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On Your Social Media Documenting Your Uncivil Society
As I continue to reblog cute pictures and post fluffy shipfic on Tumblr, I continue to be tagged on reblogs of social justice call-out posts. As far as I can tell, I'm being targeted because of a pseudo-literary reading of Ganondorf's villain monologue at the end of The Wind Waker (link), which is a fairly lazy piece of writing but for some reason got a decent number of notes when I posted it back in March.
I was doing a lot of "volunteer activism" at the time - one of my lawyer friends dragged me along to babysit people's children while she did pro bono legal advocacy for people whose relatives had been imprisoned during the recent riots in Baltimore - and a relatively minor but still important part of my motivation for posting the piece was that my experiences had made me sick and damn tired of seeing Ganondorf being portrayed as "evil angry barbaric Oriental other." Ironically, I'm now being accused of perpetuating neoliberal and neocolonialist ideology, ie, "black people always want white people's shit."
It's complicated, and I'm willing to acknowledge the validity of multiple points of view. What I am not willing to acknowledge is the condescending and counterproductive assumption that I am ignorant and need to be educated, especially not at the rudimentary "Intersectional Feminism 101" level at which Tumblr seems to operate (probably because a majority of its most active users are in fact college students).
As Angela Davis has written, "Whenever you conceptualize social justice struggles, you will always defeat your own purposes if you cannot imagine the people around whom you are struggling as equal partners."
I am going to get that quote tattooed on my palm; and, the next time someone sends me an off-anon message to inform me that I am a bigoted cunt and should commit suicide immediately, I will tell them to talk to my hand. Or to read Women, Race, & Class for a more informed and nuanced (and still gut-wrenchingly relevant, even thirty fucking years later) view of how to handle intersectionality, either way is good.
I would consider closing my ask box entirely, but I get a lot of sweet messages from friendly strangers and adorable anons. Also, I want to continue to document the "anti" "aggro" "discourse" on Tumblr, which I think is an extremely interesting subcultural movement. I've been having almost daily conversations with a professional cultural anthropologist friend of mine about the recent drama in the BBC Sherlock fandom, and the two of us are thinking of putting together an actual academic paper about Tumblr-based fandom wank. We have both seen our fair share of epic wank sagas since the early 2000s, but we both agree that the wank on Tumblr is really... special.
I was doing a lot of "volunteer activism" at the time - one of my lawyer friends dragged me along to babysit people's children while she did pro bono legal advocacy for people whose relatives had been imprisoned during the recent riots in Baltimore - and a relatively minor but still important part of my motivation for posting the piece was that my experiences had made me sick and damn tired of seeing Ganondorf being portrayed as "evil angry barbaric Oriental other." Ironically, I'm now being accused of perpetuating neoliberal and neocolonialist ideology, ie, "black people always want white people's shit."
It's complicated, and I'm willing to acknowledge the validity of multiple points of view. What I am not willing to acknowledge is the condescending and counterproductive assumption that I am ignorant and need to be educated, especially not at the rudimentary "Intersectional Feminism 101" level at which Tumblr seems to operate (probably because a majority of its most active users are in fact college students).
As Angela Davis has written, "Whenever you conceptualize social justice struggles, you will always defeat your own purposes if you cannot imagine the people around whom you are struggling as equal partners."
I am going to get that quote tattooed on my palm; and, the next time someone sends me an off-anon message to inform me that I am a bigoted cunt and should commit suicide immediately, I will tell them to talk to my hand. Or to read Women, Race, & Class for a more informed and nuanced (and still gut-wrenchingly relevant, even thirty fucking years later) view of how to handle intersectionality, either way is good.
I would consider closing my ask box entirely, but I get a lot of sweet messages from friendly strangers and adorable anons. Also, I want to continue to document the "anti" "aggro" "discourse" on Tumblr, which I think is an extremely interesting subcultural movement. I've been having almost daily conversations with a professional cultural anthropologist friend of mine about the recent drama in the BBC Sherlock fandom, and the two of us are thinking of putting together an actual academic paper about Tumblr-based fandom wank. We have both seen our fair share of epic wank sagas since the early 2000s, but we both agree that the wank on Tumblr is really... special.
no subject
If one could show that this hypothesis is supported by evidence rather than refuted, I am more than willing to say that the Stuff(tm) happening on tumblr really isn't fanwank at all but, instead, that it is yet another front of the much larger culture battle is being played out across America and the geocultural Western world. And I suspect you and your anth friend have already thought this?
As for the "single broad brush and fresh and cleansed coat of paint" comment, if we assume that white-on-white policing is what all this is primarily about, clearly the Solution(tm) is as simple as woke white folk enlightening everyone on how to properly behave. [/insert dramatically winking emoticon]
Because who owns that discourse?
...
Tumblr tags: staking out ownership of one's words?
Tumblr body comments: stepped on the soap box while everyone captures videos of it?
I have more to say about this at another time (another place) but now I am so late on my lunch break -- really late.
no subject
I should also say that all three of us have different understandings of what the designation "black" means, so I'm just going to use the term POC.
Our discussion of the possible white appropriation of POC modes of expression has been centered around the use of the expression "yall." What is the context of its use within the United States, what is the context of its use on "Black Twitter," what is the context of its use on Tumblr, when did it start being used on Tumblr, who is using it, how is it being used, that sort of thing. Most importantly, can we categorize its unironic and uninformed use as "appropriation" to begin with? We have citations for and citations against, but what we would really need are case studies.
Case studies are problematic, however, because how would we obtain useful data? Even if we did have data, could we ethically use it? To bullet-point our issues...
(1) People's identification of race/ethnicity/heritage can be complicated. Should an American understanding of race be privileged? Should people's self-identification (or anonymity) be respected?
(2) How can we "prove" that someone is of a certain race? Do we perform search engine background checks?
(3) If we don't dox anyone and take people's self-identifications at face value, what margin of error is acceptable as actual supporting data? Can we say anything meaningful using the anecdotal evidence we have, or would it simply be borderline libel?
Because we don't currently know how to answer these questions, race is off the table right now.
That being said, out of pure vicious spite we did do some thorough "research" into nine of our most hated "yall trolls," and what we found was that four of them are white, two of them are POC, and three of them are really good about not putting their personal data on the internet. In addition, even though the socially conscious communities within Sherlock fandom seem to be more organized along lines of gender identity than along lines of racial identity, many of the victims of fandom bullying who have spoken up on Tumblr and through meta posts on AO3 have self-identified as POC, attesting that the color of their skin has had a direct bearing on their experiences with sexual assault.
A sample size like this proves nothing, of course, but if nothing else we can say that "anti" "discourse" negatively impacts plenty of people who aren't white or American, even if race and nationality are not explicit elements of the flamewars that the Sherlock fandom has suffered from over the past year and a half.
This is just my personal take on the matter, but...
In a perfect world, the Internet of Other would be able to vent freely, and frustrations could be clearly aired within a reasonably safe space. To give a personal example, it's been extremely enlightening to me to learn about the aspie and spoonie communities via Tumblr. I understand that these people are not posting for my benefit, but before I joined Tumblr I'd never sought out or encountered anything even remotely like an non-pathologized inside view into those life experiences, and I'd like to think that my attitudes and behaviors have changed accordingly.
This sort of "fuck the system" mode of discourse feels like a part of a larger conversation to me; it feels like a direct manifestation of the "progressive small narratives" joining together to resist "conservative grand narratives" that postmodern feminism values so highly.
Meanwhile, the "fuck you" mode of discourse feels like an echo of reactionary Gamergate-style pseudo-activism that has lifted its discursive strategies wholesale from mainstream American news media. My anth buddy's suspicion is that this "constant attack" mode of discourse requires an enormous amount of emotional energy, and the people who posses the resources to engage in it are people who are speaking from a position of privilege, wherever that position may fall in the kyriarchy.
There are obviously a ton of factors at play here, and I'm still trying to figure out a focal point. For what it's worth, I'm also still trying to figure out whether I want to reify these conflicts by reproducing them.
Sorry for the long and disjointed response. If you've managed to read this whole mess - thank you!
no subject
Yes, this would flirt with opening pandora's box regarding research ethics. That aside:
...many of the victims of fandom bullying who have spoken up on Tumblr and through meta posts on AO3 have self-identified as POC, attesting that the color of their skin has had a direct bearing on their experiences with sexual assault.
A sample size like this proves nothing, of course, but if nothing else we can say that "anti" "discourse" negatively impacts plenty of people who aren't white or American, even if race and nationality are not explicit elements of the flamewars that the Sherlock fandom has suffered from over the past year and a half.
Well, one good thing about a case study is that eventually enough case studies exist for someone to perform a cross-case analysis.
FWIW, it parallels things I have seen and experienced in other fandoms, but only recently -- only over the past 5 or 6 years. A reflection of how polarized the world has become as of late?
Your "fuck the system" vs "fuck you" dichotomy: In the back of my brain I have been chewing on these two paragraphs on and off for hours while going about other things. For the past few years I have had parallel thoughts but my framing, perhaps, comes at the same thing from a different direction. The Internet of Other makes difference visible and, potentially, it makes disunity visible. While some people find this public discussion enlightening (for instance, your experiences while lurk-reading aspie and spoonie posts), other people find this public display of difference as evidence of disunity which, in turn, causes personal discomfort. Reactionary campaigns on tumblr often (at least to me) feel like discomforted people steamrolling the issue by imposing a simple/simplistic broad-brush "solution" for reestablishing equilibrium, comfort, and normative behavior & language. The Internet of Other is saying "are experiences are different" and the Reactionaries are trying to "fix" things to erase the discomfort of difference or to define the rules of behavior such that difference isn't a problem (from their pov). And, from what I have seen, so much of this comes from the Reactionaries deep seated social anxiety when not knowing how to act because they fear offending People of Other or being called out for doing/saying the wrong thing. So, either "solve" the problem by taking control over defining the rules of conduct or "solve the problem by discrediting the Other completely.
At least, this is what I repeatedly see from my seat in the stadium.
Sorry for the long and disjointed response. If you've managed to read this whole mess - thank you!
I read it all, twice. Sometimes a good ramble is what one needs to put thoughts together. :D
Still chewing on your ramble
This line jumped out at me on friday and repeatedly tickled the back of my brain. Something about it completely jives yet doesn't quite jive with my experiences. It hinges on how how one places meaning on the phrase "position of privilege."
Are folks who disrupt* fandom activities in constant attack mode or are they in constant defense mode and how do we tell they two apart? People whom I have seen in fandom who engage in constant defense mode are not speaking from a position of privs (but saying more isn't ethnically appropriate as a public comment over here).
That said, significant emotional energy is required which only means that their mental model of a cost-benefit analysis of the situation either favors disruptive behavior or disruptive behavior is the primary strategy they know to be effective. In the second case I would doubt disruptors are speaking from a place of priv b/c disruptive behavior is often a last resort tactic when no other successful tools/options exist (and when I think of disruptors in a fandom I am in, a number appear to fall into this category). Basically, disruption is a learned behavior despite it being a last resort tool because lack of privs in the greater world have taught this learned behavior. As for the first idea -- that their mental model of a cost-benefit analysis favoring disruption -- this is different from disruption being a tool of last resort (albeit a learned behavior) and is more likely to be coming from a place of middle-of-the-pack privileges because this reads as a strategic campaign to defend boundaries.
[* I use "disrupt" and "disruptive behavior" rather than "troll" and "trolling" because it isn't clear to me that people in fandom are intentionally shit-stirring for lulz (aka, trolling) and, in fact, many of the people who are doing disruptive things have valid points about classism, ablism, **-phobias, certain brands of feminism, orientalism, etc. Although it is true that some of these cases are a bit ... "Discoursish."]
Re: Still chewing on your ramble
In my experience, it's really, really easy to tell the two apart, and I think the difference is extremely important, especially since real violence is being performed against real people and causing real pain.
Classifying death threats, rape threats, anonymous hate mail, and organized bullying campaigns as "disruption" demeans the concept, regardless of the intentions of the people who are engaging in such behaviors. Moreover, I suspect that people who perform real "disruption," whether conscientiously or as a routine aspect of their lives on planet earth, would not appreciate being placed in the same category as people who get together to, say, urge someone to commit suicide.
For what it's worth, Whitney Phillips's monograph This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things has served as a useful resource to me in the development of my own understanding of the evolution of the term "trolling" and its connection to political-activism-in-scare-quotes. I'm using the term as Phillips does, namely, to designate aggressive and intentionally harmful online abuse targeted against an individual in order to provoke an extraordinary response.
Basically, I agree with you that "disruption" is understandable and justifiable, but a line does need to be drawn somewhere to demarcate defensive attitudes and behaviors from "trolling," even if that line then must be repeatedly renegotiated.
Re: Still chewing on your ramble
Thanks for the ref to Whitney Phillips' monograph. ps: my credit card says "hello." ;)
I scanned the monograph's ToC while nodding vigorously at how she breaks down the history into three periods with the years (2003-07, 2008-11, 2012-present) as it maps closely to my pet historical theories/explanations so now I am curious to read it to see how Phillips' ideas intersect with other ideas.
All that said, I am still on the fence regarding whether all people who engage in this definition of trolling are in attack mode or if some are in a highly vitriolic defense mode, and if that distinction can be drawn based on how their perceive their situation. And just because someone is psychologically in defense mode does not mean that their actions are justified, so I make this distinction purely to understand why they are motivated and **not** to justify or excuse their actions.
...and now I need to wait until Wednesday for that amazon package to arrive.
Edited to add: just started reading a review of Phillips' monograph and the reviewer says that Phillips makes the distinction between online bullying vs “the self-identifying, subcultural troll." So, using Phillips' definition (second hand here) I completely agree with you that she is talking about trolling as an attack mode subculture.
So, I will restate what I said above to adopt this use of language: there are people who are engaging in defense-mode cyberbullying and people engaging in attack mode trolling / cyberbullying. When the defense-mode cyberbullying escalates, it appears identical to the tactics used by trolls.