FANDOM IS BEAUTIFUL?

TOXICITIES AND DISPUTES AMONG SAPPHIC WOMEN IN SHIPPER COMMUNITIES

Abstract

Driven by the desire to find acceptance in relation to their sexualities, sapphic women, fans of media products, decide to join fan communities aimed at supporting couples made up of women, the so-called ship femslash fandoms. However, some of these communities end up presenting individuals with actions that oppose the expectations of acceptance that these women thought they could find among their sapphic peers, who support same-sex romantic couples. With negative, hierarchical and exclusivist behaviors, some of these fans end up generating tension and/or becoming victims of it. From the understanding of the use of the word toxicity in contemporary times, we seek to analyze the toxic traits in these communities, seeking not only to observe the contradictory attitudes of these shippers, but to refine the very understanding of the “toxic” terminology of toxic, trivialized and hyperbolized in the digital environment. To achieve this aim, we used qualitative research, using form methods, followed by focus groups. Our objective is to see, through collective interaction, how this concept is established and whether it is tensioned. Our hypothesis is that fandoms can be spaces of hierarchy and power games and the more opinion divergences about the object of consumption, the more dissent and disputes over meaning will be caused, especially when we are dealing with relationships that contain a minority, needy group representation and good representations.