Freaking Fans: An Oral History of Disability in Fan Spaces

Abstract

This oral history, under the lens of critical access studies, provides case studies that illustrate the long and interconnected history of disability and fan communities. Through interviews of eight disabled fans from varying communities, I have discovered a key understudied theme in the shared history of disability and fandoms. I argue that a fan community is a relational space where fans share access with each other. To be a fan is to offer room in this shared space for people of similar body/minds. For disabled fans, their identity founded on lived experiences facilitates relationships or fosters barriers within these fan spaces, constituting “access.” Disability activism within fan spaces consists of disabled fans finding empowerment through creating inclusive spaces that further empower other disabled individuals who share in this space. Disabled fans seek inclusion through providing extra room in spaces for others that they see themselves in. In this way, relationships form and sustain fan spaces. Rather than conceiving of fandom as a textual relationship between fan and creator, I advocate for considering how fans construct their own spaces, their opening or closing of which reveals whom they identify with among their fan communities. This reveals a perceived hierarchy based in historical forces in fandom that excludes marginalized groups, not just the disabled community. However, “fannish” acts and practices of inclusion resist the exclusion present in fan spaces where historical forces such as ableism encourage fans to share space at the expense of the marginalized. This is a novel and useful paradigm to conceive of fan communities as inclusive and exclusive spaces, as it reveals the hidden lives of my interviewees who shared with me their practices of inclusion, accessibility, and access. This study is also activist for stressing the importance of joy and pleasure in the disabled experience to complement the more common disability narratives of marginalization and activist struggles.