What’s your experience being a female fan of a TV show/movie where the fan base is male dominated?

9 comments

1. That was pretty much my entire childhood in the 70s/early 80s because I was the only girl in my small-town school who liked scifi and action/war movies and books. My experience was great, I still had friends to talk about the shows and books and went to movies with them.

2. Same old gatekeeping. The only way to defeat them is to know infinitely more than they do and utterly destroy them with the knowledge the moment they open their mouth. Preferably in front of other male fans, where they can all see that you’re not afraid to beat them at their own game.

   I am an extremely detail oriented person with a very specific memory. I have had to do this several times before, and I will likely have to do it again. When people in my community now have questions, they ask me. There’s a certain satisfaction in that.

3. Constantly being “tested” or told I don’t actually enjoy it because it’s a “guy thing” and that I probably don’t know much about it and only say that I like it to get attention- while the same men saying that are also the ones complaining they can’t find a woman who’s interested in that show/movie.

4. As much as dudes want other people to leave them alone about their hobbies they sure fail to mind their business a lot.

5. Sexism

6. Lots of gatekeeping and “testing” how much of a fan I am, and just tons of misogynist assholes.

   However, it ends up bringing the rest of us fans closer together and form even stronger circles!

7. I rarely interact with fan communities of anything because they’re always full of the most annoying people. Other fans ruin things, be they male or female, so I like to enjoy things alone

8. I’ve been a Star Wars and Marvel fan since I was old enough to be a fan of something. It’s gotten a little better as I got older, but for years I would get quizzed relentlessly by guys who wanted to “make sure I was a ‘real’ fan” and not someone “faking it to get guys to like me” *insert huge eye roll here*.

9. they were pretty much surprise on which they’d ask me how it appealed to me