Discrimination in femslash fandoms

Previous research shows that fans who belong to minorities often face discrimination from more privileged fans (Aalto, 2016: 14-15; Bastién, 2016; Coker & Viars: 2017; Hanmer, 2003: 85;

Pande & Moitra, 2017; Reinhard, 2018: 81-107; Stanfill, 2019; Zimmerman, 2018). Heterosexual fans of a television show are often seen as the ideal part of a fandom (Hills, 1999: 67, as cited by Hanmer, 2003: 82, 85). They can belittle LGBT fans’ LGBT-readings of television shows (Aalto, 2016: 22) and stereotype them based on a certain social identity (Reinhard, 2018: 106). This can lead to the bullying of LGBT fans; fans who belong to sexual and gender minorities have received hateful messages that have included even death and rape threats (Aalto, 2016: 14; Suddeth, 2017:

45).

According to the respondents of this study, discrimination and prejudices are very common in femslash fandoms. Only two respondents out of 53 (3,77%) had not witnessed bullying or prejudices during their participation in femslash fandom(s). 29 (54,72%) of the respondents had been a victim of it, whereas 22 (41, 51%) had witnessed bullying, but had not personally

experienced it. The most common form of discrimination in femslash fandoms, according to the respondents, is homophobia. This did not come as a surprise since my previous study from the year 2016 (Aalto, 2016) showed that homophobic attacks toward the fans of femslash pairings are very common. This implies that the internet enables a fandom discourse where hate speech and bullying is allowed (much like e.g. Reinhard’s, 2018, book shows) and this is incredibly harmful to people who are already struggling with forming a positive identity.

It should be remembered that there are many other types of discrimination than homophobia that concern femslash fandoms. Even though femslash fandoms suffer from bullying coming from cisgender straight fans who do not ship the same pairing, that does not make them exempt from intra-fandom discrimination such as racism, biphobia, and transphobia. It thus comes as no surprise that after homophobia, the most frequent form of discrimination that the respondents reported was racism. It was mentioned by 19 (38,78%) respondents. They disclosed that racism in fandom came from both femslash fans and fans who were not a part of their femslash fandom. This is deeply worrying, especially because it shows that LGBT fans who are People of Color are not

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safe from racial discrimination in their LGBT fandom, much like they are not safe from it in the LGBT community in general (Balsam et al., 2011; Johnson, 2014; Jones, 2016; Taylor-Stone, 2016). What is more, one respondent pointed out fetishization based on ethnicity, something that is a problem in the LGBT community at large (Balsam et al., 2011: 166) and came up in the answers of Stanfill’s (2019) interviews as well. According to Pande and Moitra (2017, no page number given) racism in fandoms has been overlooked by much of fandom research and it should not be ignored anymore. Femslash fandoms have been shown to be places where both representational issues of People of Color and their actual real-life issues are often overlooked by more privileged white fans (Pande & Moitra, 2017; Stanfill, 2019). The open-ended answers of this thesis coincide with these earlier findings and highlight the importance of what the aforementioned researchers have already said: more attention needs to be paid to this in fandom research.

The respondents also stated that transphobia (mentioned by 10 respondents, 18,87%) and biphobia (10 respondents, 18,87%) came from both the fans of their pairing and fans who were not femslash fans. The fact that femslash fans encounter biphobia and transphobia in their (femslash) fandom(s) implies that it comes from fans who are cisgender and gay/lesbian and who have biphobic and/or transphobic attitudes towards the other members of the LGBT community (who they do not necessarily see as the members of the same community as they may think of their own community as the “gay community”). This is similar to Edwards’ (2010: 164-165) notion about how some people assess who is “queer enough” and who belongs into the community. It is thus clear that femslash communities do not differ much from the LGBT community at large when it comes to biphobia and transphobia. This is incredibly worrying as this kind of intra-group discrimination has very negative impacts on these people’s mental health, self-acceptance, and being accepted by the rest of society (Petter, 2017; Allen, 2017a; Weinberg et al., 1998: 176-177; Talusan, 2014).

In addition to these most common forms of discrimination that the respondents mentioned, there were others that should be listed here as well. There were mentions of ableism (five respondents, 10,2%), which is definitely a problem in the LGBT community as LGBT people with chronic illnesses have stated that they feel like a minority within a minority (Jowett and Peel, 2009: 464) and they have faced social isolation and trouble in dating life because of their illnesses (ibid: 461, 463; Henry et al., 2010). Stanfill’s (2019) femslash fan interviews suggest the same: femslash fans

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run into ableism in their fandom environment. It is sad but of utmost importance to note that these fandoms suffer from the same ableism problem as the LGBT community as a whole does.

Though mentioned fewer times, discrimination based on a marginalized religious group was mentioned as well and should not go unnoticed. Both islamophobia and antisemitism were mentioned twice (4,08% and 4,08%). This shows that, in addition to all the other kinds of discrimination, femslash fandoms are not exempt from prejudices based on religious minority identities either. The fact that femslash fandoms are not a safe space for LGBT individuals who are Muslim or Jewish is awful; they face the same prejudices based on their identity in their femslash fandom as they do offline. Their fandom is thus not a safe space for them.

On a more positive note, the respondents did not mention being discriminated because of their age.

Even though today’s LGBT culture is very youth-oriented (Woody, 2014: 158; Parson, 2014: 9), the respondents of this survey did not feel like their age was an issue worth mentioning when they were asked about discrimination they had witnessed in fandom spaces. It should, of course, be taken into account that none of the respondents were anywhere near the elderly, the oldest

respondent being in their 40s. Still, I do think it is possible that some of the respondents may have received odd stares (metaphorically speaking) and comments from the younger members of the fandom because they are adults. These kinds of attitudes, however, do not seem to bother the respondents enough for them to seriously qualify and report it as discrimination like the above-mentioned types of discrimination. There may be various reasons for this: for example the fact that most people find closer community in those who are at least somewhat close to their age and adults may not have time and energy to take teenagers’ accusations about them being online at a certain age as seriously and personally as for example homophobic and racist attacks.

To conclude, femslash fandoms are spaces that suffer from bullying that comes from more privileged fans and different kinds of discrimination take place within femslash fandoms. If one has a marginalized identity, then they have probably been either personally subjected to

discrimination based on that identity or at least seen discrimination based on it in their fandom.

This is worrying and shows that these fandoms are far from safe spaces where one can simply make friends, have fun, and spend one’s pastime on one’s interests. The kind of discrimination that

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takes place within (femslash) fandoms and minority communities in general should be examined further as no group is homogenous, some fans are more privileged than others, and people

belonging to different minorities have intersecting minority identities. The need for this approach has been articulated earlier by Pande and Moitra (2017) who pointed out that fandom and femslash research tends to overlook racism within fandoms.