Here’s a roundup of stories about gender and sexuality in fandom that might be of interest to fans:
- In a strong counterexample to the women’s invisibility problem demonstrated by the L.A. Times’ entertainment blog Hero Complex (which is subtitled “For your inner fanboy”), a group of female cosplayers at Comic Con created the Gender Bent Justice League where men and women genderswap well known superheroes. The group is making a statement as well as having fun: “We try to keep it pretty scantily clad for [the men] because that’s how women are portrayed,” says Silver. “We weren’t scantily clad for ourselves because that’s not the point. We’re showing that girls can be clothed and be superheroes because, most of the time, they aren’t.”
- Also helping to keep women visible in fandom, Chicks Dig Time Lords, a book celebrating female Doctor Who fandom, recently won a Hugo award. The volume includes a contribution from OTW Board member Francesca Coppa: Girl Genius: Nyssa of Traken.
- In the BitchMedia post Ambiguously Gay Wizards, actors in the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings fandoms are cited as examples of playing gay to the fans for professional reasons. “But it also highlights how much of the cultural bandwidth Straight Men playing or imitating Gay Men is starting to take up, and how lucrative being ambiguously heteroflexible can be in securing more of the fandom’s attention”.
There are currently no entries on Fanlore for the Justice League. If you’re part of that fandom or have taken part in cosplay the site could use your contributions!
We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, event, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent Links Roundup — on transformativeworks.org, LJ, or DW — or give @OTW_News a shoutout on Twitter. Links are welcome in all languages!
Submitting a link doesn’t guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn’t mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.