A Non-Defense of the Organization for Transformative Works

[alixtii]

This is not a post defending the Organization for Transformative Works (a fan-run pro-fanfic nonprofit organization, if you're out of the loop). The OTW should be quite thankful about that fact, because frankly the OTW doesn't want me (or, more accurately, shouldn't want me) defending them. I'm a crap apologist, because I'm an intellectual radical and I can't hide that fact to save my life, even if I'm arguing with my brother over who should do the dishes, because the reason he can't see why he should do them is totally because he's operating under a correspondence theory of truth (without knowing it) when he should be going for standpoint epistemology, or some such. A conversation about evangelical Christianity's stance on homosexuality inevitably becomes one about whether there was a historical Jesus of Nazareth. And so on.

And God help me, I hadn't even finished the first paragraph of this post and I've already invoked Sandra Harding. Other than the fact that I am male, I am in some ways exactly the sort of academic (though, truly, I'm not really, as I'm only a grad student, and a just starting one at that) that OTW's critics see lurking behind every corner of the org. So the OTW really shouldn't want me defending them.

So I'm not going to defend the OTW. I'm not even sure I want to; if you go to the original post(s?) in astolat's journal, you'll find me there (naturally), offering up criticisms of the project from the get-go and providing my reservations. (I will say that what comforts me more than anything else is the knowledge that the new archive will be run on open-source software. The OTW's goal is not to hegemonize and never was--and if they end up deciding they can't or won't host chan, somebody else will be able to use the code to do so. Same for having underaged readers.)

Okay, I've gone on for three paragraphs about what I'm not doing, and this is the fourth. What I will do in this post is respond to certain elements of the discussion that has arisen over the Organization for Transformative works and give my perspective on a couple of issues and why I think my view is the correct one.

No one who knows me will be surprised that the main conversation with which I'm concerned is the one over the gender issue--the claim, seemingly based on a single line in its mission statement, "We value our identity as a predominantly female community with a rich history of creativity and commentary"--that the OTW is sexist, excludes men, or cetera. Now the org has been remarkably (and to me, frustratingly) inclusive in its response to said criticism. The official part line on the "female identity" line is that it is a reference to a historically true fact which is thus ideologically neutral.

The OTW has not trotted out feminist theory and explained in those terms why its positions are correct and necessary, which you would think thy would do if the entire project is composed only of acafans (as some have claimed). Instead, it has done its best to present its mission statement in a way which would be palatable to people who hold a number of differing ideologies, even if some of those ideologies are from a certain perspective (i.e., mine) wrong. They'd make very good Episcopalians, I think.

I told you I'm a crap apologist; I can't leave it at that. Maybe the line in the mission statement is ideologically neutral, maybe it isn't. I don't think it matters, because there is a correct ideological position from which perspective the line is appropriate.

If we remember back to the major race discussions which took place a few months ago originating in the Stargate Atlantis fandom and then spreading like wildfire through my flist, we'll remember hederahelix's eloquent advocacy of the definition of systemic injustice as the intersection of discrimination and power:

Any personal dislike that gets elevated to an oppression (with a capital O) is never just the action of a handful of individuals. It is a prejudice that gets writ large into society as a whole. Racism gets woven into the very fabric of life in the United States. Sexism permeates the very air we breathe. Homophobia becomes so pervasive and insidious that it becomes like background noise to everything else. Metaphors that reveal abilityism become so commonplace that it’s like being in a room with a smell for too long; when that happens, our nerves that sense a scent overload and refuse to notice them anymore. Anti-Semitism plays into stereotypes in such subtle ways that if you didn’t know what to look for, you’d never even notice it (Watto in The Phantom Menace for example, replicates anti-Semitism in his manners and his speech patterns.)

Sexism is a systemic superstructure of male privilege, and it exists in the world. I have been the recipient of that privilege, and fandom has helped me to understand in some small part what it feels to not have it (something for which I am eternally grateful). Resistant measures intended to combat the overarching superstructure are not sexist. Thus the OTW could be excluding men and that would be okay.

The question is not, cannot be, "Would this be just in an already just society?" Putting Supergirl in a short skirt, or giving Powergirl big breasts, would be neutral acts in an already just society: some women wear short skirts and some have big breasts, and that's okay. But we don't live in a just society, and asking what we would do then blinds us to the pattern of oppression these facts form into today. Similarly, some actions are called for today as reactionary measures which would not be appropriate in a feminist utopia. Fandom's female identity is one of these things.

That's the argument OTW doesn't want to make, because not everyone agrees with it, and which of course it doesn't have to make, because they're not excluding men. They're not catering to men, of course, and in a world of rampant male privilege that might be felt as exclusion, as cereta documents in her post Fandom and Male Privilege. And I know firsthand what that feels like, being male, and it's not fun, especially not at first. But it's not exclusion. The OTW has male members working on its volunteer staff, serving on committees. Its mission statement states that:

"We value infinite diversity in infinite combinations. We value all fans engaged in transformative work: fans of any race, gender, culture, sexual identity, or ability. We value the unhindered cross-pollination and exchange of fannish ideas and cultures while seeking to avoid the homogenization or centralization of fandom." 

While men are certainly welcome (and again, I can say this firsthand), it is simply recognize that in a world where everything else is run by men for men's purposes, this is a female space.

I believe in what Helene Cixous called the laugh of the Medusa: the radical, revisionary possibilities of a community of women writing, especially about sex. I believe that what cupidsbow calls "amazing outpouring of female talent" in How Fanfiction Makes Us Poor has the power to change the world and is valuable from a feminist perspective. In her post Is Medusa Still Laughing?, kbusse writes:

There clearly is a long tradition of connecting male AUTHORity with its ever-present tool of the PENis and the history of female reading pleasure and sexuality has long been explored (see, for example, Lacqeur’s fascinating Solitary Sex, which discusses the assumed dangers of novel reading as mastubatory practice). While media fan studies has avoided the “slash is subversive” argument since Jones at least, I’m wondering whether we’ve dismissed it too eagerly after all. Because women writing their desires, writing their bodies, writing for their bodies, might not be as acceptable as we tend to assume it is at this point in time within the fanfic community.

Some might argue that OTW shouldn't be a feminist organization. I disagree. I think that every organization should be a feminist organization, and that the OTW is not feminist enough. (This is not a defense, remember?) The Roman Catholic Church should be a feminist organization, although it sadly isn't. The Cato Institute should be a feminist organization. The only reason NAMBLA shouldn't be a feminist organization is that it probably shouldn't exist at all in the first place. There are normative ethics at work here; I am not a relativist.

If you disagree with me on this, I think you're wrong, but I love you anyway. I have had very productive discussions with people on my flist who disagree with me on the role of power in human society. And OTW may still be for you--as I've said, it is way more inclusive of differing points of view that I am, and as in one of my good moods I recognize an organization should and must be if it is going to function. Even if you disagree with the importance of privileging fandom's female identity doesn't take change the coolness of a new archive, journal, or wiki.

This sort of brings me to my second issue, which is the relationship between radical theory (e.g., my feminism) and liberal activism (An Archive of Our Own). For the people who believe that the OTW as an organization is in some ways a betrayal of the anarchic ethos of fandom, I am profoundly sympathetic. Liberalism and radicalism always tend to exist in an uneasy tension with each other, and my temperament is to be a radical. (If for no other reason than that I am still young.) And yet for all that I am a radical--my brand of feminism is not the "liberal feminism" of the ERA brand (that's my mother's feminism)--I can see the good work that liberal feminism has done: suffrage, anti-discrimination laws, assurance of basic rights like holding property and not being raped. So too can I see the compromises with authority which brought about these reforms, and problematize them--and problematize them I do! But that does not change the fact that the plight of women is better than it was 100 years ago, for all the fact that the feminist movement consisted for much of that time of middle-class white (heterosexual) women who, no, did not speak for all women.

Liberalism is necessary for concrete change, but radicalism is the vision which both motivates it and critiques it. And, oddly enough, it is the theoreticians and acafans who are keeping that vision alive. The OTW is in the not-so-strange spot of being attacked from both the left and the right: it is being attacked for being comprised of acafan who think fandom is subversive, and also by fans who do not think the OTW is subversive enough, as it tries to use the master's tools to tear down the master's house.

The goals of the OTW are not as ambitious as those of 20th-century liberal feminism, but they are concrete and useful: an archive, a journal, a defense fund, a wiki. In all of the discussions over the motivating ideologies of the org, these concrete tasks--which all really the only thing the org has in common (two fans, three opinions)--keep getting lost. The criticisms of the OTW most often appear to rest on what it appears to be, to think, to want--and not on what it is doing. (Not much yet. Give it a few months.) This is, I think, a mistake, confusing the radical vision with the liberal nature of an organization. The OTW is not some massive machine which thinks and desires in unison, but a group of people united around a (mostly concrete) set of goals.

I think I was the first person to make the comparison to the ACLU, in December, here, althhough I've seen it made since. The ACLU is an organization which is commonly understood to be motivated by a certain type of ideological agenda, but it is not a "Living Document Constitutional Interpretation Club" or some such. Instead, its members are united in their support of the concrete work that the ACLU does, to the point that people who do not share the perceived ideology can and do support the organization, and the organization (famously) serves even those who do not share the organization's perspectives. And even within the group of people who do share the dominant ideology, there are differences in emphasis. I care much more about free speech (it was Strikethrough2007 that encouraged me to send my dues off for the first time) and gay/lesbian rights than I do supporting affirmative actions or opposing the death penalty; another ACLU member's priorities will be different.

I think the OTW is going to be a lot like that. I'm not defending them, mind you; I'm just calling it like I see it.

Comments

[heyiya.livejournal.com]

:)

I'm glad we're in concordance!

[ghost_lingering]

*pokes head in fire*

[Disclaimer: This comment is a bit of a non-defense of the post...I'm still thinking about every thing that was written and I can't say I agree with all of it, but I also don't violently disagree--like I said, I'm still processing. What follows is my own reaction to your comment, without reference to the preceeding post.]

I'm a college student right now double-majoring in two liberal arts fields. One is mostly women (English). The other is mostly men (Film). (At least, those are the demographics where I am.) The one that's mostly women is maybe a 60/40 split; the one that's mostly men is...basically a 80/20 split (*to clarify: in film production classes, which are the bulk of my film classload at this point--film studies/media studies classes are more even, but still probably more guys).

I love both majors. I am equally sucessful in both majors. I have two jobs, one relating to each major, both of which I love very much and which I am good at. I love the people in both majors, though I'm probably closer to people in the second major (aka, the guys) because I spend more time with them (hard not to when you do film production classes). I fit in equally well with the people in both majors, though perhaps slightly better with the second major because most of the guys are geeks like I am (albeit mostly film geeks who argue about soviet montage and wether film is more hardcore than video, not sci-fi/fantasy/media/rpf/whatever fans, but still). In both majors we discuss issues of gender, sexuality, and race; of representation; of sub-culture; of subtext; of interpretation. In neither major do I do I blame my sucesses/failures on male patriarchy or whatever.

But.

Sometimes it is a relief to get together with my other female film friends and talk film and whatever. Because, man, I get sick of being around guys all the time. Even guys I like, who I respect, who like and respect me, to whom I am 'one of the guys'. Sometimes I like heading over to my other major and being in the majority; sometimes I like 'being one of the girls' instead.

So here's what I think: fandom (at least the corners I hang out in) is mostly (though not exclusively) women. Which would, at least the way I understand it, make it a predominately female-space. And that's nice, sometimes. It's not about male patriarchy, or male priveledge, it's about hanging out with a whole bunch of women and being geeks.

And I find nothing wrong with that: not diagnosing it as such, and not thinking that's cool. Because guys are great, and hanging out with guys are great; and people of both genders are great, and hanging out with people of both genders are great; but women are great too, and, sometimes, it is nice to hang out with just women. And if guys want to join a large group of geeky women hanging out on-line, that's cool: it's just like when I'm hanging out with my film people...after all, it's not always bad to be in the minority.

[kerravongenius.livejournal.com]

I have no quarrel with that at all, and if OTW took the same view, I'd have no quarrel with them.

[alias_sqbr]

I tend to have the same problems as alchemia with what I see as ambiguous and contradictory definitions of who exactly they are and represent (I asked a question about it on their community, unfortunately I worded it so badly I'm not sure they'll bother responding :( (*)).

There's a big difference between OTW being made up of female fanficcers but supporting male machina makers and the ACLU being made up of liberals but supporting conservative Christians. Namely, conservative Christians are by their nature the kind of people who are likely to object to any organization which defends civil liberties, but there is absolutely no reason why machina makers would object to an organisation which supported transformative works(**). In fact, I imagine many of them would be interested in joining and maybe being on the board. Would they be allowed to be?

I'm possible missing something, but the way I see it there are three ways OTW could go:
1) Be about all transformative works, including all the ones which are not historically related to fanfic etc or female dominated. This means losing the references to female spaces etc, and probably ending up with a board and membership which is at least 50% male.
2) Only be about certain types of transformative works ie fanfic, fanart, fanvids etc, with a clear definition so that those who are excluded know where they stand. Possibly be open to forming alliances with any groups who arise to fill in the gaps ie "The Organisation for Machina Makers" or "The Society for Stained Glass Icons of Soccer Players" etc. Femaleness stays.
3) Have some parts of the organisation be of type (1) (like the legal defense part) with others just of type 2 (like the archive). Make this distinction clear.

Having an unstated "Them vs Us" attitude seems awfully condescending, like other sorts of fans aren't smart or motivated enough to even want to be on the board, and that their opinions wouldn't be worth listening to if they did. If they were starting out as type 2 with the intention of branching into type 1 that would be ok, I guess, but the "female space" thing implies otherwise.

Anyway, an interesting post regardless, and on the whole I agree with you. Ish :) I do think the people getting narky about the archive are being silly: it's open source software designed for hosting fanfic, how is that not a good thing?

(*)I have the same worry about this comment. I've been having a strong of stupid-brain days recently...
(**)Well, no more than female fanfic writers, who as we've seen do object about it sometimes :)

[ghost_lingering]

I'm not affliated with OTW, nor can I read minds, but. What I just said? That's what I thought the OTW to mean when they said: "We value our identity as a predominantly female community with a rich history of creativity and commentary." (Which is Value #2 here.) Because, well. Like I said: nothing wrong with diagnosising fandom as a 'predominately female space' (or community, in the OTW's words), because...it's true, it is mostly women, and it is part of the fannish identiy (or, at least of the identity of the fannish spaces I hang out in). And fandom does have a rich history! So, I don't know. I guess I think that what I said is what the OTW seems to think: they value fandom, a predominately female community, which has a long and rich history. Or: they value fandom's long and rich history, which was shaped by its predominately female community.

At least, that's what I read, and how I read it. And I, for one, have nothing against that. But, like I said, I'm not affliated with the OTW, and if you see their statements as saying and meaning something different...well. *shrugs* Honestly, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt because they seem to have most vidders on their side. But that's me.

[kerravongenius.livejournal.com]

Since then, there has been a lot of clarification on the point and, if the things they have been saying were said by men of women, that lot would be the first to scream sexism. That's what I hate most, the double standards on display. I don't want someone claiming to speak for me who makes all female fans look like sexist hypocrites.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

if you don't think predominant femaleness is something to value, then that line is of course going to annoy or even offend you.

It's not just that, but also, when I read that someone values fandom being female as the #1 thing, it feels to me like they are only tolerating people who don't identify as female, and furthermore that they are invested in actively keeping it that way (such as by the rhetoric of "for women, by women").

(This is not necessarily about OTW, but this slice of fandom in general.)

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

First off: I think this post is absolutely brilliant, and admire the way in which you construct it (I am such a sucker for good writing!).

I agree totally that there is an important relationship between what is called radical and what is called liberal ideologies and pratices in every movement for social change: women voting! How radical! What is radical in one generation is "normal" for the next. There must be multiple, ongoing, varying types of feminisms in debate at the same time for anything to happen: feminist movement (where the emphasis is one the movement) cannot be achieved by one "true" approach.

In other words, fantastic post, and I especially like how you handle the gender and feminist issues.

However. Let's move to the next level.

First, some personal history. After discovering feminism in the early eighties, and become a self-described radical feminist (and spending a lot of time explaining to people that it didn't mean I was going to become a terrorist and bomb all male spaces), I found myself stomping away from the academy after telling the graduate director of the playwriting program that he was sexist. Note to grad students: never tell a graduate director off unless you are prepared to leave. In my exit interview with the dept. head (do I need to say this dept. was all male except for an adjunct who taught dance), he told me that they knew the director had problems with women, that no female students ever did the playwriting option on the undergraduate level, that I was the only female student to get as far as I had on the graduate level, but they could not do anything because he had tenure and becauase his stance was that he could not be sexist because he was Jewish and a member of the ACLU (I LOVE your analogy between OTW and the ACLU, btw, but it is funny in the context of this story).

And even had they made someone else graduate director, it probably wouldn't have made any difference to the overall sexism in place.

The program, not surprisingly, was even more racist (during the time I was there, there was one African-American undergrad student; all the grad students were white).

So I left. I was unemployed a while which sucks. I lived with my mom. I found clerical jobs (for the federal government which taught me that the feds have a much better tenure system than academics do--three years, and you're in, and they cannot fire you--they can get rid of your job, but they cannot fire you).

And I joined groups/volunteered: environmental, small struggling radical literary types, and bisexual. (The only feminist group I could learn of that was active in the area at the time required a commitment to both Marxism and vegetarianism and had come about a result of fierce internal philosophical struggles.)

I worked the crappy clerical job and threw my heart and soul into the groups.

A few years later, I stomped back into academia, pissed off beyond measure at the groups and frustrated with their inability to do anything beyond fight with each other. At that time I evolved my theory of groups: any group no matter how marginalized/oppressed will immediately, upon formation, look for some 'scapegoat' who can be expelled to show the greater purity of the group. NOW expelled lesbians. There are lots of other examples. I am so not a group person, I learned. And that applies to every group I've been in from Campfire groups to the Bisexual Support Group.

part 2

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

I came to feminism via reading and writing. Books are the most important element of my life, and so I decided to go someplace where I could work with books, where I could make a difference (compared to my experience in academia), and where I could in fact keep working with feminist ideas.

There are, I am sure, groups committed to social change which are much more effective, but I do not think I found them.

I also learned that philosophically I pretty much do not like working with people in that sort of situation (I also hate clerical jobs).

I decided to subvert from within and went back to academia. The challenge then became getting tenure, and that's another whole issue.

So here's my question: given the validity of your points about the OTW not being "radical, what sort of *practices* would you say would be appropriate (say, in a radical group that you could help form)? Based on the theory, what specific practices would be best? (I also agree with you on the strength of the open-source software! That's fantastic, and something I see given little credit by the people critiquing the archive. Of course since their argument seems to boil down to "we don't need another archive," I guess they wouldn't see forming other archives as a good idea.)

The whole excluding men issue--I see no reason for a feminist or a radical feminist group to exclude men at this point in time although there is every reason for some women to form groups that are women-only, but given that a HUGE amount of the criticism of the "valuing female communtiy" is coming from women, not men, and a lot of the criticisms of "feminism" come from women (often calling themselves feminist), it's not as easy as let's keep the men out. For one thing, the possible "whiteness" of the Board hasn't even been raised/debated (or if it has, I haven't seen it). The class issues are perhaps tied up with the whole critique of academics. Nobody's talking much about sexuality/gender identity--but I strongly suspect that the majority of the Board, as of fandom, are straight.

That said, of course, I was the one involved in aca-fan debate saying why spend a lot of time trying to explain ourselves to the men? Let's just do what we want to do, and those few men who understand (i.e. are feminists, who are working to dismantle their own and institutionalized systems of male privilege) will join in. I'm sort of in the space (in this one small space) described by Joanna Russ (I'm up early for some reason and not at work where all my Russ books are) of just not caring what men say, and being busy with my own stuff.

But deep down and simply; what practices do you want to see? How would you do things differently?

Because (given my age and years in the system and the fact that I'm probably not a radical anymore, given all of that), I'm seeing OTW as a lot more potentially radical than you or heyiya. Women are trying to own the space. Women who are not a corporation are creating a group to own/control space for fans who *wish* to use it.

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

They are trying to change the structure.

I am not sure how the tension between radical and liberal feminists is working out these days, but in the 1980s, one way was activist/academic.

I'm not sure that in 2007 anybody working in an academic insitution really gets to consider themselves a radical (as I understand the word) just based on the theory/reading/writing--I could be wrong, and just reflecting my own situation, but I think that's something to consider in the critiques of the OTW as not "radical" enough. I'm quite open to the idea that it's a generational issue.

The question is what is one doing beyond that academic setting--what I see the OTW doing, even with the academic journal (which btw is going to be seen as extremely radical/possibly marginalized/discounted by a lot of the gatekeepers in academia), is working to make a structural difference in existing conditions by changing the nature of ownership.

That they're not also making feminist arguments (and the systemic nature of oppression as you note is not solely a feminist analysis) is not surprising to me: look at all the criticism and complaints about the academic/feminist/exclusionary/oppressive nature of the group even as they currently exist (and before they've done much of anything beyond set up some committees!)

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

I posted a huge long three post reply below--and I mention your name!--so I don't want to repeat what I did here but did want to alert you to the stuff I posted.

I guess I would like to ask you, as I ask alixtii, what practices you would in fact like to see or see as radical (and I raise the issue of being an academic instead of an activist). I tried activism, I left activist groups.

I see the OTW as more potentially radical (in the sense of changing structures) than either of you do.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I agree with you that it is important for feminist theory to portray women not only as victims, but also to look at ways women have historically been able to resist patriarchy (Joan of Arc, Margery Kempe, Julian of Norwich) (while being able to propblematize those examples) and ways they can continue to do so today. Failing to do this would indeed in some ways perpetuate the superstructures feminist theory is in opposition. Good feminist theory is thus aware of these tensions and tries to navigate them successfully, looking at the intricacies of vasrious female subject-positions. Obviously, some works of feminist theory are better at it than others.

At the same time, women are often victims in our society. To take worries about portraying women as victims too far can ignore real victimizations. I had a conversation on LJ with a woman who once blamed rape on feminism, for constructing rape victims as victims. No, sorry--rape is the fault of rapists, and is a victimizing crime. And likewise, I do believe that patriarchy and male privilege exist, and that they objectively hurt women.

Beyond that, I didn't write feminist theory; none of the ideas above are new to me. I couldn't and I shouldn't, although I do think mine can be a useful voice in refining it. But as a white het male in a society which affords me enormous amounts of privilege, my duty is to listen and to learn. Feminist theory is what an amazing group of women--my mother, my teachers, my professors, and my friends, not to mention the female theorists and authors themselves, through their work--has taught me.

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

I think you are right that the OTW doesn't want you defending them ;o) mainly because if they become too associated in the fannish mind with anything political/social issue related, fandom will wander off elsewhere. I suspect they may have already gone too far down that route, but then I have only really heard of them via metafandom style posts and those by definition are concerned with the more ideologically aware branches of fandom.

If they can pitch themselves as just a big new archive, fandom may be interested, and may then pick up on some of the other things they are offering in passing. Most of fandom will be willing to at least investigate them if there is a chance of picking up more readers.

Otherwise they will end up just representing those few fans who like talking about gender/race/sexuality/whatever issues, and everyone else will just ignore them. Nothing wrong with that, of course, if that is what they want then good luck to them, but it won't have much to do with fandom and it certainly won't be providing anything fandom needs.

But a good open-source, adaptable piece of archive software - now that fandom really would benefit from. So if they are providing that then good for them.

For myself, I will continue to write for myself, post for the readership I am in the mood to post for, and don't really see how OTW will ever be relevant to my life.

Oh, by the way, I have taken a vow to stop trying to talk about gender/race/sexuality etc. issues online since they just make me upset and in the case of the race discussions last year actually made me considerably more racist (which naturally is not something I welcome). Hence I'm sorry but I won't reply to the two comments you replied to this morning - please understand that is not anything personal against you.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

conservative Christians are by their nature the kind of people who are likely to object to any organization which defends civil liberties

I'm not so sure. If they're the type of evangelical who acts like they want to set up a theocracy, then maybe. But I think the concservative Christian movement (in America) is more diverse than that, and there would be plenty of need to defend civil liberties, if not perhaps with the ACLU's exact emphases (gay/lesbian rights wouldn' be high on the list). And certainly neocons and libertarians and other types of conservatives might also see the importance of an organization which defends civil liberities. Indeed, they do, and there are such conservatives actively supporting the ACLU, even if they don't fit in with the percieved liberal mindset of the organization, or its conception of the role of big government, or its method of constitutional interpretation, or whatever.

Have some parts of the organisation be of type (1) (like the legal defense part) with others just of type 2 (like the archive). Make this distinction clear.

I would think the Archive as well would be of type 1; anyone can use it regardless of gender, and once vids are allowed, I think it would be an administrative nightmare to disallow machinima. Obviously parodies couldn't be forbidden either, as female fen write them too, if not as much a significant part of their output. The wiki and the journal might lean more towards #2, since it is that history/culture they are documenting; but I get the sense, from the people involved, that the journal at least would more than happily publish an essay on machinima (as Kristina and Karen do in their book), and is, after all, called Transformative Works and Cultures, with culture plural. The makeup of the Board will of course depend on who gets elected in by dues-paying members, but to play Nostradamus I do not see the makeup changing considerably.

In other words, I expect the female meta/fanfiction community to remain at the center of the org, but for it to be open and welcoming to everybody, and to serve everybody.

Re: part 2

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I can't (and won't) defend OTW against accusations of being less subversive than fandom as a whole, but the arguments I've seen made to this effect (in dkompare's and ethrosdemon's posts and the comments thereto, mostly) are often at too high a level of abstraction to be practically meaningful (but isn't that true of a lot of theoretical radical critique?), and that's saying a lot coming from this very abstract philosopher-to-be! And I think that OTW will keep track of its radical vision as exemplified in the explicitly feminist title "An Archive of Our Own," in large part because of the acafannish influence, and am amused that it is being attacked at once both for being too radical and for not being radical enough. So I'm profoundly sympathetic to those arguing about OTW's liberalizing influence, but I'm not sure I completely share their critiques.

That said, there is something inherently liberalizing in the idea of an archiv4e. First and foremost is my concern--which I held from the very beginning--that for legal reasons chan and/or underaged readers will not be allowed. This, if it happens, would be a compromised forced by the necessity of obeying the law, not being criminals anymore. That's a liberalization. So too is the fact that on my LJ, I can write a NC-17 BDSM Dawn/Giles fic with character death and noncon where Dawn's 14 and title it "Dawn gen, PG" and the only thing anyone can do is defriend me or stop listing me on newsletters. There's a fundamental anarchy in the way we do things on LJ, with no governor anywhere except maybe SixApart or their Russian successors, and a) they are King Log much more often than King Stork, at least until recently, and b) fans typically don't feel any real obligation to obey their rules beyond the possibility of consequences.

With an archive, there presumably would need to be some type of shared consensus as to what certain fannish terms meant, one true rating system, etc. So it is certainly a pulling back from the anarchy we experience on LJ--but with LJ's masters suddenly becoming more vigilant, it's nonetheless possibly necessary that we will have to take our game elsewhere. And with the possibility of more than one archive (or rather, the certainty, since the old ones aren't going anywhere) there will be a place for anarchy as well.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Agreed. There's an apologetic virtue in OTW not making the argument I'm making, but at the same time (As someone who agrees with me) I think there's a value in the argument being made somewhere.Thus my approach of distancing myself from the org and laying out my perspective without defending them.

I think once the new archive comes out, the focus will be on that much more than any perceived ideology. People mnay hate it--probably will, people being people--but I do think the focus of the criticism will change once the OTW has something concrete to show for themselves.

And fair enough.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised anymore when people ar surprised by my gender, since I feel like I talk about it a lot (since I talk about feminism a lot), although naturally it happened a lot when I was new to LJ, but part of me is gratified I can still pass. In the beginning, even Ari, after her having read my journal for three months and my having left comments in her journal for about a year, was surprised when she found out.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

The OTW, with the wiki and the Journal, are going to be spaces to work on the contextualization of fandom. This contextualization is what is going to protect our culture, yes, but it will make the space as a whole problematic.

That's fair, although it's my understanding that in the name of intellectual freedom the Journal wiill be operating almost completely independently of the org, and as thus will not speak for the org. Also, since a journal is multi-authored, it won't have only one perspective; I trust and kbusse to publish people they disagree with, for example.

I really don't know anything about the wiki--the org hasn't said very much about it yet, have they?--but ideally the nature of a wiki means that even if the people who own the servers have an agenda, it wouldn't find its way into the content, because everyone would be welcome to serve as editors. Of course, the world isn't always as wonderful as the ideal, so we'll just have to wait and see. But still, it's probably safer in the hands of a non-profit organization than in just those of one person; there'll be sure to be some checks and balances.

[alchemia.livejournal.com]

Yes, that slice seems to be the meta-fandom-y part of fandom (or at least thats where i see it expressed and highlighted), and that's also where I see a lot of the people in otw coming from. not everyone featured/participating in metafandom thinks this way of course, but the majority seem to. so until the otw proves otherwise, i'm going to assume they're more like the 'by women for women' crowd.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Well, I know that slice of fandom, I think, being someone who himself believes in the rehetoric, "by women, for women," (and in my corner of femslash fandom, "by women, for women, and about women") and I wouldn't say I was "only tolerated." They do expect me to respect their "female-identified culture" and history, though, and not to try to turn their treehouse into something it isn't.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Good for you. As I said in your IJ, just because you don't find it unwelcoming does not mean that those of us who do are wrong. If, when I was first starting to get interested in fanfic and slash, I had heard people saying it's by women, for women, I would not have felt welcome to join in, therefore I am glad that my early exposure to fanfic was in anime fandom and on FFN, where there is a more balanced gender mix, and that I did not find myself here until much later.

[heyiya.livejournal.com]

They are trying to change the structure in small ways that fit in the world as it is; the changes they want are within the system. That's my definition of liberal -- change within existing structures. Legal defenses are pretty much by definition liberal. My take on it is in the essay I just posted flocked, in fact; I want illegality to be defended too, I want there to be the idea of something more than an enclave within the corporate web. Now, I *don't* want that from OTW, because that's not their goal, and I understand that. But I still want it. I want the greater transformation, I want to think OTW in alliance not only with Creative Commons and open source but with social justice activism on and off the web. I have some connections to such RL activism, though not enough to claim any kind of cred, and I've seen amazing small-scale things get done by people who inform all they do with a radical anticapitalist, antiracist, anticolonial analysis. I can't look at OTW without wondering what it would be like with those tools involved, even while I still support what it does on its own terms. Like, as I said, more-or-less supporting gay marriage legislation while also opposing it because I don't believe in the kind of normativity that values marriage above other kinds of relationship.

I tried to address the fundamental hypocrisy of being a radically-minded academic in my reply above. For me the crucial issues revolve around capitalism and colonialism/neoliberalism rather than gender; I write critically about both structures while benefiting from them. And I have thought about the potential value in leaving academia and joining the activist world, but despite the fact that being in the system renders one liberal by default, I think that the academy needs radicals so that students aren't just being taught how the system works and how to find their place in it but also that it's fucked up and what the cost of their place is (and how not everyone and not all culture accepts the status quo).

Again like I said above, I don't believe in a noncontradictory ideological position. We all want to live comfortably even as we may deplore the systems that give us comfort off the backs of others; trying to live a pure and untainted life is probably more likely to lead to burnout than anything else. That isn't to say that I think it isn't worth *trying* -- but I think there are times when strong, negative critiques need to be made even if they can't be backed up with immediate positive action. They are probably already neutralized by being made within the academy, and I believe it's really important not to close oneself up in the ivory tower -- to be an intellectual rather than just an academic, if you like, something I try to do -- but I suppose I do believe in the value of ideas for their own sake, and that's why I do this.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Both you and heyiya have pointed out the uneasy subject-position, the de-radicalised radicalism, of the critical academic, and for good reason I think: there are many tensions contained within, and ones I would not forgotten, as especially as I begin my path to inhabit that very subject-position.

When I use "radical," I always remember its etymology of "root," so for me a radical is someone who attacks the problem from a deeper, more abstract, more meta- level, while a liberal seeks to effect change on the surface level. I would thus endorse heyiya's definition of a radical as one who doesn't want to work within the system; she wants to throw off the system itself. Thus the Russian Trotskyites were in my book liberals (although a radical sort of liberal); the critical Marxists who are in vogue in contemporary academia are radicals (although it is a comfortable, bourgeoisie sort of radicalism).

Radical, critical theory is very good at identifying problems but absolutely horrible at coming up with solutions (especially when "the system" is supposed to be as deep as cognition itself), so that radicals as I use the term sometimes seem like they have nothing to do but hang onto their tenure until the Revoluton comes. Liberals are excellent at making inroads into solvng the suface problems but often act as if they were completely clueless to the underlying systemic problems.

[illicit-grace.livejournal.com]

Yea, I guess that would help with the situation. They really havent talked about the wiki much yet - so there has been a lot of speculation about it. I too think that the space can be fair, and definitly trust kbusse to handle the journal well.
I guess that, in a lot of ways I was torn between being very, very hopeful about the project and its services (and in all honesty, the journal and wiki really do have me feeling at times like a kid at Christmas) and wanting to understnad and hear the voices of those who dont feel included/have reservations. Cause it could be problematic in many, many ways.

[la-vie-noire.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it would scream sexism because men have power that women don't have. There is no double standard due to the lack of equality. Sexism (http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2007/06/03/faq-arent-feminists-just-sexists-towards-men/)

How many 'female space' are out there that are about women doing what they like, exploring their sexuality and creativity? I would say that all mainstream media is about men exploring their sexuality and talking about what they like without judgment (everybody knows what kind of porn straight men like, sports they see, women they like to see in media/RL). Everything is FOR them. Of course calling mainstream Male Space (in a not judgmental way) would be sexist and naming ONE single space Female Space would be not. You could call mainstream White Space too and would be accurate but exclusive. Do you think people would say that naming one space 'native-american space' or 'african-american space' is racist? They would be privileged idiots if they do because that is just giving underpowered groups power they don't have. That's leveling the ground.

Of course that doesn't mean men are excluded, it means Fandom is predominantly female; and its identity is female (like mainstream's is male). As the OP said, that would probably be sexist in a feminist utopia. But we don't live in one.