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Femininity and fandom: the dual-stigmatisation of female comic book fans

Media portrayals of comic book fandom routinely depict the comics community as a masculine space, one in which the female fan is an anomaly. Yet, women reportedly represent a growing number of comic book purchasers and convention attendees. If women are, in fact, such a large contingent of the comic book fan community, then why do these gendered stereotypes of female fans persist? Moreover, why do we continually see narratives about the ‘exotic’ female comics fan if women are such a large population within comics culture? I theorise that many female comic book fans render themselves invisible in the comics community out of fear of stigmatisation, from both non-comics fans as well as male members of comics fandom. Drawing on the work of Erving Goffman, I use semi-structured interviews to explore how female comics fans in the United States experience fandom as members of a culture that is coded as masculine.