fozmeadows:

I’ve seen a few threads recently arguing that adults don’t belong in digital fan spaces because tumblr and the like are for young people, and I’ve finally put my finger on why this perspective unsettles me so much: because it perfectly mirrors the argument that queer adults – or queer things in general, really – are a creepy, corrupting influence on kids. Given how queer so much fandom content is, especially online, this might seem counter-intuitive, but one of the biggest culturally conditioned fears we have is that there’s something inherently predatory about older queer folx interacting with younger queer folx, because obviously queerness is inherently sexual and therefore something something power dynamics, right?

But the thing is, we’re missing a huge chunk of what should be the visible adult queer community because of the AIDS epidemic, ostracism, suicide and other shit like DADT that keeps or kept people closeted. Which is a big part of why so many younger queer folx don’t know queer history, or have only a passing acquaintance with it: because so many of the people who ought to have handed that knowledge down are missing or dead, or were otherwise kept from speaking. Which is why, in turn, we keep seeing resurgent waves of queer discourse – again, on places like tumblr – where younger people are, without knowing what came before them, both reinventing the wheel and making sweeping, inaccurate statements about their (very truncated view of) community history.

Because that’s the thing: for any culture or a community to survive, you need someone to transmit the history. Adults, elders, historians, senior figures, whatever – you need to keep records, you need people who are invested for the long haul, and above all you need a sense that what you’re building is important or worthwhile enough that it deserves to perpetuate itself. The community itself might change over the years, along with its dominant philosophies and expressions, but these are shifts that happen, not because knowledge has been lost, but because it has increased.

And look. I could go on a whole separate rant about how Western society is increasingly age-segregated in a bunch of unhealthy ways, and why that’s warping our collective memories. The idea that Teen Stuff and Adult Stuff shouldn’t overlap hasn’t sprung up in a vacuum. But fandom is not, should not be and never has been equivalent to the ephemeral, viral shifts of kid culture, the hopscotch games and nursery rhymes and songs and slang that children transmit to each other and then immediately outgrow, so that all subsequent reminiscence of them is detached from participation or up-to-date knowledge, unless obtained secondhand.

Not all adults in fandom are queer, nor is all of fandom queer. But online, in contexts where we’re talking largely about fanfic/fanart rather than convention spaces, and where there’s demonstrable overlap with other areas of queer and feminist discourse, fandom is one of the few arenas in which queer adults routinely interact with queer teens. And particularly knowing there are people in fandom who express a love of queer ships but discomfort with IRL queerness otherwise, it does not sit well with me to see a “But Think Of The Children!” argument being used to suggest that the people who create and maintain fandom are acting inappropriately by doing so.