overcoming assumptions and stereotypes through fandom

[veronica_rich]

While I'm not one of those who believes Everything Means Something on a television show or in movies - sometimes, a cigar may just be a cigar - the fact is, seeing things you know little to nothing about onscreen does educate you for good or ill. Responsible filmmakers and showrunners and producers make a world of difference in some people's lives

Comments

[roguedemon]

I'm still enjoying this narrative very much. :) It's interesting hearing about how slash impacted your views. By the time I first read slash -- after I joined the BTVS fandom, sometime in 1999 -- lgbt rights were old hat to me, as my father had long since came out to the family as a transwoman. I still found it a surprise to suddenly be into reading about gay sex, it just hadn't occurred to me that it would be a turn on until I got into a fandom with a lot of slash pairings. It seems weird now that it was ever an adjustment. ;)

[veronica_rich]

If gay rights were something I wasn't much familiar with as a kid, trans issues and rights were REALLY foreign to me. To be fair, I can't credit the internet for my first exposure to that, though - I took a job back in 2000 that put me in a bigger media market, and in the course of my work met a local reporter who was an older man who was transitioning to a woman. The man's reputation before I got there was typical sexist dude, from what I heard of everyone around me, so TBH for a while I wondered if his "transition" was a stunt to get material for a book or some such for his writing. Over time and interacting with her (and in reaction to having to put up with the ugly remarks I had to hear from the guys I worked with at my paper - ugh), I realized she was SHE, and I started just thinking of her as a woman. I also realized over time, on my own, that my curiosity about whether she was medically transitioning as well was really none of my damn business. And then years later the internet taught me some more about trans issues but luckily

[lordvalerymimes]

Just wanting to add that I've been enjoying reading this narrative even though I've not been commenting. As someone who came into the slash fandom in a completely different and non-gradual way, this is a very interesting counter-point to my own experiences.

[veronica_rich]

I always wonder how the newbie fandom experience is now compared to 30, 20 years ago when I got into it (well, 30 in the sense of adopting a fandom, even if it was just me and one other person IRL; and 20, in the sense of finding a bunch of people through conventions and, eventually, the internet). It feels like now there are all types of people in fandom, including "norms" who aren't into general sci-fi/fantasy - just regular people who happen to like A Thing and log onto the internet and stumble across a forum or site of others who share it. That wasn't the way it used to be - it felt to me, at least, like we were mostly nerds who had difficulty finding a place among regular people because our interests weren't socially acceptable things like sports or fashion or some occupational thing. It just feels like "having a fandom" is more acceptable in the wider culture now - like, The Nerdist wouldn't have been a thing 20 years ago.

[lordvalerymimes]

I've always been a fan of sci-fi and fantasy, but nothing has pulled me in so completely like Red Dwarf. I was pretty heavily into Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter at different points in time, but nothing ever pushed me into writing fanfiction before. I think my experience is probably very odd and atypical. Who writes their first fanfiction at 34?

Although if I'm being completely, painfully honest, I think I did write two throwaway short bits of smut when I was a teenager when I wrote myself into the Thundercats and one of the Children of the Corn films. Thank goodness the internet as we know it now didn't exist then. I will go hang my head in shame now.