Fan Fiction and Feminism
By what I gather is the customary LJ mechanism, I've had my attention drawn to How fan fiction makes us poor. In short this relates the feminist question of "Why women don't write" to fan fiction and it clearly resonated with a lot of people.
But not with me, which I find suprising, and made me wonder why. I guess I'm not exactly the most prolific fanfic writer by a country mile and I've occupied the world of classic Doctor Who fan fiction - a predominantly male environment. As such it had never occurred to me that fan fiction was a primarily female passtime nor that fan fiction writers might be considered a "community of women". But it also had never occurred to me that "Women don't write". Quite the opposite in fact - I've spent much time in recent years worrying over why women don't do science (which has a vague corollary that they are writing instead). I only did english up to O' level (and doesn't that age me). But we covered Austen, Charlotte and Emily Bronte and Carson McCullers (and I'm impressed I found her name by simply typing "Frankie, Frances, Meningitis" into Google) alongside Shakespeare, Dickens and J. Meade Faulkner without any suggestion that they should be considered particularly unusual. Of course, I was in an all-girls school and was being taught by teachers not unaware of feminist theory so its possible that they were opting for a deliberate policy against "Pollution of Agency" and "Double Standard of Categorization". In fact, come to think of it, they were also recomending "Lord of the Rings", "Day of the Triffids" and "The Time Machine" so possibly I was fortunate in teachers with a liberal definition of "Literature". I've been dragging up in my memory the books I was made to read at school, and there are indeed more male authors on that list than female, but this is the first time I've ever considered that you might infer from that the conclusion "Women don't write" as opposed to, say, "Hasn't society changed".
But not with me, which I find suprising, and made me wonder why. I guess I'm not exactly the most prolific fanfic writer by a country mile and I've occupied the world of classic Doctor Who fan fiction - a predominantly male environment. As such it had never occurred to me that fan fiction was a primarily female passtime nor that fan fiction writers might be considered a "community of women". But it also had never occurred to me that "Women don't write". Quite the opposite in fact - I've spent much time in recent years worrying over why women don't do science (which has a vague corollary that they are writing instead). I only did english up to O' level (and doesn't that age me). But we covered Austen, Charlotte and Emily Bronte and Carson McCullers (and I'm impressed I found her name by simply typing "Frankie, Frances, Meningitis" into Google) alongside Shakespeare, Dickens and J. Meade Faulkner without any suggestion that they should be considered particularly unusual. Of course, I was in an all-girls school and was being taught by teachers not unaware of feminist theory so its possible that they were opting for a deliberate policy against "Pollution of Agency" and "Double Standard of Categorization". In fact, come to think of it, they were also recomending "Lord of the Rings", "Day of the Triffids" and "The Time Machine" so possibly I was fortunate in teachers with a liberal definition of "Literature". I've been dragging up in my memory the books I was made to read at school, and there are indeed more male authors on that list than female, but this is the first time I've ever considered that you might infer from that the conclusion "Women don't write" as opposed to, say, "Hasn't society changed".