Obviously, everything here said is my own opinion. I'm drawing generalities, and my sources are my experiences. Grains of salt offered throughout the text.
Fandom wasn't invented by men. I'm not sure it was invented at all; most of the time I think it's akin to the genetic theory of religion, in which the impulse to believe in God is coded in our DNA, so that even if God did not exist, we would find it necessary to invent him, or her, or it. Ergo, fandom — if it didn't exist from the dawn of the human race's first capacity to idolize invention, we would have to create something about which we could be fans.
Ergo, (2) — The basic poles and acronyms of fandom: FIAWOL and FIJAGH. Or, expanded — Fandom Is Just A Way Of Life versus Fandom Is Just A God-d**d Hobby. (Notice the gratuitous God reference. Even among those professing their freedom from fandom, the acknowledgement that fandom touches deep inner needs surfaces — Yes, I'm joking. Well, no. Not entirely joking.)
Nevertheless, there's the dichotomy. How much of your life should fandom absorb?
The archetype of the fan was popularized two decades or so ago by an SNL skit (starring none other than that icon of fandom, William Shatner) in which we saw The Fan as an overweight, under-exercised young male in a Star Trek Lives! T-shirt, living in his parents' basement and terrified of the 'real world'. That image is a holdover, I think, from an earlier fandom: the science-fiction fandom of the 1930s and 1940s, populated by young (and not-so-young) men plunging headfirst into a universe of ideas and frequently never again emerging.
Fandom is a place of ideas: an arena of communion and challenge. In the science-fiction fandom arena, a woman was a rara avis.
Why?
Maybe it goes back to the dichotomy. A woman's life has been geared traditionally to the more practical matters: doing the laundry, raising the kids, keeping the home fires burning for the male of our species. Even in these more modern days, most women still turn their lives to the emotional bond of marriage or other committed relationships and the details that crop up in it. A woman without a man may be like a fish without a bicycle, but the romantic bicycle was built for two. A woman bereft of those responsibilities — free to pursue an intellectual life — is still often an object of pity or derision.
But that male Star Trek fan of ours from earlier? He was the rarity. Star Trek was nearly cancelled at the end of its second season. A female fan, Bjo Trimble, spearheaded the first letter-writing campaign to bring ST back for a third season. (And thus spearheaded the phenomenon of the dismal return season, I fear. Honestly, Spock's Brain? We went through all those stamps for that?) Women wrote and edited the first Star Trek zines: Devra Langsam, Ruth Berman, Laura and Margaret Basta (among others).
Keep in mind, though, that mainstream science-fiction fans (not an oxymoron!) sneered at Trek. It wasn't literature. It wasn't books. It wasn't even the movies. It was that bastion of commercialism, the television series.
I add cynically, here, that it was also something women enjoyed. Women wrote Trek. Women discussed Trek. And Trek drew women's attention away from its proper sphere — men. (See? I said it was cynical.)
There have always been women — female fen — who wrote about women. But the first big fandoms were about men. The stories in those fandoms, though, tended not towards the action-adventure end of fiction, but to the character end. The emotional end. And, frequently, to the emotional end of two men interacting with each other, depending on each other, and often, loving each other. The only point of the slash argument I want to bring up here is that these relationships tended to be between two equals who gave up some of their masculine independence to each other. If you skidded down to the power exchange of the dependence slope, one of them relinquished most or all of their independence to 'the other'.
In other words, the writing of men forming emotional and unbreakable bonds with each other was performed by women who in that writing formed emotional bonds with other women while talking about subjects they regarded as important to them, although those subjects were not important to the men surrounding them in the 'real world'. (There is an English sentence in there, I swear — I can hear its desperate little whimpers.)
But, with that in mind, isn't it interesting that the main subject of scholarly studies of fandom is slash? Stories, written by women, about men?
It seems I digress. But actually, I don’t — I have come full circle to my original starting point.
FIAWOL vs. FIJAGH.
How much of a part should fandom play in the lives of women? How much are we willing to cede to an activity that doesn't put food on the table, a roof over their heads, or do anything else practical?
There have been, and will continue to be, I’m sure, strong marriages/relationships between female fen and non-fen males, between female and male fen, and between non-fen females and male fen. But it can't be denied that fannish pursuits have shattered relationships. Intellectual pursuits have shattered relationships throughout history. Whenever a commitment is superseded by a new commitment, something has to give. The question is what.
And there isn't a right or a wrong answer to the question. And the dichotomy isn't truly one thing or the other: it's a continuum. Somewhere along that continuum a female fan finds her limits, and that's where she lands. I don't think it's a moral choice. I don't think it's a transgressive choice. I think it comes down to a selection of priorities. And where ever you land is a valid decision.
contemplative
amused
annoyed![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
sympathetic
distressed
energetic
