...and so I ask myself if I am the stone in your shoe.

[tielan]

"How could anyone love a stone in their shoe?"
~ The Stepmother, Ever After ~

*breathes*

It started with an author called Elizabeth Bear talking about writing the Other without being a dick. Unfortunately, someone pointed out a story of hers which features a magical negro who is 'tamed' by a white woman and stating that it was problematic.

It turned into a big argument about cultural appropriation: who has the right to write about non-whites, how our society perceives and stereotypes the Other (African, Asian, Indian, Oriental, Pacific Islander, Eskimo, Alien), how perfectly nice people can be racist without ever realising it, how it always comes back to the satisfaction and emotional catharsis of white people at the expense of the persons of colour trying to say "I am here, my pain is real, don't ignore what I have to say or dismiss it just because you don't want to hear that you put your foot wrong and might have to apologise."

I'm no good at talking about this stuff - I can't talk about a broader experience, I can only talk about my own experience.

One thing that's repeatedly come up is that white fans feel fandom is their safe space and their place to have fun. That to question the racial assumptions, cultural appropriations, and racist attitudes of fandom is to effectively deny white people their 'safe space', where they can happily squee and post fannishly and never have to question their choices or behaviours or feel guilty about the weight of history upon them regarding racist behaviours, a racist system, and how POC can't hide that they're POC.

And so I sit here and post these thoughts and try to broaden my perspectives and watch as the people who read this journal amble by without ever reading or commenting.

My f-list is primarily fannish. People who like my fic - whatever aspect that might be. People who once liked me. There are a handful of people who are both fannish and people of colour, but they're just that - a handful.

And so I watch the comments rack up on my fiction and wonder if I am the fly in the ointment of my f-list's f-lists.

Am I the crazy lady on the train?

Am I the stone in the shoe?

And if so, are the only options to wince and bear it or to throw the stone away?

Which do you choose?

Do you wince and bear these posts of mine and others like me? Or do you skip over them, safe in the knowledge that tomorrow, next week, next month, I/we/they might post something that you're actually interested in - something that's relevant to you, that doesn't challenge you and your way of looking at the world in any way?

Sometimes I wonder.

Comments

[beanie-j.livejournal.com]

I read most of your posts on race - I find them interesting and informative. I don't always reply and I will admit to passing over such posts occasionally - usually when I've experienced being othered by some moron who doesn't have the first idea of how to deal with me as a person.

I also think that a lot of people don't really know how to respond to such posts. I made one the other day about the ignorant behaviour of non-disabled people towards walking-aid/wheelchair users - I really hope that more people read that than the three who actually responded, one of whom is actually disabled and wasn't the intended target of the post. But I am extremely aware of the fact that a lot of people do not know how to deal with me as a person and that they really don't wish to be challenged on their prejudice, which they validate by such comments as - "I have disabled friends - how can I be ableist?" "I'm talking to you aren't I?" and "I'm a PoC and I experience prejudice - why would I other you?"

I think sometimes the only way to go is to keep at the posting in the hope that it sinks in with some people that these sort of posts aren't going away, exactly like prejudice isn't.

[tielan]

It's painful and frustrating to be Othered, no matter the cause.

In this discussion, however, it's especially frustrating because this isn't knowledge that's never been imparted before - this is old news, rehashed, and very few people seem to be learning, let alone growing.