Fanboy
(Redirected from He-fan)
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A male fan, not necessarily juvenile. The term came into sf fandom from comics fandom. Fanboy provided a needed counterpart to femmefan, once the numbers of men and women in fandom began to even out. (Jack Speer actually tried “he-fans” in Fancyclopedia 1, but it didn’t take.)
Fanboy does, however, imply a certain geekiness that the distaff term does not. Note that fanboy has been adopted into mundane vocabulary with entirely this derogatory sense.
The term dates to 1919, applied to baseball fans, but seems to have come into use in comics and then sf fandom in the 1980s, according to the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction.
| Fanspeak | 1980s |
| This is a fanspeak page. Please extend it by adding information about when and by whom it was coined, whether it’s still in use, etc. |
