steepholm

I think it can also get problematic when you start defining genre by community. Goodness knows I've done in my own writing, with regards to writing about fan fiction and talking about how much fan fiction is written in a community which, as both shark_hat and calimac point out in regards to science fiction, has fiction that is responsive and inter-textual. But at the same time, a lot of problems pop up when you start defining "who is involved" by "who I THINK is involved." A lot of the conversations around several of the more recent rounds of race kerfuffle, for example, eventually came down to authors and other professionals in the science fiction and fantasy community saying "but into the advent of the Internet I hadn't seen you in MY cons or talked to you on MY mailing lists were seen you writing letters in MY newsletters, so clearly you aren't part of the community, right?"

Community is a very fluffy thing with porous boundaries.