So I’m the same age, give or take a year or two, as the main characters on Sherlock. When I write Sherlock fic, I’m writing about my generation. My peers.
I’m also a parent. Would it be creepy if I wrote a romance novel? Would it be creepy if I read a book with SEX in it? How about if I wrote a TV script for a show that already exists? Isn’t that exactly what some fanfiction is?
Does having kids mean I have to put away my sexy thoughts, pick up my knitting and sit in the fucking corner for the rest of my life?
“but when the adult is an active member of the fandom which is mainly populated by kids… It’s ugly and disgusting and I feel so bad even thinking about that.”
“As bad as I feel for a 30+ year old mother who is deeply into Superwholock…”
Do you ever see people telling older men to stop cheering at sporting events? That it’s gross or disgusting for an old guy to put on a baseball jersey and yell his head off at a home game? No? I wonder why.
I hope you understand that this attitude perpetuates the absolutely raging sexism and ageism that permeates our culture. You’re perpetuating society’s wish that women of a certain age should go away and be silent. That we abandon our personhood as soon as we have kids. That mothers are vessels and not people. That older women are not supposed to be sexy or think about sex or feel passion. That we are supposed to sit in a circle with other mothers sipping wine and planning soccer carpools.
I was born a fannish person. I still love the same books I loved when I was in elementary school. I love talking about TV and movies and music with other passionate fans. I’ve always written fic, even before the internet, even before I knew what fic was. Having kids did not remove that part of my brain. It changed my life, but it did not change ME.
I’ve been in fandom for decades and have a large circle of wonderful fandom friends who are in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s. Together, we are responsible for hundreds of thousands of words of fanfic. We’ve made podfics, fan art, podcasts, cons, writing groups. We’re not stopping anytime soon. To quote the worst rock n’ roll song ever written, we built this city.
When you call older fans “ugly and disgusting” you are discriminating against people who just happen to have a different fucking birthday. You are telling a female-dominated community that their desire and passion and creativity has an expiration date. And you are feeding our culture’s entirely sexist expectations of how older women, especially mothers, should behave.
annaxmalina
izzy806
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