beatrice_otter | (Reply)

Hi! I came across your post on tumblr and since your profile said you were ok with random commenters am going to enjoy this oppurtunity to have a meta discussion in *gasp* threaded comments.

Anyway: this is a great post, by far the best description I've seen of this kind of approach to fandom.

I do have some relativly minor criticism:

I feel uncomfortable describing people's tastes tending towards dudes or whatever as them "sucking", it feels unhelpfully negative considering it's not something that can be changed very easily, and inclined to make people feel depressed or defensive. I think it's better to use that kind of language for active choices that perpetuate racism etc, something people can change right away. But YMMV.

I realise you can't cover everything in such a general post, but I think the implicit assumption that people divide neatly into Privileged and Not Privileged is a problem. Some of this is just ambiguous wording, for example in the paragraph:

So, like, a white person is part of the power structure that causes and benefits from racism; we're less likely to see it, more likely to cause damage to others because of it. BUT we also have a lot more power to change things for the better. It's not up to black people or Latin@s or Asians or Roma or LGBTQ people or people with disabilities or Jews or any other oppressed group to fix things--they're not the problem. The ultimate responsibility is up to Whites to suck less. (This doesn't mean that, say, a Black person can't suck--just that they are WAY less likely to damage others through their suckitude.)

You've implied that being LGBTQ or disabled is mutually exclusive with being white/racist, which it obviously isn't. The other subtext is that black people can't be homophobic or ableist, which is also untrue. And I am sure you don't actually believe either of those things!

A lot of this can be fixed with some minor tweaks of wording, but I feel like it's worth explicitely stating that you can be hurt by one sort of systemic prejudice and still benefit from another. Because the most common counterargument I see to this kind of thing is "Oh but as a queer woman I am super low down the kyriarchy, why are you bugging me about racism just because I'm white?" etc. Privilege is not a single continuum it's a bunch of overlapping ones, and I think you have to explicitely describe it that way, even when you're being succinct. Especially if you know your audience are not going to all be straight white able bodied etc dudes, which in fandom is a given.

And I guess another issue with the unspoken assumption that the reader is 100% privileged in every way is that you have side stepped the complex issue of, say, disabled people with messy feelings about the ableist tropes surrounding most disabled characters they encounter possibly finding it actively hurtful to try to make themselves engage more with those characters. And while my personal experience has been pretty similar to the one you describe, nothing works for everyone, and assuming it does will just put people with different experiences off. I'm also not sure how to fix that without a bunch of irritating "unless it doesn't" disclaimers but am pointing it out anyway. Topics for a future post perhaps :)

I hop the ratio of criticism:praise doesn't come across as too negative, I really do think you've done a great job here, it's just that my reaction to all the other parts is "yep! that!" which would make for a boring reply.