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Cyberspaces of Their Own: Female Fandoms Online, by Rhiannon Bury. New

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Cyberspaces of Their Own: Female Fandoms Online, by
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Mary E. Virnoche a
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Department of Sociology, Humboldt University, Arcata, California, USA

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DOI: 10.1080/01972240701575775
Cyberspaces of Their Own: Female Fandoms Online,
by Rhiannon Bury. New York: Peter Lang Publishing,
2005. x + 242 pp. $29.95 paper. ISBN
0-8204-7118-6.
Reviewed by Mary E. Virnoche
Department of Sociology, Humboldt University, Arcata, California, USA
Rhiannon Bury provides an engaging ethnography of
two elite female online fandom spaces. Participants are
members of the David Duchovny Estrogen Brigade Re-
search Project (DDEBRP), arising from the American tele-
vision series The X-Files; and of the Militant RayK Sep-
aratists (MRKS), a space organized around an actor from
the Canadian Due South series. The latter forum also em-
phasized slash, a form of fan fiction in which heterosexual
male characters in a primary text (in this case a television
series) are rewritten in intimate and sexual relationships
with each other.
Bury’s introductory section moves the reader from early
theorizing of a disembodied online utopia to a cultural
studies orientation informed by poststructuralism, post-
marxism, and feminist and queer theory. Identity, commu-
nity, and space serve as conceptual touchstones for theoriz-
ing and subsequent chapters. Throughout the book, Bury
moves seamlessly between dense theorizing and fascinat-
ing narratives from the women fans.
Female fandom spaces should not be dismissed as
mere retreats to the private sphere marked by feminine
interaction. Bury’s ethnography uncovers the subversive
and queering of identity and community that arise in fe-
male fandoms online. Building on Butler’s (1990) work
that argues that identity and the body are linguistically
(re)constituted through interaction, Bury theorizes greater
complexity and agency in gender performance: Subjects
become active enactors or resisters of particular genders
(or other) discourses. Likewise, community is understood
as the “effect” of repeated performances or articulations of
partial identities and “communal practices” (p. 14). Spa-
tial markers and metaphors then reinscribe the offline in
online spaces.
In the first chapter, Bury defines the fan based on her
level of involvement and emotional commitment to the
series. She notes that fan behavior in women has been de-
421
valued and stigmatized as silly or even delusional. Aware
of this meaning, DDEBRP members carefully manage the
stigma (Goffman, 1963) of their fandom. Stigma manage-
ment included selective disclosure of their fandom and
techniques of neutralization (Sykes & Matza, 1957) that
emphasized the significance of their online friendships and
the wide range and quality of online fandom topics that ex-
tend beyond the The X-Files.
In Chapter 1, Bury rejects models of passive media
consumption. Instead, she draws our attention to the pro-
cesses through which the primary text of The X-Files serves
as a starting point for discussion and identity formation.
Through collective meaning-making online, participants
decide “what really happened” in a given episode while
also negotiating their own identities and action expec-
tations. Fan expectations for a character’s behavior and
the script of the primary text may produce incongruen-
cies. These conflicts between expectations and primary
text produce opportunities for debate and identity polic-
ing. Members drawn to the series because of the equal and
powerful character of the female protagonist, Dana Scully,
and David Duchovny’s character Mulder negotiate what
“should have” happened based on their own feminism(s).
These character interpretations and critiques serve as ref-
erence points for members’ own identity expectations and
actions.
In Chapter 2, the secondary texts of MRKS slash pro-
vide a window into the queering of lust and fantasy. Queer
theory explores atypically coupled statuses and actions. In
the case of slash, that includes straight or bisexual women
turned on by homosexual male sex. Fans script MRKS
slash with a feminine gaze. The scenes between the two
male characters emphasize gradual relationship develop-
ment and eroticize non-phallocentric touch. The writing,
while subversive, creates a space for exploration and le-
gitimation of queer identity and sexuality.
 422 BOOK REVIEW
Downloaded By: [Virnoche, Mary E.] At: 22:37 14 November 2007
In chapters 3 and 4, Bury explores identity negotia-
tion through quick wit, politeness, and quality of writ-
ing. Exhibitions of all of these characteristics served as
markers of membership and status. Other studies of on-
line community have also explored the use of wit and
“plays on words” to mark membership (Kendall, 2002).
Bury found that in DDEBRP and MRKS groups, these
norms emerged through participation, rather than existing
as formal “rules” sometimes adopted in other online com-
munities. In addition, there was a conscious effort of partic-
ipants to write well. Western upper class politeness cou-
pled with the policing of “bourgeois aesthetics” marked
the processes through which members distinguished their
groups from other lower class fandoms.
Bury also theorized politeness in these forums as a
gendered communication style: asking questions, listen-
ing attentively, offering supportive responses, and tagging
assertions with phrases like “don’t you think?” Yet oth-
ers (O’Barr & O’Barr, 1995) have found that what is
sometimes mistaken for gendered communication is really
about the relative power of speakers in conversation. We
associate assertive styles with men because men are more
likely to occupy positions of power in relation to women.
Although Bury notes a general sense of “niceness,” she
positions herself and a few others as more “candid” and
more likely to share a “piece of their mind.” It would be
interesting to know if those female participants who were
the most “polite” also perceived themselves to have the
least situational power. If so, then the communication is
more about how similarly gendered groups “do power”
through communication.
Bury notes in Chapter 5 that “ICT’s possess the power of
dirt” (p. 175). She uses this metaphor to suggest that ICTs
allow people to use their language to build images, norms,
and symbols of social space. In this chapter, Bury is partic-
ularly interested in the heterotopic (Foucault, 1986) blur-
rings of spaces: spaces that appear in the “wrong place.” In
this book we find these mismatched or heterotopic com-
binations in the form of private fan leisure discussions
launched by clerical workers in paid labor spaces of the of-
fice. We also find American discourse on Canadian media
and fandom in an international context where the typical
focus is American media. And at the foundation, we have
fandom, typically a male discourse, produced by members
who identify as female. Bury urges us to see the fandoms
as sites of “resistance, inversion, and subversion” (p. 17).
The blur continues as mostly American fans invoke
“mythic” images of Canadian identity. These images draw
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on rugged wilderness survival and a sense of national su-
periority compared to America. The online fandom gave
members a chance to participate in this identity at a time
when they may have been less than satisfied with the iden-
tity and politics of their homeland. Bury points out the
ironies of the MRKS group in their resistance and sub-
versiveness. While they were very focused on challenging
discourses of nation, sexuality, and gender, they left un-
examined the racial politics of whiteness inherent in the
mythic Canadian identity.
Theories of the “effects” of media, as well as research
that theorizes representation in media text and images,
continue to dominate the scholarly presses. Bury’s work
steps outside these common frameworks and theorizes the
negotiated meaning processes around media. She encour-
ages more scholarship in this accepted and growing area
of media, and she particularly encourages the study of fan-
doms as a rich source of ethnographic data that informs
negotiated meaning processes. As Female Fandoms On-
line illustrates, member dynamics and interpretations offer
empirical grounding to theories of identity, community,
and space.
This book would be a challenging choice for undergrad-
uate media and society or cyberculture classes, and very
appropriate for similar types of graduate level courses. As
one selection for a theory course, it would offer an engag-
ing complement to the usual survey of various theorists.
Female Fandoms Online could be used to help students
make linkages between poststructual, feminist and queer
theories. Because the text is grounded in interesting nar-
ratives from fandoms, it should help students anchor the
abstractions of theory in experiences with which they can
identify. It certainly encouraged me to rethink my own
past fandom experiences and the processes of identity and
community involved.
REFERENCES
Butler, J. 1990. Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of iden-
tity. New York: Routledge.
Foucault, M. 1986. Of other spaces. Diacritics 16(1):22–27.
Goffman, E. 1963. Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled identity.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Kendall, L. 2002. Hanging out in the virtual pub: Masculinities and
relationships online. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Sykes, G., and Matza, D. 1957. Techniques of neutralization: A theory
of delinquency. American Sociological Review 22(6):664–670.
O’Barr, W., and O’Barr, J. F. 1995. Linguistic evidence: Language,
power and strategy—The courtroom. San Diego: Academic Press.