Did you know that on Twitter and Tumblr, there’s a thing folks do where they literally tag in another person of color to take over shouting at a person of color talking about race and racism in fandom or media?
Folks will see a fan of color say anything critical of a piece of media or in a particular fandom and if they disagree hard enough or they’re bored and want to start shit, they’ll tag a user they know disagrees publicly on Tumblr or Twitter, effectively turning them into an attack dog in the name of that specific thing.
And friends, I am here to tell you how that’s racist as hell.
Labeling the posts that fans of color make about racist fanworks (from accidental issues of representation to purposeful content created to harm) and racism from fans (again ranging from “I didn’t know this was an issue” moments to sustained targeted harassment) as “wank” or “drama” actually does contribute to people writing off what we’re talking about and experiencing. (Contrary to the “talking about racism in fandom makes it harder for folks to care about Real Racism” stance…)
If you don’t use “fandom wank” to refer to (for example) a fan creating really racist art of a Black character because they were accused of whitewashing them, but you do use it when talking about the people calling that out…
Well.
At the end of the day, if you use “fandom wank” or “drama” as your tags or terminology when you’re talking about folks talking about racism in fandom, you’re actively contributing to a culture of fandom that ignores that real harm is happening to fans of color in fandom because of the different levels of racism here.
It’s not something I expect to see change anytime soon because this is something I’ve seen done for at least a decade and folks do love their familiarity, but –
Consider that what’s wank and drama to you in conversations about racism in fandom – and why you tag and talk about it as such – is actually serious for many fans of color who are frustrated to see their experiences dismissed as “wank”.
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.
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.
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 –
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.
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…
During that time, fans of the group would respond to any person with a BTS-related icon that commented on that particular instance of cultural appropriation with comments dismissing their comments because “Don’t you stan BTS”.
Many of the comments were like “But Namjoon [had attempted an afro, had whatever this style is supposed to be, covered that one Shinhwa song, etc] so how can you be critical of anyone else if you like him”.
If this was strictly an attempt at calling out hypocrisy that acknowledged that our faves in this industry are all (largely) similarly problematic when it comes to respecting Black culture(s), maybe I could’ve gotten it. Maybe I could’ve even managed to gloss over it.
But this is not a fandom where that sort of thing happens – most fandoms aren’t.
Note: The section on RPF and whtiewashing deals pretty plainly with real person fan fiction – where a real celebrity is treated like a character in fan works – but from the POV of “stop whitewashing them” rather than a judgement call on the fandom itself. I’d suggest skipping this section, scrolling down to the solutions section of the piece, and waiting a little bit for me to finish writing my actual RPF-focused installment of What Fandom Racism Looks Like later this year because it’s been in the works for a while and will tackle K-Pop RPF, Hockey fandom, and the One Direction fandom’s endless racism towards Zayn.
The Fanlore page for Migratory fandom describes it as, “the most recent term used to describe the idea that slash fans are always on the lookout for the next shiny, new juggernaut pairing”.
First seen in fandom discussions across Fail_Fandomanon – one of many multi-fandom anonymous memes – the term is a reference to this idea that slash fans are constantly moving to the next fandom that’ll provide them their dose of slashy goodness.
On the surface, there’s nothing even remotely wrong with moving to another fandom because the one you’re in is running dry on content. Honestly, I’m right there with folks because when a fandom I’m in is dried up entirely or the fan content it’s creating has been done to death before… I always feel like jumping ship at least for a little while.
So I get the motivation.
But this is “What Fandom Racism Looks Like” and you know that means that there is something I find frustrating about migratory slash fandom that falls under this series….
Near the end of October 2019, Korean rapper San E posted a photo on Instagram of his favorite (“best”) Korean rappers as part of the promo for something he’d reveal in the following days. He has ten rappers on the list, and while many of them would be on my top ten list… none are female artists.
Now, here’s the thing… I’m not actually surprised that San E couldn’t bring himself to place a single female MC on his list.
First, there’s the way that San E seems to hold female rappers – and women – to a different standard in his time as the host of m-net’s Unpretty Rapstar (2015 to 2016).
Note3/31/21: Are you here because you googled “Jenny Nicholson racist”? Did a Twitter user link this to you to explain why ~people~ don’t like Jenny in the replies to a tweet calling out a breadtube user? Let me clarify a thing for you:
THIS POST IS NOT ABOUT JENNY AND IT IS NOT ABOUT WHAT SHE MAY OR MAY NOT SHIP. She’s mentioned in one segment in the article and over like 4-7 tweets (out of over 100) in the supplemental PDF/thread. It is literally not about her or about my beef with what other people ship in the Star Wars fandom but about white women and BIPOC who ship Rey/Kylo who tried to say John Boyega was a danger to Daisy Ridley over an IG comment about REY. Please learn to read and think critically and then GO AWAY. Thanks!
Content notes: As with a majority of my pieces, this one focuses closely on antiblackness including the antiblackness inherent in weaponizing white womanhood to excuse dogpiling and slandering John Boyega as a misogynist, as a potential sexual predator, as a bunch of other gross and untrue things. I talk briefly about some examples of Rey/Kylo fics from the fandom’s past including non-graphic (I believe) mentions of sexual assault and include links to a recap of one and an image of the other.
White women have most (if not all) of the actual observable power in transformative fandom spaces.
White women are the image of the typical “fan” in Western transformative fandom spaces.
They are frequently the most popular Big Named Fans (BNFs) in online spaces, the people who dominate discussions about and displays of Being A Fan. If you’re in transformative fandom and you see a particular set of headcanons or a white dude slash suddenly get supremely popular out of nowhere, chances are that a group of white lady BNFs are behind it.
White women in fandom often get to “graduate” from fandom, dominating what we and outsiders think about transformative with staff writer, researcher, and professor jobs that they can tie directly into their experiences and time in fandom.
(Look at the overarching fan studies academic field for an example or fandom-focused journalism on sites like WIRED, The Daily Dot, The Nerdist, and CBR. Chances are that many of the names you know in these fields, if you know any names, belong to white women.)
With that much power already, it can’t be a surprise that many white women in fandom will do pretty much anything in order to keep the status quo level.
If you heard me on the phone without knowing anything about me or without seeing my profile picture, you’d probably think I was a sure front runner to play Elle Woods in the musical adaptation of Legally Blonde.
For all intents and purposes, I “sound white”.
I’ve sounded like this my entire life, even when I was a child growing up in the Virgin Islands.
Out of all of my siblings, I am the only one without a recognizable Caribbean accent. If I’m around the right people – my friends and family from the islands or other Black people from other islands – sometimes I sound similar but, it doesn’t happen all that often.
There’s something that I’ve learned about what fandom racism looks like across 2019.
Something that makes me think about the future of fandom and my input/output as we inch towards 2020.
Fans of color – especially Black fans – who talk about racism and race in fandom are systematically rewritten in and excised from fandom in order to reframe conversations about race/race in fandom until the only people who are allowed to discuss race and racism in fandom are PIckMe POC who bend the knee to whiteness in fandom and white people who aren’t staying in their lane either way .
Yesterday, I saw one of my (white) mutuals talking about racism in fandom and the importance of listening to fans of color with someone (possibly a fan of color themselves) who seemed receptive to an extent. Thing is? I couldn’t see the tweet… because the person my mutual was talking with had me blocked.
I’d never once interacted with this person. I don’t know this person.
They definitely don’t know me.
But they know about me –
Apparently.
Enough to block me without actually ever bother engaging with me or my work outside of someone else’s screenshots – probably.
This happens literally all the time these days. People will block me in droves – usually because I am critical about racism in fandom, but one time when I said that it wasn’t racist to affectionately refer to Yoongi from BTS as a goblin or gremlin – without me ever once interacting with them.
And the thing is that I don’t expect anyone to let me run roughshod across their timelines. Half of the time, if I’m on one of my other accounts and I see my own content, I find myself getting annoyed. And I wrote those damn tweets.
If you’re out here claiming that you really care about racism in fandom but you and your friends have all knowingly blocked and/or constantly subtweet me, the most vocal Black voices in transformative fandom talking about racism in fandom and you pretty much only listen to sycophants of color who want to cling to their space in your orbit, –
It’s impossible to miss that I’ve spent most of 2019 writing about, listening to, and talking to other people about Korean pop and hip hop music. I have spent so much time, energy, and effort talking about what is now my primary fandom and at the end of these past eight months –
I can’t say that I regret any of it.
Criticism is part of my fandom way.
I love critical conversations about fandom. I love making connections between the theories I learned in grad school and the things I love. I genuinely and truly love getting my critical little claws all over something that I’m fond of.
Stitch's Media Mix 
You must be logged in to post a comment.