The J2 Fail Post, cont'd

[amazonziti]

Hi, everybody! Welcome to the next post. Believe it or not, with all the links and updates, the original post (or on Dreamwidth) was too long for a single LJ entry, so any further meta from myself, news, or links from other people will be posted here from now on. Change your post alerts if you're using them.

Discussion on the original post will be left open.

And now, without further ado:

ETA - further news, 6/20/10 @ 7:55 AM

I have been having a pretty intense discussion with an anon commenter in this thread.

(A quick reiteration -- I fully support the right of fen to contribute to discussions anonymously. I do not conflate anonymity with cowardice or trollishness [though I do recognize that there are people who use anonymity as a trolling weapon, and them I don't like so much]. I get that particularly in discussions of any kind of anti-oppression, signing one's name to one's opinion is not uncomplicated no matter what your stance is, and I would rather that people who have things to say contribute anonymously than not at all. I request that you think before you criticize someone for remaining anon; an anonymous person who disagrees with you =/= a troll.)

Okay. This anon requested I add an addendum to this post, which I have agreed to do. Here is said addendum:

I do not support personal attacks on the author of the fic.

THAT BEING SAID, here is my addendum to that addendum: I have seen absolutely no proof of any personal attacks on the author since, oh, the first several hours of the community's reaction to her fic. bossymarmalade discusses one of those particular comments, an equally appalling response that has gotten comparably very little airtime, and derailment here. (There's also excellent discussion in the comments to that post.)

All I know of any possible harrassment is people saying "I heard" without a source, anon or named, and without an attacker, anon or named, and using this hypothetical harassment by individuals to call everybody else bullies or a mob. If anyone is harassing the author, they are doing it by PM. If the author were getting threats and/or abuse (as opposed to messages that say "I feel hurt/angry when you write racist stories"), THAT WOULD NOT BE OKAY. As much as I do not want to participate in a racist fandom, so do I not want to participate in a fandom that operates on shady threats, and I don't want people who would resort to shady threats doing it in the name of my anti-racist cause.

But I have seen no evidence of any of that. What I have seen evidence of is this:

Fandom, you guys are champions. I think you are bloody superheroes. Look at that list of links back there! THERE ARE NINETY-FIVE LINKS IN THAT LIST. And that's not even all of what I could be including. Those are just the discussion posts, okay, or the posts with a lot going on in the comments. There are also a large number of posts that exist purely to boost the signal, and a bunch of mostly-personal posts that also include links and commentary, and then there are more posts that are flocked. Of course discussion at spnpermanon has been ongoing, and a lot of it has been great. We are not the majority of fandom... but that is still a lot of people who have made it their business to make it clear to fandom that racism is unacceptable. A good chunk of the posts are by allies -- people of color have not had to bear the burden of managing this fail alone.

And here is the thing: none of the posts I have linked to -- none of the posts I have seen, period -- have been abusive towards the author of the fic. I have seen people criticizing the fic and her apologies, and people venting their feelings, and people protesting racism and silence, and people speculating on how she came to write such a fic, and people choosing to ignore the author and talk about the fic, and people choosing to put the fic aside and talk about fandom, and people putting fandom aside to talk about their own experiences, and people putting that aside to talk about anti-racism more generally. More than one hundred posts, you guys? Several thousand comments? And none of it has descended into personal attacks or cruelty. Criticism and discussion are not abusive.

In conclusion: I don't condone abuse, harassment, or bullying. NEITHER DO YOU and I think that is exactly as it should be.

Have some more links:

glorious_spoon wrote My $.02
ellia wrote Another Signal Boost
*** musesfool wrote seriously, knock that shit off (or on LJ)
via escritoireazul, sainfoin_fields wrote things you should know about
via escritoireazul, vylit wrote i want to be under my blankets (or on DW)

ETA - further news, 6/21/10 @ 10:30 PM

Okay. This is something I've seen happen several times before in discussions of racism, and I am tired of seeing it happening, so I'm going to go ahead and address it here.

(Jay Smooth is a New York-based hip-hop video blogger. Via eruthros, facetofcathy typed up a transcript of the above video here.)

Right. So I recently came across yet another post pointing to the few people at the beginning of all this who commented on the fic master post with misogynistic slurs. That post was focused on those comments to the exclusion of everything else everyone has said, and used this video as a prop to criticize the whole fandom protest.

This is not the first time this sort of thing has happened. The last time it came up (here), this is what I said:

It is a tone argument, but it's more infuriating than your basic tone argument, because it has the added bonus of appropriating something a PoC said and then misusing it. I like Jay Smooth, and the vid itself is cool (if optimistic), but that? Is certainly not how he intended for the vid to be used.

(Also, the sheer ridiculousness of a white person using one black person to educate another black person on how to speak to white people is SO RIDICULOUS there are no words that can do it justice.)

Jay Smooth (illdoc) replied to my comment, and this is what he said:

I feel awfully pretentious declaring "how my video should be used" (I never imagined at the time that it'd be "used" or become this sort of reference point in any context), but yes, what you describe here is certainly not what I had in mind.

The whole point of the video is trying to *keep the focus on* what [___] said ..so if you jump into a conversation where a POC is calling out what [___] said, and use that video to quibble with the POC's tone, thus diverting the focus *away* from what [___] said, you're basically using the video for the exact opposite of what the video advocates. :)

Also, I mos def didn't mean to suggest the video's approach is guaranteed to (or even likely to) bring mutual understanding between you and your antagonist, or bring about some epiphany in them. I'd expect the odds against this to be astronomical no matter what approach you use. If I knew this video was destined to have such a long shelf life I'd have added a disclaimer to that effect.

If we could please stop using this video to silence people of color, that would be AWESOME.

Obviously those few anon comments at the beginning of all this were abusive. (We have been through this.) But again -- four or five comments out of thousands? It is utterly derailing to keep focusing on them.

On another subject! I was tweeting with littlemousling earlier today and some stuff came up -- namely, the misappropriation of terms meant to help marginalized groups by members of a privileged group. For example:

SAFETY - A "safe space" is any space -- like a GSA meeting, or a feminist book club, or the Black Culinarian Society (which I joined back when I was in culinary school), or hopefully this post -- which values the interests of the marginalized group on which it is focused over the needs of a member of a privileged group who enters that space, invited or uninvited. Safe spaces are little slices of the universe in which you can let down your guard with people who are like you without fear of being attacked for being gay, or female, or a person of color, or disabled, or transsexual, or whatever it is about you that makes you different and which people who are not like you use as an excuse to treat you with fear, ridicule, violence, dismissal, and/or cruelty. In such a safe space, members of the marginalized group and their issues are given privilege, while members of the usually privileged group are not accorded certain privileges -- like the right to make themselves and their issues the focus of conversation -- which they usually have outside of minority safe space.

The reason safe spaces are needed, of course, is because in the greater world the interests of gay people come second to the interests of straight people; the interests of women come second to the interests of men; the interests of people of color come second to the interests of white people, and so on and so forth.

I, personally, try not to call the greater world "safe for white people" -- though sometimes I slip up -- because it implies that white-oriented society is a haven, a bomb shelter, for white people, and if they leave it they'll suffer the same kind of institutional racism that people of color suffer, which is not true. For people of color, our safe spaces really are like bomb shelters. Every time I am in a group of people that is mostly white, which happens, oh, every time I leave my bedroom, I put on my mental radiation suit. So does every person of color. So does every person who is in some way marginalized. If you are a woman who has ever been outnumbered by men, you know what this feels like, and you know what it is like to finally be able to retreat to your bomb shelter where you are alone or with other like-minded women, where nobody will treat you like an object or come on to you when you are really not interested or argue with you when you try to explain that something is sexist.

A lot of fen have been saying they don't feel safe in fandom because marginalized people are speaking out against various kinds of bigotry in fic. What that actually means is they're feeling uncomfortable because marginalized fen are trying to clean and cultivate the world outside our bomb shelters. "Safety", when privileged fen use the word, means "the right to be thoughtlessly bigoted without fear of repercussions".

If you are a white person in a safe space for people of color, you are probably not unsafe. The word you are looking for is "unprivileged" or "uncomfortable". Please stop using our word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

SILENCING - Silencing is what a privileged group does to a marginalized group when the marginalized group tries to speak up for themselves.

So -- people of color and their allies are protesting a racist story! If you, as a privileged person, tell us that it doesn't matter or to just let it go or that we're too angry or we're not being polite enough or we should be doing this differently (or any number of other derailing comments), you are working to keep us silent!

However. If you are a privileged person who has been confronted with evidence that you are or have done something racist, please think before you accuse marginalized people of silencing you. What rights of yours are being violated? Your right to be racist? Your right not to think about stuff -- like racism -- that makes you uncomfortable or introspective?

Think about it.

Now, have some links!

*** reddwarfer wrote Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar...
*** via metafandom, ivy_chan wrote i need a hand to help me lift some kind of hope inside of me
lierdumoa wrote My Thoughts On the Latest Race Wank
muccamukk wrote Some Thoughts on Comm and Challenge Rules
via muccamukk, schmevil wrote put it in the rules
via fandomnews, nzraya wrote the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was 'Oh no, not again'
via aldehyde, kerrikins wrote When has it gone too far? (or on DW)
*** emerald_skies wrote A matter of perspective
*** via fandomnews, belmanoir wrote Racefail stuff
via fandomnews, spacejunks wrote microaggressions (and racism)
dhobikikutti wrote Warning for *isms?
elf wrote My head can't tolerate this bobbing and pretending
sinatra wrote bit of linkspam and QFT Sunday

ETA - further news, 6/22/10 @ 12:25 AM

I forgot to link this earlier because keeping up with this post means I have five and a half rows of tabs open. I apologize.

ted/theo_harrison wrote as spoon_network A Spoon-free Signal Boost About Racefail.

This is a post, using LJ's new repost feature, for people who care about the current discussion but do not have the spoons to write, relink, and handle lots of debate. (For those of you who don't know what "spoons" refer to, the Spoon Theory is explained here. I have seen the concept of "spoons" appropriated by other marginalized groups, but my understanding is that it's meant first and foremost to refer to people with disabilities or illness.)

Thank you.

Also, another great link that was hiding in my tabs:

*** via perfumaniac, aesc wrote "it's just a story": an argument for getting rid of the 'just'

ETA - links, 6/23/10 @ 3:10 PM

esorlehcar wrote an untitled post
*** maychorian wrote On Fandom Reactions
via maychorian, dotfic wrote On feeling safe in fandom
eumelia wrote The Fallacy of Symmetry (or on LJ)
telesilla wrote Wait, silencing?
mari4212 wrote an untitled post (or on DW)
*** via glockgal, thoracopagus wrote on silence, entitlement, fanfic and criticism

*** glockgal unlocked take these broken wings, which was written recently, though not in response to this particular instance of fail. I'm pimping it because it addresses issues of intersectionality, which has not been addressed much so far.

I added stars to my favorites of these entries, but honestly I think all of them are worth following up.

ETA - links, 6/24/10 @ 4:30 PM

via metafandom:

bewize wrote Authorial Responsibility
amaresu wrote Community Standards, OH NO! (or on LJ)
*** rhivolution wrote The Privileged Fan's Primer to Not Fucking Up (or on LJ)
dysprositos wrote Dogpile!

inkstone wrote You know what, fandom?
*** via inkstone, wistfuljane wrote Thank you for continuing to dehumanize us
via inkstone, la_vie_noire wrote ..Right
*** via handyhunter, ephemere wrote The pomegranate lamp
*** via wistfuljane, deepad wrote On labelling ourselves as acts of alliance
via wistfuljane, spiralsheep wrote In which there is online bullying and harrassment

I'm doing my best to keep up with both links and comments. If I haven't gotten back to you yet, I will soon.

ETA - further news, 6/26/10 @ 10:50 PM

teleen_fiction wrote Help Haiti:

I've been speaking offline to several other people about the SPN race!fail. As we spoke, I began to wonder if perhaps some of this energy that we're all using to think about how a racist story came to be written and how to prevent them from being written in the future could be used to actually try and help the people of Haiti, who were the ones that the author exploited for her story.

LINKS:

*** fairestcat wrote On Having the Conversation
via dotfic, cofax7 wrote Oh, fandom. (or on LJ)
via metafandom, havocthecat wrote Oh, fandom. It's been a faily sort of week. Or two. (or on LJ)

*** dotfic wrote Of spoons and sporks, reader reactions, silence, and the "majority"

... because I've seen quite a few comments along the lines of how a majority is at work talking about racefail in the recent spn fandom discussion and how some of the people speaking up were acting like sheep, going along with the crowd: [...] I'm not claiming this is definitive, and maybe I'm wrong -- my point is no matter how I can imagine spinning the numbers, I can't come out to any way seeing the discussion of the J2 fic racefail as a majority at work. But here's my attempt to back this up with actual numbers, spaghetti-method.

I just want to say that I love that post. I want to grab it by the hands and lead it in a merry square-dance, not even kidding.

I've read a lot of comments by people who are of the opinion that people are taking the critical side of this racefail to "go with the crowd", because it's what the "majority" is doing. dotfic has been good enough to figure out, using actual Math for Grown-ups, what the likely percentages are -- of fandom in general, and of SPN/J2 fandom in particular -- and to prove that these numbers do not in anybody's universe equal a majority.

I've also read a lot of comments that suggest that people are anti-racist because it's "cool" or "hipster" or "fun" or because BNFs are doing it, or something. I just want to take a moment to debunk this.

(The easiest point, at least for me, is that I am not, by anyone's measure, a BNF, and though a number of people I recognize and respect have spoken up, I was guaranteed nobody's support when I first posted the original entry.)

On to the rest: I have not been anti-racist all my life, but my family has, and seeing what they went through -- and experiencing, the times I was taken to conferences or protests, what anti-racist work was like -- made me COMPLETELY SURE that being anti-racist was hopeless, likely to make people hate you, and way more trouble than it was worth. Better to smile and nod and ignore racism whenever I had to -- or even play into it when I had to.

Obviously I have since changed my mind! Various situations in my personal life eventually made it really, really difficult for me to ignore latent or unintentional racism (which was my main coping method) in some friends who were very dear to me, which in turn heightened my awareness of racism in popular media, which led to my participation in anti-racism in fandom. I now think it's worth it; I understand why my family valued their work so highly; I'm glad I am able to host this round-up and write some meta that's meaningful to people.

But -- I still think that anti-racism, like any type of anti-oppression, is likely to make privileged people and marginalized people in denial, if not actively hateful, at least angry, defensive, wary or dismissive.

It is not fun or hip or easy. I don't enjoy posts claiming that anti-racist criticism is comparable to banning transformative literature; or comments comparing anti-racist outrage to a lynch mob; or being told I'm "over-sensitive"; or being asked for proof that racism has hurt me. (When somebody asks a question like that, there is no proof except photographic evidence that will get them to even consider my point of view -- and even then they'd come up with something to dismiss me.) I don't enjoy the expectation that I be polite and patient against all odds; or that I host all discussion, no matter how futile, hurtful or hateful, in my journal. I don't enjoy being told that people of color who are angry and hurt are the bullies; I don't enjoy the thousand different types of derailing; I don't enjoy being told that by discussing racism instead of ignoring it, I am exacerbating the problem. I don't enjoy nasty comments in my Inbox or making the choice to freeze a thread or ban somebody.

This is not meant to be self-pitying. Once I started collecting links I started preparing for all of this: I knew EXACTLY what I was getting into. I'm not sorry, and I don't want to stop, and I am grateful for all of you who are still reading or who have commented or who have made a post or who have engaged other people in discussion. But I do want it on the record: particularly for people of color, anti-racism is not a fun hobby, or something we do for kicks, or a leisure activity that we do regardless of our own opinion because all our friends are doing it, like knitting or mini-golf or reading Twilight. (YMMV -- those are all things I've done without enjoying myself much.) It is painful and personal and it can lose you friends and it often does not end well.

Experience has taught me, and I imagine many of you, that the best way to have uncomplicated fun, and to make people like me, is to agree with the majority, ignore things that upset me, and resolve not to make waves -- i.e., the exact opposite of speaking up against oppression.

Once more I did not plan to rant! Apparently these things just happen.

Further bulletins as events warrant.

Comments

[muccamukk]

Some Thoughts on Comm and Challenge Rules

Hey, thank you for keeping this updated. You've been amazing.

I also really appreciate your comments regarding the death threats. While, if they did happen, they're totally not okay, I have serious doubts about their veracity. They seem almost like the meta equivalent of fanon. One hears about it a lot, but no screencaps are ever provided in support.

[amazonziti]

Thanks! I have added your link, along with a number of others.

You are totally welcome. =)

I couldn't help myself, really. I am so sick of the accusations of death threats and abuse! This is not meatspace, in which asking for proof can lead to victim-blaming. Screencaps? A copy of a message? The first time someone mentioned death threats? The person who made the threats? Give me something people.

[muccamukk]

I just had a discussion with someone who for sure saw death threats from anons in the original BB post. Zie seemed very sure, and seemed offended that I wanted screen caps.

I remain sceptical.

[amazonziti]

If the threats were made by anons, they could not have been deleted by anyone but whoever mods spnpermanon, and so they probably are still there. This someone you're talking to needs to crack their knuckles and get down and do their research.

My skepticism marches ever onward.

[ithiliana]

I've been following this much more superfically than I should (am swamped at work right now), but am seeing parallels with the whole WisCon/RaceFail/white people feeling unsafe thing: the claims that disagreement/critique equals attacks (or even worse, in this case), the vagueness, the "oh people would too be attacked" without any proof or links--it's all this paranoid projective world that some privileged people refuse to abandon.

Also seconding the idea that somehow being "polite" is so important: when I sent out an announcement on my campus about a queer studies working group, I got several emails that were perfectly politely phrased but basically said I was going to burn in hell. They were...almost textbook examples of how politely worded communications can be abusive!

[amazonziti]

Haha there's no requirement for how closely you "should" be keeping track of this instance of RaceFail; as much as you can, I guess, but that varies from person to person! And I know I need to take breaks because it's exhausting.

it's all this paranoid projective world that some privileged people refuse to abandon.

Yup. It's the same kind of paranoia that kept some of my white friends' parents from letting them go to a black friend's house in Harlem. Black people will be lurking around corners, angling their mirrors so they can take unsuspecting white girls by surprise because obviously they have nothing better to do! I have no patience for this! None at all!

Politeness can be deadly. I mean, it's generally my personal preference -- I feel like I'm more in control when I'm polite, and when I'm on my game I can lift politeness to unimaginable heights of breathtaking rudeness, which is a skill I value highly -- but to suggest that politeness is harmless is disingenuous. (Some of the most racist things that were ever said to me were presented as compliments.)

It's also just -- okay, no matter how polite and not secretly rude people are, privileged people will still cry glistening tears of "Who? Me?"

couldn't tell if you had this link already

[stoneself]

a "old" link about safe spaces and privileged people entering therein those tears

Re: couldn't tell if you had this link already

[amazonziti]

I appreciate the link! I'm not sure I am going to add it to the post, since I am doing my best to add only links that are relevant to this specific incident of fail (if I didn't set some boundaries, this post would get even more out of hand than it already is).

I definitely relate to the poem, though. And the fail in the comments goes even further towards proving its point.

[(Anonymous)]

I know that I'm coming late here, but I just wanted to say a few things. Regarding this situation ... 1) at least we (and I say "we" in solidarity but also in a pan-fandom way) got some kind of "apology," (however facile and insincere) 2) at least we got the author to take the offending fic down, and 3) at least this entire affair inspired some dialogue, however fraught with problems it may be.

Several years ago, my ethnic group was demeaned in a fic. Our historical problems were misappropriated, misrepresented, distorted, and ultimately cheapened for dramatic effect. It was very similar to this whole Haiti fic affair, i.e. let's portray a historically-oppressed people as animalistic, violent by nature, and just too stupid to solve their own problems. Let's disregard 500 years of very real and painful ethnic conflict to make a simplistic, reductive point: violence is bad.

For me, reading this fic was like swallowing a knife. I do not live in this part of the world, but my family does and confronted ethnic violence on a day-to-day basis. (Everything about their lives was governed by this inequality--the names they chose for their children, for instance, had to be "neutral" enough so that they wouldn't suffer discrimination or violent attacks.) But anyway, to see history distorted in such offensive ways was really difficult.

At the time, I contacted the author to educate her on some of her misconceptions; she didn't care. She pretty much brushed off my protests and the protests of others. She said that the basic premise of her story--that bigotry is bad--was what was important, and that the "little details" didn't matter. She admitted that she had misrepresented basic historical facts for her own ends, but that she was doing it for dramatic effect. And, she said, the fic had received such good reviews! So many DID read it as an inspiring invective against ethnic conflict, which was what mattered. She also said that I had "read too far" into the story; that the story "wasn't meant" to be read as being about the conflict she had misappropriated, that the story's focus was simply on the main character anyway. She actually punctuated her responses to us with *shrug* and said "you're entitled to your opinion." Her sense of privilege still nauseates me.

I didn't ask her to take it down; I didn't even ask for an apology. I just wanted an understanding. I just wanted her to know that my family's pain isn't something to be trifled with, and that the situation was far more complex than she obviously grasped. For the sake of all people everywhere, I just wanted her to do a fucking google search, just a little goddamn research. That was all. Hey, one less uneducated person in the world is enough of an apology for me. I didn't need the fic to come down (though that would have been nice). I just wanted the author to acknolwedge that she'd gotten her history wrong, and that she would be more careful in the future.

Well, needless to say, this fic is still on the internet, still picking up the occasional good review even.

This J2 Haiti fic thing pretty much proved something to me: It takes a lot of protesting to get a response. A few dissenters here and there wouldn't have provoked any interaction between the author and the audience; it took a shitload of outcry for ANYTHING at all to happen.

And this is the other thing: My ethnic group is a small one, and I am white-appearing. My last name is not distinct; I pass. In most of the world, I reap the benefits of white privilege, and I would never make light of this. (In fact, seeing the way my relatives are mistreated drives home just how privileged I am.) I personally would never, ever, in any way, shape or form, claim to be "oppressed"--but my family members ARE oppressed. And because my group is a small one, and because we don't have the definitive markers of "other" (non-white skin), we have no recourse for this kind of thing. When someone makes light of our pain, no one cares. No one even notices. Some people might say, "Well, you're white, so it doesn't matter, you still have a lot of cultural capital elsewhere"--and this is true, but it obscures the fact that, this particular place, and in this particular point in history, this group is suffering or has suffered, and it isn't right to blatantly disregard, misrepresent, and misappropriate that suffering. It's not right that authors get away with this shit just because the targets of their imaginings are physically white. There are still real flesh-and-blood people out there on the other end of this. That's what pisses me off most of all about gatorgrrrl's story--a total lack of regard for actual living and breathing individuals who physically experienced that pain.

So, I guess this is just my long-winded way of saying that I want to see this kind of outcry and outrage when nasty, racist, and culturally blind stuff is written about any kind of people. I want to see outrage when people misappropriate the Armenian Genocide, the Bosnian War, the Irish Famine, the Holocaust--shit, I want to see people get pissed off at wrong-bad portrayals of Appalachian people. I'm not advocating for a widescale essentialization of ethnic conflict (i.e. we are all oppressed and everyone everywhere who's oppressed suffers the same pain regardless of color!), because that's clearly reductive and ahistorical, but I want to see people be more outraged by misrepresentation in general. It's easy to get people riled up over the obvious misrepresentations of Haitians and Cambodians; it's harder when we're talking about my Bosnian friend, now a "white" person in my country, who was trafficked as a sex slave during the war.

Anyway, thanks.

[amazonziti]

I want more outrage too, to be honest. It's only when something is wildly over the line that we all react so strongly. I find different kinds of fail every third story, honestly, but I can't call it out every time I see it because that would be exhausting, I'd make way more people angry than I could handle, and I'd never enjoy anything. I have to save my energy and my resources for when it really hurts me, like this particular story did.

I know what it's like to feel like you have no choice but to keep quiet, and I'm sorry you've seen your own story/your family's story misappropriated.

[eruthros]

Wow, more than a single lj post! Thanks for the additional links.

FYI, if you want to make the Jay Smooth content more accessible to people who can't watch video, facetofcathy wrote up a transcript.

[amazonziti]

The conversation is getting more and more broad, which is pretty cool. You're very welcome. =)

Thank you for that link! I will add it the next time I update.

[coffeeandink]

Thank you for writing up the section on "safe space"! The cooption of the term has been chafing my hide.

[amazonziti]

You're welcome! Seeing it misused drives me nuts. I think it was a couple of weeks ago that somebody in wiscon first addressed privileged use of the word "safety", and I felt it bore reiterating.

[(Anonymous)]

THANK YOU.

-Jackie M.

[amazonziti]

You're welcome. Thanks for reading and commenting.

[laurashapiro]

This is a marvelous, marvelous post. Thank you so much for putting so much thought and energy into this discussion.

[amazonziti]

Thank you! The topic is pretty important to me. Also, you're welcome, and I'm glad you're reading and commenting.

[delux-vivens.livejournal.com]

Great post.

[amazonziti]

Thank you!

And thanks for your own anti-racist posts -- I recognize your username from some anti-racist comms I watch.

[(Anonymous)]

Just wanted to say thank you for the explanation of safe spaces. Honestly, it's something I've had a hard time understanding before, but I think I finally get it.

[amazonziti]

You're totally welcome. I'm glad my post was useful.

[ironed_orchid]

Here via cooffeeandink, thanks for being so articulate and clear about what a safe space means, and how it should be used.

[amazonziti]

You're welcome. Thank you for reading and commenting.

[badgerbag]

Epic! well said! Thank you!

[amazonziti]

You're welcome! And thank you for reading and commenting.

[reileen]

Thank you for taking the time to do a link roundup, and also for talking about the terms "safe space" and "silencing" and what they mean.

[amazonziti]

You're very welcome.

I've been seeing those terms misappropriated by privileged people all over the internet and I was so tired of it! I'm glad I was able to talk about safety and silencing in a way that meant something to people.

here via rydra_wong

[were_duck]

Oh wow, thank you SO MUCH for collecting these links. I have been away from the internet for a bit and am only now catching up on how this fail has been playing out, and wow. That misapplication of Jay Smooth is heinous! Also, I really like your discussion of what a 'safe space' is and does, that solidifies a lot of things for me, both in my experience and in how I've gotten uncomfortable with how the term has been applied in fandom.

Thank you so much for doing so much of the heavy lifting on this.

I'm doing a link roundup and will be linking to this post if that's okay (if not, I will edit my post). Also, you seem really awesome in general and I'd like to subscribe if that's okay?

Re: here via rydra_wong

[amazonziti]

People should have to apply for a permit to use that Jay Smooth vid, for serious.

I'm glad my discussion of safe space was useful! Yeah, it's being flung around a lot by people who don't really know what it means. =(

Thanks for your thanks, and you're welcome, and it is totally all right for you to link and/or subscribe!

[ithiliana]

You are doing such an incredible job--the first post was superb, and your points made in the linked discussion and in this one are even more so. Thank you for doing this work (am subscribing and giving you access -- not expecting reciprocal!)

[amazonziti]

Thank you so much for reading and commenting -- I'm glad my posts and comments are meaningful to you! You're very welcome. And welcome aboard, lol! (JSYK, I am not often this serious. Often I talk about Adam Lambert instead.)

[such_heights]

Thank you so much for articulating all of this so well.

[amazonziti]

You're welcome, and thank you for your own contributions to the discussion.

This.

[jazzypom]

But I do want it on the record: particularly for people of color, anti-racism is not a fun hobby, or something we do for kicks, or a leisure activity that we do regardless of our own opinion because all our friends are doing it, like knitting or mini-golf or reading Twilight. (YMMV -- those are all things I've done without enjoying myself much.) It is painful and personal and it can lose you friends and it often does not end well.

Seriously. Not that I want to get into details (because the entry was flocked and then deleted) but someone on my flist wrote why we should support avatar (so that people could have their jobs, and that she could be assured of one once she got out of college) and I was shocked. I had to log out of the entry, knit a row or two, because this was on the heels of the J2 fic and on that post re: gibberish vs creole and I was still feeling raw. So I wrote saying that in all good conscience, if Avatar's fail made one less studio of fail in this world, I'd be pretty happy about it. She went off, had a thought, and then apologised.

In addition, the thing of being anti racist, is not because I'm doing it for kicks. I do remember someone calling a character of colour 'an ape' and I took him to task about it (and his defence, he wasn't racist because he was Scandinavian - or something). He couldn't help the fact that I was upset, you see, it wasn't his ~intent~.

However, to his credit, he backed down, read all the posts that you linked (I think, he hasn't said) and issued a full apology and retraction on his LJ, so yeah, if it means that one less person is engaging in the fail, and will call on someone else for engaging in the fail, I tell myself that it must be payment enough.

The thing is though, even on my flist, people say stuff that will make me go, "Oh." Because it's so off the cuff and casual, to call them on it makes me look like a dick (but I do anyway, because in for a penny, in for a pound), and although I've been trolled and called a wanky bitch because I do try to call stuff out when the spoons have been scarce, I do it anyway, because like I told a white fen, I don't have the privilege of not speaking out, of not trying to make the fandom spaces a bit safer for me and my fellow chromatic fen.

These fandom conversations are paying off, in that some comms are now putting in anti oppression posts, so that people can think before they post. It's not much, but it's plenty, because if there's a change of attitude online, it will carry over to real life, and if there's one less poc out there on the receiving end of such crap, then I'm all for being a wanky bitch, true facts.