Fandom for me has always been about community. That’s why I love 221B Con so much. For those of you who’ve never been, there is no experience quite like it. It is majority women and trans/non-binary people, and majority queer. It is the only place I have ever been to where cis straight men are in the minority. 221B con is basically a Big Gay Party Weekend where you get to experience the wonder of fandom in real life. You get to meet other fans, fangirl(and boy) over each other IRL, get drunk and gush about your headcanons, cosplay ridiculous things together, get fed John & Mycroft marshmallows, try to fit 40 hot girls into one hot tub….you get the picture. It is an amazing experience, a unique experience, and it is so exemplary of exactly how wonderful fandom can be.
A term that I heard used a lot this weekend was “safe space”; how when we came to this con as fans, we felt safe with each other in a way that just isn’t true the other 51 weekends out of the year. I use that term a lot about fandom. It is a recurring theme in my fandom discussions – how fandom is the only real safe space for women to explore their sexuality.
However, during the Gender Politics of Fandom panel Winter made a really salient point: that it is disingenuous to call fandom a safe space because it is not safe. Because everyone’s definition of safe space is different, and it may be impossible to ever truly create safe spaces for everybody, because the Internet is not a safe space. Winter then went on to say that it might even be dangerous to call fandom a safe space, because that makes it hard to have productive discussions. What we should do instead, as a community, is aim to make fandom a respectful space, where we try our best to respect each other and each other’s safe spaces.
So what happens when the sense of respectfulness and community at 221B con is violated?
Okay, you know what? I do my best to avoid wank. But this? This is utterly unacceptable in every single way. I hope these people grow up and get better. But I am completely appalled by this and at the very least I hope whoever recorded the panel gets banned.
People are allowed to like what they like and write what they want. That’s what tags are for. And just because someone likes a kink in a fic doesn’t mean they want that in real life.
I like tentacle porn. It doesn’t mean I want to fuck an octopus.