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And therein lies the rub. The image of girls getting out of hand is hard for some to swallow.

Experts predict that Japan’s population will shrink to 108 million by 2030, and critics of the otaku phenomenon blame men and women who can now live meaningful lives without human companionship. One analyst says that the rampant creativity of otaku is rivaled only by their stunted emotional growth. Journalist Yumiko Sugiura, who literally wrote the book on fujoshi (2006’s The Fujoshi-izing World: The Female Otaku of East Ikebukuro), says women who indulge fantasies of queer love rather than finding boyfriends face an even greater backlash than their male counterparts. She believes that, via yaoi, fujoshi demonstrate dissatisfaction with traditional Japanese expectations of what a woman’s life should be.

Media treatment of the fujoshi concept has always been problematic.

As a result, when media attention eventually turned to actual fujoshi, the elevator pitch — “They’re otaku, except girls!” — was more or less accurate (granting a broad reading of “otaku”), but the implications were misunderstood. If fujoshi were girl otaku, they must be the girls usually appearing alongside otaku in those TV specials and magazine articles, right? You know — the maids.

But no.

Is it any more "subversive" to conjecture that a fictional character from CSI or Dollhouse or Star Trek is gay than to conjecture that I am straight, as no doubt happens every time I step out in public? Some percentage - and it's hard to calculate in reality, but definitely higher than 2 - of people are gay; if the show doesn't show us who they are, well, what if it were these two? What if they weren't evil? What if they weren't dead? What if they were the protagonist, instead of just a sidekick?

A central goal of this report is to shift the focus of the conversation about the digital divide from questions of technological access to those of opportunities to participate and to develop the cultural competencies and social skills needed for full involvement.

If the current media environment makes visible the once invisible work of media spectatorship, it is wrong to assume that we are somehow being liberated through improved media technologies. Rather than talking about interactive technologies, we should document the interactions that occur amongst media consumers, between media consumers and media texts, and between media consumers and media producers.

On-line fan communities might well be some of the most fully realized versions of Levy's cosmopedia, expansive self-organizing groups focused around the collective production, debate, and circulation of meanings, interpretations, and fantasies in response to various artifacts of contemporary popular culture.

Fan women routed around male hostility, developing web communities 'that combine the intimacy of small groups with a support network similar to the kind fan women create off-line.' Discussion lists, mailing groups, webrings, and chatrooms each enabled fan communication.