LJ/DW media fandom has been the first time I've really participated in an online community. This month marks three years since I created an LJ, but I mostly lurked for the first twelve months, so my period of active participation really only extends back for two years.

LJ/DW fandom is also my first sustained experience in a predominantly female community. I wish I could talk about what it's like to be a male in a primarily female community, but it's generally hard for me to separate out which [novel and distinctive to me] aspects are about gender vs. online dynamics, along with which parts are specific to online female-skewing media fandom culture vs. general features of online female-centric spaces.

But if I had to describe it, it would be something like the sensation of being a teenager whose cool older* sister let him hang out with her and the smart, funny, creative women friends from college. And even join in their conversation, as though I had something to contribute!

* "older" as in more mature and worldly, like the aura that college students have when you're in high school, given that I'm probably a few years above the likely median age of my friendslist

I don't have an older sister, but I've pretty much always had a lot of awesome women in my life and cool female friends. So a lot of the conversations that I saw online would initially remind me of those occasional times when I'd been the only guy in the room, or one of two or three guys outnumberd by women. But that had never been a default or regular experience for me until LJ.

One thing that I like about being a guy in LJ/DW fandom is that I can't take for granted that I have a clear and secure place in every conversation, or feel confident about how to enter into those conversations and participate in them. It's not that LJ/DW fandom is the only place in my life where that applies, but in other contexts that uncertainty is temporary and situational; here, for me, it's foundational and structural.

And what I found here is that I make mistakes. Sometimes people tell me that I've made a mistake, sometimes I figure that out on my own, a lot of times I'm not sure, and other times I probably never realized that I made a mistake at all. Some of my mistakes have stemmed from not thinking about my words from someone else's perspective; some of them have come from being inappropriately glib; some of them have come from arrogance, or ignorance, or just a self-serving desire to be part of a conversation regardless of whether I had anything to contribute. And sometimes my mistakes are in not saying anything.

And of course I make all of those mistakes elsewhere in my life, but the experience of participating in a community that is both online plus predominantly female has sensitized me to them differently. I can't say that it's actually translated into me making fewer mistakes yet, but it has giving me more insight into how and when and where I make mistakes, and what I can do about it. And then I think about how "making fewer mistakes" is setting the bar pretty low, and I want to do and be more and better than that.

At any rate, thanks to everyone who's been part of my time in LJ/DW fandom so far -- you're pretty damn fantastic.