Sorry about the lack of post yesterday and snippiness in comments, I've been sick.
A not-at-all-bad essay has been floating around on the topic of sexism in the brony community. It's actually got some of the same points I made in the book (indeed, one of the author's correspondents seems to have used almost the exact same words to describe her experiences as when I interviewed her), but with a stronger focus on the downside to being a woman in the brony community. Slightly off-putting that the author keeps referring to "males" and "females" and at one point equates "having a vagina" with being a woman, but it appears to be out of pure cisnormative ignorance rather than actual transphobia. It's obnoxious but adaptable to, is basically what I'm saying, and worth putting up with for the meat of the essay. Certainly it's given me some interesting avenues to look into for Book 2.
A lot of what he wrote also applies to fandom in general, but it seems to get "special treatment" when it's applied to bronies, gamers, and the fandoms that appear to have male connotations to their "mission statement."
ReplyDeleteI also was struck by the exact wording from the interview. I wonder if said respondent has a script she works from, or just says the same thing over and over again. Nonetheless, I found some of his views on anthro-aspects of the clop community interesting, and useful for the *hint-hint, wink-wink*.
Well, bronies, gamers, and comics fans have in common that their fandoms are overwhelmingly majority-male, so the Petrie multiplier is a vicious 25x. Add that geeks tend to be one of the more misogynistic communities (not up to the level of, say, the religious right, but certainly there's significantly more open misogyny and sexual harassment than you'd find in a typical workplace) and it gets nasty fast.
DeleteShe may have just copy-and-pasted parts of her response when presented with similar questions from two different people. Writing out that kind of experience is probably not a whole lot of fun.
While the article gives some interesting avenues to explore further on, I don't think I can use it directly. I feel the terminology and diction issues are pervasive enough to mark it as clearly not professional work, and given that my own work is already starting out as a self-published blog-to-book by an uncredentialed acafan with only a tenuous claim to the "aca," I don't want to give doubters the extra ammunition if I can avoid it.
It's not so much the majority male angle I was referencing, as it was that BRONY itself is a (I can't believe I'm using this term...) male construct. Gamer is gender-neutral, comic fan is gender-neutral, just male "dominated." BRONY, at least from what I got from both the essay and from talking with bronies at cons, is "supposed to be" a male community, not gender-neutral. Which I think is why the author is fixated on the idea of sexism and exclusion- the name itself practically BEGS for fandom outliers to grab it and use it to "justify" (and I'm aware I'm going nuts with the quotes again,bear with me) their misogyny.
DeleteWhich, as you know from talking with me, is where I call bulls**t. The fact that so many blog posts and essays exist that say "women need their own classification" just rubs me the wrong way, and it seems to be perpetuated by the subgroup of the fandom that wants to be "special snowflakes," living in their fantasyscape where being a male MLP fan somehow entitles them to feel better than the rest of the fandom world. Those people ruin the fandom with their misperceptions of what being a fan entails, and then s**tting all over the people who don't agree with them.
Wow, that was a rant, wasn't it...
I think the issue with male-centric denotation of Brony is that comes from the fact that the fandom is based on something that "isn't for males" so they want to emphasize the "we are allowed to like this too" notion.
ReplyDeleteBut as with any group that's largely made up of cisgender men misogyny almost almost reads it's ugly head. It just seems more unfortunately because this fandom is suppose to be
About friendship and love. Don't know why it cut me off.
ReplyDelete