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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   35216 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023

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Maybe you need to like the unique aspects of Star Wars to count as a Star Wars grognard. Telepathic monks with laser swords? But then there's the rest of the setting that doesn't feature Jedi at all.

Not an accusation against you in particular, but this strikes me as an isolated demand for rigor. A male fan who loves lasers won't be asked to recite "There is no death, there is the Force" before he's allowed in the tree house. This accusation is only used to police female fandom. The main reason being that fandoms are so full of incels that a woman gets outsize attention, which is resented.

I've dated two functionally very straight women in my life who were huge (like tells me about why Kyber(?) Chrystals are symbolic levels of fandom) Star Wars fans. Maybe that's just an odd sample, but it's a real thing that happened. Gender does not strike me as a useful filter, outside of people who just kind of hate women and don't want them around.

Idk, I shouldn't chime in, I haven't watched or consumed any of the Disney content after seeing the first sequel in theaters. Maybe the whole thing has changed by now.

A male fan who loves lasers won't be asked to recite "There is no death, there is the Force" before he's allowed in the tree house. This accusation is only used to police female fandom.

This falls under "killed his parents and then demands mercy for being an orphan". There used to be gender-neutral standards in fandom that said that people should know something about the fandom before being considered a fan. (For instance, I suggest you look up trekkies versus trekkers.)

It was women who said that fans had to stop "gatekeeping" and forced them to get rid of those standards.

There were never neutral standards, they were enforced against those who were suspect. Meaning women.

No, people only paid attention to them being enforced against women.

A male fan who loves lasers won't be asked to recite "There is no death, there is the Force" before he's allowed in the tree house.

Honestly, yeah, that's pretty much how it works. I remember a time before the wider internet when things were far more niche, and getting two star wars(or your niche topic of choice) together and watch the sparks go. There was very much a sense of 'Okay, exactly how much can I let my freak flag fly around this person' with alot of this stuff, alongside the simple passionate releif of 'Holy shit, this is someone who UNDERSTANDS'.

it's a real thing that happened.

Statistical outliers. Growing up, I never once encountered a fan of Star Wars who was a woman.

Not an accusation against you in particular, but this strikes me as an isolated demand for rigor. A male fan who loves lasers won't be asked to recite "There is no death, there is the Force" before he's allowed in the tree house.

One of the very early culture war battles against nerd culture was exactly against fans demanding these sort of things from each other. This was deemed "gatekeeping", and supposedly sexist because of the disparate impact on women / girls.

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