Resistance Re-Examined: Gender,Fan Practices,and Science Fiction Television

Studies of gender, science fiction television, and fan culture have often asserted that female fans resist patriarchy by negotiating cultural texts through such practices as fan fiction and interactive deliberation. This analysis holds that specific motivation and context must be considered to advance such a claim, especially in light of undercurrents of misogyny contributing to such phenomena as "slash" fan fiction authored by women and dealing with romances between male heroes. This study assesses the practices of fans, relevant text, and production factors in the context of particular, gender-related issues surrounding the series Farscape and Stargate SG-1, and finds that activities often thought to be emancipatory can, in fact, reproduce hegemony, and that fans sometimes appropriate resistive rhetoric in defense of hegemonic proclivities.