Women in Speculative Fiction - Fans

Fans

Women have been active in science fiction fandom for some time, and the Oxford dictionary of science fiction dates the coinage "femfan" (sometimes: "femme fan") to as early as 1944. Leigh Brackett says of the history of women in SF "There always were a certain number of women fans and women readers." Labalestier quotes the editor of Startling Stories, writing in 1953, as saying "Ten years ago stf fans were practically all male, today with or without benefit of fan activities, a lot of girls and housewives and other members of the sex are quietly reading science fiction and beginning to add their voices to the bable... We honestly never expected such a surge of female women into science fiction," and Silverberg puts "probably the first appearance of the 'Women in Science Fiction' panel soon to become a fixture of these conventions" as occurring at the 10th World Science Fiction Convention in 1953; which was also the first World Science Fiction Convention chaired by a woman, author Julian May.

While science fiction fandom has been an organized phenomenon for decades—presaging the organized fandoms of other genres and media—the study of science fiction fandom within cultural studies and science fiction studies is relatively new. Consequently, assertions about the prevalence of women in fandom are largely anecdotal and personal, and sometimes contradictory. Most prominent among these assertions is the claim that it was the advent of the original Star Trek television series which brought large quantities of women into fandom. This claim is critically analyzed by Davin, who finds it poorly founded, and cites a long history of female involvement in fandom decades prior to Star Trek; Larbalestier also cites women active science fiction fandom before the late 1960s and early 1970s.

However, females became more visibly present in fandom, and more organized, in the 1970s. The slash movement among fans began, as far as anyone can tell, with Diane Marchant's publication of the first known Star Trek "Kirk/Spock" story in Grup #3 in 1974. 1974 also saw the creation of The Witch and the Chameleon, the first explicitly feminist fanzine. The fanzine Khatru published a "Women in Science Fiction" symposium in 1975 (one of the "males" who participated was James Tiptree, Jr.). In 1976, Susan Wood set up a panel on "women and science fiction" at MidAmericon, the 1976 Worldcon; this ultimately led to the founding of A Women's APA, the first women's amateur press association. Also in 1976, WisCon, the world's leading—and for many years, only—feminist science fiction convention and conference was founded: an annual conference in Madison, Wisconsin. In turn, as a result of discussions at WisCon, institutions such as the Tiptree Awards and Broad Universe arose to address questions of gender in speculative fiction and issues peculiar to women writers of speculative fiction. Some of the same people involved in creating WisCon also founded the feminist fanzine Janus, which was thrice nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Fanzine (1978–1980).

However, the perception of speculative fiction as mainly a men's genre continues to be widespread. As the inclusion of women within science fiction and fantasy more broadly has become obvious, the specificity of the perception has evolved. For instance, the still widely held view that "science fiction and fantasy are men's genres" has been refined by some to distinguish between science fiction as a genre mainly appealing to men, and fantasy, which is generally seen as being more accommodating to women (some subgenres, particularly urban fantasy, with female protagonists, and paranormal romance are seen as being more popular with women than with men). Little formal study has supported any of these distinctions, whether based on readers, writers, or characters.