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

[kerravongenius.livejournal.com]

I live in Britain and, if there is an imbalance of power, it is in favour of women.

[tacky-tramp.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Thanks for your perspective.

[danamaree.livejournal.com]

When I lived in the UK I worked in the NHS, in various positions around the Manchester area, and the overwhelming majority of the people in management were male, even the Nursing Director was male.

There were some female inroads with some of the positions, and I'm sure it's not as bad as it was, but in all my various work situations the power in the office was held by men.

But I didn't really see this as unusual, I'm a secretary, all my working life I've taken majority male management as a given, especially in Government. In this, the UK isn't any better or worst then Australia.

But it's slowly changing.

So, I would dispute kerravongenius assertion that woman have more power in the UK at this time. But maybe I worked in the wrong place. *shrug*

[zellieh]

I live in Britain and there is an imbalance of power - in favour of men.

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

House of Commons: 520 male, 126 female.
House of Lords: 602 male, 147 female.
Sunday Times' list of top 10 richest people: 6 places taken by individual males, 1 by a male "and family", 2 by m/f couples, and one by a pair of brothers.

Fascinating yardstick you've got there.

[kerravongenius.livejournal.com]

Now, how many of those women in the House of Commons are there on merit? Most are token totty put in to please feminists. Our current Home Secretary was given the job because she was a woman. Privileged, not oppressed. There are even women-only shortlists for candidates.

If money is the only yardstick you'll accept, I think you'll find the Queen has quite a bit of cash.

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

But as I say, she doesn't show up on that Times list -- and neither did JKR, which surprised me, actually. I'm not saying money is "the only yardstick", but it does have the qualities of (a) being measurable, and (b) making the world go 'round.

[kerravongenius.livejournal.com]

JKR is an interesting example. Would she be as rich or as popular if she were a chap? Somehow I doubt it. The fact that she is a single parent is also lauded, although single fathers don't seem to get quite so much attention.

[the_antichris.livejournal.com]

Philip Pullman's not as rich as JKR, but he's getting a fair bit of attention. And if you don't think single fathers get positive media attention, you're not reading the same papers I do.

[esorlehcar.livejournal.com]

If you really respect women, why not let us fight our own battles and stop being so patronising?

I fail to see how claiming that women who have attained any measure of success have only done so because of a society that privileges them and disenfranchises men constitutes respecting women.

[kerravongenius.livejournal.com]

How does saying that some women benefit from privilege translate into not respecting women? I respect the women who achieve things for themselves and resent those who get power and wealth simply because they are women. There is a distinct double standard in feminism. It's fine to say a man is privileged, but to acknowledge that a woman is privileged is unacceptable.

[the_antichris.livejournal.com]

You didn't say some women benefited from privilege; you said that ALL women MPs were there because of privilege, not on their merits. That's profoundly disrespectful of their skills and efforts.

I'd be interested to see some examples to back up your claim that it's unacceptable to say that women are privileged: I fully acknowledge my privilege as a wealthy, apparently straight woman of the dominant culture, and, mutatis mutandis, so do all the feminists I know, on and off LJ.

[kerravongenius.livejournal.com]

I most definitely did not say ALL. If you're going to lie about what was said, continuing this is pointless. It's a pity feminists can't at least be honest in arguments, isn't it?

[the_antichris.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry; I misquoted. Replace 'all' with 'most' and my point still stands. It's a pity some anti-feminists can't hold a discussion without resorting to ad hominem arguments, isn't it?

[esorlehcar.livejournal.com]

You were presented with a list showing that women are grossly underrepresented in British government. You not only had no problem with this gross under-representation, you clarified that the few women who have obtained positions of power have only done so as tokens to appease feminists. You then explained that JKR's popularity is not because of her ability as a writer, but because of the massive amounts of privilege women have.

Your automatic assumption is that any woman who has a position of wealth and power is not there because she deserves to be, but because an unfair system put her there, disenfranchising an automatically more qualified man. If that's your attempt at respecting women, you're doing it wrong.

[kerravongenius.livejournal.com]

Another one who distorts my words. What I said appears above and anyone with two braincells to rub together can see the difference between what I said and what you are pretending I said.

One day, I will meet a feminist who can argue on facts, not by twisting things, but I'm not holding my breath.

All I will say, before I go and write the fic I am neglecting to try to talk to people incapable of listening, is that Britain is a monarchy and our monarch is a Queen. It boggles the mind that anyone could say women are "grossly underrepresented" in the government. The Queen is our head of state, you silly creature!

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

Head of State

Head of Government

I'm not even British and I know the difference.

[esorlehcar.livejournal.com]

Anyone "with two braincells to rub together" can read your misogynist drivel as exactly what it is. Though the fact that you live in Britain and have somehow failed to realize the Queen is a figurehead probably disqualifies you from that category.

[danamaree.livejournal.com]

The Queen is only the head of power because of birth. And if she had an older or younger brother then he would have taken the crown.

It's a title handed down by preference to the next male in line. The only reason Elizabeth got the title is because her Uncle abdicated the crown and only herself and her sister were left, if her Uncle had kept the Crown, and had son, it would have gone to them.

How in hell you can argue that England favours women because the Queen (by an accident of birth) is the Head in an institution that is hereditary based on the male line, it hurts my head!

[tacky-tramp.livejournal.com]

You do know, don't you, that the whole reason she published as "J.K. Rowling" is because her publisher feared that boys wouldn't buy a book with a woman's name on the cover ... right?

[danamaree.livejournal.com]

Also, the Queen didn't get all that privilege and money because she was a woman, but because she was born to it, and there were only women in line for succession.

If she had had a brother, younger or older, he would have inherited the crown.

[the_antichris.livejournal.com]

I find that sort of generalisation offensive. From what I can see, the Home Secretary is at least as competent as any of her male predecessors. Do you have evidence that she was appointed as a token woman?

I'm sure feminists are pleased that there are some women MPs, even if Parliament's make-up doesn't approach proportionality, but those numbers, if anything, look more like party leaders and most MPs being male to please people who are used to male privilege, and a few women having the guts and skill to fight their way up regardless.

The Queen does have quite a bit of cash, but it's family cash, and how many monarchs have been women so far? Also, one example does not go to prove a trend.

[kerravongenius.livejournal.com]

If you think the Home Secretary is competent, we live in parallel universes, which explains a lot.

[the_antichris.livejournal.com]

I said 'as competent as any of her predecessors'; Jack Straw wasn't much of a prize. I don't think she's worse, and I think you're theorising in advance of the data, based on your own prejudices - she hasn't been in the job terribly long.

[kerravongenius.livejournal.com]

And in her previous job was so incompetent a man would have been fired.