Research In Depth
Fandom as a fortress: The gendered safe spaces of
online fanfiction communities
By Christine Dandrow
Christine Dandrow received her MA in Communi-
cation from the University of Hartford in 2016. She
is currently pursuing her PhD in Media & Commu-
nication at Temple University, where she was
awarded the Presidential Fellowship. Her research
interests include fan studies, video game studies,
and media studies.
Why fandom?
The first question that is asked of any fan
studies scholar is, “Why bother?” Why are fans wor-
thy of study and why do their practices matter? The
simplest answer is of course that fan practices matter
– a great deal, in fact – to fans, and that in and of
itself makes them worthy of study. A more nuanced
answer is that media and the Internet have evolved
to the point where nearly everyone encounters fan-
dom on a regular basis (Gray, Sandvoss, & Harring-
ton, 2007). The way people interact with media and
its artifacts can, “tell us something about the way in
which we relate to those around us, as well as the
way we read the mediated texts that constitute an
ever larger part of our horizon of experience” (Gray,
et al., 2007, p. 10). This simultaneous reflective and
interactive quality of fandom is part of what makes
it worth studying.
When scholars first started looking at fans
and fannish behavior, they saw another reason it
was worthy: the inherently subversive and power-
resistive nature of fandom. With fans being perpetu-
ally Othered by society and even (although not pur-
posefully) by the very academics attempting to cele-
brate and defend them, this initial wave of scholar-
ship saw fandom as a way for marginalized groups
to connect, interact, and express themselves away
from the prying and often harshly judging eye of the
public. While this approach was honorable in its in-
tentions, Gray, et al. (2007) argue it was also prob-
lematic in its reduction of fan to Other. However,
Gray, et al. neglect to take into account the discourse
of fandom itself. While true that, as later studies
affirm, much of the power dynamics and hierarchies
of mainstream culture are reproduced within fan-
Media Report to Women Fall 2016
dom, fandom still operates as a deliberately cor-
doned off subculture, often one created by fans
who self-identify as Othered and who want “safe
spaces” (Hellekson & Busse, 2006) in which to
practice their art. Thus, media fandom is a compli-
cated melting pot of online support group, discus-
sion community, religious fervor, and transforma-
tive work.
Definition of terms
Before continuing, a few definitions must
be established, as some common fandom terms
have varying usages. Sterling (2011) writes:
Fandom is an extremely “high con-
text” culture. In fact, it can be al-
most incomprehensible to some-
one from outside, because it’s so
thickly woven with inside jokes,
references to past stories, past fan-
doms, fandoms next-door, past
relationships. To ignore all that
and focus only on literal, explicit,
written messages is to miss a great
deal. (“[META] Fandom as a "high
context" culture”)
Thus, it would be not only inappropriate but actu-
ally impossible to meaningfully discuss fandom
without using some of its own terminology. In this
paper, fandom is defined as an interactive and
largely online community that forms around a
common interest (in this case, media-based). Cano n
is the material that has been officially made part of
the story by the original creators (Hellekson &
Busse, 2006). Transfo rm ative w o rk s are those that
utilize what Jenkins (1992) describes as “textual
poaching” (p. 24), sometimes known as appropriat-
ive or derivative work, although derivative tends
to be used pejoratively. Fanfictio n, also known as
fanfic or simply fic, is a type of transformative
work that typically takes the form of a written sto-
ry (Hellekson & Busse, 2006; Larsen & Zubernis,
2012). Shipping is the act of pairing two or more charac-
ters romantically and/or sexually and the ship is
the pairing itself (Hellekson & Busse, 2006). Slash is
6 www.mediareporttowomen.com
a genre of fanfiction that deals with the shipping of
characters of the same sex/gender, often regardless
of the characters' canon sexual orientations (note
that female slash pairings may be further designat-
ed as femslash and that the predominance of white
males in media is reflected in the composition of
the majority of slash ships) (Hellekson & Busse,
2006). Ships are usually denoted either by a slash
between the names (Dean/Castiel) or by a special
name that is often a portmanteau (Destiel). Some-
times an exclamation point is used to specify or
emphasize something about a pairing or character,
as with human!Castiel indicating the human incar-
nation of the character Castiel, who is actually an
angel in canon. Gend ersw ap means, as it sounds,
that a character’s gender is changed. Mary Sue is a
female original character in a fanfic who is usually
some form of author self-insert, and usually shifts
the focus of the story on to herself and away from
the canon main characters (Hellekson & Busse,
2006; Bonnstetter & Ott, 2011). Hurt/co m fo rt or h/c
is fanfic that focuses on the distress (from any range
of physical or mental traumas or medical issues) of
one character in a ship and the actions of the other
shipped character(s) that comfort or resolve the
trauma or issue, almost always climaxing (or begin-
ning) romantically (Hellekson & Busse, 2006).
Wank is “the dark underbelly of fan communities –
trolling, bullying, baskstabbing, shaming, and rela-
tional aggression” (Larsen & Zubernis, 2012, p.
115).
Fanfiction as art
For the sake of length and focus, this paper
will deal particularly with communities surround-
ing fanfiction writers and readers, a section of fan-
dom that has traditionally been understood as be-
ing predominantly female (Busker, 2013). Attempt-
ing to explain fanfiction as a genre of writing is a
bit like attempting to explain novels or plays as a
genre of literature – it does not quite work, because
“play” is less a genre and more an art form, within
which is situated comedy, tragedy, romance, mys-
tery, and other genres. Ultimately, that is how fan-
fiction functions as well. It is a unique art form unto
itself more than it is genre of literature. Fanfiction
has its own genres, such as hurt/comfort and slash,
it has its own tropes like genderswapping and
Mary Sues, and it has its own community centered
entirely on its creation, critique, and consumption,
much in the same way that television, plays, and
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novels do (just less commercial and more commu-
nal).
Before continuing, a few words of context:
Fanfiction can be extremely short and self-contained,
known as a one shot, but it also can constitute entire
series of novel-length works comprised of hundreds
of thousands of words each. Additionally, it should
be noted that except for one shots, which by their
very nature are completed and published in their
entirety and are typically only one chapter, fanfiction
is very rarely published all at once. Most often, it is
published one or two chapters at a time, feedback is
given in the form of comments, and then more chap-
ters are published. This makes for a very serialized
experience. Modern fanfiction, as an art form that
exists almost exclusively on the internet, is capable of
some incredibly interesting experimentation not just
in content but in formatting. This is of course contin-
gent upon the website it is hosted on, but many au-
thors will push the limits on what traditional literary
scholars would accept as, well, literary.
Fandom (and fanfiction) as resistive and female
Bonnstetter and Ott (2011) in their narrative
performance concerning Bonnstetter’s experiences
writing Mary Sues, write that fanfiction “is a means
for marginalized groups and especially female fans
to construct a discursive space within a hegemonic
culture to express themselves in meaningful and per-
sonally fulfilling ways” (p. 352). Some academics,
like Scodari (2003) and Bacon-Smith (1992) argue that
some forms of fanfiction reinforce problematic patri-
archal norms, but Bonnstetter and Ott (2011) disa-
gree, stating that the act of writing fanfiction “calls
into question the entire hegemonic apparatus of writ-
ing” (p. 358). This disagreement is echoed by Larsen
and Zubernis (2012) and Derecho (2006):
Even if a great deal of fan fiction…
tends to reinforce traditional gender
roles and social norms, fan fiction on
the whole qualifies as a resistant ar-
tistic practice because, if nothing
else, it is the means by which women
write against media corporations
whose products they consume by
augmenting or sometimes replacing
the canonical versions of media texts
with their own texts…Fanfics that
adhere to heteronormative ideals…
are also subversive of patriarchal
7 Fall 2016 Media Report to Women
Research In Depth
culture in the same way that Janice
Radway argues in her 1984 Reading
the Romance, that print romance
novels are subversive. (Derecho, 2006
p. 72)
Or, to put it differently, the very fact that marginal-
ized groups, whose writing and other works have
traditionally been downplayed in importance or out-
right ignored, create a space where their desires and
words are honored, celebrated, and valued, is in itself
resistive of hegemonic power structures, regardless of
content.
Fandom as a larger community is often char-
acterized as mostly male, although some recent stud-
ies challenge this understanding. It is situated, partic-
ularly in America, within a deceptively patriarchal
mainstream culture in which gender equality is per-
ceived as female privilege (Busker, 2013; Zubernis &
Larsen, 2012; Hellekson & Busse, 2006). This can lead
to some serious conflicts within fandom when the
spaces that marginalized groups set up for them-
selves encounter (usually straight white cis-gendered
male) outsiders. Men tend to feel excluded if topics
that make them uncomfortable (such as slash) are ad-
dressed in a community they wish to be a part of,
even if it was an established part of that community
(and, in fact, an important and valued part of it) be-
fore those men got there. When people who feel they
are Other in mainstream society seek out fellow Oth-
ers online and find them within media fandom, par-
ticularly those in fanfic-centric communities, they feel
acceptance sometimes for the first time in their lives.
Being dismissed within their own (previously) safe
space is extremely problematic in that it is both an
implicit negation of the Others' right to have unique
and independent voices and an imposition of the ex-
ternal culture's straight, white, cis-male dominated
hierarchy on the deeply personal spaces built by and
for Others, which is something that Gray, et al (2007)
reference. Busker (2013) writes: “I’m not sure what’s
more insidious: the notion that we must find it not
only desirable that men get involved in fandom, but
also some kind of imperative, or the notion that it is
our, women’s, responsibility to get them involved in
fandom” (para. 2.27). She goes on to discuss how men
not only demand entrance into the safe places of the
marginalized, but also that the Others then alter those
spaces by “actively suppressing [their] own inter-
ests” (Busker, 2013, para. 2.28), such as slash and oth-
er types of fanfiction. Resistance to these demands
inevitably leads to condemnation of the Others and
Media Report to Women Fall 2016
their endeavors by the dominant culture; a reaction
that, while disappointing, has notable historical prec-
edence. Female arts have traditionally been dis-
missed as mere craft, belittled as childish or unwor-
thy of study, or otherwise denigrated (Hellekson &
Busse, 2006; Busker, 2013; Zubernis & Larsen, 2012),
and fanfiction is no exception to this.
Fandom, the Internet, and canon creators
Ballinger (2014) writes, “Fandoms can be
intense; the fans are simultaneously the biggest fans
of the show and its harshest critics” (para. 2.4). This
passionate relationship with the text and the status
of fans as the most active of active audiences inevita-
bly gains the attention of the media creators/
producers, a loosely defined group of people includ-
ing publishers/studio executives, showrunner(s),
writers, directors, actors, and others; often facetious-
ly called The Powers That Be in reference to their
god-like control of their creations.
Sometimes, that relationship can be fraught
with tension. Although true that fandom has its roots
in resistive practices and transgressive readings (i.e.
seeing pairings as homosexual in a time when this
was anathema), for many, many years fans limited
their public activism and interaction with the crea-
tors to attempts to keep their show on the air. This
was the case with the oft-cited example of Star Trek
(Bacon-Smith, 1992), and later Joss Whedon’s short-
lived but much-loved Firefly (Johnson, 2007), both of
which had letter-writing campaigns begging for
more seasons, or in Firefly’s case, even one actually
complete season.
While fans have always been concerned with
how their favorite characters and ships are being
represented on screen, they rarely spoke up about
this in the early days of fandom. These attitudes be-
gan to shift when the internet became more com-
monly accessible. Wilkinson (2010) describes the pre-
internet days of fandom:
It all used to be so simple. There
were fans and there were The Pow-
ers That Be (TPTB) […] TPTB created
stories that we, the fans, adored,
consumed, criticized, and chopped
into bits and made into shiny new
things for our amusement. There
was a version of the fourth wall—
more a one-way mirror, really—
between the source text and fandom,
8 www.mediareporttowomen.com
 with both sides generally happy to
keep it that way. (para. 1.1)
Instead of loudly proclaiming their support and calling
for increased diversity, they practiced a sort of quiet
resistance via their writing of fanfic and their creation
of other fan artifacts, like zines (Bacon-Smith, 1992;
Hellekson & Busse, 2006; Larsen & Zubernis, 2012).
This is a trend that continued for decades. Fan-
dometrics’ (2014) survey of 10,000 individual active-
online Supernatural fans indicates a possible relation-
ship between the year a member of online fandom be-
gan watching the show and their opinions about the
show’s creators discussing ships and shipping. Of
those who believe that The Powers That Be should dis-
cuss and be influenced by shipping, 47% started watch-
ing in 2013, and 22% in 2012, whereas a measly 6% be-
gan watching at the show’s inception in 2005 (“By Atti-
tude to Discussing Shipping,” 2014). Twitter was first
incorporated in 2007, two years after Supernatural first
aired (https://about.twitter.com/milestones). By 2010,
according to The Nielsen Company, Twitter was the
fastest growing social media site in terms of unique
visitors, increasing 579% from 2.7 million in December
2008 to 18.1 million in December 2009. Social media use
in general also increased by 82% in terms of hours per
month per person. With that kind of increase in access,
it is no wonder there appears to be a correlation be-
tween the year a person entered this fandom and their
feelings about the show’s creators, especially since for
the first two years of Supernatural there was no Twitter
at all, which meant the “one-way mirror” (Wilkinson,
2010, para. 1.1) was all the more intact. Although col-
lectively this data makes it sound like fandom’s move
towards public interaction was less a slow descent and
more a sudden baptism by technological fire, it is im-
portant to note that those numbers are for all of
Twitter, not only active fans of Supernatural or other
media (no such data exists, to my knowledge). Also,
these statistics are provided only as context for the en-
vironment the Supernatural fandom was growing
within. The explosive growth of the internet in general
and social media in particular most definitely changed
the nature of fandom’s interaction with media creators,
and an understanding of how attitudes have shifted
and of the enormity of social media’s involvement is
essential.
It is worth mentioning that attitudes among
canon creators vary wildly as regards the legitimacy
and complimentary nature of fanfic. On one side of this
range of opinions, there are those who praise and en-
courage fandom in general and fanfic in particular,
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seeing it as a valid art form and the highest form of
flattery. Many of these people, although not all of them,
began their artistic lives writing their own fanfics. Nao-
mi Novik, for example, author of the alternate history
series Temeraire (Napoleon plus dragons!), is a found-
ing member of the Organization for Transformative
Works, the organization which runs Archive of Our
Own (AO3), which is one of the premiere fanfiction
websites. She not only began writing through her love
of fanfiction, but was inspired to write her own book
series because of it. She actively encourages fan activi-
ties (Novik, 2016). Moving further along on the spec-
trum, there are various shades of authors who are fine
with it while not actively encouraging it, or fine with it
as long as it does not interfere with their own creation
process. Here in this gray area, we see those who allow
fandom to exist unhindered but do not wish to be con-
fronted by it (a very live-and-let-live approach), but also
those who are pleased to have fans dedicated enough to
want to play around in this world, while politely refus-
ing requests to read their fans’ works either because it
feels uncomfortable to think about their characters in
someone else’s hands (a very personal concept for most
of them) or for fear of narrative contamination, the idea
of accidentally stealing a fan’s ideas. Tess Gerritsen, au-
thor of the book series that inspired the television show
Rizzoli & Isles, has stated that while she is amused and
pleased by her fans’ dedication and passion, she cannot
read the fanfiction in order to avoid inadvertent intellec-
tual theft (Gerritsen, 2010). This fear runs deep in mod-
ern society, since, as just established, fan access to con-
tent creators and vice versa is at an all-time high.
There are also authors, like Orson Scott Card,
who have accused fanfiction of being a lesser or uncrea-
tive form of fiction, something they do not necessarily
mind existing, but view with disdain from their place as
real authors (Card, 2004). Even more antagonistic, there
are creators who crack down on fic writers, disparaging
them personally at every opportunity and threatening
or actually proceeding with legal action against them.
There has been much discussion as to whether fanfiction
counts as fair use of intellectual property or copyright
infringement. Creators have been known to send cease
and desist letters to their fans, and some have even sued
for damages. George R. R. Martin is famously passion-
ate about his rejection of fanfiction, calling them
“unauthorized derivative works” (Martin, 2010, para.
32). While this attitude is offensive to most fanfic writ-
ers, there is room for a legal argument to be made that
fanfiction does not qualify under the US standards of
fair use for copyrighted materials: not all of it inherently
critiques, much of it is not parody, and most of it is not
9 Fall 2016 Media Report to Women
Research In Depth

satire. Fans consider it transformative, which is a re-

quirement to qualify as fair use, but authors ask, how
transformative is it really?
The shame of otherness and fandom as online
support group
Because of fans’ innate feelings of Otherness,
often exacerbated by the creators of the works they
so admire, an association with fandom brings with it
a sense of shame. It is worth noting that fandom’s
experience of mainstream-induced shame is gen-
dered: males are afraid of being perceived as sexually
inexperienced, while females fear being perceived as
“too sexual or at the very least too emotion-
al” (Larsen & Zubernis, 2012, p. 59). This fear leads
many fans, especially female fans (who are taught
from birth to stifle their desires), to hide their fan-
nishness from their “real life” family and friends,
appropriating language from the LGBTQ movement
to describe themselves in terms of being out as a fan
in real life (Larsen & Zubernis, 2012). Additionally,
fans tend to group themselves and to distance them-
selves from other groups, as if Othering groups that
are somehow worse will make their group seem less
crazy:
“When it comes to fan practices, how
extreme is too extreme? It’s always
the fan just on the other side of the
line. That is not me, fans proclaim.
I’m not delusional. Other fans may
be crazy stalkers, but me, I just
watch for the plot” (Larsen & Zuber-
nis, 2012, p. 71).
In an effort to make themselves less Other, they in-
tentionally exclude fans that identify with more com-
monly disparaged practices. That being said, even
those fans can find community of their own. H/c fics
are often looked down upon for deliberately wishing
pain and suffering on beloved characters (Hellekson
& Busse, 2006), but on any given fanfiction website or
archive there is a thriving h/c community of readers
and writers. Even as fans of general (non-romantic)
fanfic point to h/c and say, “At least we aren’t them,”
h/c forms its own community, bonding through their
twice Otherization (first at the hands of mainstream
culture, and secondarily at the hands of the general
fanfiction culture). This confirmation of belonging, or
as Larsen and Zubernis (2012) describe it,
“disconfirmation of otherness” serves the function of
both bolstering self-esteem and tightening communi-
ty bonds.
This state of emotional bonding over not only
shared interests but shared ostracization leads to cer-
tain aspects of fanfiction communities resembling
online support groups. Baym (2010) suggests that
although there are many online communities explicit-
ly built around social support, such as support
groups for cancer survivors or those with other medi-
cal issues, “the provision of social support is common
even in groups not explicitly designated as support-
ive” (p. 83). Relatedly, High and Solomon (2011)
write that one of the central qualities of a successful
online support group is anonymity, which allows
participants to disclose personal problems and feel-
ings without fear of ridicule, as well as seek infor-
mation without fear of rejection. Similarly, according

‘Star Wars’ Women Inspire Vibrant Fan Community

Podcasts and websites offering fan art and fan fiction have been exploding across various plat-
forms, as Christine Dandrow’s research illustrates. Adding to what we are learning about female fandom
is Amanda Hess’s New York Times article, published Nov. 6, 2016, showing how the blockbuster Star
Wars series is priming the pump. Female fans crave female characters,
Hess tells us, eager for every detail of a character’s development that
can be re-expressed as fan art.
As is well documented, resistance from males in the fan uni-
verse, many of whom don’t share enthusiasm for female characters, or
fandom participation by female fans (much like the Gamergate contro-
versy) can spoil the experience for female fans, but Hess notes that this
isn’t stopping the fun. Her very engaging article, a complement to
Dandrow’s fascinating research, is here: http://
www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/movies/how-female-fans-made-star- Felicity Jones in “Rogue One: A Star
wars-their-own.html?_r=0 Wars Story”

Media Report to Women Fall 2016 10 www.mediareporttowomen.com

to Larsen and Zubernis (2012), fandom’s typical ano-
nymity allows for the creation of safe spaces where
marginalized groups feel comfortable exploring and
expressing their desires (sexual and otherwise). They
add that a 2011 online survey revealed that fans feel
fandom
…builds confidence and self-esteem,
offers a support system, and creates
a space where people can explore
and grow more comfortable with
their identity…Several who identi-
fied as autistic said that fandom
taught them more about interacting
with other people than years of
groups and classes. (p. 87)
No media fandom or particular fanfiction community
features a primary goal (although it may be a second-
ary goal) of social support and self-esteem building;
media fandoms are built around media and fanfic-
tion communities are built around fanfiction as well
as the media that inspires it. Yet, as evidenced by this
survey, despite its admittedly small and self-selected
sample, it is obvious that fandom offers a kind of re-
lationship and social network that is typical of dedi-
cated online support groups. Some of the respond-
ents to the survey even went as far as saying fandom
“had ‘saved their lives’ through lonely times when
they’d considered suicide, or offered hope when in
despair over coming to terms with their sexual iden-
tity” (Larsen & Zubernis, 2012, p. 87). Clearly, fans
have found important companionship and deeper
meaning through their involvement in fandom.
Fandom wank and its role in the discourse of fandom
Some scholars have pointed to the existence
of fandom wank as proof that fandom is not the
beautiful utopia that initial scholarship tried to argue
(Gray, et al., 2007). However, wank begins painfully,
but it does not have to end painfully. As Larsen and
Zubernis (2012) point out, situations such as Race!
Fail, an event that began as race-related wank but led
to serious discussions about racial presence in fan-
dom and media in general, demonstrate that wank
can be an important part of fandom’s larger dis-
course concerning itself and its place in society. This
is not to say that the suffering that people of color
endured as a result of Race!Fail and similar experi-
ences is good; it is most certainly not. In an ideal
world, fandom would function perfectly and flaw-
lessly as the safe space it so desires to be, but this is
not an ideal world, and as established prior, fandom
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does tend to replicate the hegemonic structures of
mainstream society. That being said, the worse wank
becomes, the more powerfully fandom communities
band together to address it, either by flooding their
communities with positivity or by actually taking
steps to address the issues raised by the initial wank.
It may not be constructive in and of itself (in fact, it
can be extremely destructive, especially when it is
negativity just for negativity’s sake), but it is capable
of kick-starting a real and thoughtful restructuring
process that allows for a better and safer space
(Larsen & Zubernis, 2012). Hopefully someday wank
will cease to exist, but in the meantime, when it un-
fortunately happens, fandom should take the oppor-
tunity to listen and gain insight into how to be better
instead of allowing the cycle to continue. Additional-
ly, wank only exists in spaces that have a certain level
of devotion, a level sufficient to inspire intense com-
petition between in-groups and out-groups (like ship
wars, defined as intense and often hate-filled discus-
sions between denizens of two competing ships). Fan-
dom should not allow the existence of negativity and
wank to be used as an argument against their valida-
tion; instead, fandom should celebrate the fact that
they have members who are so emotionally involved,
while simultaneously working to resolve the prob-
lematic aspects of such involvement and include peo-
ple who are being left out of the safe spaces (as peo-
ple of color often are).
Conclusion
Given how our society is deeply steeped in
media, and given the way the Internet has allowed
fandom to become increasingly interactive and com-
munal, it is no surprise that scholars wish to under-
stand fannish behavior and its surrounding culture.
The way fans interact with media texts and each oth-
er speaks to something deeper and universal, a need
for acceptance and community that mainstream cul-
ture often fails to fulfill, since it tends to cater to
straight, white, cis-gendered males. With fandom’s
innate outsider quality, it calls to people that identify
in some way as different (that is, as anything other
than a straight, white, cis-gendered male), giving
them a very necessary and important space where
they can exercise a kind of agency that is lacking in
their offline life. In addition to offering them this op-
portunity, it also allows them to find communities
that more than just tolerate, but actually celebrate and
Fandom as a Fortress, Page 22
11 Fall 2016 Media Report to Women
gender-based violence and sex trafficking. Diane
Rehm, long-time host of the public radio show that
bears her name, will receive IWMF’s respected Life-
time Achievement Award for reportage spanning
more than 40 years.
A welcome successor
to the venerable Charles Os-
good: Jane Pauley has replaced
Osgood as the anchor of the
highly rated CBS show
“Sunday Morning.” Her first
day in the role was Oct. 9. She
is only the third anchor of the
show, which started in 1979
(the late Charles Kuralt was the first). Pauley is 65 –
and isn’t it refreshing that a woman in her mid-sixties
is being celebrated for her years of experience and
versatility and not denied an opportunity on televi-
sion, as so many have been, because of her age?
(BTW, Osgood is nearly 84.)
Gwen Ifill, one of
the most prominent politi-
cal journalists in the coun-
try, died Nov. 14. She was
61. When she took the helm
of Washington Week in Re-
view in 1999, Ifill became
the first African-American
woman to host a major po-
litical TV talk show. She
covered seven presidential campaigns and moderat-
ed the vice presidential debates in 2004 and 2008.
This season, she moderated a presidential primary
debate between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
Co-anchoring PBS’s The News Hour with Judy
Woodruff since 2013, Ifill was also the best-selling
author of The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age
of Obama.
Aileen Mehle, the gossip columnist known
as “Suzy,” died Nov. 11 at the age of 98. One of the
last of the high-powered, often-to-be-feared society
columnists, Mehle brought her talent and her stamina
(for going to late night soirees and then staying up to
write copy) to the New York Daily Mirror, the Jour-
nal-American, the Daily News, the New York Post,
and Women’s Wear Daily. Her career began at the
Miami Daily News, after she complained to the pub-
lisher, a friend, that her 10-year-old son could do a
better job covering Miami society than any of the Mi-
ami papers. She submitted sample columns herself,
and was hired. Her last regular column for WWD
appeared in 2005.
Media Report to Women Fall 2016
Fandom as a Fortress, from Page 11
encourage those very aspects of themselves that the
mainstream culture designated as deviant. Though
fandom communities are not perfect and may have
their own struggles regarding inclusiveness and
hierarchy building, the fact remains that they pro-
vide a sense of belonging and a source of social sup-
port for those who feel Othered by the dominant
culture and what it has deemed socially acceptable.
References
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and the creation of popular myth. Philadelphia: University of
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twc.2014.0569.
Baym, N. (2010). Personal connections in the digital age. Cam-
bridge, UK: Polity.
Bonnstetter, B., & Ott, B. (2011). (Re)Writing Mary Sue: Écriture
féminine and the performance of subjectivity. Text and Perfor-
mance Quarterly, 31(4).
Busker, R. L. (2013). Fandom and male privilege: Seven years
later. Transformative Works and Cultures, 13.
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For the Record
Chicago Sun Times Washington Bureau
Chief Lynn Sweet and Karen Tumulty, national
political correspondent for the Washington Post,
responded to questions from CNN’s Brian Stelter
about covering the 2016 U.S. presidential election:
How the candidacy of a female presidential nominee
affects women journalists and how they cover the candi-
date:
"On deadline, there's no gender" Sweet said.
"You've just got to get the job done. I’m glad you
asked, so people who wonder if every female re-
porter is throwing it, no!”
Because newsroom management is male dominated,
does a female presidential candidate have an impact on
the way those managers view female journalists?
“Women in newsrooms are going to have to fight
their own battles,” Tumulty said, “As long as we
are journalists, it really shouldn’t [matter].”
“There's so much more to do in top management,
no matter who's president, it’s not going to change
things just by that fact,” Sweet said.
The discussion can be viewed here:
http://cnn.it/2eMDYN
www.mediareporttowomen.com
AP Stylebook, from Page 24
A timeline of AP style changes compiled by
the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas
shows that other sexist, racist and homophobic terms
have taken woefully long to be clarified. The time-
line, at http://bit.ly/APstyletimeline, demonstrates
that while the AP adopted the term “Ms.” in 1980, it
didn’t advise against using the term “homosexual”
until 2008 (gays and lesbians are the preferred refer-
ences). “African American” entered the stylebook in
1988, but the guide didn’t point out the offensive and
inaccurate nature of the term “illegal immigrant”
until 2013.
The point is that words matter. Everyday
language can be used to reinforce stereotypes about
women, people of color, LGBT people and pretty
much anyone who isn’t a straight, white male. The
stylebook has done a good job of updating these
practices over the years, but some have taken too
long. That said, parts of the entry on “women” (page
304), sound like no-brainers to me:
• “Copy should not express surprise
that an attractive woman can be pro-
fessionally accomplished, as in
‘Mary Smith doesn’t look the part,
but she’s an authority on…’”
“Copy should not gratuitously
mention family relevance when
there is no relevance to the subject,
as in: ‘Golda Meir, a doughty grand-
mother, told the Egyptians to-
day…’”
Those examples seem absurd until one con-
siders a 2013 obituary for Yvonne Brill, a rocket sci-
entist from Princeton, N.J. The New York Times arti-
cle began, “She made a mean beef stroganoff, fol-
lowed her husband from job to job and took eight
years off from work to raise three children. ‘The
world’s best mom,’ her son Matthew said.” The sec-
ond paragraph went on to tell readers that Brill
“invented a propulsion system to keep communica-
tions satellites from slipping out of their orbits.”
After reading the stylebook’s “mistress” en-
try, I flipped to page 265, in search of a word to de-
scribe the married man involved sexually with and
financially supporting the woman described in the
stylebook. But, sadly, AP has no entry for “sugar
daddy.”
Tracy Everbach is associate professor of journalism at the
Mayborn School of Journalism, University of North Tex-
as.
23 Fall 2016 Media Report to Women
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