Stepping in it a little deeper
I tried to send some of this to intellectualfangirl privately but the messaging system apparently has some character limit. Wordy as I am, I have some questions and comments that wouldn't fit. Since her comments were posted publicly I'm assuming it's fair for me to post this here since for some reason I couldn't respond to her comment. I'm still not familiar enough with tumblr to figure out how to do some things and how things are 'normally' done.
So, intellectualfangirl said: "I’m especially annoyed that while he’s seen and recognized his error (in terms of confusing bunnylock cosplayers for “cumber-bunnies”) he hasn’t changed it. Fandom is definitely nicer to men—male characters, creators, and fans, in many respects."
First, personally I haven't reflected upon or even have enough data to comment about whether fandom is nicer to men or not. I am as new to 'fandom' as I am to tumblr. I'll take your observation as a working hypothesis, but my real question is addressed to your initial statement.Â
I don't know the history of the Baker Street Bunnies or bunnylock. From what I've learned so far, bunnylock (and/or bunny/lock?) refers to the romantic (sexual?) relationship between Sherlock and (I assume) Molly Hooper based on the word play Hooper-hopper. Is that correct? (A response from one of the cosplayers would be especially appreciated.)
And by 'hasn't changed it' do you mean editing it on the ihearofsherlock.com website? I suppose that it is possible to do that, but that would have never occurred to me. I suppose I have this value that once it is out there, it stays out there. If I offend someone I would certainly apologize but I wouldn't think of changing the source. I have been on the internet since before there was a world wide web, but I have only recently started using social media - FB and now tumblr. Must be developing 'psychosclerosis' - hardening of the brain.
Does 'cumber-bunnies' have a specific connotation here? I am an inveterate punster and love word play. Plus I wore a tux to the last birthday weekend for the first time and recently picked up three colored cumberbunds at a thrift store last month for use with the tux. I thought I was just making a play on words calling the cosplayers 'cumber-bunnies' combining Cumberbatch, cumberbund, and bunnies. Did I make a faux pas?
And now for something completely different. Since I stepped into gender equality issues, why not bring up race also. At 221bCon I was struck by what I considered the under-representation of black women (is 'women of color' more politically correct?). Being in Atlanta I saw many more black women outside the hotel than I saw attending the con. I wasn't counting specifically and should have approached one of them to ask, but I wasn't aware of more than a half-dozen (if that many) the entire weekend. Surely I am not the only one to have noticed. Is BBC Sherlock fandom predominantly white middle-class females mostly of a certain age (under 30? under 40?)? Does even tumblr.com know?
Being a data-driven guy (and I don't mean Brent Spiner) I would love to see stats about the Sherlock fandom and 221bCon. Was everyone at 221bCon (except me) on tumblr? I'm well aware that averages do violence to the individual, but summary statistics are nevertheless interesting to me.
