Feminism Isn't A "fandom". Equality Is Not The Same As A TV Show Or Movie. Please Don't Trivialize An

Feminism isn't a "fandom". Equality is not the same as a TV show or movie. Please don't trivialize an entire ideology as something that can be rated and compared to other forms of entertainment. I hope you rethink your choices.

Hi! Thank you for your note. I’m the writer who wrote most of the list of Top 10 Fandoms of the year, as I have for the last three years. I decided the order, wrote the intro section (where we announced the theme of politics) and wrote the section on feminism.

I realize that intent doesn’t always matter if the execution was poorly done, and I want to acknowledge that we may very well have screwed this up. However, I also believe putting Feminism as #1 was a valid choice, and I would like to offer an explanation of where I was coming from as a non-dude, feminist, and longtime member of fandom. (I should also note that I arrived at a consensus for what the #1 fandom should be with a number of people including Geek writer Gavia ( hellotailor ), our Geek section editor, our managing editor, and a bunch of women in the Daily Dot newsroom, which turned into this. Ultimately, though, I wrote the item, so it’s all on me.)

The Daily Dot geek writers don’t think of fandom as trivial, or as something that stops and starts with “entertainment.” While we generally stick with the conventional understanding of “fandom” as connected to fans of entertainment, we also recognize a more broader definition of fandom as an active community of positive engagement around ideas, whether you’re engaging with an ideology, a narrative, or a religious belief. We have written multiple articles on how major religious ideologies are essentially fandoms as well, for example. To us, it makes perfect sense to read feminism as a fandom, in the way we might read certain fandoms themselves as an extension of progressive politics, like Serial.

This year, we wanted to celebrate the huge influence of political activism and progressive politics within fandom. It was the theme of our entire top 10 list. I also wanted to celebrate what we saw as feminism’s huge success, to do our part to repudiate the Time “worst words” list, and to acknowledge that feminism did gain many, many fans this year.  

To further solidify the link between fandom and feminism, I also included a link to this fantastic Medium article by Kaitlyn Dowling, “Ferguson, One Direction, Tumblr, and why you need to pay attention to teenage girls.” In it, she talks about all of you, and how your fandom engagement is only half of a very visible type of community involvement in which you encourage each other to be more socially aware, more politically active, and more engaged with the issues that surround all of us every day, including feminism.

I think all that is important, and all of that ties into the immense backlash we saw against feminism, because the more engaged and vocal each of you become, the more outside voices work to silence, shame, and marginalize you—something we’ve seen in female-dominated communities since time immemorial, from romance writers to Young Adult writers to Twilight fans to erotica writers (“mommy porn”) to tween and teen One Direction fans to girls who like comics to girls who play games to girls who code to girls who want girls to get their own superhero movies to *insert thing here*. 

Let’s be real: there’s a reason Reddit’s main anti-social justice subreddit is called “TumblrinAction.“ I believe feminism thrives on Tumblr because fandom thrives on Tumblr; because they were always hand-in-hand as ways to actively engage with and deconstruct the narratives you’ve been given, whether that narrative is “See this dude? He’s so totally straight” or whether it’s “The patriarchy works.”

Female-dominated fan communities have always fought to assert themselves despite tremendous social pressure to shut up. So much of fan communities throughout the centuries have been about women supporting each other and using that support to grow strong and informed and active and take-no-bullshit from society about how they should behave. I think it’s the highest compliment of all to say that feminism gained new fans in 2014, and know that it’s in part because of all of you, your voices being active, being heard, and being taken seriously. I wanted to celebrate that, celebrate feminism, and celebrate all of you.

I hope that if this doesn’t make you feel better about our positioning feminism this way, it at least assures you that a lot of thought and discussion went into the decision, and that you’ll believe we sincerely don’t think calling feminism a fandom is in any way a trivialization.

Thank you for reading and trusting us with your feedback. We appreciate it.

— Aja ( bookshop )

If you are the kind of person who stays up late and you lose your absolute fucking mind around the same time every night (anxiety, paranoia, suicidal thoughts, etc), then that is your body telling you that you need to sleep. Listen to your body. Go to bed.

MARVEL WOMEN present:

“My feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit” — Flavia Dzodan

x Do not remove the text above. x drop me an ask if you wish to identify any characters here! (sans the first image) based on queenmera’s DC Intersectional Feminism post

Forgive me.

no language should be mocked other than french