ratcreature | on "coming out" as a fan to mundanes...

I replied to

fairestcat's The Slash Closet post even though I don't primarily see myself as a slash fan, and while commenting I realized I'm much more "closeted" about being a tv fan than I am about being either a comic or an SF fan, and that fanfic is somewhat awkward for me to talk about with mundane friends and acquaintances for any kind of fandom. And I don't mean the porn aspect here, in many cases it would be rather easier to admit to if I was just reading porn on the net.

It's not just that there is no way that anyone taking one look into my apartment could possibly miss that I'm a comic fan. I think that admitting to being a comic fan is easier, because on one level people can relate to it as collecting, which is a more "normal" hobby, and also understand it as connected to me being interested in drawing and just liking the art. Whereas admitting to being an SF fan is easier because SF fandom is somehow more established and I think it also has at least some status as potentially "more sophisticated" at least as far as SF books go, even with people not much into the genre.

Anyway, whenever I tried "coming out" as a tv fan to friends I got weirder reactions than when admitting to being into comics or SF, and the one time I tried to explain liking fanfic to a mundane friend he didn't get that at all, and he already knew that I collected comics, and was into fandom discussions on the internet.

But now I also wonder whether there isn't a gender aspect to this, what with both comic and SF fandom being more male than tv fandom, and especially fanfic fandom.