Tag: femslash

For The Second Time in Six Months, We’ve Got Messed Up F/F Discourse

Stitch2 Comments

I don’t know how to tell the most absurd fandom brained fools that lesbians – especially trans lesbians – talking about how they feel alienated in fandoms dominated by cis male M/M content or are upset about the way media about lesbians and other queer women get treated by the professionals running studios… are not inherently terfy. 

It’s the second time since February that I’m watching people in fandom – who aren’t  trans femmes themselves for the most part – call trans lesbians TERFs or accuse them of having/utilizing “TERF rhetoric” for pointing out discrepancies in content volume or criticizing cis women or trans masc co-opting of “TERF” and “TERF rhetoric” to divorce them from trans women/misogyny in particular and claim that any slight criticism of fandom (of misogyny, of a lack of F/F, of racism) is in and of itself TERFy. 

And it’s the same people doing this. 

Read More »

Fandom Racism 101: Femslash Fandom Has These Issues Too

Stitch3 Comments

It is also interesting to note that Glee debuted in 2009, the same year as RaceFail ’09. In many ways, this event, though not engaged with at the same level in all fandom spaces, marked a watershed in the ways in which debates around these issues were framed. While fans who point out the overwhelming whiteness and US-centrism of fan spaces and texts still face backlash, there has been a definite shift in the ways these categories are approached.

““Yes, the Evil Queen is Latina!”: Racial dynamics of online femslash fandoms” by Dr. Rukmini Pande and Swati Moitra

I have written a lot about M/M and “dudeslash” fandom practices over my time of thinking critically in fandom because that was, for a very long time, the loudest part of the fandoms I was in, and adjacent to, and the thing I wrote the most as a fan creator. However, that may give the impression that femslash and F/F fandoms do not have the same issues that wider fandom spaces do and that would be incredibly incorrect.

For this Fandom Racism 101 installment, we’ll be talking about how femslash fandoms also suffer from some of the same issues that other fandom spaces do. We’ll also cover some reasons why more people don’t know that femslash has these issues, how we can clock racism in femslash in its most obvious forms, and some examples of how these fandoms fail… alongside ways they can be better about their practices.

Read More »