...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

The safe space metaphor

[thelana.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I like to mindplay what would happen if we took the safe space metaphor to the hilt. What would it be like?

Everybody can relate to the idea of fandom as a safe space. The issue is that white fen claim fandom as their safe space, but what makes it safe for them might be precisely what makes it unsafe for POC fen.

So, how do we deal with unsafe space? In warning discussions we regularly have the discussions about how people really want rape warnings, because they have so called "triggers" that they want to avoid because they have experiences with rape in real life. This explanation is generally respected.

So, if we framed the safe space problem as being like this, would it make sense? People who endure a lot of race related crap in real life, who are triggered by offesive representation and want to avoid it in fandom, who want fandom to be their safe space?

If we used this logic, wouldn't the logical result be if people started warning for it? No, obviously not along the lines of "this is racist crap", but more like "cpwotc" (clueless person outside their culture) or "wpwotc" (white person writing outside their culture) or even just wpw (white person writer).

Or maybe disclaimers along the lines of "Disclaimer: This might be annoying and offensive to you. Please consider not reading it.".

In the case of rape, warnings and disclaimers protect twofold. The easily triggered person gets to decide whether they really want to take the risk and bother with the fic. And the author who gets called out about it gets to say "Hello, didn't you read the warning? Don't like it, don't read it. If you don't like it, why didn't you hit the back button?".

Of course this is just a half tongue in cheek mind experiment. Tough I do wonder how/whether that would affect writers. Would it make people more aware of what they are writing? Would the writing get more bad? Would there be discussion about it? Would it motivate people to try harder to overcome the wpw label?

I guess that is currently on my mind. If we are trying to discuss race on a larger scale or if the topic really is race and racism in fandom specifically.

Re: The safe space metaphor

[blacksquirrel.livejournal.com]

cpwotc - lol

To some extent I think the point is the people saying something offensive rarely perceive it in that way - so it would be something other people warn you about - which, I think, is a fairly accurate representation of what we have now - a word-of-mouth system for warning people about writing/conversations that are racially problematic.

Do you remember the incident with the Supernatural RPS fic set in Cambodia awhile back? Something like that might have benefited from some kind of institutionalized warning system - if the author had to stop and consider whether to check a button to warn about potentially offensive representation of a culture not his/her own, that may have produced some deeper thinking - or, it might just have served as the sort of "don't like, don't read" justification that you mention.

But, yes, overall it's unfortunate when one person's quest for safe space undermines someone else's ability to feel safe.

Re: The safe space metaphor

[thelana.livejournal.com]

See, that to me is the perfect example of a fic that should just not exist. Not just on a race level, but on a "metaphorically making out on the bodies of dead people" level. I mean, if they had been having sex during a visit of Dachau wouldn't that have been just as precious?

*shudder*

If anything that is the kind of fic that if you want to write it should come with a whole slew of warnings plastered all over it and maybe only be shared on a request/email basis.

That's actually one category where I would wish people would realize that something like this really is on a level with, let's say extreme chan or "she was raped and really enjoyed it" fic. Of course nobody can forbid you to write and think it, but you should at least know that in public environment it is extremely distasteful and should only be posted with the strictest precautions and ideally not in a public forum (like those people who send certain stories out only by email or only post it under friendslock in their own journal).

Re: The safe space metaphor

[tielan]

I think it goes further than just labelling, though - the primary object is to have people learn and think and grow and change from where they are to where they need to be.

I know you meant it as something of a facetious idea, but there's a danger in that people might begin to think that they can 'warn' for innately racist behaviour and that precludes them having to apologise.

Does that make sense?

Re: The safe space metaphor

[thelana.livejournal.com]

I think it makes sense to me. But to me that's exactly what I'm wondering about. Are we really trying to fix overall racism as an institution through blogging in fandom?

Several people have compared the POC experience to somebody standing on their foot and not getting off. People talk about actual hurt it causes. In that case, wouldn't it make sense to try to think of ways to evade it? Because in the end there is never a way to completely evade it. Because in the end you still are writing outside of your own experience and no amount of studying up on it will change that. So wouldn't the logical and fair thing be to slap a warning outside "This might not be as good as you have hoped for".

I'm thinking less with people mind who write actively horrible stuff, but more of the "I have well intention, but I'm worried I might not get everything right/I might fall short". To me, it's just fact that you are not going to get everything right. Even if you did an endless amount of historical research, you are not going to get everything right if you haven't lived through it (even if you manage evade things that are actively wrong; but there is a difference between "not getting it actively wrong" and "getting it perfectly right") and since this is fandom, people are even less likely to put in the same amount of research they would or should put in if they are writing an actual book. So wouldn't a fair thing be to give a warning?

It just seems to me that fandom is more or less built on the idea that you can write what you please and that you don't get to question people'e preferences. If somebody wants to write a teamfic where Teyla and Ronan are just afterthoughts that is incredibly depressing, but can you actually forbid people from writing it? At least a warning would indicate some awareness.

I get the idea of how minds have to change so attitudes will change. But isn't the approach from the backdoor also one that deserves considering? If you change the attitudes, maybe the mindsets will eventually change with it? (or how about a combo version? Install some attitude related laws like anti-discrimination laws and still work on trying to change mindsets on top of that)

Again, people use the language of immediate hurt. So wouldn't the normal reaction to hand out a bandaid? I get the idea that it is pointless to keep carrying over bandaids rather than fixing the bridge that is crumbling above. So why can't you do both? Hand out a bandaid and at the meantime continue thinking about how you can fix the bridge above? Work on both the mindsets and the attitudes?

Again, I can picture that these things might be boring or frustrating for fen of color (white fen talking amongst themselves how they could potentially make things nicer for our fellow fen of color), but maybe it is still something that has to happen. With of course, the problem of where we draw the line between things that really need to happen and things that are just the equivalent of tying your shoelaces for 5 hours.

Re: The safe space metaphor

[ladyjax.livejournal.com]

Actually, in most good anti-racism training, white people are in a group by themselves to start working on their stuff. People of color do the same -because god knows, we have our own issues across color lines. A third group is where people come together and try to have a discussion.

This takes time, it takes effort and it takes a whole lot of commitment.

For myself, I know I can just withdraw completely into groups where I can still have challenging discussions, including the inevitable blunders, but I can dump the rest of fandom into the ash bin. It's not something I want to do but if it's a choice about my mental health versus hearing yet another chorus of "I'm a clueless white person" and a handful of bandaids then then I choose my peace of mind.