 184)
These findings span both off and online fandom. Traditionally early adopters of new technologies are seen as men, and often young men (incidently the demographic that is most often targeted, both with regards to design and publicity of new technology and as the audience for the various shows and films that inspire the fandoms). However, this is not always the case: Herring et al. (2004) argues that “a historical account of weblogs that accorded a central place to personal journals – as their prevalence merits – would thus identify females as the creators, early adopters, and most characteristic current users of weblogs”. Costello goes as far as saying that in terms of gender “the general Internet sample from the most recent GVU survey [1998] is virtually a mirror image of the cyber-fan sample” (Costello, 1999, P. 134 – 135). Despite this majority, MacDonald (1998, P. 151) reports that “cultural conversational norms that denigrate
woman’s talk appear to be winning out in cyberspace - the female Quantum Leap fans
have been forced into a private fringe realm”. Bury (2005) sees a division along the lines of gender occurring almost immediately in direct contradiction to the early ideals of cyberspace utopia.
“As quickly as they arrived, groups of female fans turned their backs on public spaces of interaction such as UseNet... Facing varying degrees of harassment and denigration on the male-dominated forums, many female fans chose to stake out and colonize cyberspaces of their own in the form of private mailing lists” (Bury, 2005, P. 1 – 2)
This fits with the experience of online fandom detailed by Janis Cortese in Spender (1995), where the online fan presence was strongly male dominated and unreceptive to female appreciation of the male members of the Star Trek crew. This is not the only such case. The Qui-Gon Jinn Discussion List traces its routes back to a no-longer extant
thread ‘being a Jedi never looked so good’9 on TheForce.Net’s10 bulletin board. The
initial comment receives both a positive and negative response, the negative focusing on the suggestion that the initial poster is letting her hormones overcome her judgement or derogatory about any thread perceived as focusing on the physical characteristics of the actor/characters. The response to this criticism by the original poster clearly positions the discussion within gender lines. The original poster notes that the critical responses were expected. The comparison with male fans discussing the attractiveness of Natalie Portman is both acknowledged (the male fans can effuse over an actress, why can’t the female fans over a male character?) and dismissed as not being a fair comparison
(the thread concerning thecharacter, of which physical appeal might be a part but that
acknowledgement not invalidating the rest of the character discussion). The gender of the detractors is highlighted as the reason they were unlikely to regard the discussion with sympathy, the assumption clearly being made that this sympathy/understanding was
9
http://www.qui-gonline.org/began.htm
shown to the male dominated threads discussing the attributes of the actresses11(Various Forum Posters, 1999).
More recently, similar tension can be seen in the discussion on the fifthHighlander film,
‘The Source’, on the official bulletin board12. A synopsis of the movie appeared on a
publicist’s webpage and, having been discovered by fans, caused a large amount of debate and speculation before it was removed. The thread was initiated on the official board on 19 March 2006 and a number of separate discussions also occurred, for example on the
highlander lj community journal13. The division between those on the official boards
and those within the LiveJournal community is noticeable. The posts on highlander lj (female-dominated) suggest that many of the members do not feel comfortable in the environment found on the official sites and therefore avoid them. An effort is instigated
to make sure that the feelings of the female fans appear on the official site14.
A change in the thread on the official site can be seen coinciding with this decision. From discussing which version of the script the synopsis might have been drawn from, and its possible accuracy, the discussion was redirected to the relative merits, or lack thereof, within the script and the effect that certain elements to the story might have on the fans. The emotional attachment to some characters and the relative importance of those characters versus the franchise were repeatedly raised in arguments. For some the franchise was more important then any particular characters (or any particular actors), for others the characters were why they were interested in the franchise and if the official sources did not provide for them then they could, and would, leave for ‘fanfictionland’. While not exclusively, the division was broadly down gender lines (as far as can be identified). Although some qualifications are used, a good proportion of female fans, especially those attending conventions, were characterised as being interested in the actors rather than plot, characterisation or mythical integrity. To some on the message board they were ‘extreme’, ‘scary’ and ‘irrational’. Meanwhile the idea that the film, and indeed the franchise, is being aimed at the young, male demographic to the exclusion on the strong female fanbase was raised on a number of separate occasions. While there was actually a consensus on the idea that the death of a specific, well liked character would be unfortunate, especially if done carelessly, the disagreements on the reason for this belief obscured any agreement.
What we see in this case are two spaces: the general space where (female) desires are suspect, and what might be termed the feminine space. Although it may not have been their motivation or intention, this space was created by female fans to allow them
11It should be noted that the post comparing the thread to the one on Natalie Portman does appear
to be objecting to both as shallow rather than privileging one over the other, however that does not appear to be the spirit in which the comment was taken.
12 http://www.highlander-community.com/cgi-bin/messageboard/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_ topic;f=17;t=000964 13 http://community.livejournal.com/highlander_lj/108311.html 14
While gender is not specifically noted the implication is clear and the language couched in ‘us vs them’ termshttp://community.livejournal.com/highlander_lj/111296.html
freedom from disapproving influences. While using the term ‘feminine’ because of the
perceived female dominance of this area (even the language shows a female bias15), it is
important to mention that, while women may be in the majority, there are few places which have active bars on who can participate. While early lists may have deliberately emphasised the female to deter male interests this separatism is rarely seen on modern lists where anyone is welcome as long as they respect the community. No disrespect is intended to those men, or others who do not choose to identify as female, who chose to participate.
Given the above situation, it might be suggested that, rather than just demonstrating the typical and unequivocal male bias and double standards as suggested by Spender (1995), what we see in Cortese’s case, and similar, was misfortune, both in the choice of discussion group and in unknowingly hitting a contentious subject due to the tensions going on in the wider community. The problem here, other than the lack of civility shown by the group she joined, was that as a newcomer Cortese had few clues as to how to navigate the disparate sprawl of related groups and find ones appropriate for her specific interests. Whether this interest would have included the large amount of fan fiction undoubtedly existing and featuring those same Star Trek crew members about whom she posted we have no way of knowing but the principle and the problem of finding the right group for any given user is the same. While perhaps less obvious, there were many communities in existence at that point on the Internet where Cortese’s comments would have been welcomed and where she would have found herself among the gender majority.
This fits with what MacDonald (1998, P. 151) describes as ‘private fringe realms’. If the female influence has been relegated to such spaces then it might be expected that our interaction with them would be limited. This begs the question, how do we define fringe? Indeed, fringe from whose perspective? While this feminine space exists mostly separate from official sanction or support, in a number of fandoms there is very little or no official space. What happens when those on the fringe become the majority? As Bury (2005, P. 3) admits “Sheer numbers do ensure the female fans today have more options than private lists”.
The issue is one of direction. For many newcomers the obvious points of contact are official sites and fora set up by production companies, broadcasters and authorised fan clubs. Just as Bacon-Smith (1992) sees a progression from the initiated masses up the loose hierarchy within fandom, some members will move to more specialised communities. This can either be seen as moving out to the fringes away from the central power as objectified by the inspiring source material and its owner-creators, or moving to a higher level of discussion for those who demonstrate the requisite knowledge and
15The controller of a list is traditionally referred to as the ‘list mom’ and the application ‘Mary-
Sue’ is frequently used to describe characters of both sexes although the male equivalents ‘Marty-Sue’, ‘Marty-Stu’ and ‘Gary-Stu’ were eventually developed to try and bring balance. (see Glossary)
attitude. Where does ‘fringe’, with its negative connotations, stop and ‘elitist’, with its positive ones, start?
Having shown that studies identify a high percentage of women in online fandom but that they tend to cluster, it needs to be demonstrated that the specific area we are interested in, fan fiction writers, has a particular gender demographic before we can justify our assumption of female bias. Bury (2005, P. 2 – 3) describes spaces dedicated to fan fiction as examples of ‘women-centred spaces’. In his study of the Dark Shadows Fan Culture (Benshoff, 1998, P. 201) notes that, unlike previously studied science fiction fandoms which were predominantly female, Dark Shadows has an almost equal division
of genders. However he goes on to note “The majority of stories are serious in tone
and written by women; conversely, most of the stories with a comedic edge seem to be written by men” [emphasis mine]. Even in this egalitarian fandom the creation of fiction
is female dominated. 16
Costello (1999) showed that female fans were more likely to be involved as active social participants including in information exchange and fan fiction. This not only confirms the dominance of women in this domain but suggests that word of the survey is more likely to spread through female lead social exchanges. Evidence of this network effect was demonstrated by the forwarding of an advertisement for the survey by an unconnected person to a list that was under observation.
From the evidence laid out above it seems clear that the ratio of respondents to any study will clearly be biased towards female input. Since research has already investigated this area the decision was made not to focus specifically on gender or sexuality as factors and therefore questions in this area were not included as part of questionnaire due to sensitivity within the community about revealing such personal data. The extremity of this position in some areas of the fan fiction domain can be seen in the results published by Hinton (2006) in which 96.4% of the 365 people that responded to her survey on slash in the Harry Potter fandom identified themselves as female. While it is unlikely that the survey carried out as part of this thesis’ research and hers drew from exactly the same pool of respondents, the imbalance in conjunction with the previously mentioned research makes it extremely unlikely that it would have been possible to get anything close to an equal gender division.
16It is also interesting to note that in this fandom there is seen to be less overtly adult material than
is seen in other fandoms such as Beauty and the Beast (Benshoff, 1998, P. 207 – 208) and of those stories with adult content those written by men were found to be more sexually explicit and slash was notable in its rarity. One has to wonder both whether these facts are interconnected and whether the perceived community is complete as described. Since Benshoff is dealing with an offline, and therefore harder to track, community and one which appears to be comparatively prudish, the question must be raised as to whether there was a more underground community to which he did not have access. We raise these questions to highlight the difficulty of working with such communities prior to their growth online although the splintering described by (Coppa, 2006, P. 56 – 58) presents its own challenges and requires caution when making assumptions about cross-community expectations.
While in this thesis we are not just dealing with fan authors, there is, as we have already shown, a strong bias towards media-inspired rather than original writers within the respondents of our survey. For this reason it is assumed in this thesis that the majority of those making up our case study usergroup would identify as female. While there is no way to prove this supposition the tone of many of the responses suggested it was in fact correct.
Gender is an issue in that it is important to recognise that different people may feel happier in different environments. This thesis is not about creating a ‘feminine’ space but about helping people create a space in which they are comfortable and in helping others of similar mind find those spaces. The fact that this study will be dominated by female feedback allows us to compare and contrast with other male-user dominated studies but does not give opportunity within itself for such comparison. For these reasons and those laid out below, age was taken as the primary group division demographic.