beckyh2112 | Why I Don't Care for OTW

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fandom

Why I Don't Care for OTW

No matter how much male they feel, transformative works belong to what I like to call the female part of fandom.

You know, this whole post is astonishingly sexist and full of useless, ill-informed generalizations.

Apparently discussing the relationships in a show is more 'transformative' than discussing the special effects. Or, like most of the males I know in Transformers, discussing the relative merits of Character A vs. Character B.

But apparently, to be 'transformative', you have to be discussing sex and relationships in the fandom.

This is just one idiot, who apparently ran away from comments disagreeing with her.

Yet, I've noticed this continuing idea, from OTW and their supporters, that to be a fan of the sort they care about, you have to be female or part of the 'female' side of fandom. This sort of creativity is just as "transformative" as slashfic. I know equal numbers of Transformers fanartists from either gender. I read a fair amount of Transformers fanfic by males.

So, how am I participating in a 'female' side of fandom? How can people even define fandom as being 'male' or 'female'? Dividing it up like that sets an implication that one side is better than the other, especially with OTW's emphasis on examination of the female side of fandom.

I believe that approaching an analysis of fandom from an academic-feminist perspective is going to be inherently flawed when you come to such fandoms as Transformers. Just as I believe that analyzing fandom as a whole based on exposures to individual fandoms is inherently flawed. Different fandoms have different cultures.

I don't like OTW. I find their seeking for legality to be something to be extremely nervous about. I find the gobzillions of meta posts about why people joined OTW to be intensely off-putting. I dislike them using

heidi8 as one of their Intellectual Property lawyers, as she's been a big defender and close friend of Cassandra Claire. I've never particularly liked the academic-feminist form of analysis that they seem to be using, at least not if it isn't in conjunction with another form of analysis.

I don't think what they are talking about providing is worth my time, especially when they seem structured in such a way as to shut out half the fandom that I love and participate in.

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Time for you to get in there and talk with OTW about it? Perhaps?

Actually, if you don't mind, I'd be interested to know which fandoms you know of that are predominantly male. Transformers, I know, and I know one male who writes fic in that fandom. POTC had a lot of men involved because of the sailing angle, and maybe it still does-- I've devolved into a miniscule little corner there. HP? I'm sorta sure it's 95% women...

I wrote one fic for Snake Plissken and found that almost all Plissken writers were men.

And that's all I know. What else?

Time for you to get in there and talk with OTW about it? Perhaps?

Why? They've already given me reasons unrelated to their academic analysis for me to not support what they're trying to accomplish. They're not, as I pointed out in my post, providing anything that I view valuable enough to spend my time on.

I don't see any particular benefits to bringing up this position to OTW, and I do see a good chance that I'll either be ignored, argued with, or talked past.

Transformers is a big one. Back when I was into it (eight years ago now), DragonballZ was a largely male fandom. The Matrix I always got the impression of as being a pretty even split, maybe a little higher on females than males, but you couldn't call it predominately female. Again, though, I'm several years out-of-date on that one.

Transformers is a big one. Back when I was into it (eight years ago now), DragonballZ was a largely male fandom. The Matrix I always got the impression of as being a pretty even split, maybe a little higher on females than males, but you couldn't call it predominately female. Again, though, I'm several years out-of-date on that one.

Honestly, I think overall fanfiction fandom is predominantly female. There are some fandoms within, which I've heard are not exactly that way, DC Comics springs to mind. But I've been in 6 major fanfiction fandoms over the last 15 years, not to mention numerous ones which I've only dipped my toes in, and all of them have been predominantly female.

I bet if you did a poll and linked it to many communities, you'd fine that the majority of people who participate in fanfiction fandom are female. Of course, it's not exactly scientific, but it certainly would show an overall trend.

So in that way, OTW is correct in stating that fanfiction media fandom is predominantly female.

OTW, however, has stated that it is not exclusively about fanfiction fandom. It is about fan-creators, which includes a lot more than fanfiction.

You are correct. But, I still think that fanfiction is a larger part of 'transformative' fandom overall. And since fanfiction is predominantly female...

And all my anecdotal experience with art, has been that predominantly the creators are female. But that's the fandoms I've been in.

I still would like to see a poll!

A poll would be a pain to do as digging out the major communities of even a decent sample size of fandoms would be annoying.

I note that my own anecdotal experience with fan-creators in most of my fandoms is that there are many male fan-creators. *doesn't deal with a large enough sampling of the fandoms to feel comfortable with claiming predominance for one gender or another*

Further thoughts on why classifying fandom as predominately female is bad: It introduces and may internalize a bias in researchers to view male fan-creators as aberrations. This is not helpful to academic analysis.

It also suggests an exclusion of male fan-creators. This may not be intended, and it may not be read by some male fan-creators, but it is a visible implication. This is not helpful to OTW's attempts to be inclusive of all fandoms.

Also, examining fandom 'overall' leads to basing fandom analysis on the greatest common denominator, which has limited usefulness to academic analysis.

I believe that fanfiction fandom is predominantly female. Art, I'm not sure, I don't have any experience with that.

As for academics. Don't know, personally don't really care, I'm not an academic, or even been to University.

But I know enough to say that what is good or bad, is arbitrary.

Given that part of what OTW wants to do is academic analysis, viewing what they're doing from the standpoint of how it effects their analysis is a good point for criticism.

But I know enough to say that what is good or bad, is arbitrary.

This is bad logic and can be used wickedly. Not everything is subjective, especially when a person is criticizing an organization in their efforts to achieve stated goals.

Given that part of what OTW wants to do is academic analysis

Yeah, not really my thing, but I get that other people are into that. Myself, I find it very difficult to follow some of the high level academic stuff.

Not everything is subjective

I believe everything is. I'm Taoist :) But that's a totally different subject. And best not to be talked about in this forum.

And that was me above.

I'd like to point out that by the logic you are using, sometimes rape is acceptable. If you view everything as subjective and good/bad as being arbitrary designators, that is.

Ummm, yeah....well.

I don't want to drag the debate of relativism here (which is a large part of a lot of eastern philosophies/religions). I'd be happy to debate it if you email me.

"But I know enough to say that what is good or bad, is arbitrary."

Whaaa? We're talking about a specific group of people in an organisation who want to meet specific objectives - "good" and "bad" is _not_ arbitrary here. "That's bad" means "that's not going to achieve the stated objectives and may work against them". As Becky has pointed out, classifying fandom as primarily female interferes with their stated objectives - hence, "bad".

I bet if you did a poll and linked it to many communities,

Seems you're confusing fandom and Lj. Lj definitely has a mostly female userbase (http://perfica.insanejournal.com/17602.html#cutid1), so polling communities here would be fishing for data in an extremely limited pool.

I didn't just mean LJ :)

Might wanna keep an eye on that wording, then.

Apologies, I didn't think 'community' was an LJ only term.

I've been on mailing lists and forums before going to LJ, and I considered those communities as well.

So, for the interest of not confusing anyone.

I would be interesting if a poll was created in a neutral territory, as in a polling website. Where people who are interested, would link them to their boards/forums/blogs/communities/mailing lists/etc specifically centred around 'transformative works' as defined by OTW. To see the gender dynamics.

It won't be scientific of course.

And when I moved to LJ in 2001, I moved from a mailing list, at the beginning fandom was a large part of LJ (I don't know about now), and then, as now, LJ was female dominated.

I think there is something to that.

And when I moved to LJ in 2001, I moved from a mailing list, at the beginning fandom was a large part of LJ (I don't know about now), and then, as now, LJ was female dominated.

This brings up the counterpoint: Was LJ a large part of fandom?

Was LJ a large part of fandom?

I think so, from my experience. Because I've tried to find other 'communities' out there a few years back, outside of LJ, and there are very few, and most link back to LJ.

Ie, most of their members also have LJ accounts.

But we will probably never know.

*nods* I note that in my own experience, Transformers is the first fandom I've been involved in where even a little bit of my involvement in distributing and discussing fan-creations has been through Livejournal.

I know of at least one group of fans of a SF television show who have very little presence on LJ.

Given the unwelcome, if not outright vicious, reception this fandom gets from general fan communities like LJ, they've mostly opted to keep to themselves on e-mail lists and separate boards.

I would estimate the membership is equally divided between men and women.

Given the unwelcome, if not outright vicious

I have no idea what you're referring to. (am I suppose to?).

So, I can't comment.

Other than there are fan groups outside LJ, no.

fandom_counts is any indication, fandom is but a (vocal cranky) blip in Lj's statistics. Which may explain why Lj blew so many people off during Strikethrough.

You said "neutral territory" and "OTW" in the same sentence and I giggled.

Apologies for butting in, but the OTW website claims to be for all 'Transformative Works,' which they seem to translate into all fanworks. Fanworks are not limited strictly to fanfiction. Fanart follows under that umbrella, as well, and there are more than plenty male fanartists out there. Things like comics, photocomics, etc, would also fall under their definition of 'Transformative works.'

Of course, for that matter, there's also Transformative Activities. Considering roleplay includes examining the characters well enough to be able to act them out, shouldn't that be Transformative? And if it is, again, plenty of males get involved in that.

But now we're running into an essential problem in the use of the word: it's a little broad and not particularly well defined. If it applies to everything they say it does, it is, in fact, so broad as to be nearly useless, especially as a legal term.

Of course, there's also the question: why ISN'T a discussion of special effects or technicalities transformative? Comparing the fiction with the reality, trying to work out in one's mind how the little nuts and bolts and crunchy stuff about how things like Transformers or Star Wars or Star Trek or whatnot work can be a fascinating, enjoyable, and educational challenge, and what's more, having things 'worked out' in one's mind, whether it makes sense from the real world perspective or even the canon perspective or not, does alter the viewer's perception of the canon in question.

Edit: Oh, leakin' lubricant! Edited to correct the usage of bboard tags instead of html tags. In the battle between the [ and the <, this round went to the [. :/

Edited 2008-01-19 00:37 (UTC)

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Why I Don't Care for OTW

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