Remember all those times people kept saying “Stop talking about racism in Fandom” or “Why’re you bringing this up when REAL racism is happening right now?”
Or
“They’re JUST comic books, they don’t mean anything. Focus your anger on REAL issues.”
Ya’ll remember that shit? Because I fucking remember that shit. All those “Comic book purists” people like to coddle and make excuses for, well, they could just be the next person to shoot up a Black church.
Funny how fandom acts as a microcosm for larger issues, ain’t it?
If ever there was a paragraph that described Canadian-Brand Racist Jackassetry, THIS IS VERY IT.
‘When you believe niceness disproves the presence of racism, it’s easy to start believing bigotry is rare, and that the label racist should be applied only to mean-spirited, intentional acts of discrimination. The problem with this framework–besides being a gross misunderstanding of how racism operates in systems and structures enabled by nice people–is that it obligates me to be nice in return, rather than truthful. I am expected to come closer to racists. Be nicer to them. Coddle them.’
one of the billion things Hollywood / television needs to fucking stop doing that’s become a specific obsession at this point:
making loudly racist white male characters just to guilt trip the audience with “bbu..utt ;;thheeyy aae ggooo;;d peeoopple you,, juusT ddon'tt nueddrrsstand” and making the biggest idiots in viewing history go “oh my gosh I guess racists have feelingzuh we are wrong to hate themm do we not all bleed the same”
we literally don’t need anymore of this shit, especially considering the fact that VIOLENT WHITE RACISTS are treated more humanely by fandoms than actual minority characters (including mistreatment from their own writers)
where are all those “let people draw whatever they want” folks whenever an artist is being harassed over their trans or disability headcanons? when artists of color are being chased off the internet for their personal interpretations of characters who are either fanonically white or aracial? where are you all hiding?
that’s right, you only come out of the woodwork when artists are being genuinely nasty and making people feel unsafe. you don’t really care about letting people draw whatever they want, you just want people to be complacent in disgusting practices
the real “problem with political correctness” is not that it’s considered offensive to use slurs, but that there are now many “progressive” environments where saying the right things is more important than doing the right thing. it’s why it’s so easy for abusers to gain traction in leftist circles (they learn the right words quickly and employ them to frame their own behavior as progressive); it’s why so much potential activist energy gets poured into fighting about language; it’s why moderate liberals didn’t believe fer/guson had a problem until the police emails with actual racist language were leaked. (you can do racist things, you just can’t SAY racist things.) i don’t have a neat conclusion here but a related point is that i’m so much happier since i started focusing on like, being a good kind caring person instead of trying to remove the word “crazy” from the vocabulary of everyone in my family
isn’t it interesting how the people who go this is just like *insert piece of fiction* when faced with real world oppression always use media that’s filled with white bodies and tell white stories for their comparisons? like it’s honestly so disturbing that people gotta filter the actual suffering of poc thru a white fictional lens in order to feel any type of way. I don’t want these people to read another book I want them to realize what they’re doing and learn how to empathize with people who are different from them lol.
I think it’s pretty weird that people constantly think that bringing up racism or “problematic” things in a given media means that your orchestrating a full out boycott of it. People did it with SU and Agent Carter and now when people were talking about Frozono’s wife and how she’s staying a disembodied force of sassy one liners in the year 2018 and pointing out the dehumanization of that automatically means now tumblr is “at it again” trying to boycott Incredibles 2. Like why does people talking about racism make you so uncomfortable that you come to those conclusions.
*parts a bead curtain as i enter the room, carrying a glass of lemonade*
hey….
nothing you ever read, watch, or participate in will be ideologically pure and without its problems. your quest to consume the most unproblematic material will be, in the end, fruitless. your enjoyment of anything will be sapped away, leaving you a husk starved for media.
it is okay to enjoy things that have problems to them, so long as you do it critically and with an open mind, and take care to consider others.
One of my long term fandom friends (back from ye olde message board days of yore) has been posting for weeks about how her teenage daughter is “out of control” and she just posted in the facebook group about how her daughter has ruined Christmas by deciding to be a lesbian and the whole group just went “Karen, you’ve been writing gay m/m slash fic for three decades” and she went “but that’s different, that’s not REAL” and I’ve never tried to actively set someone on fire with my brain before but
“I came to you guys for support not to be attacked”
That’s funny, that’s really funny, because that’s probably how your child feels. You fucking shitheel.
Two of the other mom’s in the group just offered to take M for Christmas and keep her with them when school restarts because she deserves to be loved. One of them actually said “deserves a real mother” and I just spat my tea everywhere.
We all just got banned from the group but for anyone concerned “Aunt” Bee (wonderful, great A+ person) just posted in her personal feed that M showed up at her house and is safe.
crash course in why anyone who implies liking slash makes you an ally is talking out of their ass
Now that it’s 2017 can we finally stop using mental illness as an excuse to be bad people Like no it’s not okay to deflect claims of racism, homophobia, or transphobia because it makes you feel bad. Guess what makes me feel bad? When people hate me for being lgbt or not being white. Guess who also has mental illnesses? Lgbt and non white people. Guess what you can be? Mentally ill and also not bigoted. Like its perplexing to me, as somebody who has an abuser who constantly hides behind their illness, and as somebody who is very much ill themselves, that this shit is still even a topic of discussion. It’s everybody’s personal responsibility to not be bigoted people because it hurts other people when we are. Even if it can be hard to challenge your pre conceived notions and inherent bigotry when you are mentally ill you should do so anyway because when you don’t you are HURTING people. And no, it’s not acceptable to cover your ears to criticism like that because it makes you feel bad. Being a bad person should make you feel bad and being part of a GOOD person is learning how to handle that and learn from it rather than lash out or force your own ignorance. Idk I’m just real tired of how people recently love to, when confronted with racism/homophobia/etc. say “seeing this #discourse makes me feel unsafe i have anxiety and depression i have to take care of myself” bitch me too and it felt awful and made me hate myself to be called out on dumb shit i said in the past but I realize that not confronting that will only hurt everybody involved If you really cant take whatever discourse you blog about stop blogging about it, at the very least
tbh the people i’ve met who really empathize with villains are people who have been villainized in their own lives and unjustly made to feel like they’re bad people by those around them. They doubt themselves and instinctively want to support disliked and obviously flawed characters, characters doomed to fail, and attempt to find the good in those characters that no one in their own lives see in them.
real evil people don’t relate to villains, they see themselves as the hero. :\
There’s also some interesting studies about how villains are portrayed as gender nonconforming (read: bad) - feminized men and powerful women. It’s meant to code the character as off-putting because they don’t fit the social code, but being queer, you might just see an ally.
not only that (adding onto the previous point, not disputing or derailing bc it’s absolutely true), but a lot of villains are also:
1) mentally ill / neuroatypical and for ages have been almost the only kind of characters you could look to for that even if nearly all of them are portrayed violently or inevitably become victims of their own minds,
2) abuse/assault survivors, usually as children
3) disenfranchised by other means which drives them to their villainy (living in or have previously lived in poverty, exploited by employers/had their work stolen, experimented on, etc.) which parallels in a way how poverty/racism/institutionalized violence can lead to crime for survival. villains have their initial anger invalidated and further villainized by story narratives, so seeing them fight back against it and come back again and again to keep fighting tbh can be satisying!
I’m putting it out there that using round wide eyes to implicitly state innocence and purity in a character; and small “slanty” eyes to convey dishonesty and deceit in your antagonist is actually racist lmfao.
I see some of you bring out this concept in you character designs over and over and yeah it’s not a conscious thought process but thinking “this is the evil character who is morally decrepit - how should I really bring that out in their image?” And then linking that immediately to drawing smaller eyes is racist yellow peril derived stereotyping.
I’m sure most of us have been guilty of this at some stage including myself so can we all just grow up and leave this bullshit behind in this year? 谢谢
Other “evil” looks based in bigotry:
- dark/heavy/thick eyebrows (racism/antisemitism)
- hooked noses vs “cute”/button/patrician (ditto)
- faces described as angular (as opposed to like strong-boned or whatever)
- “swarthy” complexion (thanks tolkien)
- blonde hair/blue eyes = hero/ine
- accents.
- “shifty eyes” iirc, I remember learning they just indicate a lot of thinking, which could be lying, yes, orrr dealing with a second language/unfamiliar dialect, or dealing with NTs as someone who’s not, or trying to figure out if the authority figure is trying to get you to agree to something they can use against you, or…
Bigotry around disability that often intersects with racism includes making villains or “shifty” characters dramatically scarred and/or having acne/acne scars, missing eyes or limbs/digits, walking with a limp and/or cane, missing and/or crooked teeth (this one can also be pretty classist, and “buck teeth” and a gap between the front teeth have a history of anti-Asian and anti-Black caricature behind them, respectively), overweight in a way that’s portrayed as “disgusting” proof of their “greed” or like moral decay or whatever, etc!
These visual markers often get layered on top of the above racist stereotypes to make a character’s design seem more “untrustworthy” or “creepy” or “unsettling,” hypersexualized/fetishized/desexualized, “aggressive” or “passive”, “mean and “scary” or “cowardly and despicable”, and so on and so on - always ask yourself and your subconscious WHY they do these things! And ABSOLUTELY hold yourself accountable for this, (my fellow white artists especially!!!)! Fighting the racist messages we’ve taken in our entire lives takes work, and it takes time, and it’s always worth doing.
okay like. supposedly being interested in m/m relationships, or even a specific m/m relationship because you like the specific dynamic depicted is fetishizing. because it’s only acceptable to take an interest in any m/m relationship if you’re a man who likes men, apparently. BUT then also m/f relationships are supposedly relatable and accessible to everybody???
or maybe.
just maybe.
that’s a bullshit argument used to shut down enthusiasm for anything that isn’t heteronormative as well as to shame a group of what is perceived to be young women and girls. because any time young women like anything at all, however harmless or even positive and uplifting, that thing is relentlessly mocked and derided as shallow and ridiculous.
this post has so much going on that i guess i gotta write a whole essay so here we go
as a gay man, i can say with full and total confidence that more often than not, women’s consumption of our relationships, and our sex lives, and our trauma is fetishistic. it’s not about fighting heteronormativity. it’s really not that deep.
finding another man loving man in fandom is incredibly difficult, especially in shipping circles. i’ve been in the tumblr business for almost seven years, and i’ve met maybe 1 or 2 guys total who write slash besides me. slash fiction is dominated almost entirely by women and woman-aligned people, and it’s been this way for a very long time. even a good amount of smutty slash fanzines in the 70s-90s were written by women who liked to write about boys fucking. when i met another guy who wrote slash fanfic, i was completely shocked. it had taken 6 or so years to meet him, and i was completely bowled over. and i just thought “boys don’t write about boys loving boys, that’s not our thing”. but what i wanna know is why isn’t it our thing???
why aren’t most slash fanfics written by boys who love boys? why isn’t a genre, a subculture ABOUT US, something that we’re seemingly not allowed to participate in? why do we feel like outsiders when writing our own stories? why are some of them most praised “gay shows” and “gay books” (for example, the song of achilles and yuri on ice) all written by women, and read by women, and aren’t really catered towards gay men at all even though we’re the SUBJECTS of the story.
when you go through websites like goodreads and look under the “gay romance” section, you see names like madeline, jane, abigail, marie, amy. i mean, abigail roux’s writing alone probably takes up half the list! you might see a sean or a david thrown in, but for the most part, stories about men loving each other are written by women. ones that are written by men often don’t get the attention reigned in by the foxhole court and cut and run. that’s where the issue lies. in a community supposedly dedicated to us, our love, our sex, our relationships, we take the back seat. we don’t get recognition. we don’t get control. we don’t get to tell OUR stories OUR WAY.
not to mention, much of slash has always been smut. and that smut, for a lot of questioning boys who love boys, that’s our first exposure to sex between two men. i know it was for me. but when it’s written by someone who’s never been a man having sex with a man (and no, if you’re a cis girl having sex with a cis man is not the same way trans men have sex with cis men, but y'alls abysmal treatment of trans men will have to wait for another post), it’s often written inaccurately and unsafely. not using a condom? unsafe. spit as lube? definitely not safe. SHOVING IT IN???????? REALLY NOT SAFE. rimming someone without having them clean or use an enema first????
not only unsafe, but also really gross. the general consensus (and yes i asked) about this is that safe sex has been deemed by slash shippers to be “boring”. they want to get right to the fucking, no time for prep (which is literally the most important part), no time for cleaning, no time for lube, no time for protection. this is incredibly dangerous for young men who love men who are trying to figure out all the different ways that we can make love to each other. if this is their only exposure, they’re going to think that doing this is okay. they’re going to think “yeah, i can just shove my tongue into someone’s dirty asshole” or “i don’t have to prepare my partner before shoving very large into something very tiny” which is not the case and will get people hurt. i know fic isn’t supposed to be a sex ed class, but the lack of sex safety is really concerning.
and when men who love men like myself bring up the fact that maybe you guys should stay in your lane a little and let us take the wheel in a genre entirely dedicated to us having sex with each other, you somehow claim that we are “kinkshaming” you and being misogynist by taking away “the one place where women can explore their kinks without judgement”. which is complete and total bullshit because FIRST OF ALL gay people are not your kink. we are not your fetish, we don’t exist for your entertainment or your gratification. if you really think that two men who make love to each other is your “fetish”, then maybe that’s telling you something. human beings aren’t kinks. so fuck outta here with that.
and the obsession with boys enduring homophobic and sometimes transphobic abuse and rape for the sake of ~angst~ and hurt/comfort is uh pretty fucked up. the obsession people have with gay trauma is by far the most disturbing of all. like so many woman slash writers go out of their way to subject gbt male characters to all sorts of injury and abuse just so they can be ~comforted~ and possibly get comfort sex. the idea that you want to see us hurt just because you think it’s cute when we comfort each other isn’t okay. like, didn’t someone want to write a check please fanfic about the pulse shooting??? yeah how can any of you look at that and think it’s okay. it’s not okay. in no world is that okay.
so this brings me to your claim that if gay/bi/pan men (including trans men and male-aligned people) tell you to maybe chill out and maybe let us write stories about us for a change, that’s a misogynistic/homophobic/shallow statement. this just blows my mind. i need a little more clarification about why it’s such an evil no-no for us to want to represent ourselves or speak for ourselves or tell our own stories. because it kinda seems homophobic that you’re so angry about gbt men wanting to represent themselves. it almost sounds like you only think our love and our sex and our lives exist only for you to write and read about. you’re making it sound like we are objects made for your consumption, and by establishing ourselves as real people is ruining your fantasy.
nobody’s saying you can’t be supportive of gbt boys and want to write about them in your stories. but for the love of god, don’t get angry when we want to tell our own stories, and don’t pitch a fit when we express that we’re uncomfortable with being objectified for your own sexual gratification.
tldlr; men who love men have never existed for your consumption. we are not your “escape from heteronormativity”, we are not your “safe space for kink exploration”, we are not your favorite ships, we are not your kudos on ao3. we are real men with real stories who want a chance to express ourselves in a genre that’s about us but that we seemingly aren’t allowed into. we are people, and we deserve to and be seen as people and treated like people. stop speaking over us and invalidating our concerns about how we’re being treated. and that’s the tea. ️♂️☕️
@ all you straight fujoshis
Oh my gods this. This is everything I try and fail to say when people ask me how to explain fetishization vs storytelling.
Do you know how many books by gay men I edited in my time at the erotica publishing house? One.
Out of literal thousands of manuscripts, there was One gay man writing m/m, the rest were all by women, and I feel safe in saying, the majority of them, not from within the LGBTQA+ community.
And boy howdy did they pitch fits when we turned to them and said “your manuscript does not meet our health and safety requirements please revise” because our house had a strict safe sane consensual rule, along with body positivity, which everyone LOVED when they were writing m/f stories. But when it came to m/m we had so many authors say “ew, but that’s not ~sexy~ :/” to which my reply was often a very politely phrased “literally don’t give a fuck Susan, you know what else isn’t sexy? Bleeding assholes, which coincidentally is what you’re being.”
But y'know, nicer. Because I’m a fucking proffesional.
Anyway. Do you want to know what happened to said singular man writing m/m fiction? He got dropped after a year. Because, and I quote, this is a direct line from our then marketing team, about a gay man writing gay erotica: “that’s not what women want to read”
And if that’s not one of the most precise and fucking infuriating demonstrations of what the fuck is wrong with the “but I write gay slash fic! I can’t be homophobic!” “~allies~” (spoiler: you’re not) in fandom and yes, even in “real” publishing, I dunno what is.
There is a Difference between storytelling and fetishization, and all y'all crying “kinkshaming!” when someone asks you to treat them with respect, need to stop.
Many “gender critical” people on this website like to site a 2011 Swedish study to claim that trans women have the same rates of violence as cisgender men. This claim is a gross misreading and should be challenged whenever seen. Below I will be showing quotes from one of the researchers from the study showing exactly how wrong the “gender critical” claim is.
For starters the study found that women who transitioned from 1989-2003 did not even demonstrate a male pattern of criminality let alone anything close to the same pattern of violence. Which means that the claim of trans women being as violent as cisgender men is definitely false as a general statement for all the women who transitioned from 1989 onward.
The study as a whole covers the period between 1973 and 2003. If one divides the cohort into two groups, 1973 to 1988 and 1989 to 2003, one observes that for the latter group (1989 – 2003), differences in mortality, suicide attempts and crime disappear. This means that for the 1989 to 2003 group, we did not find a male pattern of criminality.
However we also need to look at another key distortion of the facts that the “gender critical” camp manufactured. Pattern of Criminality does not mean the same thing as pattern of violence. Even the trans women in the 1973-1988 group were not shown to exhibit the same rates of violence that cisgender men do. What the study actually does show is that prior to 1989 trans women were being convicted at the same rate as cisgender men, not for the same crimes.
As to the criminality metric itself, we were measuring and comparing the total number of convictions, not conviction type. We were not saying that cisgender males are convicted of crimes associated with marginalization and poverty. We didn’t control for that and we were certainly not saying that we found that trans women were a rape risk.
The idea that trans women are just as likely to rape as cis men is a lie. It is a lie which has become a central tenet of denying trans women access to life saving shelter and community and this lie needs to be confronted where ever it tries to take root. Whenever you see this lie, shine a light on it because it can only grow in the dark.
I’d like to point out that actual studies have linked trans suicides to constant misgendering as a cause (one of, I should add), whereas affirmation of gender is known to do the opposite. So intentionally misgendering trans people is pretty much legit trying to kill them.
In other news, water is wet.
Where the study/source?
I’m uber busy at work and I don’t have the time to pull up the specific spot it’s discussed. But, look up the work of Dr. Ry Testa. He’s a trans man tackling these issues.
Someone who knows how to navigate resources and has the spoons and time try and find the paper, save trans momma the trouble.
Sounds super legit though. Being misgendered almost always causes some dissociation and social withdrawal form me since it belittles my identity. I don’t get suicidal thoughts but I could sure as hell see how someone who does would be affected by that.
Misgendering a trans person is a violent act. It’s an emotional abuse that cuts deep into who we feel we are at our core. We have enough to deal with internally, adding external voices to that can destroy us.
GBV was associated with both a history of suicide attempts and numbers of suicide attempts in this study. Participants who had been exposed to victimization were almost four times more likely to attempt suicide than those who had not experienced victimization. In addition, over three-quarters of those who had a history of suicide attempt had attempted multiple times. Trans men exposed to GBV were 2.1 times more likely than trans women to have a history of a single suicide attempt and were 3.2 times as likely to have made multiple suicide attempts. A history of suicide attempts was significantly more common among multiracial individuals, and significantly less common among those of higher SES.
From the last article linked to.
Even more relevant is actually The Gender Minority Stress and Resilience Measure article…
In addition to the violence, rejection, and discrimination experienced by both LGB and TGNC people, TGNC individuals may experience an additional distal stressor, which this study has labeled nonaffirmation. Nonaffirmation occurs when one’s internal sense of gender identity is not affirmed by others. For instance, a trans woman may be addressed as “sir” when making a purchase or answering the phone, or might be referred to with her former male name by an individual not yet fully comfortable with her gender identity. TGNC individuals who do not identify as either male or female (e.g., individuals who identify as genderqueer) may also experience a sense of nonaffirmation as people in their life are unable to refer to them in gender neutral ways. Nonaffirmation of one’s gender identity may occur more or less often for any TGNC individual, based on how their gender expression is interpreted by their social context at that particular time (Beemyn & Rankin, 2011; Bockting & Coleman, 2007; Nuttbrock, Rosenblum, & Blumenstein, 2002). In sum, the literature suggests that TGNC and LGB populations experience both common and also unique distal minority stressors.
It also cites these works in relation to the concept:
Beemyn, G., & Rankin, S. R. (2011). The lives of transgender people. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Grant, J. M., Mottet, L. A., Tanis, J., Herman, J. L., Harrison, J., & Keisling, M. (2010). National Transgender Discrimination Survey. Report on health and health care (pp. 1–23). Washington, DC: National Center for Transgender Equality and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
Hey, thanks. I haven’t had a good mental headspace for reading recently, so this is helpful.
All it means when people say “you’re speaking from a place of privilege” is that you’re likely to underestimate how bad the problem is by default because you are never personally exposed to that problem. It’s not a moral judgement of how difficult your life is.
^^^^^^ read it. say it out loud. keep repeating it until you understand.
