Originally posted as a thread on Twitter on August 4, 2018

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Fandom about shows/films with white queer characters: “You have to support it because it’s a win for ~all of us~ and #RepresentationMatters”

Fandom about shows/films with queer characters of color: “I don’t know why, but just don’t feel like this is something I’m interested in”

I was thinking about Empire again, and Pose, and Moonlight, and Black Lightning and how a majority of white queer folks and white members of fandom claim to want to support all forms of queer representation… until brown people are involved.

Call Me By Your Name is seen as a more universal queer story than any single film or book about a queer character of color. Love Simon is hyped in a way that a similar film about a lesbian of color in his rom-com shoes would never be.

And it’s… frustrating.

As far as I can tell, Troy Fall of A City doesn’t have the same fanbase/fandom response as Madeline Miller’s Song of Achilles (the former has black actors playing Achilles and Patroclus while the latter is… a book and does not)

And I know racism (specifically antiblackness for the examples I used) isn’t the only reason why those things haven’t gotten huge fandoms but like… I’ve seen how transformative fandom treats and talks about black people.

Antiblackness is a HUGE reason behind the disinterest. Consider all the queerbaiting, “bury your gays” laden, racist and ciscentric media we’ve seen fandom continuously lose their minds over in the name of queer rep…

And then consider the overarching silence fandom tends to keep when qpoc star in queer media.

And I’m not even getting into fanworks for these shows or media, but I could. I could absolutely talk about how a ton of queer white people in fandom kind of seem like they prefer to consume and create content with white queer characters…And how they have excuses on hand for it