I love this post! I would co-sign it, but I feel that would be presumptuous because I could never have been half so cogent. You do a great job being clear about what you're criticizing and what you're not. My reaction was much the same. Initially: bored, this vid is not about me and has nothing to say to me. But then I started seeing all the recs and discussion, but even so, I sort of am used to people in fandom conflating "fandom" with "slash" or "boy-focused stuff", so it wasn't really until I started seeing discussion or comments about how It's About Time We Started Talking About This that I got a little disturbed. It's one thing that there are apparently a lot of people to whom this vid and discussion is interesting and I would never want to tell people not to explore this if it's interesting to them, but the presentation of it as an endemic social issue (even in fandom) kind of makes me want to poke my eyes out. Probably this is a bad analogy, but I sort of feel like it's those people who say "but women sometimes hit men too!" in discussions about domestic violence. Like, okay, sure that does happen sometimes and it's bad and should be dealt with in those individual instances. But it is not an endemic social issue at all on par with the reverse and talking about it like it is is just incredibly dismissive of the real issue, which is that our society does not at all appropriately deal with violence against women. The same point is that there are huge issues with representation of women in media and violence against women in media, and flipping it and making it about violence against men does NOT make it the same issue in the least.
And I admit that partly I just deeply resent being told that this is something I Need To See, even if it makes me uncomfortable. I think mostly it's because, again, I do get tired of the conflation of "fandom" or even "female space in fandom" with boycentricness, what that vid ACTUALLY makes me think is the real issue worthy of discussion (or at least one that deserves at least as much attention) is why so much of fandom is focused on the boys at all, torture porning them or not. Why, to use an easy example, fandom can have so much discussion about how sexist SPN is and then...go back to making slash vids and reclaiming Sam and Dean. Because the tropes on display in that vid and the fannish proclivities it relates to are all still about boys. And now, what the discussion of On the Prowl has done is suggest that it's now time for fandom generally to focus on *meta* energies on the boys too and on its treatment of *men*. Which I think is a problematic statement, and that's what the vid and reaction makes me want to talk about.
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And I admit that partly I just deeply resent being told that this is something I Need To See, even if it makes me uncomfortable. I think mostly it's because, again, I do get tired of the conflation of "fandom" or even "female space in fandom" with boycentricness, what that vid ACTUALLY makes me think is the real issue worthy of discussion (or at least one that deserves at least as much attention) is why so much of fandom is focused on the boys at all, torture porning them or not. Why, to use an easy example, fandom can have so much discussion about how sexist SPN is and then...go back to making slash vids and reclaiming Sam and Dean. Because the tropes on display in that vid and the fannish proclivities it relates to are all still about boys. And now, what the discussion of On the Prowl has done is suggest that it's now time for fandom generally to focus on *meta* energies on the boys too and on its treatment of *men*. Which I think is a problematic statement, and that's what the vid and reaction makes me want to talk about.