Maybe I'm a mermaid

[jlh]

I've been thinking about this for a few weeks now, and at one point hoped to get it done for the most recent PoC in SF Carnival #8, but for lots of reasons didn't, though my post does relate to its theme of intra-racial dialogues. In the wake of IBARW2, in which I participated, I joined deadbrowalking, and I've been reading everything that I get linked to, and I've had much more of a sense of myself as a FoC, a fan of color, and what that means to me, and what it means or can mean to others, and what I can use my voice for. I've been trying to use this time to STFU and listen, lest others sense that I have need for some pants. Check out the Carnival, because there are some truly excellent posts in there, without which I don't think I could have clarified my own thoughts.

There's been a debate lately about the word "queer" and who gets to use it and who doesn't and in what circumstances. I'm not interested in commenting directly on that, but in one of the earlier posts that kicked off the debate hth_the_first said in part:

Queerness is the turf of queer fans, not of slashers. You know who gets to say what's so totally gay? Gay people. Not that they will always agree with each other! Not that they will always *disagree* with what straight people think. But the thing is, people who are saturated in queerness and spend our lives thinking about the queer issues -- guys, we get to be the voice of what's SO GAY.

I found myself translating this statement into one about race—who gets to say what is SO BLACK?—and there were a lot of differences that stood out to me.

As a biracial woman, a lot of my experience with race has been one of customization for myself, and then realizing how much customization everyone else is also doing, even while the "community" maintains a unified front for political reasons. So for me, running around claiming the authority over what is SO BLACK feels presumptuous.

But more importantly, or at least, less personally, the SO GAY claim and the SO BLACK claim work in very different ways in fandom, because for slashers SO GAY is positive, while the SO BLACK claim seems to be problematic—see the recent conversations about SGA to see what I mean. The issue isn't one of those who are not black pointing at something and claiming it to be black, but one of those who are not black refusing to accept the PoC fans pointing at something and claiming it to be black. Either way, the voices of those who might claim authority are being ignored or discounted. Either way, as noted in ciderpress's excellent essay (which to my mind should be required reading), the conversation is being controlled by the ones with the privilege.

And it's really to ciderpress, who asks how to get out of this box we're in, that I have a response: we don't shut up. We just keep writing. We just keep throwing ourselves against that wall. Maybe the goal isn't to get the poster of the story with wanky race issues, or the meta that tried to work to ignore sexuality, to get the message, as witchqueen noted in her recent posts about tone. Maybe it isn't even to get the third parties to get the message, as I'd thought at the time.

Maybe it's to remind our fellow non-privileged fen, be they FoC, or queer, or something else (I know some work on class is starting here and there), that they do have a voice, do belong in fandom, do get to speak up when their own squee is being harshed. After all, isn't one of the singular things about LJ fandom that it is a primarily female space, a safe space away from sometimes-condescending fanboys? A lot of talk has gone into the feeling of community, of having a place to speak up and be heard in the same language, that deadbrowalking has brought, that metafandom has brought just because fans from different fandoms can see everything going on, and as new as that is, that has to count for something.

Comments

[greyandgrey.livejournal.com]

It's somewhat problematic to correlate Queer Identity and Racial Identity. I think one of the big differences between Queer Identity and Racial Identity is that Queer Identity is something that the individual discovers for him or her self. Nobody can tell you from the outside "you are queer and that is just a fact", whereas Racial Identity is something that is or can be imposed from the outside. An outsider can tell a black person "You are clearly of African descent and therefore belong in such-and-such ethnic category and are racially considered to be Black" and it doesn't matter how that black person modifies their behavior or represses a part of themselves, they can still be identified as belonging to a specific group and therefore associated with whatever baggage comes with that label.

In other words, there's no such thing as a closeted black person.

I think in a lot of ways that makes being Queer the easier minority to be in, because it's one you are in through self-identification. It's an identity you can hide from and escape if you want to.

Because of that self-identifying feature of Queerness, I think it is possible that Queerness feels more like something Queers can control, and therefore it's easier to take pride in Queerness which lends "SO QUEER" to being a positive. Whereas ethnic identifiers lump a whole group together with no chance of opting in or out which makes it a harder image to control. Which leads to it being problematic instead of resoundingly positive.

*Disclaimer #1: I am Queer, I am also white
**Disclaimer #2: I in no way mean to imply anywhere in here that gay is a choice. But expressing it is, and OPENLY, PUBLICLY expressing it especially is. Which is why it is different as a cultural identifier than race/ethnicity (which I kind of use interchangeably even though I know that there are technically some differences between the two)

[jlh.livejournal.com]

I don't think I'm correlating the identities by using a discussion about Queer theory to be a launching pad for a think piece about race in fandom. I was more thinking, "I don't feel comfortable switching these out. How can that help me to think about how race and sexuality work differently in fandom?" So I was thinking about difference, not searching for similarity.

Just because someone can decide from the outside that one is whatever, does not mean that this is the identity that one has. It's true that one must understand what people from outside are going to assume, but racial identity is absolutely something that the individual discovers for him or herself, as I said in my post. Every person of color that I know had to decide for themselves how that impacted their lives, what it meant to them, and how they were going to behave in the world because of it.

Also, there are plenty of closeted black people. It's called passing (http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/resources/lessonplans/hs_es_passing_for_white.htm), and has a long and fraught history. The musical Show Boat is all about a mixed girl trying to pass for white. It's singing the famous "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" that leads to the discovery that Julie is mixed race. There are also Hispanics who are able to pass, like Rita Hayworth or Martin Sheen.

I'm a biracial woman, and you'd be surprised how easily I could pass if I really wanted to. People are often surprised to hear of my actual ancestry. So there aren't a lot of outsiders telling me what I am—and sometimes, they are completely wrong, as when they think I "must be" hispanic, or arabic, or south asian. I don't feel any more need to accept their incorrect definitions of me than I do to "accept" the codified ways of being black. I construct my own identity, while understanding what may or may not be projected into the public space.

At any rate, what I was saying about being so queer being positive within fandom was about slashers looking to queer their texts, and that being a positive act, while looking to racialize the text, again within fandom, is seen as problematic, or harshing the squee.

In fact, "I'm black and I'm proud" in the larger world is hugely positive. I think in that context, saying that something is SO BLACK is a very good thing as a claiming of identity, much as you're saying that SO QUEER can be.

It's taking me a while to think these thinky thoughts...

[greyandgrey.livejournal.com]

Ok, so... I wrote out a reply that when I copy/pasted it into word was like a page and a half long, and I don't know that it makes much sense, and I sort of got to this point where I was describing to you exactly the way in which the two identities were different from a fan writing perspective and how Queer ID is more malleable than Racial ID in fictional characters ....

And then I couldn't figure out how that all let to a reason why one is viewed as resoundingly positive and the other is viewed as, in your words, "problematic"


So, I'm gonna mull over the issue for a while, see if I can edit out my earlier response into something readable, and then get back to you....

So basically what I'm saying is Queer is positive because it leads directly to Porn.

[greyandgrey.livejournal.com]

Ok, I think this makes sense. However, I also have serious doubts that it in any way relates to anything else I might have said earlier... :-/

One of the other big meta topics I’ve seen whirling around lately is about the nature of shipping and people wondering if/why shipping seems to be the default of a lot of people in media fandom. Clearly romantic/sexual relationships between characters are a significant part of the fan experience to a lot of people. Queerness is an identifier that directly ties into romance, whereas race is not. It is possible, likely even, that because of this the larger part of fandom sees Queerness as more directly applicable to their interpretation of the text. Because if you want to develop the sexual relationship between characters, it’s good to deal with their sexual identity. Especially if the sexuality you are presenting in your fic goes against what has been presented in canon. On the other hand, even if there are characters of color in the canon, even if those characters are playing a major role in the fic a certain author is writing, it’s not something the writer or the reader necessarily has to deal with.

It’s not like queerness is un-problematic in fandom. There are all these issues about slashers who don’t support gay rights, the “only gay for you” trope, authors who completely change a character’s personality to fit a gay stereotype, people who take canonically bisexual/queerish characters and make them 100% gay to fit into the narrow binary straight or gay model of sexuality. But it definitely gets drowned out a lot by the excitement of seeing your favourite pairing and being able to go “Ugh! They are Gay and In Love and I love their stupid faces!”
The part of that exclamation that makes it a resounding positive is the “and In Love!” The Gay becomes positive by association. If the main focus of slash fandom were not on romance, if it were on, say, the way in which the characters deal with both overt and latent homophobia, people would not be so into it. People would view it as “problematic” rather than resoundingly positive.

Re: So basically what I'm saying is Queer is positive because it leads directly to Porn.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Okay, while this is interesting? It doesn't have much to do with my post. I'm not arguing about queerness; in fact I said I'm not interested in commenting directly on that, and I'm not. I also said that for slashers SO GAY is positive. But this post isn't about why that may or may not be true, and I'm certainly not enough of a slasher to argue the point.

This post is about why SO BLACK is NOT a positive statement, because this post is about race. If you want to make a post about queerness in fandom, be my guest, and I'd be interested to read it. Or you can look into the conversation about queerness in fandom that is already going on and that sparked this post. But I am feeling a little frustrated that you are not discussing the topic of the post, which was race, and instead talking about something that I specifically said the post was not about, which is sexuality.

All that said, this: Queerness is an identifier that directly ties into romance, whereas race is not. […] On the other hand, even if there are characters of color in the canon, even if those characters are playing a major role in the fic a certain author is writing, it’s not something the writer or the reader necessarily has to deal with. may be the general problem, because race ties directly into the character themselves, of course, and I think that allowing the writer and the reader to not deal with it, as you say, is allowing them to not deal with a fundamental. And I find that problematic.

Re: So basically what I'm saying is Queer is positive because it leads directly to Porn.

[greyandgrey.livejournal.com]

This post is about why SO BLACK is NOT a positive statement

Ok, I guess I thought I was answering that question indirectly... by saying what queerness does, I was trying to imply what blackness does *not* do. By talking about something I do understand, which is queerness, I'm trying to draw parallels and comparisons to figure out something I admittedly do not understand, which is blackness. And by highlighting what I see as a key distinction between the two identities I was trying to figure out why they seem to be viewed differently in fandom.

The narrative payoff for resolving issues surrounding the identity is something that needs to be taken into account in why one is viewed positively and the other is not, I think. The payoff for resolving issues surrounding queer identity is "and then they lived happily ever after and in love", whereas the payoff for resolving racial identity is "so now character X is comfortable in his/her own skin". While both are positive results, the former is markedly more exciting, and the point I was trying to make was that the lack of an exciting result from the resolution of issue makes the community less likely to necessarily want to push through the "do we have to talk about this? it's making me uncomfortable" feeling which discussions of both identities do have.

I hope you feel that's more relevant

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

In other words, there's no such thing as a closeted black person.

Well, in the sense that people should get to identify themselves, yes, but in the sense that many mixed-race biracial people (who, thanks to things like the "one drop rule" *were* "legally" black) have passed as white (http://www.umass.edu/umpress/SS02/otoole.html)-- sort of no.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Words are complicated. I almost just want to write that.:-) Because as usual I fall in the middle--the people with the privilege do not get to be the ones defining things...that is, they shouldn't, but they more often than not do wind up being the ones who get to define the terms without to suit themselves. But on the other hand there's a place where it's unrealistic to think anybody can control language so much that people outside the defined group aren't going to draw their own conclusions--wrong or not.

For instance, on "The Office" there's a line that comes to me...Oscar is describing his membership in the "Finer Things Club." The Club is one where they read a novel once a month and then discuss it at lunch with props and costumes. So they wear berets when discussing a book set in France and bring in an easel with a painting of the Eiffel Tower and eat croissants, for instance. Oscar says, "Besides having sex with men, the Finer Things Club is the gayest thing I do."

Now, Oscar is a gay character so he is "allowed" to say that on some level, but still the joke works because the other meaning of "gay" is understood here. Of course there are plenty of gay people who would not like this club, but people get what he means, and he's not saying it in the homophobic sense of "that's so gay," he's referring to cultural expectations of which he himself is aware. Slashers might say "totally gay!" to mean "they totally make the best couple and love each other and want each other!" which, as you say, also isn't an insult. They are describing something understood to themselves for which this actually seems like the right word.

So it's like there's always a compromise between those people being defined and wanting to define themselves, and people outside describing something in their own experience--which can be racist or homophobic or sexist, but isn't always. And it says something--not always something good--about why that word is being used or why someone is having the reaction they have to it.

It reminds me actually of this article I was reading about the incident in Long Island where the black man shot the white teenager threatening his son? And the white people seemed completely obsessed with making it clear that they were *not* racists--it was just kind of an interesting flipside. Only for them "racist" that term they wanted to control and felt they couldn't. They were only racists when they said they were, not when the PoC felt discriminated against. So they believed the PoC shouldn't be able to point to the situation and say (rightly imo) that racism was at work here, that their race was being used against them. Again they feel entitled to define words for themselves without giving that courtesy to somebody else, where as the PoC is just more used to not being granted that courtesy.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Seriously wtf LJ with the no comment notifications.

There was a part of this I didn't even get into, the necessity for a straight lady in the big city to develop really good gaydar, but that wasn't part of the point I wanted to make so I took it out for clarity. But your story about Oscar reminds me of that.

I'm with you on that middle ground. It's like, for me, with my own race, I have to define it for myself. But it would be foolish to think that my appearance doesn't define it for other people—often incorrectly, given the number of sweet little old ladies who come up to me speaking Spanish. That said, just because I'm aware of what comes to me from the outside doesn't mean I can't define myself. There's a joke in the black community about how it doesn't matter what Tiger calls himself, because if a cop stops him driving his Buick, he's a black man. And that's true, but also not as important as Tiger feeling that he should also respect and celebrate his Thai heritage, and that the two don't have to conflict. It's the constant mulatto drama, really.

I mean, claiming that I am biracial—that is no longer the claim to privilege that it was, say, in 19th century New Orleans when there was a powerful Creole community. In fact, often I feel that I don't deserve, in some way, to claim that I'm black, and I feel a little uncomfortable doing so.

The Long Island thing—I adore how you've characterized it, especially: They were only racists when they said they were, not when the PoC felt discriminated against. Because of course, that is exactly the point.

[skywardprodigal.livejournal.com]

Pretty cool post. Pretty pretty and pretty cool.

I'm thinking. :)

Also, this bit? Maybe it's to remind our fellow non-privileged fen, be they FoC, or queer, or something else (I know some work on class is starting here and there), that they do have a voice, do belong in fandom, do get to speak up when their own squee is being harshed.

I dug. :)

:)

I came by via friends-of-friends.

[ciderpress.livejournal.com]

Thanks for writing this. It's given me food for thought. :)