I’ve been talking about misogynoir in fandom spaces for over a decade at this point – less than that on this site but still.

One thing that remains clear is that queer/feminist “transformative” fandom has never been interested in seeing Black women as valid and viable sites for shipping with the character fandom actually loves.

Fandom actively rejects romance and relationships for Black women unless it’s to make them a Mammy figure for someone they don’t care about so that duo can take care of their white fave.

Which brings us to The Bear and the way that, from the second the first season finished airing, people have decided to wring their hands and whine about shippers ”ruining” Syd and Carmy’s perfect platonic relationship by making it romantic in fanon and wishing it was requited and romantic in canon.

This new round of misogynoir disguised as introspective fandom criticism was partially kicked off from the release of the series’ second season… but also from TIME Magazine’s spicy headlined article “Should We Ship TV Characters? Viewers of The Bear Have Feelings”.

First of all, take that terrible headline back to 1993 and the X-Files fandom losing its mind over the “will they, won’t they” narrative and their feelings about that ship…. And leave it there

In 2023, it is frankly ridiculous to write an article asking if we “should” ship TV characters in the same breathlessly anxious way that one asks if they should ship Korean idols. People have been shipping TV characters dating back to the days of Star Trek – and perhaps even beyond that considering that soap operas have been around from the dawn of television.

Second of all, this article doesn’t engage with fandom as it is. There’s no reference to misogynoir or fandom’s overt antiBlackness problem especially when shipping Black women comes into play. There’s no contextualizing backlash against SydCarmy and people being smug little shits about the ship not beign canon.

There’s no recognition that this is a data point in fandom.

It’s not an outlier.

It’s not a ship war.

It’s something that has been going on for years in fandom that smugly talks down to Black women in these spaces and tells us that we are unintelligent and entitled for wanting to see (or actually seeing) deep romantic relationships involving Black women.

And it actually has impacted the ways that Black women – fans and performers – are able to engage with fandom.

Phillip Iscove, who was a writer on Sleepy Hollow (one of many Black fans boldest and most infuriating examples of the misogynoir feedback loop between fandom and the source media) made two infuriating tweets that I find incredibly relevant and telling.

In a now-deleted tweet, he said that:

Wait. Are there people out there that want Carmy and Syd to hook up???NO. Stop. Please keep your shipping nonsense at bay! Their relationship is based on a love for each other’s talent and ambitions not romance. People can be partners that don’t fuck. #TheBearFX

(Sentiments like that is why I’m writing a story where Syd reenacts some Megan Thee Stallion lyrics with Carmy and that gorgeous face. Because this wild “people can be friends/partners without fucking” shit would not fly for a ship that white people in fandom liked and that centered them solely. It’s only when it becomes a way to put Black women in their place where fandom likes them do we get the “let people just write these people as friends” routine without backlash.

Meanwhile, they can be partners who fuck. Open your narrow little minds, goddamn.)

But then he follows it up with a response to a twitter user by saying “I promise you from the bottom of my heart that it has nothing to [do] with race for me. Truly. I adore David & Keith or Six Feet Under as well as Crosby and Jasmine on Parenthood…”

Which is wild like his examples for interracial relationships he likes are… from shows that aren’t even on air. And this makes it clear that he has never and will never acknowledge his role in the toxic feedback loop of misogynoir that raged through the fandom to the staff to media coverage over at Sleepy Hollow.

The thing is that these attitudes and behaviors can’t be fixed with Terms of Service changes.

They are only fixable if you want to fix them.

If you care about the Black women in your fandoms, on your shows, on your screens. And too few people do. Look at the person who replied to Holly pointing out a pattern of misogynoir from Iscove, someone with power over shows and the ability to shape careers… in order to reaffirm how much they hated SydCarmy.

Something no one ever asked them to do.

All of this serves to remind Black women fans and performers of their place.

Of how little they’re cared for in these fandoms unless they can be useful.

To gaslight Black women fans about what has been going on for decades in fandom and harming Black fans, creators, and celebrities in the process.

The thing about misogynoir in fandom is that a lot of people write it off and pretend that these things that make Black women feel absolutely miserable in fandom… aren’t really racism because there are rarely any racist slurs used.

Or they say it’s not really racist because the person saying awful things about a Black character in narrative clinch with their preferred love interest will always reassure the readers or their followers that they just find that character annoying or cruel or abusive (because of malicious misreading) and has nothing to do with race even though the character they want their preferred white love interest with is always both worse fandom white.

From the dawn of fandom, it has been clear that fandom will go out of its way to make sure that everyone knows that any Black character, especially a female character in The Narrative is unworthy of main character status and love even in the case where they are the main character or a love interest to the main character.

Sure, they change how they say it.

Sometimes they say it’s because the character isn’t well written.

Sometimes it’s because they think the character has some kind of negative trait that harms the main character.

Other times they actually weaponize social justice language and pretend they care about Black women in relationships by saying that she should be alone because she’s strong and Black… and no Black woman can be both strong and coupled up.

And that’s not the end of it, because the people doing this  have spent years,  decades, coming up with transparent excuses for why they constantly say really horrible things about Black characters and the often Black women fan base pushing back against their unsubtle anti-Blackness in fandom.

But because fandom refuses to understand that these behaviors don’t exist in a vacuum even in fandom, this all gets written off as a ship war.

We’re talking about Snowbarry shippers bullying the different fans and cutting Iris out of official art but WestAllen shippers being called “jealous” and “antis” even though we are pointing out a decade long pattern of misogynoir that has hurt Candice Patton.  

We’re talking about racism from Rey/Kylo shippers being written off as appropriately aggressive (White) Feminism done in defense from hordes of FinnRey shippers… instead of looking at the way those shippers have spent years lying about John Boyega and harassing him while harassing other fans and journalists like me and Ashley Reese and even other actors like Rahul Kohli for pointing out their ongoing and utterly unwarranted harassment campaigns and abusive tactics.

How about us talking about the ways that Anna Diop (who played Starfire on Titans) was subject to abuse before the show had even aired because she was dark-skinned, Black, and no one could imagine or want her with Dick Grayson. Open misogynoir that required active defense against then became about ships like DickBabs or DickDove, not about the fact that people of different genders were attacking and harassing a Black actress because they didn’t see her as the ideal love interest for their preferred Main character.

And these Black actresses see this stuff.

They know when people around them are telling the fans that the character they play isn’t worthy of love. They can see the things people say about their characters and their relationships as that character.

They can see the incredibly racist and anti-Black things that people say about these characters in part because a lot of these people do actually say them to the actor themselves. They’ll tag them in social media posts insulting the character and insulting the actor. They will ask them racist questions at conventions – virtual and in person. They will send up their preferred ship at the direct expense of the actress the Black actress that’s directly in front of them.

And fandom will always take their side and decide that no this is just Black people being entitled when it is that Black fans have spent literal decades at this point watching white fans bend over backwards and make excuses for the nasty shitty things they say to and about Black people in romantic situations in pop culture when those things get fandoms.

Black women fans see this stuff and it makes us unable to escape into fandom because people go out of their way to tell us that the escapist fantasy, the silly romance, the hot guy… aren’t for us. Even in canons where they are.

Which brings us back to the Time Magazine article:

It is deeply frustrating that people who normally don’t give a shit about fandom journalism and go out of their way to frame it as “fake news” the second it peels back the layers and talks about the endless issues especially where Black fans are concerned… have absolutely been here like “yes thank you we’re validated because TIME Magazine thinks it’s weird to ship ____” or whatever they’ve gleaned from reading the headline and running with it.

And the TIME article isn’t the only one that positions this as a ship war or complains about shippers “ruining” a rare bromance from the headline, choice of image, or tweets embedded in the piece. There’s a HuffPost article making an argument against SydCarmy that especially grinds my gears because it is so dang condescending for no reason.  There are others on outlets (like this one on Slate) that aren’t as bad but similarly lack the willingness or range to look at the big picture of why Black women are riding so hard for SydCarmy and clapping back against detractors. It’s about decades of vicious misogynoir in fandom and Black fans getting tired of repeating themselves in the face of it.

No one cares about the fact that Black women in fandom are harassed and mistreated in the name of reifying white feminism in fandom and upholding the status quo. No one cares that Black fans defending Black women are portrayed as “antis”… but the racists giving them shit never are.

And the majority of fandom journalists don’t have the interest, range, or whatever to dig into this stuff and actually talk about what’s been going on in these fandoms for decades. No one cares about andom journalism when it’s saying stuff that actually matters about racism and fandom or harassment or bullying or whatever unless it’s like about fucking “antis” but when it comes to dismissing and undermining what Black women specifically in fandoms have been talking about for over a decade then it’s acceptable.

Then it becomes the accurate journalism that we should all be paying attention to.

Then it becomes okay to misrepresent (Black women) fans.

/

I don’t care if you don’t ship SydCarmy. I actually mainly left the first season shipping Syd with Richie.

But I do care about the fact that whenever we talk about ongoing patterns in fandom, people make it about themselves rather than looking at the big picture.

The big picture here is that in fandom, Black women are almost always turned into Mammy figures or Bros. Literally why Orlando Jones and I have mild beef is that I reminded people that he was part of the problem back in the Sleepy Hollow fandom at first and he didn’t like that reminder.

The big picture is that everyone rushes to remind Black women that fandom isn’t for them, that the escapism isn’t for them. It is constant. It is this shameless crowd rushing to let us know that there’s no way that Black could be the love interest, the Romantic ideal, to get the Short King Chef.

These shallow ass articles – like with fandom as a whole/norm –  always have to remind us that we don’t belong and that we are not on their radar.

Because if you were writing with Black fans in mind you wouldn’t start your article about shipping in the there by saying that we shouldn’t or by acting like a canonical platonic relationship negates any romantic potential.

 It’s just so frustrating so much of fandom journalism now is all about reinforcing white women’s right to dominate the social and creative power in these spaces. It is all about reaffirming them as the most beloved and reaffirming Black women as interlopers trying to control the space.

So much of it has become all about telling people that their right to be smug and condescending is more important than Black women’s rights to see or be themselves be seen even in the content they are creating for themselves.

I’ve been talking about the stuff for over a decade and no one ever understands it except for other Black fans who sat through people undermining them and harassing them and going after these actresses who are literally just trying to catch a paycheck and have fun with their coworkers and it’s so frustrating to deal with.

It doesn’t just stop at these fans saying that they specifically don’t like a ship. It always escalates and snowballs to where, years later, these Black actresses all will talk about how they felt they didn’t really have anyone in their corner aside from those Black fans who defended them at the direct expense of their relationships and reputations within fandom. It escalates to where showrunners and writers will write out romantic plots for Black characters because white fandom says they are not interested. They kill off characters like Abigail Mills. They never develop characters like Bonnie Bennett. They don’t protect the actresses beyond the most tepid of lip service.

It’s not just because Hollywood is incredibly anti-Black women but… because the fans give them no reason to think they should care about Black women either.

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And while I’m here? If you’ve ever shipped any level of incest ship, you are the last person anyone wants or needs to hear from when you roll up to dismiss a pairing with a Black woman character because of the familial vibes she supposedly has with her main romantic option.

Genuinely, nothing against 99% of shippers even here, but if you’re someone who ships siblings or another perverse familial relationship… but your moral hard limit is when a Black character is in a relationship with an unrelated white one and then it’s incest and then it’s badwronggross?

Hypocrisy isn’t cute, but silence is always free.

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Things To Read:

Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction

Race, Culture and Media

The Dark Fantastic

Who Actually Gets to “Escape” Into Fandom?

On Tom Hiddleston & Zawe Ashton, Misogynoir, and Why Fandom Should Stop Punishing Black Women

Freema Agyeman talking about the misogynoir she experienced from fans