A piece entitled "When Worlds Collide: Fandom and Male Privilege" was posted by Lucy Gillam on her LiveJournal this past week.
Gillam, who is active in both writing and in discussing greater themes of fan fiction, tackles gender issues in the fan fiction writing community, particularly when it comes to slash and other often female-oriented writing styles of fan fiction.
The piece provides not only a good example of how much the fan fiction writers see themselves as a collective community with several niches inside of them but also how issues that have affected society at large--issues such as gender equality, the perception of reverse discrimination, etc.--become a part of the political side of the fan fiction community.
The essay and its responses provide a great window into the fan fiction world and some of the issues that fan actively debate their mark on new material generated from characters or pieces they have appropriated and remediated from the mass media. It is a good demonstration of how important this community comes to be in some people's lives and in the formation of their identity.
