Each Woman Fan Has Her Own Story: Three Fandom Autoethnographies

In the Autoethnographies chapter, Tamar Rapoport and Efrat Noy advocate the use of auto-ethnography as a critical feminist methodological approach based on personal testimony for investigating women’s (and men’s) experience and performance of fandom. The crux of the article is the analysis of the personal testimonies written by three women, researcher-fans of different ages, who narrated their fandom experiences and perceptions. In addition to revealing women’s gender-based experiences and perceptions, their personal stories prove highly valuable for exposing the gendered regime of the football field as well as the different ways in which women acquire and do fandom. Moreover, they reveal the manner in which women who cannot speak the dominant fandom language properly make their way in the fandom field within which they seek their own voice and position. The analysis suggests that women’s fandom might breach the hegemonic masculine manner of doing fandom and challenge its set boundaries, thereby problematizing the definitions of both authentic fan and fandom.