The Autistic Self-Advocacy Network periodically makes plain-language videos explaining important topics, and they're always really good. They just uploaded a whole series on structural racism. If you need a basic but thorough primer on the subject for yourself or someone else, they're excellent. Besides being helpful for people with disabilities, they should also be a useful supplement for your kids if your local school district is trying to get rid of any mentions of racism in the curriculum. All the examples are US focused because ASAN is a US group, so it might not be much help to people in other countries, sorry.


Structural Racism 3: What Is Racism?

Structural Racism 4: What is Structural Racism?

Structural Racism 5: Structural Racism is Still With Us

Structural Racism 6: Structural Racism is Sometimes Hidden

Structural Racism 7: Structural Racism Takes Work To Get Rid Of

Structural Racism in the US Today: Immigration

Structural Racism in the US Today: Housing

Structural Racism in the US Today: Environmental Racism

Structural Racism in the US Today: Mass Incarceration

Remember how two weeks ago at Worldcon, Jeanette Ng won the Campbell Award for Best New Writer and, in her acceptance speech, pointed out that Campbell was a fascist?  She's not the first to point out what a shitty human being he was in so many ways, and I hope she won't be the last, since discussing his influence on the genre and how much fascism, racism, sexism, ableism, and every other sort of ableism is baked into our bones is an important step.  But she was a crucial voice at a crucial time.

Dell Magaines, which sponsors the award (it is not a Hugo, although it is administered by the same people as the Hugos and voted on by the same people) just announced today that henceforth the award shall be known as the Astounding Award for Best New Writer (named after the magazine, and not the man who edited it).

Good on them, and thank you Jeanette Ng for being willing to speak up.

I hope this will refocus discussion from the name of the award, to the bigotry and authoritarianism that shaped the genre's bones.  Jeanette Ng has a lovely Twitter thread on this which you should all go read.

Them: Fiction affects reality!  Representation matters! The stories we tell affect the way we see the world!
Me: Yes, yes!  Let's talk about racism in general and anti-black racism in particular and the intersection of race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability, and how we need to both advocate for (and support) media featuring people other than straight white able-bodied neurotypical men, and let's talk about how we can hack our own brains to shift our preferences to be more inclusive, and--
Them: And that's why everything you read or make must be Morally Pure and if there's any dubcon you are a rapist and if there's any sexy stuff for anyone under 18 you are a pedophile!
Me: :facepalm:

The "media affects reality" idea gets brought up in two ways, these days, and one of them I heartily agree with ("so therefore we need to promote greater diversity and inclusiveness") and one of them I heartily disagree with ("so therefore we need to police our desires so that we only desire/read/write/watch things that are Acceptably Pure And Unproblematic").  And there are a lot of reasons for that, but I spent some time last night pondering what the difference is and why.  I mean, the basic underlying idea (that representation matters and the stories we tell affect our view of the world) is quite true, and provable; why do I accept that argument for things like racism in fic and not for, say, dubcon sex?  (Insert arguments about thought control and the viciousness of purity culture here; enough electrons have been spilled arguing about this that I don't need to go into detail.)

What got me thinking about this specifically was a case where someone wrote a PWP Black Panther fic, shipping a black character and a white character, chock full of really racist tropes fetishizing the black character, and defended it with "that's just my fantasy!"  Why do I accept (and defend) the right of people to write/read Hydra Trash Party, and think that's acceptable, but think that the racism fetish kink is a step too far and shouldn't use the same justifications?  Here's what I've come up with.

1)  Everybody knows that noncon is bad in real life.
When someone writes, say, a fic with noncon in it, nobody is arguing that noncon is good or should happen outside of fiction.  You can have fantasies where you are raped and know perfectly well that however titilating it may be to you, you would NEVER want ANYTHING even CLOSE to it to happen in real life.  Like, you might try kinky role-playing with someone(s) you trust to simulate it, but there's still a big difference between fantasy and reality.  Neither fandom nor the larger culture is trying to claim that being raped is a good thing.  There is a clear separation between fantasy and reality.  As long as that separation is maintained, there is little if any harm in exploring that fantasy, and often good.  (allows people to know themselves better, work through their issues, see that they're not alone and having disturbing fantasies doesn't make you a bad person.)

On the other hand, when someone writes fetishizing racist porn, there are a LOT of people in society and in fandom who ... can't tell that it's racist and demeaning to the people that it's fetishizing.  Extremely few people (especially in fandom) believe "women want to be raped" but there are a LOT of people who believe "black men are animalistic and insatiable" or "asian women are submissive" or whatever fetish you're writing.  And that makes a HUGE difference in the ethics of both reading and writing.  If you write out your noncon fantasy, nobody who reads it is going to assume it means that rape is good and you're just reflecting reality.  If you write out your racist fetish fantasy, lots of people who read it are going to be nodding along and going, yes, X really are like that.

2) There's a far wider gap between, say, noncon porn and reality than there is between racism and reality
So you have written your Hydra Trash Party fic where Bucky Barnes gets abused and raped and everything is really creepy.  Are you going to go in to the office the next day and start beating up the low many on the totem pole?  No?  Didn't think so.  Are you going to try and live out those kinks in your daily life?  No, unless MAYBE you and your partner are into BDSM, and then there are a lot of manuals for how to explore those fantasies in a safe, sane, consensual, non-damaging way.  You're not going to start treating people like Rumlow treated Bucky; even if you wanted to, there is a wide gulf between that and socially acceptable behavior.  Even if you wanted to, there are resources in society for stopping people like that and helping their victims get away.  Not enough, but they exist.

On the other hand, if your fantasy is Black men being animalistic and insatiable?  Huge amounts of our culture are devoted to saying just that, everything from the (in)justice system to the news to the movies and TV we watch to the jokes we tell.  Instead of society being disgusted by your actions, society will support you and egg you on.  There's no gap between your fantasy and what society thinks the world is like.

In conclusion: representation matters, and the stories we tell affect how we think and feel.  However, when there is a clear separation between fantasy and reality (as in the case of non-fetishizing kinky porn) there's a limit to how much the fantasy can affect us in negative ways, and it's better to allow people to explore the less-nice parts of their psyche than to shame and demean them for ever thinking anything that isn't "unproblematic" enough.  On the other hand, when there isn't a clear separation between fantasy and reality (as with racist, ableist, etc. fetishes), that's when the stories we tell and give brain space to are most likely to affect us for the worse, reinforcing the -isms in our hearts and minds.

tumblr version is here.

I've been in fandom for almost twenty years, and here are some things that are true of pretty much every fandom I've seen: There is a lot more sexism, racism, homophobia, ableism, anti-semitism, etc., in fandom than most of us would like to admit, and the vast majority of it is unconscious. People (mostly white, etc.) THINK they're being perfectly unbiased and fair, and they really, really aren't. Their unconscious prejudices are shining through. And it sucks. We, collectively, suck.

But here's something I think most people miss: when we talk about this stuff, the point is not to make people feel bad. It's not about who's a "good," non-racist person, and who is a "bad" racist. It's not about proving who's "pure" and who's not. (Or at least, if that's why you're doing it, you're a really screwed-up self-righteous asshole.) IT'S ABOUT CHANGE. Because the thing is, we are all swimming in a sea of racist, sexist, queerphobic crap all the time. We can't change the larger culture (at least not by ourselves), but we CAN change fandom. I know, because fandom has gotten better about this stuff over the last twenty years. There is still a LOT of room for improvement, but it's better than it was. And it can get better than it is. But not if we ignore the problem or sweep it under the rug or get defensive. The first step in sucking less is to realize that you suck in the first place. The second step is figuring out how to suck less.

This post is about that second step. This post is about how to take the knowledge that, yes, we have some problems, and work to make those problems smaller. This post is about how to work through that, grow as a person, learn to suck less, and still have fun in fandom while you're doing it.

There are a lot of posts out there about how to be a good ally. There are also lots of posts out there about avoiding racist/sexist/ableist/whateverist tropes in fic. And there are a lot of good posts out there pointing out that fandom gets WAAAAAY more interested in able-bodied neurotypical cisgender white men than about any other character. We all know what the problems are, or at least, we should. But I think there's a need for "okay, I want to be more inclusive/suck less, how do I do it" on a broad level before we get to the nitty-gritty of "these are tropes I should avoid or be careful about." Namely, how does one get oneself to be fannish about characters that all one's cultural conditioning is screaming at you to ignore?

First, some basic principles.
1) This is fandom. It is supposed to be fun. This should not be like that terrible assignment from your least favorite teacher in school, fandom should be fun.

2) We've all been marinating in a stew of racism/homophobia/sexism/ableism/antisemitism/islamophobia all our lives. Even if, on a conscious level, you disagree with any given ism, your gut has been conditioned to prioritize white able-bodied cissexual neurotypical men over everything else.

3) Racism and sexism suck, and sucking is bad, and it makes fandom NOT fun for those on the receiving end of it. We should all be trying to suck less, both as a goal in its own right and because we want fandom to be fun for EVERYONE.

4) It is possible to work at sucking less while still enjoying fandom.

5) The higher we are in the kyriarchy, the more damage your sucking causes, and the more we are protected from that damage. 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.)

So the question is, how do we as White people have fun in fandom while sucking less? Fear not! It's actually pretty simple, you just have to make that a consistent priority.

Let's define Principle 1. How is fandom fun? Well, for me, fandom is fun because there are shows and movies and books that I love, and I love reading and writing fanfic and meta about them, and squeeing about them with my friends. I find all of those activities fun. I hope you all do, too. I want you to keep on finding those things fun.

BUT there is a problem. We are conditioned by our society to value men more than women, Whites more than any other race, able-bodied neurotypical people more than disabled and/or neurodiverse people, etc., etc., you can all fill in the hierarchies that our society has tried to instill in us (and has probably succeeded in instilling more than you realize). The preference for white men in fandom isn't any worse than in other places in our society. It's true, and I think it's important to remember.

The problem comes in when we leave it at that. "Well, it's not my fault, and anyway even if I AM conditioned to pay more attention to whitedude more than anything else, this is fandom so I should be able to just ignore that and go on like always." Aaaaand then you continue to have fun, but you keep sucking, and hurting people in the process.

We have all been conditioned to favor whitedude above everything else. By which I mean, our society privileges stories about able-bodied neurotypical white men above stories about other people. A white man who has super incredible abilities and can do all the things is Batman, a white woman with all the same qualities is a Mary Sue, and is usually depowered to make room for the male hero, to boot. And characters of different ethnicities, or religions, or with disabilities, don't even have it that good. We think stories about white men are interesting because ... those are the stories we've read, watched, listened to the most. We're used to them. We've been taught all our lives that these are the good stories, the stories that matter. And so most of us have learned to prioritize those stories on an unconscious level. And we show that in our choices, which shows we watch, which actors/actresses we think are hot, which characters we write about.

The good news is, that's conditioning. It's not some inborn genetic thing, it's how we've been trained. And we can train ourselves differently!

It starts by being mindful. What we consume shapes us, right? So keep that in mind when you choose what you consume, what movies, what books, what TV shows, what fanfic. I'm not saying "don't watch your favorite show if it's got too many white men." But let's be real: some TV we watch/read because OMG ITS TEH BEST EVAR!!1! and some we watch/read because it's fun and some we watch/read because our friends are and some we watch/read because it's better than other things we could be doing.

When you're making a choice between two shows/movies/books that will probably be about the same level of entertaining, go for the one that's less ALL WHITE MALE. This is the age of the internet, where our choices are much greater than they've ever been before. When you're browsing Netflix on a Tuesday night looking for a fun movie to watch, give higher preference to diverse shows. Not in an "OMG, I can't ever watch anything with white men again, no matter how awesome it is!" way, but rather in a "I've seen so many movies about White Men(tm) in my life--is this one going to just be more of the same? Are there other options I might enjoy?" way. When you've got a variety of options and they would all be enjoyable, go for the ones least likely to reinforce the WHITE STRAIGHT ABLEBODIED NEUROTYPICAL CIS MALE IS THE DEFAULT AND BEST inside your head.

What this can look like in practice: I like Marvel, but I am not a big enough fan to watch all of their shows. I pick and choose and leave myself time for other shows as well. On Netflix there are two Marvel shows I could be watching that are roughly comparable: Daredevil and Luke Cage. Both are about urban superheroes, but Daredevil is white and Luke Cage is black. (Also, Daredevil has some really terrible Yellow Peril stuff.) So I watch Luke Cage. I enjoy it. I'd probably enjoy Daredevil, too, but I don't have time for everything, and so I prioritize. And I don't treat it like I'm taking my medicine and forcing myself to watch something because it's more socially just and not because I like it. I go in expecting to have fun. And you know what? Usually I do.

Another example: back in 2011, I needed something new to be fannish about. I had enough time to be fannish about one television show in addition to the stuff I was already fannish about. There were two shows premiering that fall that looked interesting to me, both rather similar: Grimm, and Once Upon A Time. Both were urban fantasy. One starred a white man, one starred a white woman. I chose the one starring the woman and went in to it prepared to love the show. Not grudgingly, but "ooh, this could be fun." And I loved it. If I hadn't, I would have stopped watching it after a couple of episodes and switched to Grimm. That was always an option; I wasn't watching OUaT to be masochistic about "doing the right thing." I was choosing which of two interesting options to give brain and heart space to, and I was going in to it with a brain and heart open to being pleased. If, despite that, it didn't please me? I'd move on to the next thing. Plenty of other fish in the sea. But I started with the less-whitedude option.

What this does is it gives brainspace to new possibilities. It erodes the assumption your hindbrain makes that white men matter more than other people do. It erodes the assumption your hindbrain makes that white men are more interesting. The more attention you pay to people outside the cultural norm, the more interesting you find their stories. When you do this, you are actively re-training your cultural conditioning about who matters and who is interesting. And you are having fun while you are doing it.

This has two ways that it will erode your suckage in fandom-related ways. First, it increases the number of people likely to be in non-whitedude fandoms, which is a slight counterweight to the overwhelming whitedude nature of fandom in general. One more person reading the fic and (hopefully) commenting. One more person posting about it, whether you do meta/art/fic/gifs/fanmixes/videos/whatever. Second, if you do this consistently over a long period of time, you will find that your instinct to always focus on white male characters will erode. Your background assumption of who is interesting and who isn't will start to shift.

Do this with the fannish content you produce, as well. You have a tumblr? Give preference to reblogging women and people of color. If you see something about white guys that is AWESOME AND SQUEEWORTHY, go ahead and reblog it and enjoy it while you do. But, you know, a lot of times we reblog stuff that's interesting but not full-on capslock squee, right? Stuff where it takes a second to decide if you should reblog or not. Where you could go either way. And in those cases, make a conscious decision in favor of diversity. Stuff about white men? If it's in that "should I reblog this?" category, don't reblog it. Stuff about anyone else? Do reblog it. When figuring out new content to post, do the same thing. AWESOME SQUEEFUL STUFF? Post away! Interesting but not incredible? Give more weight to stuff about women and people of color and queer people and disabled people and neurodiverse people and Jews and Muslims and all the rest. It's not about harshing the squee, or putting your fannish tastes through some kind of quota system. It's about balance. Trust me. The world and fandom both have PLENTY of whitedude stuff, they'll get along just fine without more. But there's a shortage of everything else, so that's where the focus should be.

And you can do the same with fanfic! Again, I'm not saying "never read your favorites!" I'm saying, be mindful. Are you a big Captain America fan? Check out the Sam Wilson and Natasha Romanov and Maria Hill fic in that fandom, and keep your eye out for more. When you do so, consider filtering out Steve/Bucky stuff occasionally. (http://erindizmo.tumblr.com/post/65292624924/7-step-tutorial-on-how-to-filter-out-characters) After all, presumably you already read a lot of S/B. Your goal isn't to find fics where Sam is in two scenes to get the Whitedude together or help them work out their shit, but fics where Sam gets to really shine. As himself, not just the sidekick to the whitedude. And don't do it grudgingly; do it with open heart and mind, ready to embrace Sam in his awesomeness. This isn't to say you should never read whitedude fic, if that's your thing, but rather that there should be a health(ier) balance. This isn't about forcing you to choke down your bitter fannish medicine; it's about expanding the things you love. It's about creating more opportunities for joy and squee.

And when you read those fics, comment on them! Spread the love! Authors who write about women or people of color tend to get fewer comments on those fics than on stories focused about white male characters, which is discouraging. Share the love; kudos and comment. A comment saying "Good fic" is great, it doesn't have to be long and involved. This holds true for all your fic, by the way, not just the fic where you're consciously diversifying your reading habits. Reading a Steve/Bucky fic and the author wrote Sam well, or Natasha, or Maria, or Rhodey, or Dr. Cho? Tell the author! Point that out specifically. Doesn't have to be elaborate; "I liked Sam" is fine. The point is to reward people for being more inclusive.

When you find a particularly good fic based on a certain woman or character of color, check out the author's page. Chances are, they've got more like it. If they do, and you like their work? Subscribe to them so when they write something, you see it. Again, the goal is to still have fun with awesome fic, but shifting what you consume to be more diverse. Because that will shift your internal default away from the Straight White Neurotypical Ablebodied Man that our society tries to push as the default. And that will affect how you see the world both in fandom and out of it.

Part of the fun of fandom, for many of us, isn't just about consuming content, it's also about creating it. I love writing fanfic. And here's where a lot of peoples' asses start to show, and where they start whining about how they just write what they write and they only get plotbunnies for whitedude. And that may be true, but again, this is something you can actually change. If your brain doesn't come up with plotbunnies for characters of color, or for women, or for lesbians, or for a mixed-race canon couple, or for disabled or neurodivergent people? You can work on coming up with plotbunnies on your own and train your brain in the process!

For example! Say you are a fan of The Flash. For every episode you watch, come up with one plot bunny for a non-white male character. You don't have to write it; that's another step down the road. It doesn't have to be something huge. The first step is getting your brain used to generating plot bunnies for characters you normally wouldn't. If Iris had a big part in that episode, think up a story idea for her. What was she doing while Barry was fighting the villain of the week? How's things going at work for her? If Joe had a big part, think up an idea for him. If there was an Iris/Barry moment, think up a story idea for that pairing. Wally, Cisco, Caitlynn, Lisa Snart, you get the idea. If you're a Supergirl fan, come up with a story idea for Hank or James or Renee Montoya or M'Gann each episode. You don't have to write it, the goal for this part is to get you used to thinking of these characters as people with stories. People you are interested in. I mean, if you get a great idea and want to write it, awesome, but step one is to get your gut and your hindbrain primed to think about these people and care about their stories. You've already been primed to care about and think about white male characters by everything you've seen and read and heard since you were a baby, but there's been precious little priming you for everybody else, so a little extra effort is probably going to be needed.

The next step is similar to the choosing-fandoms step, only for choosing plotbunnies. You will probably have some ideas that just yank you over and demand to be written, so write them. But if you are anything like me, there are also times that you want to write and have a lot of different ideas you could write, you just have to decide which. And in that case, you can probably guess by now, give more weight to the non-whitedude options. If you have four plot bunnies you could write, and two of them are about white male characters and one of them is about a white woman and one is about a character of color? Give more weight to the woman and (especially) the character of color. I'm not saying "you can never write white men again!" I'm saying that in your decision-making process, recognize that the rest of the world is weighted WAY THE FUCK IN FAVOR OF WHITE ABLE-BODIED NEUROTYPICAL CIS MEN, so to provide balance, we should be weighting in favor of everyone else, and giving the most weight to the people that society gives the least weight to.

The things I've outlined in this post don't magically get rid of all that social conditioning overnight, and they don't magically fix everything. What they do is they give you a place to start, and aim you in a direction so that, if you work on it over time, you will suck less while still having fun in fandom and making it more inclusive. And the more people who do stuff like this, the less fandom will suck over time.

You've probably already read it, but franzeska has some EXCELLENT meta on AO3 about fandom, racism, sexism, shipping, slash/gen/het, fandom history, hypocrisy, and counterproductive activism.  It's long but OH SO GOOD.  With a lot of really important points that get completely missed in most discussions of these issues.  I have a few quibbles and one major problem with the piece, but overall I agree with most of it.

Your Vagina is a Bigot; My Vagina is a Saint

I'm watching Rio Grande, one of the greatest Westerns ever made. But there is something really ironic that was not intended to be so. John Wayne's character's estranged wife, played by Maureen O'Hara, comes to visit because Reasons. She's a Southerner, John Wayne is a US Army colonel. Fifteen years ago, he was a captain during the Civil War, and in the march down the Shenendoah, he gave the order to torch his wife's family plantation. There is a lot of angsting about this from all sides (the general who sent him to do it and is now still his commander, the sergeant who was the one who actually held the torch, etc., etc.) At one point the general wonders what history will make of their actions in Shenendoah.

Well ... not much, actually. The destruction was fairly limited, and civilian casualties were low. Southerners gripe about it, but actual historians and everyone who isn't from the US South go meh.

What doesn't get a "meh", what people care about and shake their heads over, is the persecution and destruction of Native Americans who were forced from their homes and either killed or confined to reservations (i.e. the worst land available that nobody else even wanted). You know, the stuff that's the action plot in this movie, that everybody's taking for granted as the right thing to do.

(Also, I think it's hilarious that the movie takes place somewhere between 1877-1879 (depending on which Shenendoah campaign they're referencing), and at one point an Irish guy requests that old great song, Down by the Glenside (The Bold Fenian Men), which wasn't written until 1916 ...)

Still, it is a very good movie.  John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara are at their best, the supporting cast is excellent, the script has a lot of great bits, and the cinematography is gorgeous.

I'm writing a story for oc_bigbang, and that means I get art made for me.  Yay!  And it looks like I'll get the rough draft done on time, even bigger yay!  When I signed up, they asked if I had a particular actress in mind for my OC, Tora Manar.

Well.  That's a problem for me.  I have face blindness; recognizing faces is difficult for me, and so visual cues aren't at all what I write from.  I mean, even when I'm writing characters from a TV show or movie where they already have actors that I have seen many times I don't really picture them at all when I'm writing (or reading) fic.  But, you know, I thought I'd try, which has led me to a frustrating half-hour with Google Image search.  I don't want Manar to be supermodel-gorgeous; just kind of normal-looking is fine with me.  Because she is a kind of Bajoran-girl-next-door who survived the Occupation and the camps and wants to rebuild Bajor and make a better life for herself and her family.  Fairly ordinary, glass-half-full type.  One of my inspirations, back when I thought this was a romance instead of a gen story, was Lalita from Bride and Prejudice, played by Aishwarya Rai.  Now that I know it's a gen story, Lalita's refusal to accept patronization from the privileged people is still a contributor to Manar, although Manar is much less likely to point it out unless it's really big.  She's trying for a career as a Starfleet officer, she's trying to blend in and get accepted and so she's got a lot more incentive to bite her tongue.  But, you know, Aishwarya definitely has supermodel good looks that I don't want Manar to have.  But that got me started with Bollywood actresses (and also, it annoyed me that while we occasionally saw Bajorans of color in the background, I can't think of a single ep that had one with an actual speaking role), and from there several other searches, and here's what I've found.

Vega Tamotia seems to have a good face; pretty enough, but not hubba-hubba.  But her skin is a bit lighter than I described Manar's skin as being.
Karthika Nair is a bit closer, but I'm not quite sure about for some reason--maybe it's her expression in most of those pictures, she looks a bit too cynical or something.  This is Star Trek after all, and so Manar has a bit of that optimistic/Pollyannaish quality that infuses most of the Star Trek universe.
Rula Jebreal is wonderful, but a tiny bit too close to the too-gorgeous, and also possibly slightly darker than I described Manar.

Now, I've never seen any of these women act (nor read Rula's books nor seen her TV show), so this is going strictly off of pictures.  What do you guys think?  Any suggestions?

(The other main character is a Vulcan male, in that indeterminate middle age Vulcans have where they look thirty and could be anywhere from 30 to 100 years old.  He may be distantly related to Spock and to Ambassador Soval from Enterprise, with whom he shares a name.  I don't really care about what he looks like; there are thousands of white actors in the right age range to choose from, and there are probably quite a few who could do appropriate Vulcan dignity.  Besides, it's not Soval's story, it's Manar's.  He's got his own internal life, but we only ever really see glimpses of it.)

...because this should probably get linked.  Thank you to megwrites for pointing out the depths of privileged racism in Elizabeth Bear's casual use of the term "death march" to describe writing a book.  And her response to someone who called her on her BS.

So, if you're in the Stargate fandom you've probably heard about the massive amounts of fail (multiple different kinds, no less!) inherent in the casting sides for an episode of Stargate: Universe, and the defense from Gateworld, and all that. sheafrotherdon has an excellent rebuttal to Gateworld's defense of the fail, and cereta has an older post on living in a systematically misogynistic society and why don't "nice" men take a stand which then links to khalinche's post on the levels of harassment your average woman experiences on a daily basis, and why men don't really get it. And someone in the comments mentioned the Vagina Monologues, which I've never seen.

And I've been thinking. I love Stargate, but not the fail, and it seems like the fail has been growing over time, and the way they consistently play issues of rape and torture and such for titilation/humor or in other ways abuse white male privilege.

And lo, at 2 o'clock in the morning, an idea has formed for a story I will never write but which would be Made of Awesome if someone else would do it:

Teal'c is sensitive to power issues as they relate to the whole Jaffa/slave thing, but not so much (which is to say, not at all) as they relate to male/female relationships. He's very secure in his male privilege, and uses it, particularly with Jaffa women. He has great respect for Sam, treats her like an equal as a warrior, true, but look at how he treated the Jaffa women he was with. It's not that he's a bad guy, he just responds as his culture has taught him and doesn't really seem to think about the issue that much. And then in the episode Family Ties, Teal'c gets given tickets to The Vagina Monologues.

I want to know what Teal'c's reaction was. I want it to be done seriously, not played for laughs. I want to know how he related that to his experiences of Jaffa life and working with Sam for ten years. I want to explore Jaffa culture and Teal'c's perspective on it beyond the 'Jaffa revenge thing.' I want to see him talk about it with Sam, and with Ishta, and maybe his daughter-in-law Kar'yn. I don't want him to turn into an enlightened feminist Western male, but I do want him to understand.