Category: Fandom

Fandom Racism 101: Clocking and Closing The Empathy Gap

Stitch4 Comments

How does fandom’s empathy gap come into play when the trauma of POC is on the table? Why does the empathy that fans extend to white characters, fans, and performers, hit a hard wall at POC – especially when it comes to Black characters, fans, and performers in my direct experience?

In the Slate.com article “I Don’t Feel Your Pain”, author Jason Silverstein uses the following example as he describes the racial empathy gap:

Let’s do a quick experiment. You watch a needle pierce someone’s skin. Do you feel this person’s pain? Does it matter if the person’s skin is white or black?

For many people, race does matter, even if they don’t know it. They feel more empathy when they see white skin pierced than black. This is known as the racial empathy gap.

The way that non-Black people literally do not believe that Black people feel the same levels of physical pain – documented through over a century of studies – is one way that we see the empathy gap play out. However, this isn’t the way that it tends to play out in fandom because there’s no one out there pricking fans of color with pins to see if we bleed the same color and amount. (Yet.)

But what they do is constantly privilege white feelings over Black ones.

Read More »

[Stitch Talks Ish] Episode 6: When Black Lives Matter, But Black Opinions Don’t

Stitch6 Comments

Episode Notes

Transcript

Hello, darlings!

So this is episode – officially, Episode Six-  of Stitch Talks Ish. In the timeline, it’s Episode Seven because we had a bonus episode last month, I believe to celebrate the release of Yoongi’s second mixtape as Agust D, D-2. So, if you haven’t listened to that episode already please go check it out.

So this episode is called when “Black Lives Matter, but Black Opinions Don’t” because I have spent pretty much all of June and part of May realizing that for a lot of people, you know hashtagging, sharing petitions, and donating that is really all They think they have to do to be antiracist whether in fandom, in public, in their day to day lives, whatever.

They do the bare minimum, which is publicly perform antiracism.

They’ve bought the books. they own White Fragility. They share their few friends of colors’ GoFundMe ease and cashapps. They really do care about racism in the abstract.

And of course, they definitely don’t want Black people being killed because we’re Black, but they also don’t really care about us as people.

Read More »

Antiblackness in (Service of) the Archive: A Statement

Stitch10 Comments

Huge chunks of transformative fandom are currently playing the most actively antiblack game of telephone in the world.

And I’m the subject.

What will I be by the time they’re done? I’m already being compared to trans exclusionary radical feminists despite being nonbinary, accused of holding grudges against people I don’t know and have likely never interacted with, and being slandered literally every single time that someone else mentions me as an author to read.

And all because I write about racism in fandom in a relatively sharp tone.

Read More »

Thread Collection: Antiblackness in the Archive (6/14)

Stitch4 Comments

I just did a thread on Twitter about the specific ways that antiblackness manifests in fandom via fanworks on the Archive of Our Own (or any other hosting site, to be fair) revolving around punishing, harming, killing, etc Black characters and since some of y’all aren’t on Twitter or in the event that you’re blocked on my main… I turned it into a blog post lightly edited since I don’t have to abbreviate points for Twitter’s character count.

There’s a thing about the Racism on the Archive of Our Own that i wanted to mention.

The racism specifically directed at Black characters (and sometimes fans and performers) in some fanworks on the archive does diverge somewhat from racism aimed at non-Black East Asian or Latinx characters for example:

All characters of color get fanworks that are full of mild to major racist stereotypes and that is definitely a thing I don’t know how to fix via reporting or tagging.

But Black characters get that and abusive fan content to tear them down, dehumanize them, or put them in their place.

Read More »

I Am Not My White Friends’ Keeper

Stitch4 Comments

Here’s an interesting fact that you might not have known before this very moment: I, the Stitch, am apparently responsible for the behavior of any white person I am friendly or friends with inside of fandom. It doesn’t matter if I’ve seen the behavior or not. It doesn’t matter if everyone involved is an adult or not.

I personally am responsible for handling my white friends.

Or at least that’s what one Hannibal fan made it their point to claim when tagging me into a thread that I demanded that I take responsibility for and handle a white friend whose opinions on racebent characters in the show aren’t my opinions on racebending and whose behavior in fandom isn’t something I can or do control.

Read More »

Why Write About Fandom Racism At A Time Like This?

Stitch9 Comments

The short answer?

We live in a racist world and that world doesn’t stop existing when someone crosses over some kind of threshold to fandom.

The long answer?

In fact, because fandom communities are insular and twist themselves in circles to avoid engaging meaningfully with things that disturb the peace that they’ve surrounded themselves in –

The racism that folks have as baggage lugged around offline? Gets stuffed full of more racism and carted around to other fandoms.

Read More »

On Korean Artists Using Their Platforms to Say that Black Lives Matter

Stitch7 Comments

I didn’t expect that I’d be writing about the Black Lives Matter movement in the context of Korean pop and hip hop music – or their fandoms.

But that’s what this post is actually about – barring some all too necessary backstory about fatal antiblackness and police brutality in this country.

Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi created the Black Lives Matter movement began in 2013 as a hashtag (#BlackLivesMatter) in direct response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman, who had murdered 17-year-old Trayvon Martin the year before.

I remember the birth of the movement, but more than that, I remember watching the news when Zimmerman was acquitted. I remember clearly feeling anger that that man killed a child only a few years older than my oldest nieceling and was going to get away with it. Because we watched as we were told once again that Black lives didn’t matter.

I say once again because the United States is one of many countries to make it clear that Black people – our lives, our opinions, and our hopes – do not truly matter to them. The United States has a history that started with the Triangle Trade, kept on going through Reconstruction Era white supremacy up to the Civil Rights movement and –

Just hasn’t stopped.

Read More »

Stitch Reviews D-2

Stitch2 Comments

Spotify/Buzzsprout

Transcript

I went into Yoongi’s sophomore outing as Agust D knowing that I would probably find a ton to love about the album. After all, I literally love Yoongi’s voice. I’m talking about from the literal raspy sound of it and how he delivers his fierce verses to the way that he uses his Voice to unload sharp, intricate, and interesting commentary that often seems to revolve plainly around his past, present, and future as a rapper.

Mind you though, I was primed to like Yoongi’s return to the stage as Agust D.

For one thing, I am and will probably always be, fully fucking feral for every member of BTS’ brilliant rapline. (You may remember this from my review of BTS’ February release Map of the Soul: 7 because I couldn’t shut up about it then.)

Read More »

Fandom Racism 101: Introduction

Stitch1 Comment

The first time I used the hashtag #WhatFandomRacismLooksLike, it was March 2018 and the Marvel Cinematic Universe fandom post-Black Panther was hell. Despite everything that Black fans in the fandom had been trying to prepare ourselves for from the fandom, the fandom’s immediate focus was on either the minor white male characters who were in the film on any level or on diminishing the value of Wakanda.

As a result of what I kept seeing, I decided to write articles about what racism looks like in fanworks as well as in the behavior on display by fans towards performers and fans of color alike. I’d been doing it on Tumblr from 2012 and on my website since 2015, and I figured that as someone seeing all of this nonsense happening right in front of my salad, that I should just keep at it.

Read More »

Stitch Talks Ish Episode 5 – Returning to the Anitaverse

Stitch

On Buzzsprout/On Spotify

Transcript

Hello, Darlings, and welcome to what will hopefully be a slightly shorter episode of Stitch Talks Ish.

So episode five is all about Laurell K. Hamilton, which I’m sure nobody actually wants, but everybody’s getting. Because despite the fact that I keep saying I’m done with her, her books are really bad, I’m not done with her, even though her books are really bad. That.

We are here because when I see her work, by the time I see it, it’s like, wow, she’s still like that, you know? And it’s not like I have anything else to do. And there are only so many Kpop, K-hip hop related pieces I’m going to be able to make without you guys just straight up showing up here and fighting me. So I have returned for the roast. I cannot promise that I will do anything else. But I have returned to roast Laurell K. Hamilton, which if you’re new to my site, to my social media, I’ve been doing this for a really long time— for me, like, five years minimum.

When I started my website, I started using her stuff as a regular feature. So I was doing The Great Big Anita Blake Reread, where I would reread her books and talk about like the good, the bad, and the just plain ugh, and I’d stopped because we started getting into the book that were just uncomfortable. And I don’t know if I’ll ever return to them—depends on how bored I get.

Read More »

Flashback Friday: My Martha Jones (Fandom) Problem

Stitch

Note: I originally wrote this back in 2012 in response to a frustrating comment on a tumblr post about Martha Jones. Sadly, after all this time… fandom is not better about Martha Jones or any other Black woman it comes across.

There’s this post with a comic scan from the Doctor Who books going around where Martha Jones snarkily calls 10 out for his treatment of her in comparison of Rose. You can see the post at the link and read the comic for yourself, but basically she looks at him and is like, “Did Rose get this sort of treatment or was it just me?” 

This sort of treatment refers to one awful moment after another. I don’t know if you remember Martha’s run as a companion (and if you don’t, please attempt on fixing that), but she basically got no down time. Where all of the other companions got chances to have fun and visit places where people weren’t trying to kill them either in-show or off-screen, Martha didn’t get any of that. And to top it off, she’s directly referencing the fact that pretty much the only thing 10 talked about were the good times with Rose. Which according to the way he’s telling it, it all of the time.

Read More »

Making Memes To Cope With Fandom Racism

Stitch3 Comments

My latest thing has been to absolutely overuse the “Is this a pigeon” meme format.

I literally cannot stop making memes in this format.

Mostly about how ridiculously racist transformative fandom insists on being.

They’re a surprisingly effective coping mechanism for me as I try to figure out how to come to terms with the fact that transformative fandom is not getting better. I have a worse reputation for talking about antiblackness in fandom than anyone who’s actually been antiblack in fandom does for being antiblack.

That’s definitely a hard pill to swallow.

So I’ve been making memes to cope.

Variations on the same one mostly because it’s hilarious, but I’m always looking for new memes to mess with.

Since they’re mostly on tumblr and y’all mostly aren’t there… have my coping memes:

How do y’all cope with the sad fact that transformative fandom is pretty much Like This all the time?

[Video] So They Think They’re Talking Black

Stitch

There’s an error in this video that I did actually catch before it posted…

I wanted to open with that because it’s honestly hilarious. I copied the original introduction for this video – which I had originally drafted and recorded last year before the world was Like This – which means that I didn’t update it to include how much work I’ve done across this project.

At this point in 2020 after a solid year of working on this project, we’re at eleven articles, twelve related articles, two Spotify playlists, nine videos including this one, two pieces of Patreon-exclusive content, countless twitter threads, and two podcast appearances.

That is a lot of work, y’all.

And I am honestly maybe only halfway done. Two thirds if I squint.

Read More »

What Fandom Racism Looks Like: For Clout and Social Capital

Stitch2 Comments

Across Korean pop/hip-hop twitter, anyone who calls out or even mentions the antiblackness that is a constant from the artists, the industry they’re part of, and the fandom spaces we’re in on and offline… gets accused of doing it for “clout”. 

And by clout, they mean positive power or influence in fandom

Here’s a newsflash for y’all: there’s literally no scenario or fandom where a person of color – or even a white person – talking sharply and critical about the racism in a fandom, in the source material, or from a celebrity gains measurable powerful and positive influence in fandom for it. 

None. 

I have had this site for five years and was on Tumblr talking about racism in fandom for three or so years before that and if you think any of that translated into people overwhelmingly and actually listening to me when I talk about racism in fandom…

You would be extremely wrong. 

Read More »