#but I'm also one of those people who did 'supporting women by rehabilitating their characters in fic while the canon writing got worse

[figureofdismay]

I keep seeing that post claiming that they've only ever seen people in fandom complaining about the writing and characterization of women characters, never men characters, when the time I spent in m/m slash shipping circles -- and also many m/f shipping fandom circles -- was almost entirely made up of watching people complaining about the bad/sloppy/"ooc"/cowardly etc characterization of male characters. Like, that may be their experience but it's extremely not universal lol

What's more, a lot of the time I think people view "complaining about the writing of women characters" in a way backwards to the initial intent these days. For a long time on here in like 2014 to 2019 fandom, complaining about the writing of women characters was the main way people tried to show that they supported women and picking apart every portrayal was socially rewarded because it was the pathway people felt was available to them to seek better female representation in media. Of course this backfired with a combination of lots of fandom folks getting totally burnt out, and lots of fandom folks ended up scared to make women characters do anything or suffer anything because they had seen the furor of the backlash many times, and which obviously has a chilling effect on fandom overall.

I really don't think any of this started because 'fandom hates women' but as an expression of fandom wanting to see 'better' women characters that weren't cookie cutter tropes, and complaining and attacking each other over fan works and opinions was the only way they could feel like they were 'doing something' because complaining about the writing of popular franchise women characters on Twitter or the Mary Sue did very little. And of course 'good representation' is a horrifically flawed premise because no one character can make every woman feel seen (or every queer person, or, you get the picture). And now people are so used to self policing in fandom and trying to guess what will get them decried as Problematic that people avoid a lot of interesting and marginalized characters out of genuine fear of the social consequences of getting it "wrong." Those consequences fandom repeatedly demonstrates for them as impossible to predict but potentially very real and lasting on community connections.

Unfortunately this has an identical effect on fandom as "people hate women and minority characters" and it's as straightforward to navigate. "Help them branch out to minority characters they might identify with on other grounds" won't help with this. Neither will yelling at them that they hate women and minorities and should feel ashamed. What would help is 'stop participating in dogpiles and call-outs' and 'support fan works about Weird characters and nuanced takes' and 'don't assume that the person saying some female character has flaws hates that character and jump to attack' and 'if someone says something with unconscious bias about some character don't assume they hate women and jump to attack' and 'if someone ships that woman character with someone you find Problematic don't assume they hate women and jump to attack.' basically, fandom is a hobby for fun and enrichment, and if people feel like paying attention to many marginalized characters is something stressful that will get them shamed and heckled, they won't Learn To Be Better, they'll just avoid you and the character and characters like them in future.