Commodification and Responsibility

[rynling]

On one hand, I agree with this sentiment wholeheartedly and have been preaching it since 2016.

One the other hand, I do think that, if you have a sizeable enough platform, you have a responsibility to use it wisely.

On my third hand - and this is the hand stretching directly out of my anxiety-ridden heart - I think it's scary how social media has blown issues relating to commodification and responsibility wildly out of proportion.

Something happened this week with Noelle Stevenson. Because of the nature of Twitter, I'm not really sure what it was, but I think they made some sort of visual gag related to a noncanonical sibling of one of the She-Ra characters during a BLM charity livestream. Like, the character Bow is an archer because his name is "Bow," so maybe he has a sibling who is a farmer because his name is "Sow." This was apparently perceived as an insensitive comment about Black people working in the fields. Or something?

Regardless of their intention, Stevenson apologized immediately, publicly, and sincerely...

...and that tweet was interacted with tens of millions of times. I've muted a lot of words associated with fandom discourse, but my timeline was still filled with people making vaguetweets about being disappointed with creators they once looked up to. And that's fair, of course, but still. It took a lot of maneuvering for me to figure out what everyone was tweeting about, and I still can't be sure what actually happened. All I know for sure is that a hashtag with Noelle Stevenson's name garnered far more attention on Twitter this week than news relating to Jacob Blake.

It could be that people are responding to much deeper issues concerning hiring on the She-Ra staff and cast and representation on the show. I wouldn't know, but I think that's a reasonable assumption to make given common industry practices. Stevenson's personal Twitter feed, however, is all about supporting people of color and boosting minority voices. But again, I don't know what's going on, so I'm not in any position to judge.

All that being said, it's not easy to be perfectly polished when you're giving an impromptu public performance that hasn't been rehearsed in advance or edited afterwards, and sometimes you say dumb shit because you're nervous. I still think about very specific stupid things I said during my first year or two of teaching that never would have left my mouth if I weren't giving a live performance while stressed out and tired, and I sincerely regret them and have done my best to grow from the experience. Even people with the best of intentions fuck up sometimes, you know?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that, while I believe it's important for people who have a large following on social media to be held accountable for their words and actions, the fact that a poorly considered offhand comment can become a matter of public discourse on an enormous international stage is frightening.

Comments

[lassarina]

I'm not in the fandom, but the general consensus among my friends who are (and who are generally very much focused on intersectional social justice) was that it was just a very slightly weird comment that got taken very, very far out of context and proportion, to a degree that was, well, frightening. AFAIK it was "only" about that singular comment, and not "this comment is emblematic of [all these other issues]". I don't know the creator, haven't watched the show, and have no horse in this race, other than being generally terrified by how much this went completely sideways.

It keeps cycling back to, I love writing, but do I want to be a published writer?

[rynling]

It keeps cycling back to, I love writing, but do I want to be a published writer?

Yeah... yeah.

I think this also has to do with not expressly presenting as a cisgender man at all times. I hate to make everything about gender, but WOW I have seen some shit in the communities surrounding zines, comics, and indie publishing. It seems to me that, if you're a man who doesn't even try to engage with diversity, you can get away with anything, up to and including actual assault. Meanwhile, the more I learn about Goodreads, the more I realize that a lot of aspiring writers and artists who operate outside of traditionally male-dominated genres and avenues of publishing will use any excuse to go out for blood.

Especially in the YA community, but definitely in romance communities as well. I couldn't care less about Star Wars, but even I noticed and was alarmed by how even The Mary Sue used to go after (queer and female) writers who retweeted something about Reylo. The current expectation that minority writers should be forced to out themselves for the sake of #OwnVoices is equally alarming. Yikes.

It's tough to admit this, but I actually lost friends over J.K. Rowling. People kept saying she was transphobic, and I would reply that I didn't want to trust the internet hate machine on the basis of a tweet she supposedly liked five or six years ago. The response (from actual academics) was not, "Since you study this sort of thing and have a lot of experience with it, maybe you're approaching it from a different angle," but instead, "SO YOU'RE HOMOPHOBIC THEN."

I know I've been on about this for years, but I hate how the tools and language of social justice have been appropriated for the purpose of enforcing militant groupthink. I used to tell myself that I wouldn't have to worry about this sort of backlash if I didn't have much of an audience, but my experience with Tumblr completely disproved that notion, and now I really don't know what to think anymore.

[runicmagitek]

Also count me in on Team Do I Really Want To Be A Published Writer.

The #OwnVoices movement has great intentions (to my understanding), but I hate how you essentially need to provide a resume of Shit You've Suffered Through to prove you're "qualified" to write that thing. Or on the flip side, just because I'm not able-bodied doesn't mean I want to write about that all the fucking time. It's exhausting to live with, let alone write about it.

Also, speaking of things men do and get away with, did you see the story a while back about some guy who added actual ingredients from Breath of the Wild into his story? It looked like he barely did a basic Google search and pulled some of the first responses. That's amusing and everything, but it's also infuriating A) that he apparently just laughed it off, as did most people on Twitter and B) knowing this would be a very different scenario if a woman did this.

[rynling]

I did read about this! So you know how there are various English-language websites and social media accounts that aggregate "weird" news from Japan? There are the same sorts of Japanese-language websites and accounts focused on weird news from America, and that's where I read about John Boyne. At first I thought it was cute and wholesome, and then I got the whole story about why people like this are why the #OwnVoices movement started in the first place. Yikes.

But I hear you about not wanting to turn certain aspects of your identity into a brand. Wow, do I ever hear you.

Like, I'm extremely grateful for people who are Here! and Queer!! and Ready To Talk About It!!! I love reading essays and comics about queer identity, and obviously I like when not everyone in the stories I read is straight. At the same time, sometimes I personally just want to write about A Creepy Town With A Dark Secret, and maybe that's an analogy for queer identity I guess, but really, it's mostly just me wanting to write about A Creepy Town With A Dark Secret.

And holy shit, as someone who just had to leave a job after disclosing a disability, I think maybe people shouldn't have to disclose anything in a super public and incendiary venue.

I get the feeling that perhaps young people who don't have much exposure to operating outside of high school and college can forget this if they spend a lot of time in progressive spaces online, but the wider world is still distressingly ignorant and bigoted.

[lassarina]

(oops I left reply form open for like a week.)

I also hate to make everything about gender but if it walks, talks, and quacks like a duck, PERHAPS IT IS A FUCKING DUCK.

It's interesting you mention the JK Rowling thing. I recently read a book about illnesses that disproportionately affect women, and it was interesting (if horrifying) for the first half.

Then the second half took a hard turn into Starhawk/1970s-feminism style "embrace the inner feminine" and Queen of the Underworld mysticism, and the whole thing felt a bit TERF-y, but also like - the book is literally talking about diseases that primarily affect women, and so yes, there is a degree of necessity of talking about DFAB bodies, but there are ways to do that that aren't weird TERF-y Starhawk feminism, and this was not that. And I was really conflicted about "am I seeing what I think I'm seeing", and the GoodReads reviews are a completely fascinating polarized 1-or-5 no in-between (I am one of the 1s.)

It always perplexes me when people jump straight to "you're *ist" because like - I know I have beaten this horse well past the point of no return, but everyone has different life experiences. And everyone is going to address certain things in certain ways. And I am genuinely interested in knowing why someone thinks $thing is not X, whatever X may be. (I get a lot of practice with this, tragically, with my in-laws.) Because the thing is, as much as the circular firing squad that is the left is not fucking helpful in any way, the porcupine firing squad of the left against everyone else is also not super helpful! I really hate when people use "the tone argument" as a way to shut down minority voices because it's a shitty tactic, but also, realistically, people engage with you better when you don't launch in screaming about how they're bad? It's complicated and hard.