Well, apparently there are trends! I thought that in general people tend to chose the same gender for the loan word--in Spanish, the ending of the word surely influences: 'a' sounds feminine, for example, and 'o' masculine; and probably other stuff I don't know.
But in Spanish it seems that isolated fans--i.e. Spanish speaking fans in English fandom--use the feminine like I do, and in Spanish fandom, the masculine is the norm. (Though I wonder if those of us who do simply stand out more because of the anomaly, and others isolated fans also choose the masculine but we're not noting them.)
I've gotten used to the masculine form through translation, though, and individual fans can change their own usage without too much bother, I'm guessing. It's the trend one won't be able to change.
I think usage can be political in the sense... If I were to use fandom as a feminine, even though it bothers other fans, simply because I consider it a 'female safe space' or something... that can be political. I'm not sure if the unconscious choice can be political. It could be, though, because we don't know to what extent culture influences us.
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Re: Via metafandom
Date: 14/01/2010 00:16 (UTC)But in Spanish it seems that isolated fans--i.e. Spanish speaking fans in English fandom--use the feminine like I do, and in Spanish fandom, the masculine is the norm. (Though I wonder if those of us who do simply stand out more because of the anomaly, and others isolated fans also choose the masculine but we're not noting them.)
I've gotten used to the masculine form through translation, though, and individual fans can change their own usage without too much bother, I'm guessing. It's the trend one won't be able to change.
I think usage can be political in the sense... If I were to use fandom as a feminine, even though it bothers other fans, simply because I consider it a 'female safe space' or something... that can be political. I'm not sure if the unconscious choice can be political. It could be, though, because we don't know to what extent culture influences us.