Femgenficathon

Challenge
Name:	Femgenficathon
Date(s):	2005 - 2011
Moderator(s):	gehayi
Founder:	gehayi
Type:	ficathon
Fandom:	multifandom
URL:	femgenficathon at LiveJournal; archive link
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Femgenficathon was a multifandom ficathon for gen stories about women.

The first Femgenficathon was Harry Potter only, but the following years saw the ficathon go multifandom.

Participants choose a number, and are then assigned a quote.

Restrictions & Criticism

Femgenficathon has been criticized on several fronts. The mod disallows fics about:

• Transgender characters: "To admit male characters who identify as women would be politically correct...but it would also open the doors to admitting ALL male characters. For, ultimately, it would come down to one person's interpretation--'well, I think that Draco Malfoy/Dean Winchester/Sherlock Holmes/Fitzwilliam Darcy/Roy Mustang/Ichigo Kurosaki/Discworld's Death/et cetera has always identified as a woman!'

Basically, any male character--whatever his canonical orientation--could be interpreted that way. And that's the problem. It would shift the focus of FemGen away from stories about the women and how they see themselves and the world to stories about the canonically male characters and how they see women and see themselves."

• Pregnancy and childbirth: "When I founded this ficathon in 2005 (has it been that long already?), canonical women in fanfiction were, then as now, often reduced to nothing but traditional gender roles and gender stereotypes. It bothered me that so many fanficcers--many of them women and girls--focused on traditional roles to the exclusion of all else. I created FemGen to get fanfic writers thinking about the active and heroic roles women could take, both in fanfic and in real life. I want to get people thinking outside the box of tradition."
• Authorial avatars: "Since you are going to be writing about women and girls, I urge you to make them believable. Do not turn them into Mary Sues.

For the purposes of this ficathon, I am defining 'Mary Sue' as 'authorial stand-in who possesses many, if not all, characteristics that the writer wants to possess--good looks, intelligence, "attitude," "coolness," wealth, noble or royal blood, special toys that no one else has, the love of all canon characters, the love and desire of the author's lust object(s), special powers that may or may not be canonically possible, a Destiny--and a remarkable talent to send all canon characters OOC and to kill the plot.'

A Mary Sue can be either an original character or a canon character. Believe me, I have seen Hermione and Ginny Sued many, many, many, many times."

Despite some people's discomfort with the mod's limitations on what can be included in fics written for Femgenficathon, it remains a popular event for fans eager to see more positive portrayals of female characters in fandom.