Zee made me post this.

[schmerica]

Dear fandom, sometimes people are a) immature b) bitchy or c) wanky. Surprisingly enough, there is no direct correlation between this and being under 18. Seriously, you deal with underage people ALL THE FREAKING TIME, and you don't know it, because we don't choose to tell you. Most people CAN'T TELL, and that's FINE. If you do have the emotional maturity to deal with fandom reasonably, and you don't broadcast your age and make it into a issue for list owners and such, nobody SHOULD care.

(Less life experience CAN mean more wankiness, but you know what? That's usually if you are a person prone to it anyway. Other people just keep getting worse and worse about the longer they go on. Seriously, there's a certain type of kerfuffle-raising that's a skill; you get better at it with time.)

I have to admit, too, that when I entered fandom as a teenager (after I started college, but before I was legal for anything), one of the things I absolutely loved about it was its age-blindness. On the internet, what matters is how you present yourself and how you act that matters, not your age. At 17, it is kind of amazing to be able to strike up discussions and friendships with people anywhere from your own age to three decades older than you and have none of them automatically, without even thinking, treating you like a silly kid.

Signed with love and frustration,
Pearl-"I Was a Baby Fangirl and I Lived to Tell About It!"-o

Comments

[eledhwenlin]

Word.

[foreverdirt.livejournal.com]

Yes.

[lamardeuse.livejournal.com]

Dear fandom, sometimes people are a) immature b) bitchy or c) wanky. Surprisingly enough, there is no direct correlation between this and being under 18.

True, but I'm more inclined to look kindly on a person under 21 who engages in a), b) and c) because at least there's hope that they'll smarten the hell up, and I'm more inclined to admire a person under 21 who is a kick-ass writer (I revised your age limit up a little because I'm forgiving and impressed up to about that point). It's not a fair thing, but at least it works both ways to some extent. I suppose it's prejudice of a kind, but it exists, and the only sure cure for it is not to reveal the awful truth online.

[melpemone.livejournal.com]

I entered fandom as a mouthy fourteen year old, and soon learned to keep quiet and read my porn in the corner. I found it a tremendous injustice that people wouldn't talk to me because I was so young, but nearly 11 years down the track I kinda get where they were coming from - I have every faith that the teenager I'm talking to about buttsecks has a modicum of maturity, at the very least, but their parents scare the shit outta me. So I recommend that people under 18 don't friend me, but I'm not really very diligent about checking. :-)

[china_shop]

*hearts*

[lamardeuse.livejournal.com]

I have every faith that the teenager I'm talking to about buttsecks has a modicum of maturity, at the very least, but their parents scare the shit outta me.

Thank you for summarizing my main concern with the issue so neatly. I had serious misgivings when I was in HP; you literally have a lot to fear if you engage in direct interaction with a minor about this kind of stuff, not from the kid but from the parents. I didn't try to stop people from reading, but I did put disclaimers up the wazoo and deliberately refused to engage with people who I knew were underage.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

There's not really any way you CAN check, dude; the ast majority of us are considerate enough not to put our age in our lj profiles or mention it in unlocked/uncut posts.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

I suppose it's prejudice of a kind, but it exists, and the only sure cure for it is not to reveal the awful truth online.

Heh. Dude, I totally get the point you're trying to express here? But using the word cure for it is like saying pretending you're a guy is the cure for sexism.

[lamardeuse.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I'm operating on three hours sleep here. Feel free to substitute a better word, and my apologies for any offense.

[melpemone.livejournal.com]

This is extremely true, and I'm fine with that. I'm completely and totally aware that there are people underage that I talk to all the time - I'm just not aware of most of them. :-) I did the exact same thing, so it would be hugely hypocritical of me to criticise any underage friend of mine for omitting their age. Just... there's a fair few draconian laws here in Australia, and if I'm found to be providing porn to a minor, it's jail time. Same with writing porn featuring people under 18 (I had to pull all my HP fic, though I've decided since that my personal limit is 16+, because that's the age of consent, damn it, and perfectly reasonable). In short, it got a bit scary there for a while, and made a lot of people very paranoid. HP fandom will do that to you. *g*

In summary (!), I'll put up disclaimers and warn off teenagers because that's what I have to do. But I'll turn a blind eye because I sympathise, and in return I hope they don't inadvertently rain trouble on my head. Which is far easier in dS, for damn sure. :-)

[lamardeuse.livejournal.com]

And you know, if I didn't know I was operating on three hours sleep, I might be inclined to take offense myself that my inclination to cut younger fans more slack is likened to sexism. But I won't.

[melpemone.livejournal.com]

Eee! omg, hi! I love your fic! I just finished re-re-re-reading Head Trip - please have my extremely belated thanks and kudos?[/fangirl]

Man, HP came with tremendous baggage, didn't it? It was a fun four years, but I'm relieved to be out. And yeah, I used to have nightmare visions of the police knocking on my door thanks to some overzealous parent, and a couple of times I struggled with what to do when a friend came out with their "P.S.: I'm 16, sorry" post. It's a lose/lose situation for everyone involved.

[lamardeuse.livejournal.com]

Yes, and wow, you're in Australia, where the legislation is even more draconian than here in Canada. *sigh* I had to age up my Harry in my big fic to avoid the risk of being labeled a child pornographer, and I yanked my podcast of an underage story off the net as well.

And thank you for the fangirling! You're very kind. :)

[hesychasm]

Thank you!

[vee-fic.livejournal.com]

My interaction with the underage of fandom is a form of voluntary blindness: if your actions do not scream out your teenagerhood with every character you type, then I can pretend/assume you are an adult. If not, then it's just a question of whether I hold out hope for your becoming an adult someday, or whether I discover that you are, in fact, 42, and are still hung up on the mean girls in high school.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

Yes, you're perfectly correct that most underage readers and writers by the very fact that they don't stand out do suggest the maturity to engage. And you're totally correct that it's offensive to "explain" someone's wanky behavior via their age when we see grownups behave worse every day around here. And you're right that age-blindness is one of the really cool things that this environment affords us.

And yes...I just came from reading a thread where an adult voiced her concerns about interacting with someone underage, exchanging porn etc. and many of the underage (or barely of age) respondents believed "But I've read porn since I was 1X" to be sufficient response. And given the legal situation many places as well as the sheer discomfort I'd feel were I to write with/for someone whom I'd later found out to be more than 20 years younger than I and not a legal adult yet, I felt this lack of understanding and compassion, this complete ignorance of anyone but themselves and their own wish to read fic was indeed immature.

I don't have answers to this, and this wasn't what your post was about. Assuming the reason someone's wanky is their age is silly, you're right.

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

I agree with you that people shouldn't assume that someone who's young will be wanky or someone wanky must be young. And so I thought I'd tell you so.

The discussion of the legalities/moralities of providing porn to the underage is a different discussion, by which I mean I don't actually see it as what you were talking about here, so I think it's slightly unfair of people to redefine the discussion to it.

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

In honesty, I think it was a valid comparison in that both are examples of holding people to different standards based on an arbitrary feature. (In case you were curious, I'm over 21.)

[destina.livejournal.com]

Sometimes there's not, and sometimes there is. And the older I get, the easier it becomes to see the correlation, and to guess some fan's ages long before they reveal them. Just because we choose not to mention it, or enjoy the company of people from 16 to 69, doesn't mean we haven't figured it out in any one of a number of ways. YMMV, but let's talk again when you're 39. *g*

PS -

[destina.livejournal.com]

- but you are absolutely right about one thing: wank is not age-dependent, and maturity has nothing to do with age.

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

I was a baby fangirl, too, and that was one of the things I liked about fandom. And sure, I participated in some ridiculous wank, but I grew out of it, which is more than can be said for some of the adults who were also involved.

I can often guess the younger fangirls (they tend to talk about school with noticeable high school or college markers, among other things), but I'm not so far from that myself, so it doesn't bother me. I actually like reading about other people's school experiences.

So my friendslist goes from high school to professor, and I think that's neat. And since I don't really write porn (as yet), I'm not too worried about the legalities.

[annakovsky.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I read some of the comments over in that wank (I don't even know why! I don't care about SPN!), and I thought it was incredibly rude for people to act like her being a teenager was somehow a valid thing to criticize. Talk about your ad hominem attacks.

[kudra2324.livejournal.com]

or whether I discover that you are, in fact, 42, and are still hung up on the mean girls in high school.

ah, yes. i think it's those discoveries that are the most alarming.

[shoemaster.livejournal.com]

I was a baby fangirl, hell, most days I still feel like one (going to be 20 soon!). When I first got really into fandom in oh, 7th/8th grade, I assumed everyone out there was my age. (Ha!) Obviously my view expanded as most of the people I talked to were in their 20s and 30s, and everyone was really great, I got the minimum of shit due to my age. At 17, I took my parents along for my first second fangirl meet (we were looking at colleges), and they let me go back to visit a few months later and they've been pretty chill about it all.

I shelter them from the sheer volume of porn, but my dad (accidentally) got me reading Laurell K. Hamilton when I was 11.

[ladysorka]

I admit that I'm not sure I'd have been able to hide as long as I did if I was a baby fangirl on LJ, in contrast to being 16 and lurking on Sentinel mailing lists. I cheerfully admitted my own age on the one het Farscape list I was on, to the point where I was going to fannish meets at 16, but I did keep my mouth shut in slash fandom until I was of age - but I think a large part of that was that pre-18 I was on mailing lists, and I got my LJ shortly after turning 19.

Those people I did reveal my age to tended to be surpised I was that young, but I... very, very rarely revealed my age. Though, um, yes.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

I was not at all offended by your comment, and I'm sorry if it came out that way. I don't think reframing the point you were making by changing the variable from ageism to sexism is either a) claiming that the two are equal in importance or b) claiming you are guilty of either.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

*grins* Point! I suppose I'm most familiar with the people who express total surprise or shock on learning someone's age, but of course, that is totally a skewed sample with self selection, isn't it?

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

See, the opposite is true for me -- I totally avoided lists till I turned 18, because I felt that put the list owner in an unfair position in a way lj doesn't directly. Plus I couldn't bring myself to lie outright on age statements.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

n summary (!), I'll put up disclaimers and warn off teenagers because that's what I have to do.

Dude, of course! I totally understand that; I expect everyone to do that, you know? That is not insulting, that is just the legal situation. My post is more of a response to people whose problem is not "hey, legality, gotta cover my back" but more directly set in stone and unthinkingly dismissive.

[roguewords.livejournal.com]

When I started in fandom I was an immature 21 year old. Legal, but I shouldn't have been reading what I was. ;P

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

That is totally a good point you're making -- but I wonder how much of those responses have to do with the tone of the post in question, too? Because if we're talking about the same one, and I assume we are, I found it breathtakingly condescending and insulting. Plus, while I agree that's not a sufficient response to the post, in some of the comment threads there was definitely a tangent that became *about* teen and youth sexuality, more or less. And when the original poster starts saying things like "that's gross" and "you should talk to your therapist about that" in response to "I've read porn since age X" ... I can understand why other commenters would continue to pursue that response, I guess? As a refutation of not the post itself, but of the message of "You are fucked up and weird if you became sexually curious and/or mature at an age lower than 18", maybe.

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

Seriously, dude! It's not like there aren't SO MANY OTHER places to attack, you know? "Oh, she's a teenager. THAT explains it" is ... really condescending.

tona and ausience...as always :D

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

yes. the that's gross comment got me riled up as well. I really wish people would be a bit more conscientious that there's another person on the other side of the computer (just this morning I read a comment on sth we metafandomed, so virtual stranger, I assume, which was an honest and good rebuttal but ended with wtf. ... i mean, WTF!!!)

So, yes, the entire thread really shouldn't have been ever about teen sexuality, b/c the entire point of the OP was meant to be that withholding or lying about age might endanger the adult in their involuntarily interaction with minors. The teen's sexuality should not be an issue (except with the constant I read porn when I was it kind of came in and...clusterfuck!)

audiences as well!!!

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

.

[lattara.livejournal.com]

WORD!

(says the woman who started at 14)

Re: tona and ausience...as always :D

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

*nods* I think the one thing I might disagree with a little is that the teen sexuality thing *was* totally off topic -- just because I read the OP slightly differently than you did. It didn't seem totally focused on simply the legal isses/consequences for the adults so much as ... hmm. There definitely was, to me, a sense that the underage are *fundamentally different*, in terms of intelligence, emotions, maturity, pretty much everything, if that makes sense, -- as if the day you turn 18 something actually physically changes in your brain somehow. If you're treating teenagers as squicky freaks who shouldn't be thinking about ADULT things, it makes sense that the conversation is going to derail like that.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

hmmm..yes and no. i do believe that there are issues of maturity, and that I have a hard time imagining I could have a balanced emotional relationship with someone underage (or 18 or 20 for that matter).

I'll be forty this year (and boy, it freaks me out just to type this :), and while there are certainly many experiences the teen may have had that I do not share, I do have a couple of decades of adult-on-adult interaction on them. In fact, I have about 15 years of adult-on-almost adult uni teaching on them, where I am confronted with exactly this gap every day.

Now, that doesn't mean I'm always right or even that I'm more emotionally mature. Hmmm...it does mean that the number of teens who are aware of their situatedness while simultaneously attempting to understand that of others is smaller than that of adults who have lived both teen and adulthood, who've been dependents and have had dependents, who've been students and teachers,... etc.

So, yes, I do have moral/emotional issues here above and beyond the legal ones. I don't want to be in a sexually charged interaction with a minor, not because of her but because of *me*. [And I should admit that I do have a huge RL age squick which may clearly color my kneejerk reaction here.]

Otoh, that doesn't mean that I look down on younger fans or that I don't engage with them as equals. And since I don't write fic, the issue is less problematic for me. If someone can hold their own in a discussion in my LJ, I could care less what their age is. And in fact, that experience has taught me to respect my students more as equals (not that I was talking down to them before, but when younger I was a bit obsessed with factual knowledge being the be all and end all :).

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

*nodding* I'm not trying to say your personal reactions or comfort levels aren't fair, it's just ... hmm. More that I have issues with the huge blanket assumptions some people feel comfortable with, I suppose? And -- again, this is shown pretty well by the other post -- I think there's a clear difference between "underage people and porn is an issue for the legal repercussions for adults in our community", which I think most people would agree with, and "underage people and porn is an issue because it is wrong, because their brains and psyches are unformed and we need to save them from themselves somehow."

[aillychan.livejournal.com]

You know, I thought the same thing. I started young, and was utterly flabbergasted to realize that people who were stirring up some utterly ridiculous wank were adults. Real, honest-to-god, well over the drinking age adults! I thought, don't people grow OUT of that stage?

[ladysorka]

I think part of the thing for me was that my mother was completely aware of my involvement in fandom, and, in fact, encouraged it, to the point that, when I was about 12/13, she was pointing me to her favourite Janeway/Chakotay stories - a number of which happened to be NC-17. So I didn't feel that I was endangering the list owners, because, hey, my mom thought the porn was a nice little hobby. Hell, she had me signing her up for Sam/Jack NC-17 lists under my name.

My, uh, situation was probably a bit unique, though.

[jenniferkaos.livejournal.com]

hey!...i found ur name on a love meme and I really love your page...I'm going to add you now...will you add me back?...:)

[sapote3.livejournal.com]

It still sometimes blows my mind that I'm _not_ an underage fangirl. I've had five years of lying on the "are you 18?" clickthroughs and only three years of telling the truth. I still feel like most fans used to be older, pre-Harry Potter, but then, to a thirteen-year-old, everyone seems old. I was reading the message boards on a slash interest group on Facebook and most people said they started reading slash around the same age I did.

But I am something of an internet wallflower, so my online adolescence was pretty low-conflict.

[aukestrel.livejournal.com]

Her being a teenager is not a valid thing to criticise in and of itself; her opinions on and reactions to fandom community etc. are just as valid as anyone else's. However -

(you've already defriended me, pearl, so I don't have to worry that this will cause you to drop me like a hot potato *g*) - I am the mother of a 15 yo! What's more, he's an erudite and thoughtful 15 yo and when he sends emails, or posts online, you would not know he was 15 (in part because his mother has always insisted on proper spelling and grammar in his electronic communications with her).

BUT from several years of teaching my son moderation in outlook, not leaping to judgment, and basic critical thinking, I can draw two conclusions from my own personal experience of being a teenager and parenting one: 1. The American educational system is not geared to teach critical thinking. I suspect this is because there is a giant plot afoot (no, not the BNF plot to keep down new writers, the OTHER giant plot wherein Americans incapable of thinking critically will not be able to see the flaws inherent in the reasoning of those in power) ; 2. Teenagers in general tend to see things in much more black and white terms than many (not most!) adults.

So people who do have experience with teenagers may in fact be inclined to say, "Oh, she's a teenager. That explains it." They are not necessarily right to do so - they may be leaping to judgment themselves and possibly generalising ahead of the facts - but neither are they necessarily wrong, at least until we know what the "it" is that they're talking about.

As far as protecting the "unformed minds" of pre-18 yos, I think we'd do far better to expose them to as wide a variety of outlooks, opinions, sexuality, politics, debate, and even fandom wank as possible. As a mom, however, I do not want my son going online and lying about his age to join communities or mailing lists or what-have-you, not because I am worried about his "unformed mind" but because it's wrong to put other people in the position - potentially dangerous in certain countries - of unknowingly dealing with a minor.