Abstract

Henry Jenkins’ definition of fan activism emphasizes the tactics fans use to effect widespread political and social change at a grassroots level. Yet fan activism is also more of a loose or fluid concept that includes active and implicit manifestations of resistance. Surveying two different genres of Harry Potter genderfuck fan fiction - genderswap and transfic - helps illustrate the complex ways in which fans enact their political agency. The work that fans do in online communities, from writing contemporary academic theories into fan fiction to intervening in popular fan tropes that present problematic views of gender, opens up queer pedagogical spaces that extend beyond fandom. The transfic genre (as illustrated by the fic The Relative Truth) reflects a more nuanced and progressive space than the traditional genderswap genre (as illustrated by the fic Being Liquid), functioning for fandom as an internal critique that allows for the proliferation of a full-range of queer and transgender experiences in fan fiction. These fan interventions transpose Jenkins’ concept of “textual poaching” from appropriating not only mainstream texts, but texts within fandom itself. Ultimately these online spaces function as popular and accessible alternatives to the pedagogical spaces opened up by academic discourse.�