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rynlingAs 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
Date: 2016-10-08 09:18 am (UTC)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