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Back in 2010, one fan wrote about her perception of the intersection between fandom, social justice and the rest of the world:
"....I think a lot of people don't notice how broad and long term the effects of fandom's existence.....really are. There is a generation of published authors that have come out of fandom, and right now a new generation is writing their first fanfic and getting their first feedback comment. There are TV writers who didn't know what slash was 5 years ago but now consider slashers an essential part of their audience. Research of online fannish communities is a growing field in Social Sciences departments in universities all over the world. Every day I see more and more awareness and acknowledgment of fandom in the real world, every day it seems like more people are paying attention and more people are taking part in this community. When I was 9 years old, I didn't have a computer; when my sister was 9 years old, she was posting her fanfic on fanfiction.net. Taking that in mind, I can't think of a fannish community I'm familiar with that hasn't been affected by the "social justice" issues that have recently become more and more mainstream in my corner of fandom. And the communities that haven't been touched by it at all, will likely be touched by it in 5-10 years' time.
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scans_daily started as a place to talk about homoerotic subtext in comics, today they have a How Not to Fail 101 post they make their community members adhere to. The campaign to protest the Avatar: The Last Airbender movie was as successful as it was, had the broad effect that it did partially because of the social justice work that had previously been done in fandom and because more people were receptive to issues like whitewashing in Hollywood ......Around 2006 someone came into a fan community for the US scifi show "Stargate: Atlantis" and expressed the opinion that the show was sexist and treated its female characters poorly. In 2006 that post had several pages of comments flaming that person and reciting various bingo squares on how it's nobody's problem but her own. Today that kind of reaction would be unthinkable in the same corner of fandom..... and many of the people you saw on the flamming side in 2006 are today regularly speaking out about feminism and other issues in media.
-I've seen people say that they don't see the kind of awareness and understanding about social issues in their RL interactions as they do in fandom. And to that, honestly, all I have to say is look around. Again, 5 years ago you wouldn't have been having these conversations in fandom. 10 years from now some kid is going to publish their novel who grew up reading non-faily fic about trans characters...... I see the effects all of this is having on the world; I don't know how you can see them. And I know this is not just a "product of the times," it's the result of a lot of hard work from a lot of dedicated people, and if they - we - weren't doing this, it wouldn't happen by itself (and it won't, in future)."
"....I think a lot of people don't notice how broad and long term the effects of fandom's existence.....really are. There is a generation of published authors that have come out of fandom, and right now a new generation is writing their first fanfic and getting their first feedback comment. There are TV writers who didn't know what slash was 5 years ago but now consider slashers an essential part of their audience. Research of online fannish communities is a growing field in Social Sciences departments in universities all over the world. Every day I see more and more awareness and acknowledgment of fandom in the real world, every day it seems like more people are paying attention and more people are taking part in this community. When I was 9 years old, I didn't have a computer; when my sister was 9 years old, she was posting her fanfic on fanfiction.net. Taking that in mind, I can't think of a fannish community I'm familiar with that hasn't been affected by the "social justice" issues that have recently become more and more mainstream in my corner of fandom. And the communities that haven't been touched by it at all, will likely be touched by it in 5-10 years' time.
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scans_daily started as a place to talk about homoerotic subtext in comics, today they have a How Not to Fail 101 post they make their community members adhere to. The campaign to protest the Avatar: The Last Airbender movie was as successful as it was, had the broad effect that it did partially because of the social justice work that had previously been done in fandom and because more people were receptive to issues like whitewashing in Hollywood ......Around 2006 someone came into a fan community for the US scifi show "Stargate: Atlantis" and expressed the opinion that the show was sexist and treated its female characters poorly. In 2006 that post had several pages of comments flaming that person and reciting various bingo squares on how it's nobody's problem but her own. Today that kind of reaction would be unthinkable in the same corner of fandom..... and many of the people you saw on the flamming side in 2006 are today regularly speaking out about feminism and other issues in media.-I've seen people say that they don't see the kind of awareness and understanding about social issues in their RL interactions as they do in fandom. And to that, honestly, all I have to say is look around. Again, 5 years ago you wouldn't have been having these conversations in fandom. 10 years from now some kid is going to publish their novel who grew up reading non-faily fic about trans characters...... I see the effects all of this is having on the world; I don't know how you can see them. And I know this is not just a "product of the times," it's the result of a lot of hard work from a lot of dedicated people, and if they - we - weren't doing this, it wouldn't happen by itself (and it won't, in future)."