the feminist librarian reads

A Few “Don’ts” For Fangirls.

Honey, don’t let them make you feel bad about your slash fanfiction.
Don’t let them make you feel bad about your NC-17 fanart.
Don’t let them make you feel bad about your cosplay, your RP, you Tumblr full of pictures of those actors you like, your excited posts with the friends you’ve made in fandom whenever they’re on TV.
Don’t let them make you feel bad for creating, for sharing, for enjoying both the original product and the do-it-yourself, freely dispersed product of the fandom. Don’t let them impose their ethos that anything that has no financial worth therefore has no worth at all.
Don’t let them make you feel bad for subverting a canon narrative in order to make it about the female gaze, and genuine female desires. Don’t let them make you feel YOU’RE the one to blame that that canon narrative, like so much conventional media, either panders solely to the heterosexual male gaze and male power fantasies or has tried to sell itself to women but has done so using the same old boring fallacy that apparently all women desire is to see a woman be physically, sexually, emotionally and/or economically dominated by an awesome dude in between his awesomeness and/or rescuing her, and that those tired old clichés just don’t float your boat, no matter how many times you get told that’s the only kind of thing you’re even allowed to put your boat in. Don’t listen when they get pissy that you’re playing with THEIR ACTION MEN and making them do MUSHY KISSING instead of saving the world like awesome dude friends how they’re supposed to.
Don’t let them make you feel you’re any of the following: rabid; fanatical; insane; perverted; delusional; hysterical. Those words, in conjunction with a woman or girl expressing desire and excitement are used to control and shame female sexuality, just like so many other words used against women – slut, whore, skank, slapper. Don’t forget how exhibitions of female desire, particularly en-masse has always been pathologised when seen as out of the control of the gatekeepers – look at Beatlemania, for example. Mania. Those girls were just having a brilliant time seeing their heroes and venting their feelings and sharing with their friends, but they were pathologised and sneered at by people who didn’t understand, didn’t even try. They were the silly, crazy girls, just like every group of female fans of an unobtainable figure since have been silly, crazy girls. A few thousand women in a stadium screaming and crying over some men they desire is a hysterical group of delusional idiots. A few thousand men screaming and crying in a stadium over some men playing football is a perfectly normal group of fans, bonding in an emotional moment.
Don’t let them tell you you’re consuming their product all wrong.
Don’t let them tell you you’re doing your own sexuality wrong.
Don’t let them tell you you’re doing your own enjoyment and desire wrong just because it’s something that they can’t slap pink glitter and a picture of a dominant man and a submissive woman in a clinch onto and sell it back to you on a fucking lunch box.
Don’t stop creating and consuming with whatever fandom communities you have until you want to stop.
Love from, Gabby.
A 34 year old wife, mum, writer and enthusiastic amateur fangirl.