In a message dated 3/1/01 10:02:57 AM Eastern Standard Time, nydersdyner@yahoo.co.uk writes:
<< BTW, Una, you've met him-- is Jenkins really this horrible demon bloke who came in and didn't tell anyone bar a few what he was really doing? I read "Textual Poachers" years ago, and while I haven't read it lately, I was shocked to hear Annie say his work was ethically suspect... >>
I did NOT say this. Please do NOT put words in my mouth. That is hardly "scientific" or "non-biased," or "academic," is it? If you are going to repeatedly misinterpret and twist people's words, it's no wonder that they will equate your "study" of them as akin to being a lab rat with no say in the matter.
I never categorized Jenkins as "ethically suspect" or some sort of "horrible demon bloke." In fact, I very carefully pointed out that he corresponded directly with both Leah and myself and that *we personally* had NO problems with anything he said or did. That doesn't change the fact that other fans over the years DID have problems with it.
Annie
On Thu, 1 Mar 2001 Ashton7@aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 3/1/01 10:02:57 AM Eastern Standard Time, nydersdyner@yahoo.co.uk writes:
<< BTW, Una, you've met him-- is Jenkins really this horrible demon bloke who came in and didn't tell anyone bar a few what he was really doing? I read "Textual Poachers" years ago, and while I haven't read it lately, I was shocked to hear Annie say his work was ethically suspect... >>
I did NOT say this.
I thought you did. When you wrote
Apparently, there were a good number of fans who didn't know and didn't take kindly to be the basis of someone's academic lab experiment.
that seemed to me a very clear allegation of unethical practice.
Please do NOT put words in my mouth. That is hardly
"scientific" or "non-biased," or "academic," is it? If you are going to repeatedly misinterpret and twist people's words, it's no wonder that they will equate your "study" of them as akin to being a lab rat with no say in the matter.
I never categorized Jenkins as "ethically suspect"
I thought you had. If that wasn't what you meant, perhaps you should have written more clearly.
or some sort of "horrible
demon bloke." In fact, I very carefully pointed out that he corresponded directly with both Leah and myself and that *we personally* had NO problems with anything he said or did. That doesn't change the fact that other fans over the years DID have problems with it.
Were these fans who had taken part in a study? If so, and they had problems with it, that still suggests unprofessional conduct on the studier's part -- and that's something which should be discussed explicitly, not left as a vague insinuation. If they weren't part of a study, they can stop whining.
Iain
To clarify a few points for readers who may have misunderstood:
1) I am not studying anybody or any group in fandom. I currently study businesspeople. All of whom are volunteers, all of whom have been made aware of the issues before they are interviewed, all of whom are given the option to read my material before publication and none of whom have *ever*, privately, publicly, or indirectly, accused me of treating them like lab rats.
2) Annie's exact words on Jenkins:
that he corresponded directly with both Leah and myself and that *we personally* had NO problems with anything he said or did. That doesn't change the fact that other fans over the years *did* have problems with it.
To accuse Dr Jenkins of not respecting his informants' wishes is very much an accusation of being ethically suspect, and one which could seriously damage his professional credibility.
3) I regard my Lyst time as my downtime. I am not on the Lyst to be scientific, rigorous or academic (although, like many people here, I may draw on my RL experience in discussions where relevant). Consequently, I am not always going to be so. Furthermore, I am also going to occasionally use facetious terms like "horrible demon bloke."
I don't like it when people twist my words around either.
Fiona
The Posthumous Memoirs of Secretary Rontane Available for public perusal at http://nyder.r67.net
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I really, really, really don't want to extend this, or get involved at all, but it seems so obvious to me that the hurt feelings on both side are resulting from a perfectly understandable misunderstanding as it were...
Fiona Moore wrote:
- Annie's exact words on Jenkins:
that he corresponded directly with both Leah and myself and that *we personally* had NO problems with anything he said or did. That doesn't change the fact that other fans over the years *did* have problems with it.
To accuse Dr Jenkins of not respecting his informants' wishes is very much an accusation of being ethically suspect, and one which could seriously damage his professional credibility.
I think the root of the misunderstanding is simply that Leah meant one thing by "other fans" and Fiona read it as meaning something else.
Shoot. I did it again. Please read "Annie" where I wrote "Leah" in this message. My apologies to both of them. :-(
I do this so often -- swap names on people -- that I'm wondering if it's a syndrome with a name and all. Like dyslexics reverse letters in words, people with XXXX syndrome continually muck up names?
Susan Beth (susanbeth33@mindspring.com)
From: Susan Beth susanbeth33@mindspring.com
And that is, truly, an accurate statement going by my experience. There are a lot of fans, particularly slash-friendly ones, who don't at all like having a spotlight shown on their hobby. It has nothing to do with
whether
they thought his study was accurate, or whether or not they liked the conclusions/theories he drew from it. They simply *like* having fandom be their little secret cabal, safely hidden away from the eyes of mundanes.
I can't help thinking that they're being their own worst enemies in cultivating this air of secrecy. First of all, what makes them think they've got a right to be immune to investigation? Secondly, they are overestimating their own importance, because the principle line of inquiry is not one of who is doing what, but of what is being done and why. Thirdly, being reclusive and secretive can only foster the notion that they've got more to hide than they actually have, which means they end up drawing more attention to themselves, not less.
If you don't understand why, well, how does British TV cover SF
conventions
over there? What we inevitably get is footage of the 300 pound guy in complete Klingon rig who insists on speaking in klingon and waving his plastic weapon menacingly at the reporter. IF your experience is that Attention to Fandom = Mockery of Fans then you, too, might very much
prefer
to be left quietly alone and dislike *anything* which draws attention to fandom's existence.
Surely all the more reason to encourage a more positive counterbalancing view that shifts the focus away from the fans themselves and considers what it is that they do.
But I've long since come to believe that there is an element in fan culture that wants to shut itself away in the ghetto of fandom and sneer at the mundane world outside whilst pretending that it isn't secretly enjoying all the attention.
Neil
Susan Beth (susanbeth33@mindspring.com)
Sorry, this got overlooked for a day. (My ISP is delivering my mail in random order these days -- I get replies before the original posts, for example.)
Neil Faulkner wrote:
I can't help thinking that they're being their own worst enemies in cultivating this air of secrecy.
Very likely.
First of all, what makes them think
they've got a right to be immune to investigation?
I don't think I said they thought they had a "right" to be immune to investigation, just that they *preferred* it that way. (I don't have a right not to have a family with a beginning bagpipe player move in next door, but I'd sure prefer it that way.)
Secondly, they are overestimating their own importance, because the principle line of inquiry is not one of who is doing what, but of what is being done and why.
Nope. At least the ones I spoke with. They weren't worried about being outed personally, they objected to having the "why" part dug into. I suspect this was in many cases due to those people themselves having internal conflicts over why they liked slash -- they were reared in the "good girls aren't interested in sex" beliefs and yet found themselves very interested indeed not only in sex, but a kind of sex that society mostly condemns as deviant. IOW, on some level they still believed they were morally wrong or psychologically sick, and had no wish to have that confirmed.
BTW, the objection was not just to *outsiders* researching them. Before either Bacon or Jenkins, two K/S fans were curious as well. Judith Gran and someone whose name I can't pull out of my data bank at the moment drew up a lengthy questionnaire that they distributed at slash cons and to the subscribers of "Not Tonight, Spock" (a K/S letterzine) among other routes. The questionnaire was aimed at discovering the demographics of the slash fan: age, marital status, religious background, geographic area you grew up in, profession, whether you had children, and so on, plus how they'd come to discover slash. The results were to be compiled and reported in NTS mainly...IOW, this was a survey BY K/S fans, ABOUT K/S fans and with the results to be reported TO K/S fans.
Doesn't sound very controversial, does it? But even before I got the questionnaire, I'd received mailings from three other small groups of fans, all urging that we not cooperate with the questionnaire.
Mind, this was around twenty years ago, and the last two decades have seen a great deal more openness and tolerance to "alternative" sexuality develop.
Susan Beth (susanbeth33@mindspring.com)
Susan Beth said;
Sorry, this got overlooked for a day. (My ISP is delivering my mail in random order these days -- I get replies before the original posts, for example.)
Well, THAT fits in with the "causality" discussion on FC.
-(Y)
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Ashton7＠aol.com -
Dana Shilling -
Fiona Moore -
Iain Coleman -
Neil Faulkner -
Susan Beth