Fanfic Archive Adds Download Options

[Pandarus]

Worldwalker, like it or not fanfiction is a predominantly female space. The interlocking fanfiction communities do not marginalise women's voices, or punish women for expressing themselves openly about their identities, their fears or their desires in their writing. Women get to be fannish together, and to discuss the serial comma together, and to have conversations in which gender is irrelevant - but they also get to have conversations, and write stories, that they WOULD NOT HAVE if they weren't in a safe space, where they are not the minority.

Now, fanfiction is certainly not all about sex - but a lot of it DOES deal with sex and desire. That business of women (of all ages, ethnicities and orientations) exploring intimacy and desire is a major component of fanfic, and it's the bit that tends to freak out archives. The AO3 are not going to freak out about it, and are not embarrassed or ashamed of it. They're certainly not saying everyone has to write hot Snape-on-squid porn, but they're saying that if you want to do that, they've got your back.

Men don't need a safe space in which to talk about sex and sexuality without fear of being stigmatised, because THE WHOLE WORLD is already set up to prioritise the male perspective on desire.

... I think that perhaps what the AO3 team are saying, and what you're hearing, aren't quite the same thing.

You seem to be hearing: "GIRLS' CLUBHOUSE! NO BOYS ALLOWED! BOYS SUCK!"

Whereas they seem to me to be saying: "Girls built this clubhouse, and girls are definitely welcome here."

It's a little bit like someone in the middle of a predominantly Jewish area building a Kosher deli & coffee shop, and making it clear on the sign that they keep kosher. That isn't a secret code for "Fuck off, all non-Jews!" That's just telling me that they keep kosher, and that their coffee shop is a safe place for people who keep kosher to come and hang out. But I am still totally welcome to go and buy a coffee and a bagel, and sit and chat, and play chess, and become a regular, even if I'm an Atheist or Catholic or Hindu or Muslim or whatever - so long as I'm not going to go around insulting kosher food and grumbling that Hitler had the right idea, and telling the owners that obviously Jews don't know the first thing about how to run a proper coffee shop. 'Cause they already told me on the door that they built this particular coffee shop, and that keeping kosher is of fundamental importance to them, and so they won't be changing that to pander to me, when there are already several million other places out there where I can happily consume non-kosher food.

[cfrizz]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

We have one person saying that women are discriminated against because male authors are more nominated more often for Hugos, and another person saying men are not discriminated against because even though they're told OTW is an organization of and for women, they're not legally prohibited from submitting stories to the archive. Which is it?


So it's okay to make the whole world comfortable for men, and if women find it useful, they can use it too? You're in favor of that idea?

I simply don't agree with defining who something is "for" in terms of what kind of chromosomes or organs someone has. Kind of funny, I suppose, in these days of identity politics, but that's how I roll.

When various businesses said that women could only hold menial or dead-end jobs, such as Home Depot in California back in 1994, I didn't agree with it.

When an OTW board members said "The OTW is an organization created to advocate for female-dominated transformative media fandom and its artworks. That is its purpose," I didn't agree with it.

And the only difference I see between them is one of quantity, not quality. Neither one is looking at the person, only at the chromosomes. They're both judging someone on who they are, not on what they can do or how well they can do it. Home Depot will now hire women (thanks to getting their asses sued off) and OTW will accept works by men (so long as they remember what OTW's purpose is). I can't see either one being a comfortable thing: knowing you are accepted only grudgingly and it's really for someone else, someone who differs from you not in their experience or ability but in their chromosomes.

Online, I don't have an identity as a man. I don't have an identity as a woman. I don't have an identity as transgendered. I have an identity as Worldwalker. Why do people keep trying to ignore Worldwalker and figure out who Worldwalker's poster is and what pronoun they should use for me? Do you agree with my ideas? Then you agree with Worldwalker. Do you disagree with my ideas? Then you disagree with Worldwalker. You're not agreeing or disagreeing with what bathroom the person sitting between my keyboard and my chair uses -- you're agreeing or disagreeing with me. I'm not what anyone expects of whoever I am; I'm Worldwalker. Look at what I say, not what you think I should say based on who I am (and if you're deciding what I'm really saying based on who you think I am, let me remind you that the possibility exists that you may have guessed wrong).

I've many seen people in many places say that the answer to them being on the bottom is for them to now be on the top (if you don't believe me, consider the public statements of your least-favorite political group). But that's not the answer. Our mothers weren't as dumb as we thought when they told us two wrongs don't make a right. They don't; they just make two wrongs where there was one before. If there is a history of discrimination against women in a given field, the answer is not to codify some different discrimination. The answer is to eliminate discrimination, so that nobody is judged by anything but what really matters: who they are, not what they are.

That's where I disagree with OTW. This is 2010, almost 2011. Nothing should be for men, or for women, or anyone else. Things should be for people, and we should be able to say that what happened decades ago -- or days ago -- is in the past, and we're not going to repeat the mistakes of the past going into the future. A just and fair evaluation of the past of fanfic will show who the people involved were. People that matters to will know. But the future should be based, not on men or women, young or old, any religion or none at all, or anything else -- the future should be based on writing. That is, after all, what fanfic is about.

(and I will get some links up when I've had something more closely resembling sleep; my current level of consciousness is bordering on "un-")

Originally Posted by Pandarus

Worldwalker, like it or not fanfiction is a predominantly female space. The interlocking fanfiction communities do not marginalise women's voices, or punish women for expressing themselves openly about their identities, their fears or their desires in their writing. Women get to be fannish together, and to discuss the serial comma together, and to have conversations in which gender is irrelevant - but they also get to have conversations, and write stories, that they WOULD NOT HAVE if they weren't in a safe space, where they are not the minority.

Now, fanfiction is certainly not all about sex - but a lot of it DOES deal with sex and desire. That business of women (of all ages, ethnicities and orientations) exploring intimacy and desire is a major component of fanfic, and it's the bit that tends to freak out archives. The AO3 are not going to freak out about it, and are not embarrassed or ashamed of it. They're certainly not saying everyone has to write hot Snape-on-squid porn, but they're saying that if you want to do that, they've got your back.

Men don't need a safe space in which to talk about sex and sexuality without fear of being stigmatised, because THE WHOLE WORLD is already set up to prioritise the male perspective on desire.

... I think that perhaps what the AO3 team are saying, and what you're hearing, aren't quite the same thing.

You seem to be hearing: "GIRLS' CLUBHOUSE! NO BOYS ALLOWED! BOYS SUCK!"

Whereas they seem to me to be saying: "Girls built this clubhouse, and girls are definitely welcome here."

It's a little bit like someone in the middle of a predominantly Jewish area building a Kosher deli & coffee shop, and making it clear on the sign that they keep kosher. That isn't a secret code for "Fuck off, all non-Jews!" That's just telling me that they keep kosher, and that their coffee shop is a safe place for people who keep kosher to come and hang out. But I am still totally welcome to go and buy a coffee and a bagel, and sit and chat, and play chess, and become a regular, even if I'm an Atheist or Catholic or Hindu or Muslim or whatever - so long as I'm not going to go around insulting kosher food and grumbling that Hitler had the right idea, and telling the owners that obviously Jews don't know the first thing about how to run a proper coffee shop. 'Cause they already told me on the door that they built this particular coffee shop, and that keeping kosher is of fundamental importance to them, and so they won't be changing that to pander to me, when there are already several million other places out there where I can happily consume non-kosher food.

Outstanding posts from both of you, Thank you!

Both of you have summed up the facts of how life is for men and women in our current society. We have come a long way, and still have a long way to go before we reach a truly impartial genderless specific non-assumption making society.

I try not to get too caught up in these types of things since, there is very little I can do about it. Nor will I deny myself the use of the board mentioned above since one fanatical view doesn't represent the views of everyone else on the board.

All I can do is try my best to not make assumptions and give everyone the benefit of the doubt until they prove themselves not worthy of having it.

[Worldwalker]

Welcome to MobileRead, Pandarus. You might want to look into some of the other threads, too, especially in our "introduce yourself" area.

Anyway, I think we're looking at things totally differently. You're looking at things strictly from a gender-based perspective: Something is men's stuff, something else is women's stuff, and the important thing isn't the stuff; it's what kind of chromosomes the person who wrote it has. Isn't that exactly what people are trying to get away from -- the whole idea that who someone happens to be is more important than what he or she writes?

Let's say, for example, that I'm a woman who writes military SF. Would it be right for Baen Books to prohibit me for writing for them, since they only buy military SF by men? Obviously that would be wrong (and besides, would you want to be the one to tell Elizabeth Moon that?). There would be, I think, a lot of people objecting to that. "She writes good books; nobody should care what she looks like." Yes, there are more male military SF writers than there are female ones. But does that mean that the market, and the authors, should be always and exclusively male? That they should celebrate only male contributions to the genre? That women should be made to feel unwelcome? I read military SF, and I want to read good military SF; they could take all the names off the covers and the books would still be good or bad or otherwise.

Let's say, for another example, that I'm a man who writes fanfic. Why does "The OTW is an organization created to advocate for female-dominated transformative media fandom and its artworks. That is its purpose" suddenly become a Good Thing? Why is it suddenly okay to make decisions based on someone's chromosomes, not their writing, when that someone is male? I would think that women, knowing what it is to be discriminated against based on who they are, not on what they can do, should be the last people to look at body form instead of actions.

This exchange is attributed (wrongly) to Winston Churchill:

Churchill to lady socialite: Would you sleep with me for a million pounds?
Socialite: A million pounds? Well ... of course.
Churchill: Would you sleep with me for five pounds?
Socialite: What kind of woman do you take me for?
Churchill: We've already settled that; now we're just haggling over the price.

That's what "reverse" discrimination is: haggling over the price. There is only discrimination. Either you take (gender, color, age, religion, whatever) into consideration, or you don't. Establishing quotas, set-asides, "safe spaces", or anything else based on some such criterion winds up with the same thing: Caring about what someone is, not what they can do. Either we embrace discrimination or we reject it. It's either right or wrong. If we try to say "well, discrimination is right some of the time," we're like the socialite, saying Mr. Churchill is acceptable at one price but not at another. Personally, I'm just going to say that it's wrong, and not haggle over the price.

[whitearrow]

Can you please point out a single incidence of *actual* discrimination by the Archive or the OTW? Just one. A single male who's been told he can't use the archive, submit an article to the academic journal, participate in the wiki, join a committee, run for the board -- anything.

Because without that, you are basically arguing that a group has no right to support and advocate for its members, to choose its own constituency as long as it doesn't discriminate against others who agree with its goals... and that is a point of view with which I fundamentally disagree. And it's where your "reverse discrimination" argument falls down. Unless you can point out some actual discrimination.

And no, I don't look at the issue as "Something is men's stuff, something else is women's stuff" -- I look at it as people have the right to associate and have their own viewpoints. The viewpoint that women's fannish activities are often trivialized, ghettoized or ignored is not without evidence to support it, and to create an organization that actively supports women's fannish endeavors doesn't mean that men aren't welcome as well. It just means that women won't be trivialized, ghettoized or ignored.

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by whitearrow

The viewpoint that women's fannish activities are often trivialized, ghettoized or ignored is not without evidence to support it....

Is the evidence available online? I'd be interested to learn more, but so far this debate has been rather short of facts.

[whitearrow]

Do you really need a scientific survey to demonstrate that, say, sports fandom is well-accepted by society, and, say, fanfic writing isn't? Seriously?

[Sparrow]

It'd help (although I didn't have sports fandom specifically in mind) - you did say "The viewpoint that women's fannish activities are often trivialized, ghettoized or ignored is not without evidence to support it".

I think it would be useful to see what you have in mind.

[BexBits]

Originally Posted by whitearrow

Do you really need a scientific survey to demonstrate that, say, sports fandom is well-accepted by society, and, say, fanfic writing isn't? Seriously?

Women can't be sports fans?

My daughter will be so disappointed.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

Is the evidence available online? I'd be interested to learn more, but so far this debate has been rather short of facts.

From Fandom and Male Privilege

...the majority of my social life was either gaming or hanging out with my gaming-geek friends. As should be no surprise, the majority of those friends were men. In a group of, oh, about 30 or so people in various concentric circles, there were about four women who regularly showed up at parties and other functions.

After a while, we began organizing "chick nights," gatherings of just the four of us and maybe some other women we knew from outside the group. For reasons that were often kind of bizarre, some of the men in the group took exception to this. They never organized nights at which we were excluded. When we pointed out that by the law of averages, a good half of the various social outings ended up being guy-only, they replied that it was not the same thing.

"Look," I finally said to one of them, "when we get together Saturday night, we're going to paint our nails and put goop on our faces and play with each others' hair and watch movies with really hot guys and talk about how hot the guys are and probably talk about sex and periods and all that fun stuff. Do you really have any interest in that?"

"No," he replied, "but we could do other stuff instead."
...
A situation that is perfectly equal between men and women is perceived as being biased in favor of women.

And if you don't believe me, you've never been a married woman who kept her family name. I have had students hold that up as proof of my "sexism." My own brother told me that he could never marry a woman who kept her name because "everyone would know who ruled that relationship." Perfect equality - my husband keeps his name and I keep mine – is held as a statement of superiority on my part.

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

From Fandom and Male Privilege

Thanks for the link.

[whitearrow]

Originally Posted by BexBits

Women can't be sports fans?

I didn't say that. I didn't say men can't be fanfic writers, either. But I don't think there's a real argument, either, that these are activities where men (most professional sports) and women (fanfic), respectively, predominate.

[cfrizz]

"Let's see. I happen to believe that no, men don't generally like or write female characters as well as women do male ones. I base this on the fact that over two years of frequent discussion on a large (2500+ members at that time) forum dedicated to a particular fantasy series, there would always be far more bashing from men against female characters than from women against male ones. When the forum was polled, a majority of the men said they preferred male PoVs, and many even said that they wouldn't be likely to read a book which featured mostly or solely female PoV characters.

Also, in the field of SF and fantasy, I have come across exactly two male authors whom I think consistently write women as people, not as... women. (Well, three if you count a certain scriptwriter). Female authors generally do a lot better with male characters."

This statement pretty much sums up where it's at for fan fic of all kinds.

I love Star Trek. The last ST show I watched all the way through was Voyager. I was absolutely delighted that they FINALLY put a woman in the Captains chair. I loved that they had women in roles that did other things besides care giving.

So I went on the TrekToday.com Voyager forum and what did I find? Basically it was/is a male dominated board a great many of whom DESPISED Capt. Janeway/Kate Mulgrew, the only meaningful discussion of B'Elanna Torres & Seven Of Nine that was warranted was talk of how hot they are & the size of their breasts, the catsuits worn, blah blah blah.

It was pretty clear to me that a good many there, had a problem with women in positions of power and could only put them down or trivialize their roles. Needless to say, I didn't hang out, or participate there.

Naturally I wanted to find a forum that discussed this show in a meaningful way.

Where I ended up was in forums generally dominated by lesbians. This was where I got introduced to Slash fiction which I knew nothing about.

While this was considerably better than the other forum, it wasn't perfect either. A great many of the women there expressed only disdain for the male characters if not outright hatred (Especially for Chacotay). Some went overboard with expressing their personal fantasies of how Kate Mulgrew & Jeri Ryan actually had the hots for each other regardless of all evidence to the contrary.

Whenever I pointed out the reality of the situation & how some of them were really being disrespectful to the actresses involved and that their comments could easily be picked up all over the web leaving people with bad feelings about the forum, I would be attacked, and was questioned as to why as a straight woman I would even be on the board.

I told them why I was there & that even though it wasn't perfect it was a lot better than reading derogatory comments from adolescent boys or men with one track minds!

Most of those who disliked the fact that I wouldn't ignore some of the more blatant attitudes & opinions left & things are more balanced now.

I know of 1 current writer who is a man who writes ST F/F slash fiction & is very good. He does a very good job of keeping all the characters balanced & in character. It seems to be very hard for some whether female or male writers to keep this balance without either showing their dislike/trivialization of either males or females.

I can't tell you how many stories I have read & dumped that were used as an excuse to bash Chacotay. Every story some wrote HAD to have this element it got old real fast. Or other stories that EVERY woman/man suddenly turned gay, that also got old fast.

I also have read a book by an author who participates here who had maybe all of 2 women represented in his book & neither were in roles of any importance. Sorry but in this day and age, that is simply unacceptable.

Stereotypes die hard, and society indoctrination dies even harder. There may well be more men then we know of who write fan fic, but don't make it known for fear of the women who might find out & pitch a fit, or other men who might find out & thereby ridiculing these men and calling them gay.

I've seen it happen over & over again on audio related boards that I'm a member of. Any man that expressed the slightest opinion of respecting his wife/women in general were mocked & put down, until I stood up & defended these men for being REAL men & not some overly macho thugs who have to constantly prove that they are on a bulletin board.

Like I said before, we have come a long way, but still have a long way to go to get to a good balance in this world.

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

I also have read a book by an author who participates here who had maybe all of 2 women represented in his book & neither were in roles of any importance. Sorry but in this day and age, that is simply unacceptable.

I don't have a problem with a book being primarily mono-gendered.

I think most writers write their own gender best, and I'd rather have good characterisation than bad merely to fill up a quota.

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

I also have read a book by an author who participates here who had maybe all of 2 women represented in his book & neither were in roles of any importance. Sorry but in this day and age, that is simply unacceptable.

I have to disagree here.

Would you say that a book that featured almost all women was "simply unacceptable"?

Do you want those books (and everything else) that have to have one person of just about every definable group, including the smart kid who is, naturally, a geek, and the one in the wheelchair who is always optimistic about everything, because they give you a frontal lobotomy along with your wheels? The books whose message is "life sucks; deal with it" because they have to be "relevant" to kids whose lives suck, instead of being, say, some of the Tom Swift books, that presented something really cool to aspire to? How many women is "enough" women? How many men is "enough" men? Where do the people who don't present as either fit in?

I don't count characters. I don't check to see how many of them look like me. When you get right down to it, nobody but me is exactly like me anyway. What I care about is whether a character is interesting to read about, not whether they stare back at me when I look in a mirror. All my life I've read about people who are younger, older, different races, different genders, different nationalities, and I don't think it was until I got into high school that someone told me I was supposed to care. I told them where to get off, and went back to reading the books I enjoyed.

Good stories are what matters. A good story can have anyone in it. If someone writes good male characters, or good female characters, or good characters that they carefully avoid mentioning any sex in connection with, more power to them; if it's a good story, I'll read it. And if the story is no good, it doesn't matter if it's got ten clones of me in it; it's still no good.

Freedom from discrimination means freedom from discrimination, not just discriminating a different way. Counting characters ... saying a book isn't acceptable because it doesn't have enough women, or enough men, or enough left-handed, black, bald, tall, middle-aged, unmarried, Nigerian truck drivers, is just another sort of discrimination. Isn't that what we're trying to get away from?

[citac]

I wish I lived in a world where being male/female/other or brown/black/red/yellow/white does not matter, but the fact is that in most cases it does matter. It matters that we're men and women and other, and that women are often marginalized and need their safe spaces. As a woman, I don't feel safe on the street in my country, I often don't feel safe online, and I'm thankful that there's a place where men aren't the center of everything, that's welcoming to women, but doesn't exclude those who identify as men or other.

Elfwreck already posted the link to OTW 's TOS and Fandom and male privilege, and this might be another link of interest to some: Ilyka Damen