The Links Roundup posts are getting a new name! The Communications Committee has been using the #OTWFannews hashtag for them at Twitter for a while as it's a more distinctive name for the series and a clearer name for their content. OTW Fannews is meant to be a selective look at discussions of fandom, and issues affecting fans, in both traditional and non-traditional media venues. It also includes interviews where OTW staffers and volunteers have taken part, or discussions of the organization appear.

Here's a roundup of women in fandom stories that might be of interest to fans:

• CNN's Geek Out! blog ran an excerpt from Rob Salkowitz's book on the commercial side of pop culture. "Many of today’s best online comic and fantasy-genre news sites and discussion groups were started by, and remain powered by, women. Today, there are increasing numbers of proud girl geeks of all ages; I count myself fortunate to be married to one. Crowds at conventions and even some comics stores now reflect a much more equal gender balance. As for the comics industry itself, not so much." He concluded that the future of comics was likely to favor women. "Typically, female comics fans who speak out on this issue from a feminist perspective are roundly and rudely shouted down, sometimes from the podium. It’s hard to imagine a more self-defeating strategy for the long-run health of the industry. Women today are the loudest and most compelling voices in fandom; young girls are making some of the most popular self-published comics. Decades from now, Twilight will be fondly remembered (or ironically inflected) nostalgia for millions of middle-aged women, some of whom will be able to look back on the shared communal experience of sleeping out for days at Comic-Con and having had the time of their young lives."
• Tracey Sinclair at Fanboy Unleashed wrote about a recent round of geek credential checking and declared "There seems increasingly to be the idea that there is some level of arcane knowledge required to be a ‘proper’ geek, but only, of course, if you have a vagina. Nobody’s calling the guy dressed as Thor a fake – hell, it wouldn’t matter if he couldn’t spell Thor, nobody would think to question that he belonged there. But there is still an ingrained suspicion that girls aren’t really geeks – or, if they are, they should look a certain way, and dress a certain way. Dare not to fit into a category you had no input in defining, and you’re a ‘fake’." Writing for the St. Louis Post Dispatch, Aisha Sultan makes it clear that this treatment is not limited to geek fandoms or to adult women.
• Certainly women tend to get little support from content creation companies. While Ashley Eckstein's Her Universe company provides a stereotypically feminine product -- fashionable clothes -- her observation of the sexism behind the dearth of such material was all business. "'I think we are now starting to wake up and say 'no, we don’t want to deal with this anymore' and if we do speak up, people will listen and it’s becoming more accepted to like sci-fi from a social standpoint,' said Eckstein. 'We finally opened our mouths.'...According to Eckstein, a number of companies told her that female fans just aren't interested in and don't buy science fiction and similarly themed merchandise...'We said we'll prove you wrong,' asserted the actress, 'and we did.'"
• Some people seem to feel that if they can't stop the presence of women, they can stop voices supporting them from being heard. The Daily Dot reported that Sam Killerman's Gamers Against Bigotry website was hacked. "Where 1,500 people once pledged to curb their sexist, racist, Ableist, and homophobic language during gaming, hackers have inserted NSFW images like Goatse. Killerman said he’s been unable to restore the pledge page permanently, but users are continuing to sign it in the gaps between takedowns." Fortunately, panels at conventions are a little harder to disrupt, such as the Sexism in Anime Fandom panel at Otakon (no transcript available).

If you've been a woman in fandom, share your experiences at Fanlore! Contributions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, event, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent Links Roundup. Links are welcome in all languages! Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

The PBS production OffBook has created a new video about the spectrum of fannish behavior and motivations, and it features discussion from board members Francesca Coppa and Naomi Novik. The 7:20 minute video explores the diversity of fandom, the way its fanworks may challenge dominant views expressed in mass media, and fair use and its meaning for fans. The segment concludes with "Fandom lets many more people have a voice, and it lets many people tell stories that would otherwise not get heard." (No transcript available)

This video was released within days of two other discussions about fandom and society:

• Brett White writes in Comic Book Resources about women represented in comics and the vital role of women in fandom: "Women engage in fandom to levels that men do not. When women get behind something, their sheer numbers and passion force it into the mainstream." To that end he believes that "I want other people to be inspired. I'm a white male...I had my heroes who 'looked like me' and that I could identify with or aspire to be. I want girls to have that chance too. And as much as I want boys to see women as equals, I want girls to know that they don't have to identify with Disney Princesses or Really Cool Disney Channel Starlet if they don't want to. They can identify with Wasp and Invisible Woman or Kitty Pryde. They can be Stephanie Brown or Batwoman or Black Canary. They have as many awesome superheroes as their brothers do. Everyone needs female heroes as much as male ones."
• Richard Just wrote in The Daily Beast that as American culture becomes increasingly politicized and polarized that sports fandom may be a neutral meeting ground, and thus a vitally important space for discussion and common cause.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, event, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent Links Roundup. Links are welcome in all languages! Submitting a link doesn’t guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn’t mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

Here's a roundup of issues in fandoms that might be of interest to fans:

• One persistent problem fans have experienced revolves around their representation -- either in media stories on fans, or within the canons that they're fans of. Alyssa Rosenberg wrote about the latter, saying Hollywood decision makers think "it’s easier to sell white men as brawling gods than black men as hugely technologically advanced leaders of foreign nations", which leads some stories to cross media formats while others don't. In the meantime William Shatner hopes to defend fan practices to the media with his new documentary. "'These people who come to Comic-Con and dress up - all across the country, the rest of the population who doesn't understand are scoffing at them.'" But fans have their reasons. "'For a kid who is pathologically shy, dressing a cat up in a uniform -- [suddenly] he could speak. 'Captain Dave,' who is dying from Lou Gehrig's disease, lives through 'Star Trek.''" The media, or at least Variety continues to beg to differ.
• When it comes to the press though, fans now have their own forums for speaking out about the slant given to press coverage. Indeed problems may arise when fans are also members of the press, as is the case for a CultureMob reporter who talks about making decisions on what to attend at ComicCon and for what purposes.
• The fandom/media divide has been a topic at other sites, with some acknowleding the greater depth of fan knowledge while critiquing its objectivity. On gaming site GamaSutra this personal slant is blamed for blocking creativity among content producers. The respondents to the column were having none of it, with a rather good discussion ensuing about how the role of commercial interests were being ignored in the post.
• Such a discussion would also have been welcome on the article of OTW staffer Aja Romano at The Daily Dot when she discusses the persistent problem of female erasure from fandom. Noting how rarely women are included in fan convention panels, or condescended when they are, she also explored other ways in which their participation is ignored in male dominated fandom spaces. "Take Kate Leth, author of popular webcomic Kate or Die. When a father told his daughter in her comic store, right in front of her, that there was 'nothing for her' in the store, she tweeted angrily, 'you bet yr ass I gave her a free comic.' Leth added, 'what am I, chopped liver?'"

If you've got your own fandom issues to share, why not explore them on Fanlore? Additions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, event, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent Links Roundup at transformativeworks.org. Links are welcome in all languages! Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.

Here's a roundup of the benefits of fandom stories that might be of interest to fans:

• Blogger Suzanne Lahna wrote recently about things she's learned from fandom. Concluding that "Fandom is important, and I think the why needs to be told," she lists a few benefits from the immediately practical to the lifelong. "Fandom taught me how to make a fight scene work like a fluid thing. Fandom taught me that present tense is actually okay, and can be used well in the appropriate scenarios...Fandom taught me how to write boldly, without shame, without hesitance." She writes, "Fandom has given me hope. Fandom reminds me that there are no limits to what we can write about, what we can do, only the limits we place on ourselves."
• The Atlantic looks at soccer fans and finds much the same thing as Lahna. "Trying to rationalize fandom can be a complicated, even futile process. But studies by psychologists have shown that identifying yourself with a sports team can have profound implications. According to Daniel L. Wann, a professor at Murray State University, and a pioneer in the field of sports psychology, the more passionate your fandom, the more positive the impact is on your psychological health. Based on surveys of American sports fans over more than two decades, Wann has categorized fans in relation to the degree to which they consider their team an extension of themselves. He describes the more ardent fans, the ones who consider their team to be an important part of their lives, as 'highly identified' fans, and the ones who follow their team more loosely, with a sense of detachment, as "weakly identified" fans. He says, in the case of the highly identified fans, the social connections that are formed through their fandom—the camaraderie that comes out of following games with a group of people—plays a significant and positive role in their lives."
• A piece on sci-fi cons in The Seattle Times came across the same opinions yet again: "'It's a community,' Katrina Marier, editor of Westwind, the magazine of the Northwest Science Fiction Society, said. 'People in fandom care about each other. We're excited to get together.' She said when someone gets sick, people visit with casseroles and offers of help just like in any group." Indeed some ideas should spread outside of fandom. "'Some [people] you'll like and some not. Some you'll agree with and some not,' she said. 'You all can occupy the same space for the course of a weekend. That is very important, and we could use a lot more of that in our national discourse.' That's reason enough to be involved. Besides tolerance, Marier says, fandom has solidified some other good traits. 'Fandom has encouraged my tendencies to both be open to new ideas and to think about them critically, and to ask questions.'"
• Indeed a story in The Advocate stresses the ways in which fandoms and society can be intertwined with their feature on a comic book store wedding. Various comics shops honored the marriage of characters Northstar and Kyle with fundraising events and receptions, but Midtown Comics took it a step further when they hosted a wedding in-store. The groomsmen featured in the story "were selected from more than 50 applicants because 'they really stood out as super-fans,' said Thor Parker, Midtown Comics’ social media and events director. They met online and had one of their first dates at a comics-related event."

If you're an X-Men fan or in a comics or sci-fi fandom, or want to share your own story about what fandom has meant to you, why not write about it in Fanlore? Additions are welcome from all fans.

We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, event, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent Links Roundup at transformativeworks.org. Links are welcome in all languages! Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.