Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth

Enterprising Women is a book by aca-fan Camille Bacon-Smith. It was published in the same year as Textual Poachers and the two books signaled a beginning to the study of fannish culture, now known as the academic field of Fan Studies.
From the start, there were tensions between the fannish community and academics who studied fandom. Enterprising Women created a strong negative reaction among many of the female fans who were the subjects of the book. 
Among the areas of contention were what may perceived as shallow, or incorrect, gender assumptions: "Some of Bacon-Smith’s theories concerning slash writing include: 1) that the male characters are actually surrogate women and, 2) that slash writers are afraid to write about heterosexual sex because they’re afraid they’ve been doing "it" wrong all these years; that women aren’t really expected to know the mechanics of gay, male sex so essentially anything is allowed and accepted."Academia Explores the Final Frontier, Strange World, 1994. 
Bacon-Smith talks about this book quite a bit in Camille Bacon-Smith and Henry Jenkins at Gaylaxicon 1992.
==On Mary Sues==
Camille Bacon-Smith includes a subsection on the Mary Sue concept in her book, Enterprising WomenBacon-Smith, Camille, Enterprising Women, Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth. Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1992., tying it together with the Canon Sue issue. While not denying that such characters exist, she observes that fear of creating a "Mary Sue" may be restricting and even silencing pro writers, not just fan writers. She mentions "Mary Sue" paranoia as one of the sources for the lack of "believable, competent, and identifiable-with female characters."
At Clippercon 1987 (a Star Trek fan convention), Smith interviewed a panel of women authors who said they did not include female characters in their stories at all. She quoted one as saying "Every time I've tried to put a woman in any story I've ever written, everyone immediately says, this is a Mary Sue." Smith also pointed out that "participants in a panel discussion in January 1990 noted with growing dismay that any female character created within the community is damned with the term Mary Sue."Smith, p. 110. A footnote states this was reported to her by Judy Chien, who attended the panel at MostEastlyCon 1990 in Newark.
Several other writers quoted by Smith point out that James T. Kirk himself could be considered a "Mary Sue," or Canon Sue, and that the label seems to be used more indiscriminately on female characters who do not behave in accordance with the dominant culture's images and expectations for females as opposed to males.Smith, p. 97.
==Fan Reactions and Reviews==
===1992===
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==External Links==
*Science Fiction Culture commentary from the blog, Stromata, by Tom Veal
*Temple University's Enterprising Women Collection. Temple University hosts a number of fanzines related to Camille Bacon Smith's book Enterprising Women (the "Enterprising Women Collection").
==References==
Category:1992 Academic Commentary
Category:Slash Academic Commentary
Category:Star Trek Academic Commentary