A interesting article about how toxic Fandoms come to be.

[Aurora Moon]

An article on Syfy wire on how toxic fandoms came to be.

It's a interesting look into how people came by their sense of entitlement and ownership over their fandom.

http://www.syfy.com/syfywire/the-fall-of-fandom-etiquette-and-the-rise-of-the-ship-war?amp

[DJ Doena]

The problem with the "toxic fandoms" is that by now it's used a blunt club to quell any critisism of any IP.

I do realize that there is such a thing, because I remember the hatred that Smallville's Lana's character got back in the day and how it spilt over onto Kristin Kreuk.

And sometimes it seems as if female actresses do seem to get more sh!t than men do. Daisy Ridley and the Asian actress from Star Wars can certainly share their stories on that front. But maybe we're just more sensitive and just don't notice as much when male actors get loads of crap delivered.

But as I said in the beginning, this "toxic" thing (which also comes in the flavour of "toxic masculinity" but apparantly there is no such thing as "toxic femininity") has been the standard excuse ever since Ghostbusters 2016 flopped. Because it's a handy excuse. No it's not that we didn't make a decent movie, it's those women-haters!

I'm sorry to say, but Ghostbusters and Star Wars 7 and 8 were NOT good movies. And it had nothing to do with them being women. They were just badly written characters put in a badly written plot.

Seriously: Has Ray ever failed on anything she attempted to do? When I was a kid I loved to read novels by a German author by the name of Karl May. He'd been a conman in the mid-1800s who went to jail and started to write. He invented an alter ego called "Old Shatterhand" who travelled the Old West ca 1860 - 1870. And like a good conman he convinced the readers of that time that he actually had lived all those stories.

And what were the characteristics of Old Shatterhand. He was a newbie in the West who had been hired to survey railway tracks. He was the best at it. He could shoot like a pro. He tamed an untameable horse. He killed a grizzly bear. He defeated a master Comanche knife-fighter in a fair fight. And so on. In short, he could do everything and everything flawlessly.

When you read that story as an adult of the 21st century you realize how this is not really good storytelling (anymore - because the books sold like sliced bread back in the day).

You need a character who is not perfect at everything, who fails from time to time, who has flaws that s/he overcomes at the end.

Look at Kira Nerys and Jadzia Dax from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine for strong female character templates.

But recently, it appears as if being a "strong female character" means that you can do everything a man can do and better, and also that the men around you are all clueless or evil idiots.

And rightfully, established fandoms are upset when you don't create new characters by establishing them on their own merits but by tearing down the old guard just because they're men.

[Aurora Moon]

Actually, I can believe that there is such a thing as "Toxic femininity". Toxic masculinity is a set of myths that society tells boys and men about what it means to be a “real man”, with implicit threats to their worth and identity if they don’t meet those expectations. So by this definition, there's toxic femininity too.

In more conservative states, I've heard silly crap aimed at women too. stuff like, "Don't cut your hair short... long hair is a sign of your femininity! plus, if you cut it too short then you'll be thought of as a butch dyke... you're not lesbian are you?? You know what happens to lesbains around here."
Then there's other stuff that we're often told that women are supposed to be:

• An acceptable woman presents as morally pure but accommodating; refined, and nurturing. She doesn’t exert direct power over others.
• An acceptable woman’s power comes from her ability to charm and influence the people— particularly the men— around her to bring their own powers to bear toward her purposes.
• A woman’s worth is principally determined by men’s sexual desire for her.
• Women must appear to appreciate and support one another, but they’re actually constantly and secretly in competition over beauty, male attention, and other things that define their worth.
• An acceptable woman’s mission is to competently and quietly fulfill the emotional, nutritional, domestic, and sometimes sexual needs of the people around her. The most worthy women are the most selfless women.

This set of toxic myths teaches women to look at and evaluate ourselves as objects. It teaches us to centre our looks in most matters, and hold our bodies to impossibly high beauty standards. It teaches us that if we wish to control a situation, we must do so covertly, by manipulating the people involved. It also teaches us that men are conduits to self worth and power as much as they’re individual human beings with their own sets of needs, all while overlooking our own intrinsic power and worth.


Of course, there are people who will claim that toxic femininity does not exist, because to them the concept of "toxic masculinity" exists to highlight the organized, political nature of domestic violence and other forms of violence against women. They mainly focus on how this affects women instead of all the negative ways that it affects the men themselves. They would claim that there are no such thing as toxic femininity because it doesn't enable violence against anybody.
Of course, I would disagree with this... because if toxic femininity teaches women that they are supposed to be submissive towards men at the cost of themselves, wouldn't that be enabling women to become victims of violence?

But I digress... this is getting off topic.

On toxic fandom itself-- it kinda sounds like you're saying that people are justified in feeling upset over a badly done movie. But I think that's the root of the argument here-- the fact that there is a right and a wrong way to express their displeasure.

By all means, we should be able to criticize a badly written character or story. and yes, we should criticize those writers who thinks that "strong female character" means writing a mary sue character.

But for pete's sake... it's not like the actresses or actors had any say over the script of a movie. They were just there to do their job and get paid. They have nothing to do with how badly written a character is.

I completely loathe the Lana Lang character... but I don't hate Kristen Kreuk. Because I know they're two completely different people, you know? plus, one is fictional and the another one is not.
I just think it shows total immaturity on the toxic fans' part if they're unable to tell the difference.

[DJ Doena]

I completely loathe the Lana Lang character... but I don't hate Kristen Kreuk. Because I know they're two completely different people, you know? plus, one is fictional and the another one is not.
I just think it shows total immaturity on the toxic fans' part if they're unable to tell the difference.

I fully agree with you. :-)