thoughtfulSee, there was a lot of stupid pre-con surrounding the fact that OH NOES TEH TWILIGHT FANS ARE INVADING!!!! Never mind that Twilight, whether you like it or not, is speculative fiction, full of My Little Vampires, and has spawned a massively successful movie series. Never mind that this same complaint came up about the Harry Potter people, the urban fantasy people, and lots of other "not our kind" groups, before they became "our kind." TEH TWILIGHT FANS ARE INVADING!!!! IT IS TEH END OF DAYZ!!!! Worse yet, they're girls! Icky icky girls! The mainstream press—which still views the female geek as a charmingly endangered species, one which is potentially a myth—grabbed this and ran with it; if you go digging, you can find some...charming...articles about "the female invasion of Comic-Con" and "girls meeting geeks."
I first "invaded" Comic-Con thirteen years ago. Pretty sure I was a girl at the time. My boyfriend at the time definitely thought so, and as he had more opportunity to perform practical examinations than anybody from the mainstream press, I'm going to place bets that he was right. But anyway.
The Twilight girls, understandably, took offense, since they were being presented as fluff-brained bimbos who wouldn't know a comic book if it bit them on the booty. The general populace of Comic-Con wasn't offended, per se, although some offense started brewing when the Twilight fans started speaking up, since the cycle o' slag went media -> them -> us. But there was still the chance that everybody would be able to just get along. I know that I'm a lot more focused on getting where I'm going, at-con, than I am at playing Sharks vs. Jets in the middle of the Exhibit Hall.
But then came...the shirts.
Shirts on Twilight girls all over the convention. Shirts which read, in large, easy-to-read lettering, "Yes I am a real woman / Yes I am at Comic-Con / Yes I love Twilight." As a "real woman" who's been attending Comic-Con since before she could legally drink, these shirts awakened in my breast the deep and abiding desire to force-feed them to the people wearing them. I did not do so. Be proud of me. Be especially proud of me since large groups of the shirt-wearers—not all of them, by any means; I'm sure there were Twilight fans who were having a fantastic time without trying to piss in anybody's Cheerios—chose to stand around near the Exhibit Hall cafes and out by the Heroes carnival, making snotty comments about the costumes, figures, and overall appearance of the non-Twilight girls who went walking by.
Not cool.
I am a girl who likes the X-Men. I am a girl who likes horror movies. I am a girl whose favorite comics currently in print are Hack/Slash, The Boys, and Creepy. I am a girl who has spent a long damn time fighting for respect in her chosen geeky social circles, because we are still the minority in a lot of places, and it's difficult to convince your average horror geek that the female IQ is not calculated by taking the national average and subtracting her bra size. Twilight aside, there aren't enough of us to start playing this sort of game. Yes! You in the shirt, you're a real woman! And so am I! And so is every other girl at this convention! I did not give up my right to femininity just by deciding that I like to keep my My Little Ponies and my blood-drinking monsters separate, nor did you get a double-dose by combining the two. Women have been fighting for respect in comic and media fandom for a long time. Undermining that fight, even if you're doing it because you were provoked, just undermines us all.
No one has to like what I like. I try not to judge the likes and dislikes of others, and even when I can't avoid it, I try not to wander around in T-shirts that say things like "Every time editorial brings back Jean Grey, Magneto kills a kitten" or "Women Opposing More Bad Adapted Terror: JUST SAY NO TO STEPHEN KING MOVIES." All this could have been avoided if people hadn't been dicks to the Twilight fans in the first place...but I really do wish the Twilight fans hadn't felt compelled to be dicks to the rest of us in return.
July 28 2009, 15:39:16 UTC 7 years ago
Ok, I can see exactly why the people standing around making the snotty comments were total jerks, but I really don't see why the shirt was so threatening itself. If anything it sounds enabling on the part of Twilight fandom.
Now -I'm the first to admit that I don't actually get the appeal of Twilight, but I don't see what in Twilight fans saying "Oh hai, I'm a real woman, no really!" denied the geek cred of any other woman at the con.
If you are mostly insulted because the shirts perpetuated the mainstream media assumption that you were obviously only there (since you are a girl for REALS) because of the Twilight fandom - that's not the problem of the Twilight fans trying to be taken seriously or the shirts they chose to do it. I don't see anything in the mantra "I'm a real woman, I'm at comic-con, I love Twilight" that judges the likes and dislikes of others.
July 28 2009, 15:44:23 UTC 7 years ago
There was very much an attitude of "we are the only real women here" that surrounded a lot of those little clots, and yeah, it bugged the holy crap out of me.
July 28 2009, 16:39:26 UTC 7 years ago
I guess I don't see the phrasing "Yes, I am" the same way. I read it more as as a negation of the implication that real women wouldn't be at comic-con.
Now the attitude on the other hand, that would but the crap out of me too.
July 28 2009, 18:12:33 UTC 7 years ago
July 28 2009, 21:15:05 UTC 7 years ago
Out of context, I'm with you on how I would interpret the phrasing there. However, I can see where the shirts were a defensive response by (probably insecure and/or immature) women to a stupid (and probably immature and/or insecure) attitude towards their particular fandom "invading" Comicon.
I think I would have gone with something more generic. "Yes, I'm a woman. Yes, I'm at Comicon. So what?" But maybe they couldn't get that printed in an angsty enough, sparkly enough script. :P :)
Speaking as a girl who *worked* in a local comic store in the late 70s and has attended/worked on at least one SF convention a year since the late 80s, I suppose I've run into my share of clueless maladjusteds through the years. I don't have much patience with idiots of any gender, so I learned pretty quickly to just ignore them and find people I can spend time with.
Mind you, I haven't read the Twilight books and it would be deplorable if that's someone's only reading material or impression of how relationships should work. But sometimes you can't stop the stupidity, you can only hope to contain it.
BTW, I also think nearly everyone has at least one Fandom that's not Intellectually Respectable. Seanan may have My Little Ponies; I may love professional wrestling. There's a lot of room in between. ;)
Every time editorial brings back Jean Grey, Magneto kills a kitten
*giggle* I loved the original Jean Grey/Dark Phoeniz saga, and hated when they killed her off. However, _having_ killed her off, bringing her back even once negates the whole point of the original story arc. So I may not agree with Seanan's oft expressed preference for Emma Frost as Scott Summers' life partner, but I can still agree with this sentiment from my own angle. :)
July 29 2009, 14:46:29 UTC 7 years ago
July 28 2009, 17:58:53 UTC 7 years ago
I can't imagine what it would be like to show up at a con in a Twilight shirt and meet that as my first introduction to fandom. (I particularly want to beat the "bad role model" people, because when I was 13, the last thing I wanted out of books was good role models. I loved--as 13 year olds do--angsty, twisty, tortured stories, and when I wasn't reading "Flowers in the Attic" I was reading Stephen King, Kurt Vonnegut and Harlan Ellison. Arguably I didn't grow out of it, although I was too old for Lackey when she came along--but most of them do.)
And I'm used to it, because I went through it with Sailor Moon and Harry Potter. It would be so much more offputting if I hadn't been through this before.
I mean, "we are the ONLY real women here" is annoying-as-hell subtext, but the shirts didn't actually SAY that, and I kind of like Twilight fans for not shutting the fuck up and taking the abuse that a lot of older fen want to give them. You would think that people who can remember when SF fen sneered derisively at "Trekkies" would be above this shit, but apparently not, I had at Baycon someone I know and normally love spend a half hour trying to convince me that Twilight was dogshit until someone I barely knew told him to lay the fuck off.
And Twilight will bring more women into fandom. Convention fandom, not just fanfiction fandom. Just like Star Trek and Sailor Moon and Harry Potter did. And some fanboys (you shouldn't be surprised to know the friend I had trouble with is an old gamer geek friend) are really obnoxious about it, because for all that they say they want to interact with women, they clearly are uncomfortable with any female who isn't clad in spandex, exposing her cleavage and...rendered in four colours two-dimensionally on a wall, or for the really adventurous, an action figure.
Also, FWIW, there will be significant crossover between your audience and Stephenie Meyer's. I know because I am part of the crossover (and I also like Cassandra Clare, Holly Black, Sarah Rees Brennan and Libba Bray--which is standard for this model) even though I am over 40 and really smart. IDK, you might wnt to mentally prepare yourself for the day these shirts come out and it's one of yours they're talking about.
July 28 2009, 18:11:31 UTC 7 years ago
To be completely honest, there were a lot more Twilight shirts than just the one I objected to, and I didn't see anyone giving those people active shit unless those people gave them shit to begin with (that, I did see, and it was incredibly irritating). SDCC is so vast that you get all types and all fandoms represented, and for the most part, unless your fandom wants to beat mine up and take its lunch money, you're left in peace.
(In regards to the "bad role model" people, my role models at thirteen were mostly Final Girls from horror movies, Stephen King heroines, and pre-Grimm fairy tales. I totally feel your pain.)
You're right that the shirts didn't actually say that, but the women who wore them frequently did, and there were ways of not shutting the fuck up that wouldn't have involved alienating the women who were at the convention but outside of their group. I'm not anti-Twilight in any specific sense. It's Not My Thing, but then, James Gunn is Not Your Thing, and I respect that. I'm anti-"you don't count because you don't like ____," no matter what ____ you're using.
I do hope that Twilight brings more women into fandom. Right now, because it's so huge, it seems monolithic, and like the women it brings in will just leave when it ends. I totally don't think that's the case, but I also understand why it's so daunting. (There were fans camped out in front of Hall H from Tuesday night on. If I'd been truly interested in any of the Thursday programming, I would've been pissed, because that? That is madness.)
If mine produce those shirts, I will cheerfully propose alternate shirts that don't make me want to bite people. I'm actually excited about the crossover, because enthusiasm makes me happy, and I don't care if our kinks are not identical, as long as we can both agree that we like the same general playing field.
July 28 2009, 19:11:03 UTC 7 years ago Edited: July 28 2009, 19:13:20 UTC
Some Twilight fans (who are women) are very obnoxious.
I also think that being a female DW fan was kind of like being a female Trekkie was once.
Being a Twilight fan has the extra pain that being a female Sailor Moon or Yaoi fan (and I was both) had in the early 90s, before and right after the dub, in male-dominated anime fandom, where you are not only being shat on because You Like That Obnoxious New Fangled Thing What Has Taken Over My Club, but also because You Like That Thing That Only Icky Girls Like, And It Is Probably Bad For Them Because Usagi/Serena/Bella Is So Wussy/Passive/Femmy/Not Lara Croft, And Women Are Too Dumb To Know What's Good For Them. ST and DW were to some degree female-dominated fandoms and by female-dominated, I mean that girls wrote most of the fic and were more than 30% of the fans, OMGZ.
SM and Twilight were/are nearly all female fandoms, and I spent a large part of the 90s telling obnoxious giant robot fanboys that if they wanted girlfriends ever they needed to STFU about Sailor Moon. (Still remember walking into a club meeting with a doll that I had paid over $100 for and having some asshole sneer at it with "OMFG I hate Sailor Moon" before we were even introduced--he was unusually porkish, but it wasn't something people did because they thought they couldn't get away with it.)
I certainly don't think people who don't like Twilight don't count, and you may be sure that I would tell anyone who expressed that sentiment that turnabout is neither fair play nor attractive.
(I do wish they would shut up sometimes because everybody has already heard those arguments a billion times and it's preaching to the choir, and some of the comments on this post were rage-inducing, none of them yours. I mean there ARE people who spend a lot of time bitching about whether the violent and sexist stuff boys like is good for them, but people don't take them as seriously as they do the Feminist Twilight Haters.)