beckyh2112 | 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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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".

Why I Don't Care for OTW

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