Young folks would do well to remember

Meta
Title:	Young folks would do well to remember (the first line of the essay)
Creator:	TBH
Date(s):	May 14, 2021
Medium:	Twitter
Fandom:
Topic:
External Links:	Young folks would do well to remember that fandom..., Archived version (link to Tumblr quote, original tweet has been deleted).
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On May 14, 2021, TBH tweeted the following about the role that older women played (and still play today) in shaping the fanfiction community. The tweet and follow-on responses dealt with ageism in fandom, misogyny, queer and anti voices within the fandom community, sex positivity, porn content, and personal experiences of aging in fandom. Along with a good dose of pre-1900 Sherlock Holmes fandom history.

Young folks would do well to remember that fandom as we know it was pioneered by housewives sharing the kinkiest Kirk/Spock fics known to man. Queerness, porn, and older women are foundational to fandom spaces. You try to remove one of those elements and the whole house comes down. When puriteens rail about porn and fandom adults, I hope they know they’re railing against the joists under their feet.

Responses/Reactions

While some liked the use of the phrase 'Puriteen", others took issue, while also pointing out that the lines between child safe and adult spaces have been steadily erased by online interactions:

victorcrystalgem: I mean yeah but… Back in the day how likely was it for a kid to stumble upon one of those “kinkiest fics”?

I mean this is a fact and no one can change that, but I worry that people will bring it up in the wrong contexts, is it the same for a teen to get into the fandom of a mature piece of media to complain about adult content than for the one trying to keep the adults from putting out adult content of a piece of media made for children?

Back when internet didn’t exist I’m sure it was not an issue for adults to make whatever content they pleased for any piece of media of any target audience, because they were shared in person, and they only gave it to the people who they wanted to give it to.

Now, just by searching for the name of a character on Google images you can find porn of them on the few first results. Kids everywhere can gain that kind of trauma by just looking for pictures of their favorite cartoon character. And a lot of those characters are children too.

I’m not saying that it shouldn’t be made (the nsfw content not the cp) but there are ways to make sure it doesn’t get to children, posting it on a locked Twitter account where you can choose who gets to see it, or on patreon where you have to be an adult to be on it for example.

But idk, this is just my opinion as a “puriteen” I guess

Notes: #idk #I just don't think minors should be exposed to porn #I'm talking from personal experience when I say that it literally doesn't do any good #any amount of valuable information you could get is overpowered by everything else #puriteen what the fuck #nsfw #text #porn m #sex m

On Twitter some argued that both women and girls are the focus of anti criticisms implying that gender and not ageism is the target:

[ZeusIsHot1, on May 14, replying to TBH]: Nowadays women and girls can't like anything without Antis coming up with their harassment. The characters are Always either "too old" or "too young" and "too toxic" or "too innocent".

Others pointed that the loss of moderated communities has led to toxic communities:

[Cora57367207]: As a "young " I have never understood the hatred for the "older" people in fandoms for how I saw it I have fucking respect for having the balls to write fanfiction when on television you could not even flush the drain

[weirdtakoyaki replying to Cora57367207] Its a new thing. When I was a teenager in fandom adults and teens mingled in shared communities on livejournal and there werent a ton of issues. I respected the older creators and would ask them advice and stuff. I think a big part of it now is the lack of moderation on platforms

[KaszaTycho replying to weirdtakoyaki and Cora57367207]: Agree! I'm saying that for a long time now. Imo the decline of moderated platforms and fanclubs is one of the main reasons for this trend. The age diversity and support was totally different back in the days. I miss this mutual appreciation.

[weirdtakoyaki replying to KaszaTycho and Cora57367207]: The lack of moderation is i think the biggest factor in why fandom spaces have become so toxic. No one around to freeze or delete inflammatory posts, no clear set of community rules to abide by, etc

[Cora57367207 replying]: and the results of this are jungles of the calibre of Wattpad where the rule of the noisiest,rudest and grammatically wrong applies and real Wild West scenarios on Ao3 where saloon shootings look like a sleepover compared to stories such as "Sexy Times with Wangxian"

Fandom History: One voice claimed that the homophobes and anti-feminists in fandom were also critical to maintaining fandom in the first few decades and therefore they should be allowed to continue shaping current fandom culture:

[lizbarr] This is technically true, but the het shippers, anti-porn crusaders and homophobic anti-slashers (sometimes, but not always the same person) were also load-bearing and I think it's simplistic to say they were never there. And, like, the whole idea of age restricted spaces and maybe not putting your explicit art up where kids will see it was inspired by a self-styled anti-feminist who wanted to ban all adult content in fic, so we also can't say nothing good ever came from those debates.

In fact, this fan longed for the days where "dressing up as a penis and simulating sex on stage is no longer acceptable con behaviour." The deep irony of this statement is the fact that several Kirk/Spock fans did dress up as pensises and dance on stage in the 1980s, the "golden age" of slash fanfiction and were not ostracised or shunned for the skit. Some consider the surviving video recordings of these skits a treasured part of slash fandom's cultural heritage.

Others dove deeper into fandom history, pointing out that many of the early fanfiction writers were not housewives and they faced criminal penalties for writing and sharing slash fanfiction involving adult characters:

[jes_minn replying to TBH]: Thank you! Never was a housewife but was writing slash ("ship" was not yet coined) in the 70s. And remember, there was no internet, no computers, no fax machines. Post office and risk of arrest for mailing lewd stuff. Sigh. Good times.

This then led to an impromptu explanation of the role that fanzines and the US Post office played in the early distribution of fanfiction:

[phanasfire replying to jes_minn]: I'm really curious to know how did that work, like did you mail to all the ppl who wanted to read? how did you organize that, like how did ppl get to know you were writing it in the first place and then gave you their adress?

APAs, SASEs, mailing lists, and the importance of stamps were all discussed:

[jes_minn replying phanasfire ] to Start with sharing/selling stuff at cons. Get on mailing lists. Create yoyr own mailing list. Submit stuff to zines. Notices in personals of fan mags. Send a SASE and some $ for copying. That sort of thing.

Along with an exploration of fandom migrating from the term slash to shipping:

[Ao3Tikli replying to jes_minn]: I think the term “ship” was coined when people started to “ship” het pairings more and more. Because “slash” had that gay connotation.

[jes_minn]: Yes, it had acquired a gay connotation, but the first division was between sexual and non-sexual. Slash, as in K/S was sexual. And, as in K&S, was non. There were het pairings in slash, e.g. Spock/Uhura and Kirk/Rand. But never as popular as K/S.

[eaperfox replying to TBH]: Literally why it's called "slash". I don't think people even CALL it slash anymore, do they? Kirk SLASH Spock. Come on fandom babies, learn your history. It's full of smut. You'll love it.

[blueskyscribe]: Yeah, like you said, [the phrase "ship"] came from X-Files fandom! The reason they coined it was there was a fierce divide between "shippers", who wanted Scully and Mulder to get together, and non-shippers, who didn't.

[ArcticEllie] Yep! It’s from the X-Files fandom in the 1990s. It was derived from “relationship.” The ship name is also MSR “Mulder Scully Relationship

From there the conversation wandered into more recent fandom history discussing gateway fandoms like Buffy and the use of dial-up modems to connect to the Internet:

[coffeegirl18 replying to yuribou]: [Buddy Slash was] My entry level fandom...Anyone remember message boards, dialup screeching at you and Windows 3.1. I had an hour of internet at my parent's workshop here and there. It was basically because it was hot out; Mom had to work and there wasn't much to do. [orionsfreckles] Totally this. Waiting for the dialup to connect so I could go explore the Yahoo geocities fan-pages and see what fanfic I'd stumble upon that day

And it ended in the late 1800s Sherlock Holmes fandom:

[@FrillyBecky replying to TBH's comment about Kirk/Spock fanfiction]: Earlier still, they found Sherlock fanfic written in an old copy of Sherlock Holmes from the late 1880s! So do with that what you will [choosethebeauty replying to FrillyBecky] My mom is a HUGE Sherlock fan & she told me about how people wrote fanfics before they even knew what it was! Fandom has so much history & to see so many try to disown & degrade it bc “eww older women” It’s just so deeply disturbing to see misogyny passed as “protecting fandom”