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jlhThis might be whiny and self-serving! But I'm frustrated, so there it is.
What's frustrating me is the way that groups get called out, en masse, as though they are undifferentiated. I can fall into that sometimes myself, but I try not to do that because I don't think it's productive, I have found that it leads to a lot of defensiveness that one has to pick through, and most importantly it entirely discounts and makes invisible and futile any movement of individuals in that group to change their behavior. In a sense, calling out groups en masse implies that there is no way to affect change from within, and no way for people in a position of privilege to recognize that privilege and try to work against it.
Honestly I find it just as frustrating when I'm not in a position of privilege as when I am. I don't find starting posts with "Hey (white people/men) please stop doing X" to be useful because mostly I hear from my white/male friends who aren't doing X and they're very sad. So then I spend time saying no, I didn't mean you (hello, Cotter Corollary) which is frustrating for everyone involved. And I find myself having the same reaction when a group of people that I'm in are called out as well. I mean, I'm American, I'm able-bodied and -minded, I'm well-educated, I've ascended a class level or two from my origins. Call out those groups and you're calling me out, whether I've evidenced the behavior you're calling out or not. (My usual reaction is to think, "maybe I'm doing exactly that and I don't even realize it.")
This works in a fannish context as well. In email conversations I might traffic in generalizations, but I'd never do that in a public post because (1) hello wank (2) more trouble than it's worth (3) they're not all like that; it's just an easy way to have an email conversation. I mean, there are plenty of Kirk/Spock shippers who never said a single gross racist thing about Nyota Uhura, maybe thought that she was really spirited and fun in STXI, and are busy shipping her with McCoy or Scotty or Gaila or Chapel. There are plenty of Arthur/Eames shippers who've never written Yusuf as a cab driver/stoner or Ariadne as a shrew. There are plenty of Harry/Hermione shippers who never thought their ship would be canon. There are plenty of Ron/Hermione shippers who weren't giant assholes when their ship WAS canon. There are even Snape/Harry shippers who were involved in mainstream Harry Potter fandom and don't think it's a feral at all.
I shouldn't even have to say these things, but I'm not sure at this point that they actually go without saying. It's crucial to point out the ways in which fandom could do better on social justice issues, but I think it's equally important to point out when it does. I think that you can't have a stick without a carrot; stick and absence-of-stick doesn't work for me as a training method. That doesn't mean people should do things in order to get a reward, of course, or that we need to give everyone a cooky just because they weren't an asshole that one time, but that attention should be paid. There are lots of folks unhappily pointing out the wack-ass shit that goes on in fandom, and that work should, must, has to continue. But we can't create an atmosphere where being in a particular fandom or shipping a particular ship dooms a fan, no matter what they do.
And we should recognize that half the reputation that ships get comes from the louder and more persistent voices that are rarely the majority. I keep looking back to this Stanford study that found "when people with extreme views have this false sense that they are in the majority, they are more willing to express themselves." All I have is a voice to undo the folded like, etc, and I can sit here and tell you that despite writing my share of white boy slash I've also written a long, involved fic where a black het couple and a white female couple are two of the three main pairings, or that I started out in fandom writing about a nonwhite character most of the time, but at the moment I'm just not sure that it matters. And part of that, to be sure, is that there simply are no highly visible pairings that aren't either two white men, or a white man and a white woman--and there are precious few of the latter. If a fan gets known not for what they've mostly done but for the most visible thing they've done, then unless we are pure enough to have never written white boy slash or white people het--and obviously I am not that pure--then those ships are what we will be known for.
It's frustrating to think that one can sit and scribble and plan all the Seamus/Dean and Yusuf/Ariadne and Anwar/Kimberley and Carly/Amanda and Parvati/Pansy you want, and it literally does not matter. I think as much as we need to push against the forces that lead people to not write female characters, femslash, and chromatic characters, we need to push against the idea that it's ultimately futile to do so.
What's frustrating me is the way that groups get called out, en masse, as though they are undifferentiated. I can fall into that sometimes myself, but I try not to do that because I don't think it's productive, I have found that it leads to a lot of defensiveness that one has to pick through, and most importantly it entirely discounts and makes invisible and futile any movement of individuals in that group to change their behavior. In a sense, calling out groups en masse implies that there is no way to affect change from within, and no way for people in a position of privilege to recognize that privilege and try to work against it.
Honestly I find it just as frustrating when I'm not in a position of privilege as when I am. I don't find starting posts with "Hey (white people/men) please stop doing X" to be useful because mostly I hear from my white/male friends who aren't doing X and they're very sad. So then I spend time saying no, I didn't mean you (hello, Cotter Corollary) which is frustrating for everyone involved. And I find myself having the same reaction when a group of people that I'm in are called out as well. I mean, I'm American, I'm able-bodied and -minded, I'm well-educated, I've ascended a class level or two from my origins. Call out those groups and you're calling me out, whether I've evidenced the behavior you're calling out or not. (My usual reaction is to think, "maybe I'm doing exactly that and I don't even realize it.")
This works in a fannish context as well. In email conversations I might traffic in generalizations, but I'd never do that in a public post because (1) hello wank (2) more trouble than it's worth (3) they're not all like that; it's just an easy way to have an email conversation. I mean, there are plenty of Kirk/Spock shippers who never said a single gross racist thing about Nyota Uhura, maybe thought that she was really spirited and fun in STXI, and are busy shipping her with McCoy or Scotty or Gaila or Chapel. There are plenty of Arthur/Eames shippers who've never written Yusuf as a cab driver/stoner or Ariadne as a shrew. There are plenty of Harry/Hermione shippers who never thought their ship would be canon. There are plenty of Ron/Hermione shippers who weren't giant assholes when their ship WAS canon. There are even Snape/Harry shippers who were involved in mainstream Harry Potter fandom and don't think it's a feral at all.
I shouldn't even have to say these things, but I'm not sure at this point that they actually go without saying. It's crucial to point out the ways in which fandom could do better on social justice issues, but I think it's equally important to point out when it does. I think that you can't have a stick without a carrot; stick and absence-of-stick doesn't work for me as a training method. That doesn't mean people should do things in order to get a reward, of course, or that we need to give everyone a cooky just because they weren't an asshole that one time, but that attention should be paid. There are lots of folks unhappily pointing out the wack-ass shit that goes on in fandom, and that work should, must, has to continue. But we can't create an atmosphere where being in a particular fandom or shipping a particular ship dooms a fan, no matter what they do.
And we should recognize that half the reputation that ships get comes from the louder and more persistent voices that are rarely the majority. I keep looking back to this Stanford study that found "when people with extreme views have this false sense that they are in the majority, they are more willing to express themselves." All I have is a voice to undo the folded like, etc, and I can sit here and tell you that despite writing my share of white boy slash I've also written a long, involved fic where a black het couple and a white female couple are two of the three main pairings, or that I started out in fandom writing about a nonwhite character most of the time, but at the moment I'm just not sure that it matters. And part of that, to be sure, is that there simply are no highly visible pairings that aren't either two white men, or a white man and a white woman--and there are precious few of the latter. If a fan gets known not for what they've mostly done but for the most visible thing they've done, then unless we are pure enough to have never written white boy slash or white people het--and obviously I am not that pure--then those ships are what we will be known for.
It's frustrating to think that one can sit and scribble and plan all the Seamus/Dean and Yusuf/Ariadne and Anwar/Kimberley and Carly/Amanda and Parvati/Pansy you want, and it literally does not matter. I think as much as we need to push against the forces that lead people to not write female characters, femslash, and chromatic characters, we need to push against the idea that it's ultimately futile to do so.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-29 09:32 pm (UTC)...I kind of want to cross-stitch this and frame it for my wall. And also, word to the rest of this post, too. I always like that tag on your tumblr, "positivity is precious", because it is.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-30 05:30 pm (UTC)