Have you been part of fandom for at least ten years (even non-consecutively)?
We’re Casey Fiesler and Brianna Dym, longtime fan community members, and also researchers in the Department of Information Science at University of Colorado Boulder. We’re conducting a survey about how fan communities migrate across platforms! So if you’ve used multiple platforms in that time (Livejournal, Tumblr, AO3, Usenet…), we would love to have you participate!
The survey is a mix of multiple choice and open answer, and you can answer as much or as little as you like. The survey should take on average about 15 to 20 minutes to complete. (There will be more questions depending on how many platforms you’ve used, though you can skip through questions if necessary.)
We will ask for some demographics (any of which you can skip) so that we can describe how fan communities are different from other communities, but won’t require any identifying information – unless you would like to give us your email address so we can inform you about the results of the study.
So, letting people be who they want to be is a good thing. That’s shocking I tell you, just shocking. All I want to know is, how much time and money went into this research when you could’ve just asked trans folks how they felt for free
The way research works is they probably did ask trans folks, and then systematically collected their responses. Research often is the collection of many many people’s responses, collected in a rigorous standardized way. They are not just saying “this is the case for some trans kids” they are saying “this is the majority experience” for the trans kids they studied/ which is a powerful and useful thing to be able to say.
Yes it seems obvious but especially with social justice and medical research even if it is well known having a peer reviewed paper saying means that when some cis person is arguing the opposite you have a peer reviews paper to go, “look it’s been studied you are wrong”.
Research studies inform policy and medical practice. It is a good thing that this paper has been made because it can be used as evidence.
Minority groups benefit from research that looks at how things affect them and gives them a voice that is harder for policy makers to ignore. Bashing this study because it is obvious isn’t helpful, this study could seriously help trans kids, especially if it had been published in main stream media, because parents who are cis and don’t know anything about trans issues or don’t know if anyone they know is trans might find out their kids are and search for info and this will pop up. And because it’s from a trusted source, it’s research! they might think “oh maybe the best thing I can do for my kid is let them transition”.
Poo pooing research that gives minorities a voice because it’s obvious for the maringalised group but not the hegemonic one hurts the marginalized group because the hegemonic group is the group that needs to learn how “obvious” it is.
The annual Latke-Hamantash Debate, started at the University of Chicago in 1946, is a humorous academic debate in which faculty debate the respective merits of the two items of Jewish cuisine, the latke, and the hamantash. Arguments given by faculty members, who don their academic regalia, must be made using the specific language of their fields. For example, in the 2014 Latke-Hamantash Debate, chemistry Professor Aaron Dinner argued that the latke was eight times more fuel-efficient than the hamantash, and therefore the superior food. Past debaters include economist Milton Friedman, essayist Allan Bloom, and Nobel Prize winning physicist Leon M. Lederman.
When I saw this I literally screamed in my head at the same time my hand flew to grab a hold of this magazine. Rejoice my fellow fanfic writers, we are valid, our writing is valid and we should be proud of being fanfic writers.
Enjoy this reading that I’m sure will inspire and motivate you to keep writing 😉💗
Steel Phoenix Studios 