harrycrewe replied to your post: How queer is fandom?
Most people in fandom first stumble across it when they are young and just figuring out our own sexuality – and fandom teaches them that it’s normal and OK to like things that aren’t “mainstream”. So did it attract queer women or did it create them?
I love this comment!
My first reaction was knee-jerk against it, and then I thought about why that was. I suspect it was defensiveness. “No no, fandom doesn’t turn you queer.” Meaning, really, “It’s not a threat to the status quo.”
But the status quo is for crap, isn’t it? ‘Turns women queer,’ by the very definition I used (‘having an experience of their sexuality that is not in line with societal expectations’)…well. Frankly the societal expectations of sexuality for women are often restrictive and patronizing.
For women—and other people!—who ‘turn queer’ after encountering fandom, I suspect that the essential queerness is already present before they encounter fandom, but some people might not question or notice it in themselves until they realize that there’s the potential for more for them out there.
A thing I love about the BBC Sherlock fandom in particular (though I’m sure it’s not the only one) is how many women who’re married to men we can find in it. I love it because when you listen to them tell their stories, you find that many of them are queer. It illustrates that just because you happen to have found happiness in a heteronormative (at least apparently…because you don’t know how their relationship is negotiated unless they tell you) relationship, it doesn’t mean that’s the whole of who or what you are.
And it doesn’t necessarily take away from that relationship, either. I know a few people who, thanks to what they’ve learned about themselves through fandom, have ‘come out’ to their spouses—as kinksters, or bi, or even a different gender. That strengthens a chosen relationship, in trust, understanding and the ability to bring one another enjoyment with a better understanding of needs and desires.
I guess that ultimately, I would say that it’s misleading to claim that slash fandom ‘creates’ queer women (and other people, and sometimes people who start out assuming they’re women but discover otherwise). They create themselves. Let’s not take that away from them. They are who and what they are, and whomever they may become through their experiences and their choices. But they find something in fandom that speaks to them, maybe something that opens their eyes to possibilities they never even knew existed. In that sense, fandom has probably facilitated the ‘creation’ of a lot of queer women—and other people! 😀