softwedge:

wookiees:

i can’t even begin to tell you how much hypermasculinity almost utterly ruined star wars for me growing up

Ok sorry but this post spoke to me so strongly and i’m just gonna rant for a bit.

It wasn’t until pretty recently that i even started calling myself a star wars fan, or even truly thought that i “qualified” as one. Which is weird when you consider that I’ve seen the movies countless times and was so young when I first saw the original trilogy that i don’t even remember it. I spent half my childhood swinging around toy lightsabers and pretending to be a jedi. I genuinely cannot remember a time in my life without star wars. And yet, for years I didn’t feel like I had the “right” to call myself a star wars fan because of the way the fandom’s culture was for a long time.

It’s sad, because my friends and I have talked about this and it’s seems like this is the case with a lot of girls who are star wars fans. Especially as a preteen and teenage girl, i always felt like there was such a culture of toxic masculinity to the star wars fandom that really turned me off from wanting to participate in it and caused me not to feel like a real part of it. There was always this underlying fear for me that if i called myself a fan, or wore a sw shirt or something like that, then some rabid fanboy would jump out of a nearby bush and quiz me on the knowledge of boba fett’s entire family tree.

And I think a lot of what this boils down to is affirmational vs transformational fandom. For the longest time, the star wars fandom was dominantly an affirmational fandom, where participation and status revolved around having the most knowledge of the source material, knowing trivia, debating the plausible mechanics of the world, etc. Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with that school of fandom, but it is typically a type of fandom participation which appeals overwhelmingly to male fans. By itself, affirmational fandom isn’t bad, but it can quickly lead to things like gatekeeping based on petty trivia and excluding those who are “lesser fans”, as i often saw with the star wars fandom. 

This is one of the reasons i have very little patience for people who hate/complain about the sequel trilogy and new disney canon. Because for me, the release of The Force Awakens is when the star wars fandom started feeling like a welcoming and accepting fandom for me. Because with the new movie came a lot of new fans, and a LOT of those new fans were teenage girls, as well as members of the LGBT community, which are demographics that tend to favor transformational fandom practices, such as fanfic, fan art, shipping, character metas, etc. Obviously there are men who prefer transformational fandom and women who are geared towards affirmational fandom, but i’m just talking about fandom trends. And star wars still has many parts of the fandom which are affirmational, which isn’t bad! But bringing a more diverse fanbase and diversifying fandom practices to those that are less based on rote memorization of details and more focused on personal interpretation of source material has caused the fandom to be more accessible for a lot of people, myself included. 

Sorry that this got pretty long, but it’s something I’ve just been thinking about for awhile. I’m sad that I’ve loved star wars for so long but didn’t start openly calling myself a fan until recently. I’m sad when i think about all the time i missed out being a part of this fandom because I was afraid i would be judged for not knowing every model of ship or ancient jedi master’s name. And I’m sad that i know a lot of women and teenage girls and other people who aren’t straight cis white men who have had the same experience. But I’m also so grateful for the sequel trilogy for being the catalyst that has led fans like me to feel more empowered and shifted the fandom culture to be more accessible for all, rather than just a boys club.