#blacklivesmatter

the last time I reblogged this post right before I got a great job, in a permanent work-from-home position, with benefits, retirement, and a salary literally 3x what I was making before, doing something I really like. 

So you know. 

On November 24th, 2018, I posted a list of major deletions of sites or of content on sites that stripped fandom of its history. A bunch of pro-shipper blogs had just been deleted, and people were nervous. I suppose I was thinking “All this has happened before…”

On December 3rd, 2018, Tumblr’s Department of Irony announced the NSFW ban. Thanks for providing this salutary lesson to The Youth and a billion reblogs to me, I guess.

Today, we have AO3 for writing. Audio, images, and video are in as much danger as ever, yet fans attack AO3 every donation drive. For those of you who forget our past…

HERE IS WHAT HISTORY HAS TAUGHT US!

1992 - Chelsea Quinn Yarbro forces a zine to be destroyed

1995 - Viacom/Paramount goes after fansites

1995 - Anne Rice gets IWTV fic deleted everywhere

1997 - Fox and Lucasfilm go after fansites

1998 - AOL goes after X-Files fansites

2000 - Warner Brothers goes after Harry Potter fansites

2000 - Anne Rice anne rices again

2001 - Tripod Massacre

2001 - Anne Rice goes after IWTV fic on FFN

2001 - The Bronze shut down as Buffy changes networks

2002 - FFN bans porn

2002 - FFN bans RPF

2003 - Gryffindor Tower implodes

2004 - FFN bans script format

2005 - FFN bans CYOA, Readerfic, 2nd person, Songfic

2005 - Sheezyart bans adult content; y!gallery founded

2005 - Viacom/Paramount goes after fansites again

2006 - Sakura Lemon Archive suddenly closes

2007 - Strikethrough, Boldthrough on Livejournal

2007 - Youtube institutes Content ID, deleting many fanvids

2008 - Slash Cotillion closes, taking much historical m/m with it

2009 - GeoCities shuts down, taking old fannish websites

2009 - Greatestjournal shuts down; RPGs deleted

2009 - Marvel gets scans_daily deleted

2009 - imeem, major vidding hub, closes suddenly

2010 - FFN forums purged for inactivity

2010 - DeviantArt purges adult fanfic

2010 - Literate Union goes after Twilight fandom on FFN

2011 - Delicious destroyed by Yahoo’s incompetence

2011 - China arrests women for writing m/m; destroys danmei.org

2012 - major FFN crackdown on porn

2012 - Megaupload deleted for piracy; also destroys vids, podfic

2013 - Max-Dan-Wiz.com purged of fan-generated content

2014 - Quizilla shuts down

2014 - China purges m/m story websites; arrests female authors

2014 - Blip.tv deletes vids

2014 - Viddler deletes vids

2015 - Journalfen’s servers become fully robust, deleting Fandom Wank

2016 - y!Gallery deleted

2016 - Elfwood goes offline

2016 - Audiofic Archive corrupted; major blow to podfic

2017 - Chinese author jailed after being ratted out over fandom drama

2017 - Parents get queer Warrior Cats fic purged from Wattpad

2018 - Tumblr deletes pro-shipper blogs

2018 - Tumblr announces NSFW ban

2018 - Wattpad deletes accounts/fics without warning

2019 - China purges weibo of m/m; more women jailed

This is only a small taste of the many times that:

Fannish moderators got bored, ran out of money, or had a falling out, deleting a site/list/forum along the way.

Sites got bought out and closed for being unprofitable.

Fandom got hit as governments targeted piracy or political dissidents.

Fans grudge reported each other.

Official forums got deleted when the canon finished.

It’s not always malicious. It’s not always about us. But we lose every time.

Some of these purges hit everyone. Many of them hit m/m content specifically or female gaze-y material in general. This is why antis are dead wrong. This is why anti-fujoshi policies end up being anti-m/m policies. This is why we need clear labeling, not content restrictions.

This is why we need AO3.

AO3 itself was set up to be a safe haven for even the most repulsive fic. (And, yes, we very much thought in those terms. A test case I brought up while we were writing the TOS was that rpf snuff porn by male authors about female celebrities. Ughhh.)

Protecting vile fanfic is central to what AO3 is. It would have to abandon its mission to be the archive you want.

I personally support this stance on content because the more restrictive archives of the past (which is most of them) did not effectively keep out anything I hate, but they did regularly go after content I want to protect. Even very reasonable “no gross stuff” policies get twisted back on the most vulnerable people and the most #ownvoices content.

But that’s no reason for AO3 to be the only archive or the only valid content policy.

Many archives of the past had mods vetting all fic, whether for content or quality. Many archives took moral stances on underage fic. I can’t think of a single instance of one explicitly trying to be a safe space for fans of color though, unfortunately.

In general, yes, women’s art is attacked more frequently. You see that in all types of art, high and low, fic and original. I’m sure some of the people advocating censorship are especially upset by fic because they expect women to produce didactic, clean art.

But as for why there’s an overall focus on women, it’s because fic is mostly written by women.

There are some male-heavy spaces like Spacebattles or FIMFiction, but they are the exception, and they don’t change the overall trend in fic fandom. The most relevant data we have on fic writers is probably the following:

FFN Research’s 2010 survey of new user accounts on Fanfiction.net shows:

78% female

22% male

Centrumlumina’s AO3 Census shows:

80% female

4% male

6% genderqueer

Reddit’s r/Fanfiction’s latest survey shows:

65% female

26% male

2.7% genderfluid

Bear in mind that Reddit is famously guy-centric, and their fic space is still way more than half women. The AO3 numbers are probably more representative of fic fandom on Tumblr.

I think there’s a bit of a disconnect between it and the people who tend to show up most often on tumblr fandom history stuff today. The latter are often people who left FFN for Livejournal after the purge. They got involved in early OTW, are often m/m fans, and avoid more dude-heavy parts of fandom.

FanDomination was founded by Laura Hale and had her vibe all over it. Hale wouldn’t be anything special today, but she had a “Think of the men” and “Let’s monetize” vibe that really rubbed people I knew the wrong way, and later on, she did her level best to make OTW her nemesis. The “only good fic” and “helping writers improve” thing sounds fine on the surface, but it’s something I associate with a particular strain of fandom that leads to all those reddit posts today that are like “I tried to leave a critical review on AO3 and people think that’s rude?!?!” from long-time FFN users.

Basically, “fandom” is many, many separate communities. A few of them end up writing the majority of the “fandom history” content, but we shouldn’t assume that means only certain ones matter.

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On another note, to the anons who keep going “You missed X” about this post, it’s not a complete list. It’s not even 1/10th of a complete list.