Possibly NSFW discussion of a term that gets on my nerves

[avevale_intelligencer]

I wondered how long it would be before someone brought in the masturbation metaphor to describe our discussions on Doctor Who...does anyone ever talk about "football wank" or "political wank" or "real ale wank," or is it just sf fans who get that? And is it possible, in these relatively enlightened days, that masturbation still carries in some quarters the "unnatural act/sin against the Holy Ghost/self-pollution" stigma that's implied by the comparison?

Because it is implied, let's make no mistake about that. When people talk about "fandom wank" they are not describing people indulging in a harmless and pleasurable act which is practiced by (I would imagine) the vast majority of human beings at some point in their lives. They mean to belittle us. They mean to insult us. They mean to be offensive, and they succeed. They mean to turn the passion that we bestow upon our hobbies into something squalid, something dirty, something to which no decent human being would ever stoop.

Our language is rich in words and phrases to describe what happens when people let their passions run away with them, when they lose perspective in focussing on a single issue, when tempers run high and things are said that should not have been said. This happens in all areas and walks of life, to all manner of people. Why should it be that one particular group of people, whose attention is given to particular forms of literature and drama, when they fall into this error or even when they do not, should be smeared with a playground epithet from the sucking pit of Victorian sexual repression?

I suppose it's all part of the standard bigoted view of fans as spotty unhygienic teenage boys who spend too much time reading books and not enough time getting drunk in gangs and bashing members of the minority of their choice. But it seems a little...disappointing, shall we say...when other fans support and sustain the stereotype by using terms such as this to describe each other.

Comments

[eoforyth.livejournal.com]

I've come to notice that it is generally applied to that non-productive to-and-fro-ing, with each person not taking much notice of anyone but themselves, rather than for proper discussion, etc., which, when you think about it, makes 'wank' a rather appropriate name for it.

I think the real problem is that people are erroneously applying the term to all forms of open discussion.

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

For originating of the fannish use of the term, we apparently have to think the fairly recently deceased Craig Hinton, who (according to his obit in DWM), having created the term, cheerfully agreed when it was used to describe much of his own writing.

Since then the meaning has drifted and generalised somewhat, from "attempts to explain way plotholes that no one else really cares about *in fiction*", via doing so in on-line discussions, to just generally discussing anything in an obsessive fashion, to please oneself rather than with any serious prospect of edifying others.

Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanwank

Of course, just 'cos the originator of a term didn't intend it to be used nastily, doesn't mean that it won't be... =:o\