Fannish & Gendery

[queer_scribbling]

"Indeed, fan spaces may constitute a key space in which fans are able to experiment with identities they do not or cannot embody in other spaces, to fulfill a fantasy, to experiment with cross-identification, to try on imagined future identities, or to experience aspects of their imagined selves that are foreclosed or impossible in their real lives."

- Duggan, Jennifer. 2020. "Who Writes Harry Potter Fan Fictions? Passionate Detachment, 'Zooming Out,' and Fan Fiction Paratexts on AO3." Transformative Works and Cultures, no 34.

https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2020.1863.

Comments

[queer_scribbling]

Originally commented on the same posting date, on PF:

Given what I've experienced of nonbinary folks feeling like they're 'not trans enough' to also self-identify with Trans and another academic splitting Transgender and Nonbinary respondents, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the gender breakdown used here. The paper does touch on why fans might not supply gender identity info voluntarily in their profiles, but I also find this a bit odd considering how I've interacted with non-cis folks over the years.

Some binary trans people don't really like being lumped into a catch-all Trans category separate from the binary genders (even if male/female is used because there are people who use sex/gender terms interchangeably). There's a bit of a thing where nonbinary and intersex folks have really been trying to separate out automatically lumping intersex in with nonbinary. Maybe I've just been in certain spaces where agender folks also use nonbinary, but my first reaction to separating "genderless" from Nonbinary was that it just seemed odd.

I can understand that someone wanting to study stuff might not like the umbrella usages of different identities and sorta lumping in a ton of people, but this comes across like arbitrary identity lines that may not actually reflect how the individual fans would self-identify in a survey.