Constructing queer female cyberspace: "The L Word" fandom and Autostraddle.com

Abstract

Autostraddle.com is the most popular independently owned Web site for queer women and a central, organizing force in queer female cyberspace. It also grew out of The L Word fandom, though its appearance now occludes the history of fan recapping that laid its groundwork. In this article, I reconnect Autostraddle to The L Word fandom, tracing the gradual accumulation of online fan activity into a stable Web site and queer female social space. In doing so, I revise dominant conceptions of fan productivity as individual-centered and temporally bound, arguing for a more expansive consideration of the large-scale creations fans can build over time. My intervention is twofold: a plea for history where the Web can seem to be an eternally present medium, and an assertion of fandom's inseparability from the larger landscape of queer female life online.