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I keep weighing in on too much meta these days. Somebody stop me.
tOkay, you know what my number one pet peeve about fandom is? The fact that it is like the one space where I've ever felt safe being female, and yet it is fucking full of people marginalizing female characters, writing them out completely, or writing them as defined by male characters.
And yet a very loud five people out of ten are incapable of examining the fact that they do this. If you attempt to draw attention to it, you're a buzzkill and wet blanket.
In the end, it always circles back to "NOOOO NOT MISOGYNISTIC AT ALL, THAT FANDOM-WIDE SYSTEMATIC REDUCTION OF FEMALE CHARACTERS IS NOT INDICATIVE OF ANYTHING, CAN'T A HOBBY JUST BE A HOBBY?"
And I hate that. Because yeah, sure, a hobby's a hobby. But you know what? When it sounds like five people out of ten in that hobby are marginalizing female characters but exaggerating male characters, and are all using the exact same reasons to do so, we have something in need of examining.
But OMG, how dare anybody draw attention to that. A cigar is just a cigar. A widespread desire to completely ignore female characters is just a widespread desire to completely ignore female characters. There is no misogyny here!
And it makes me just sdfgkl;jsfg;kljashhh keyboard smash with impotent and incoherent rage.
And yet a very loud five people out of ten are incapable of examining the fact that they do this. If you attempt to draw attention to it, you're a buzzkill and wet blanket.
In the end, it always circles back to "NOOOO NOT MISOGYNISTIC AT ALL, THAT FANDOM-WIDE SYSTEMATIC REDUCTION OF FEMALE CHARACTERS IS NOT INDICATIVE OF ANYTHING, CAN'T A HOBBY JUST BE A HOBBY?"
And I hate that. Because yeah, sure, a hobby's a hobby. But you know what? When it sounds like five people out of ten in that hobby are marginalizing female characters but exaggerating male characters, and are all using the exact same reasons to do so, we have something in need of examining.
But OMG, how dare anybody draw attention to that. A cigar is just a cigar. A widespread desire to completely ignore female characters is just a widespread desire to completely ignore female characters. There is no misogyny here!
And it makes me just sdfgkl;jsfg;kljashhh keyboard smash with impotent and incoherent rage.
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The sheer virulence of the response is just mind-boggling to me. You say, "I think you have something that you should examine," and they breathe fire at you.
Because we suck all the fun out of being an *ist, we should just leave them alone? Except their *isms suck all the fun out of our fandom experience, too. For this we joined fandom?