RareWomen (LJ) is now RarelyWritten (DW)

[brightknightie]

The ficathon formerly known as rarewomen is now rarelywritten. It now makes its home on DW and has an RSS feed for LJ, instead of vice-versa. Time to update subscriptions!

The name change signifies a scope change. Before, the game celebrated canonically self-identifying female characters underrepresented in fanfiction (whether CIS, transgender, etc. — no limits). Now, the game will celebrate canonically self-identifying non-CIS-male characters underrepresented in fanfiction. There's no longer any baseline of femaleness. Nominations for 2015's game will open January 30 and run to February 7.

I've played in three iterations of this exchange ficathon as it celebrated women characters. All were well-run. There were many excellent (and some exquisite) tales. I was gifted lovely match stories. I recommend the game's mods and participants. I'll probably play again this year.

But, personally, I admit that I still feel conflicted about the game's changes.

Overall, canonically female characters demonstrably have a fraught representation in fanfiction. They're distressingly under-represented in many fandoms proportional to their presence in canon. (For example, try HL's Tessa Noel on the AO3.) In my experience, for complex reasons, canonical women characters are frequently marginalized by their own fandoms.

I'm not completely convinced that canonically neither-CIS-male-nor-identifying-as-female characters face exactly the same challenge in the hands of their fandoms. I'm not completely confident that changing this particular game's scope addresses that challenge better than another initiative might. And I don't know whether this change will make more people more happy.

I'm most skeptical of the inclusion of non-self-identified-gender AIs, such as Person of Interest's computer intelligences, the Machine and Samaritan. It seems to me that such characters, if indeed rarely written, are not so for reasons of gender.

While the change is for the kindest, noblest reasons, and they've made an outstanding renaming choice, I can't quite help still hearing the difference between "yes all women" and "no CIS-men" as sounding discriminatory.

And of course being a woman (or any other positively-stated identity) is more than being not-a-CIS-man. But if that's the only shared point?

(Change is hard.)

I want to do my very best to evaluate the results of this change properly, intellectually, when the time comes. But just right now, I feel, personally, emotionally, left behind by the change.

Comments

[senmut]

I'm trying to find words to discuss this with you.

But my knee-jerk reaction is 'if women are underrepresented, what do you think non-gender conforming beings are?'

And I am trying to get to a more articulate place to work from, but it is so close to home that I have trouble. I *get* that women are overshadowed in their own fandoms. Ziva in NCIS should have had a fan following on par with Black Widow... and it's all about the boys. Same for Abby, same show.

But when you get someone who presents as a non-binary gender, or caught between the two binaries, and they are erased, or the writer chooses to simplify in a follow-up by explicitly making them *normal*, it really, really tears at my soul. It's a message of 'you do not matter, you are fake, they are none like you' that I get hit with.

So this change, if I am understanding it right, means a lot to me.

[brightknightie]

I think that I misread your reply before.

I did not mean to suggest that there is something wrong with a more inclusive ficathon.

I do mean to say that it is not the same ficathon.

Again, I apologize for causing distress. I didn't mean to.

[brightknightie]

A perceptive, anonymous friend has pointed out that it would be impractical to have two ficathons.

Having one ficathon for canonical characters who self-identify as women and one for those who self-identify as neither-women-nor-men wouldn't scale. Combining the two creates a more realistic opportunity for the latter characters in a large multi-fandom game, as people sign up for some of each.

[greerwatson]

I get their reasons (and I have to say that people mostly seem to agree with the change); but I personally feel the same way as you. I get that it would be impractical to have two separate exchanges; but that's a statistical evaluation of the relative sizes of the two populations. "Women" and "non-men" just aren't semantically interchangeable terms.

[brightknightie]

I'm sure that I'll get used to it, though it doesn't feel like a perfect fit right out of the box.

Yes, the semantic angles feel jagged.

Allowing that the previous parameters are discarded and different parameters are implemented, and not comparing ideals or utility, there's still a "dropping" feeling -- ironically, making event eligibility more inclusive requires a more exclusive definition of that eligibility.