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, 16:18:32 UTC 7 years ago Edited: July 28 2009, 16:19:54 UTC
I have been reading SFF* since I learned to read, oh, somewhere around 1954. I first heard about cons around 1962. Due to massive shyness and other things, I did not attend my first con until 1982.
I was surprised, pleased, amazed and enthralled to find out that there were other persons of the female persuasion who shared my love and even obsession of SFF at cons. Had I known beforehand that there were other girls/women/females, who were not spouses of the writers I loved to read, that attended cons, I might have tried to make more of a effort to attend cons.
I am not a fan of Twilight. There are a number of SFF writers that produce works I do not like, do not want, to read. But that does not mean their works are any less SFF than those whose works I consume like candy (oh, yeah, I adore Toby Daye!). Anything which is considered Horror Fiction is 'meh!' as far as I am concerned. My SO,
For a long time I preferred 'hard' SFF, with gadgets and geegaws and shiny pretties to drool over. And then I discovered the 'softer' SFF, mostly written by female writers like Leigh Brackett (wow, this writer is female? How cool is that?!), Andre Norton, C. L. Moore and others who used gender neutral names.
And then I discovered female writers who used (either real or pseudonym didn't matter) real female names. And then I started dreaming about being a writer of SFF.
I think that what I am trying to say here is that any reporter who was worth his/her salt (and there are damn few nowadays) would have checked the background of writers and fandom in the SFF field before promoting garbage like "Oh-my-ghod-females-only-started-being-i
After all, the mother of SFF is Mary Shelley!
*For me this means Science Fiction/Fantasy, for some it means Speculative Fiction Fandom. Doesn't matter what you call it, it is still geeky and fun.
July 28 2009, 18:56:34 UTC 7 years ago
July 28 2009, 19:11:34 UTC 7 years ago
July 28 2009, 20:31:16 UTC 7 years ago
July 28 2009, 20:30:29 UTC 7 years ago
Just saying.