“Get out of here you anti”

Abstract

Pleasure(s) of people of marginalized genders and sexualities are central to media fandom scholarship, making it suitable to analyze as an identitopia. Recently, the figure of the fandom antifan or anti, an individual deemed hostile to fan pleasure, particularly around shipping practices and fanwork production, has gained prominence in fandom discussions. The anti is seen to interrupt media fandom’s identitopia through policing and puritanism. A troubling aspect of this formulation is the consistent identification of fans who are critical of fandom’s negotiation of race/ism, as antis themselves. They are then accused of supporting censorship in the name of social justice. This is a disruption of antifandom models as these fans do not claim a negative stance themselves. This article theorizes this disruption via the fandom killjoy, drawing from in-depth fan interviews and examining related racist incidents in fandom spaces.