Waiting to X-Hale: A study of gender and community on an all-female X-Files electronic mailing list

In this paper, the author looks at the practices of community making on an electronic mailing list made up of female fans of the popular American television series, The X-Files. Based on ethnographic data collected over a one year period, the author argues that gender continues to be performed, albeit linguistically, in cyberspace, the members of the research list articulating both 'feminine' and 'feminist' identities when discussing both the television show and their lived experiences. Thus, the desire to create a space in which to share both the pleasures and pains of the often devalued 'feminine' remains a powerful one. The data also reveals, however, that this desire for commonality results in its own forms of exclusion and containment of difference.