#gcfandomconfessions

Coming up with names for, and descriptions of sub-sub-subgenres of music that are basically just the personal stylings of one or two artists.

TV animation, in particular, has pandered to the concept that "boys won't watch girl shows, so boy shows are more profitable" since at least the 1980s.

For those unfamiliar with the term, the Bechdel Test, AKA the Bechdel-Wallace Test, came from a comic by lesbian comics creator Alison Bechdel, who said it was inspired by her friend Liz Wallace. In it, one of her characters states that she will "only go to a movie if it satisfies 3 basic requirements. One, it has to have at least two women in it... who, two, talk to each other about, three, something besides a man." Years after the comic was published, this statement became a talking point in popular media criticism, inspiring variations and similar tests.

Artfight begins in 2 days, July 1st. If you don't know, Artfight is this big art event where players are split into two teams, and "attack" people of the other team by making art of their original characters (OCs). At the end, the team that has the most points, gained by making and posting the attacks wins.

A woman noticed how the vast majority of the OCs posted were male, and how the ArtFight community (and digital artists in general) have waaay more male original characters than female ones, and made a video about it. I haven't seem the video myself yet, only read commentary about it on TikTok, but that is absolutely true and I am glad someone said it. The art community has a sexism problem because artists are human beings who live in a sexist society, and of course their art would reflect that.

Reading the comments was an infuriating experience. People will do ANYTHING but examine their own misogyny, they got so defensive over their all-male cast.

We got the classic "it's not that deep bro", "friend that's too woke," "go touch grass" "why does that matter?" As if they were being personally attacked. As if that isn't a reflection of wider society. Like. Women are half of the world's population, so why are we so underrepresented in art, even in communities that are majority female? In fandom, it's often claimed people are uninterested in canon female characters (Sakura, the girls from MHA, the women in BBC Sherlock, etc) because they are badly written/oversexualized/stereotypes. Okay. So WHY, when you go create a universe of your own, with full control of the female characters, with the chance to create interesting and complex and non-stereorypical women, you choose to just… not do that?

"Go touch grass" I did and women still exist. What now?

Some TIFs claimed to not write women because they are "boykissers" (lmao). And like… why do you need to be attracted to a character to write about them? Straight men can write and relate to male characters without wanting them carnally. Same thing with straight women writing female characters.

Some other TIFs claimed to not write women because "it gave them dysphoria", which I thought was wild. Do they have dysphoria every time they have to interact with a female character in fandom, too? Like…??

Saw one TIF say that she could not write female characters because she "didn't want to associate herself with femininity," and DAMN that revealed her own sexism so bad. She did not even consider the possibility of having a female character that was not feminine! That was a recurring theme --- conflating "woman" with "femininity". It's like they cannot fathom that women can be as varied as men, that you can have female OCs who defy gender stereotypes, who can occupy roles beyond just love insterest/mother/femme fatale, who can dress in any clothing and do anything the male characters do.

I will not be joining ArtFight this year, but if I do the next, I want to draw female characters ONLY.

Thanks for reading, I was really frustrated by all this. What made me more mad wasn't even just the sexism, it was also the ardent denial that there was sexism at all. Love ur blog xx

I believe I watched the video you're talking about (it's a long one, so I had it on .25 speed 😅). I have not participated in Artfight myself, but her data was pretty telling, even with the gender ID accommodating stuff in there. And while there were some positive comments, there were a number of people making excuses like you mention. Pretty sad and frustrating to see. Even if they recognize there's a problem, there's zero interest in breaking the cycle.

"I'm a transman because I like playing combat based video games and edgy superhero comics, but being a rom-com fan does not mean I'm a woman."

"I'm a transwoman because I enjoy magical girl shows, but liking the most shounen of anime as well does not mean I'm a man."

"I enjoy media stereotypical to both men and women, therefore I'm non-binary."