Tag: fandom racism

What Fandom Racism Looks Like: Beige Blank Slates

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What Fandom Racism Looks Like - Beige Blank Slates

“certain bodies could be read as blank slates not already overdetermined by race” – a partial quote from page 17 of Melanie E. S. Kohnen’s Screening the Closet: Queer Representation, Visibility, and Race in American Film and Television.

Some of fandom’s favorite characters are “blank slates”.

Beige blank slates, that is.

General Armitage Hux from the Star Wars sequel trilogy.

Arthur and Eames from Inception.

Q from Skyfall and Spectre.

Clint and Phil Coulson in the first Thor movie.

Various minor white male characters in a show or film that somehow became one of/the most popular characters in their source media or fandom.

In this installment of “What Fandom Racism Looks Like”, we’ll be looking at the idea of the “blank slate” primarily in Western media-focused slash fandom spaces.

We’ll be asking what a blank slate looks like, what these fans and fandoms get out of these characters, what characters will never be considered blank enough to be loved, and how, while the claim that fandom prefers “blank slate characters” might well be true and there are many instances where the Beige Blank Slate provides necessary representation within fandom, the preference that prioritizes white male characters above all others kind of messes up something that has the potential to be great.Read More »

#FlashbackFriday – “Dear Budding Sleepy Hollow Fandom”

Stitch

Originally published on my Tumblr September 17, 2013. Seriously, it’s been five years of me talking about misogynoir in fandom and with shipping and things have gotten way worse instead of better. (Also, lightly edited for clarity.)

Abbie Mills from Sleepy Hollow Wikia.png

Dear Budding Sleepy Hollow Fandom,

Don’t do the thing.

Don’t do the thing where you go in deep to act like shipping a woman of color in a hetero relationship (with a white dude) is somehow helping the patriarchy.

Don’t do the thing where you constantly bring up how “it’s a preference” when the only people you don’t ship with the lead are the women of color holding court and kicking ass right with him.

Don’t be like the Skyfall fandom that put maybe 5 minutes of interaction between Q and Bond over everything with Moneypenny. (Ignoring how their relationship actually works and their attraction to each other…)

Don’t be like those people that say that Spock/Kirk is more progressive than Spock/Uhura will ever be. (Because it’s not like when the original series was on air, when we had so little in the way of canon interracial anything on screen to serve as representation).

Don’t act as though wanting to be excited about a dark-skinned black woman as a lead and also wanting to ship her with her co-star is playing into the patriarchy.

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[Video] My Comic Book Girlfriend Has To Be a Redhead: Misogynoiristic Reactions to Racebending Iris West and Mary-Jane Watson

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Abstract Recent adaptations of popular comic book series have taken the step of diversifying their original storylines by racebending (Gaston and Reid 2012) key characters – for example Iris West (played by Candice Patton) on DC Comics and The CW’s The Flash television series and Mary Jane Watson (rumored to be played by Zendaya) in […]

[Image Post] Finn Needs A New, Less Racist Fandom

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Finn_Doesnt_Need_Redeeming

Source:  Where Are Y’all Getting Your Characterization From? Finn Isn’t A Coward, Or Selfish, And He Doesn’t Need A Damn Redemption Arc.

I love Finn from Star Wars. It’s not just because I not-so-secretly want John Boyega to fall wildly in love with me and marry me (but like…), but I think Finn is one of the most compelling characters in the sequel series.

Which is why I can’t get over the fact that so many people disagree with me on how amazing Finn is. Heck, I still can’t believe that folks think Finn is up there with Jar-Jar Binks as the worst character in the ~Star Wars Cinematic Universe~.

Or that many of his so-called fans wish he’d just… die.Read More »

What Fandom Racism Looks Like: #NotAllFans

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WFRLL - #NotAllFans

Inspired by this tweet thread I wrote.

Fandom really doesn’t like to acknowledge that it has multiple problems with race and racism.

From members of fandom writing racist alternate universe stories where characters of color are dehumanized, tortured and killed off (as a form of “putting them in their place”) to the harassment that fans direct at fans and performers of color, there’s no way to escape the fact that fandom – transformative and curatorial fandom spaces– is racist as hell.

One thing that I’ve noticed as I move through various fandoms is that few fans want to acknowledge that the problem and commentary calling out the problem are coming from inside their specific fandoms and social groups within fandom. If a fan of color points out the racism in an aspect of fandom or in harassment they’re receiving from people in fandom, one of the first responses that they get from members of that fandom is…

“I know racism sucks, but don’t generalize a whole fandom based on one person.”

Basically, that’s one of the most useless responses you can give a person talking about something currently impeding their ability to enjoy their free time and security in fandom. Read More »

What Fandom Racism Looks Like: Only 33 Words in a Trailer

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WFRLL - White Feminism in Fandom.png

Yesterday, the Captain Marvel teaser trailer broke the internet.

Today, I saw a tweet about said trailer from Shakesville.com’s Melissa McEwan from the night before that reminded me that when it comes to feminism and fandom, people of color are always stepped over on the path to (white) female empowerment.

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“In the first Captain Marvel trailer, Samuel L. Jackson’s character has 67 words. Brie Larson’s character, i.e. Captain Marvel, has 33.

Come on, Marvel.”

McEwan’s tweet didn’t just inspire me to write a whole tweet thread about White Feminism ™ in fandom.

It reminded me of a bunch of different brushes I’ve had with White Feminism ™ in fandom – from Maggie Stiefvater’s beef with the The Force Awakens fandom apparently focusing more on Finn and Poe than Rey, to Anne Theriault’s desire to keep Uhura “Strong and Single” in the Star Trek reboot films, and the Star Wars “Dude Free” edit of The Last Jedi that not only cut out Finn and Poe but… all of the Tico sisters’ screen time in the name of feminist satire.

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[Stitch Likes Stuff] Shipping, Fandom Racism, and Reylo

Stitch

I came across this video thanks to one of my old mutuals on tumblr and I think it’s a pretty great overview of the way that shipping trends and fandom racism are often one in the same.

The video’s narrator, Moth, starts with a “Shipping 101” introduction for the uninitiated and then jumps right in. They focus on a couple of specific areas that I feel are important to take into consideration in fandom/as a fan:

  • The popularity of “unhealthy” non-canon ships with two white characters over “healthy” canon ships with one character of color being shipped with a white character (Moth uses “unhealthy” to refer to ships involving minors in sexual/romantic relationships with adults, incest, one character being a noted abuser in canon, that sort of thing.)
  • The excuses fans in fandom give for why they’re not racist for being almost solely invested in ships between white characters — especially white villains and the white characters fighting against them.
  • And the Star Wars’ fandom’s Rey/Kylo shippers and several of the racist excuses that some of the fans of the ship use to explain why they can’t find Finn a “worthy” partner for Rey (but insist on shipping her with someone who she calls a monster and can’t stand).

Obviously, this sort of video hits a lot of my buttons because these are things I talk about on my website. I think it’s a really insightful video that clearly lays out what fandom does, what characters are impacted the most, and why it’s a set of trends that is racist. Much of the video focuses primarily on the Star Wars fandom, but as I think that’s one of the most racist fandoms active right now… Obviously, I think that’s a great thing to zero in on.

So please, go to Moth’s video and let them know how much you appreciate their work and upvote the video (because folks that talk about race and racism in media or fandom definitely get the short end of the stick and tons of abuse from assholes who don’t seem to get that they’re just… proving that fandom is racist).

Sacrifice, Heroics, and Dead Characters of Color

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This post contains spoilers for Orange is the New Black season 4, Wynonna Earp season 3, Elementary season 6, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 5, and a bunch of other stuff that’s been off the air or out of theaters for years.

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I knew I was never going to watch Sleepy Hollow again when Nicole Beharie’s Abbie Mills sacrificed herself in a heroic death for Tom Mison’s Ichabod Crane at the end of the series’ third season.

When I saw spoilers that Orange is the New Black’s Poussey was killed off in a tasteless and traumatizing scene that called back to Eric Garner’s murder by a police officer four years ago – and the folks in fandom defending it as something that “had” to happen – I immediately took the show out of my Netflix queue.

And, every time a person of color dies so the Winchester brothers can live, I wonder why I even kept the show around as an afternoon marathon session.

Heck, not only did I think I’d have to say some pretty sharp words to Rian Johnson during the climax of The Last Jedi where he had Finn set up to kill himself in order to (possibly) save the dregs of the resistance, but to this day I block everyone I see on social media that wishes for Finn’s death by redemption arc – or suggest that his death would have somehow “saved” his character from being boring.

And now, Wynonna Earp has followed in the footsteps of these shows by killing off the main Black character Xavier Dolls (played by Shamier Anderson) in the third season’s second episode (“When You Call My Name”) and the fandom and crew alike don’t seem to get why that’s such a big problem.Read More »

What Fandom Racism Looks Like: White Prioritization

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What Fandom Racism Looks Like.png
I think my pal Holly over at DiverseHighFantasy was one of (if not the) first people to use “white prioritization” in a fannish context in a piece on The Walking Dead fandom and the Rick/Michonne ship. So I’d like to open my piece by shouting out to hers.

As I’ve researched, I’ve found a really great starting point for talking about “white prioritization” in Sincere Kirabo’s definition of “white-centeredness” in this piece entitled “On White Supremacy And The Nature Of Norms”:

White-centeredness is a deeply-rooted aspect of U.S. culture. White-centeredness denotes the centrality of white representation that permeates every facet of our dominant culture. It upholds as “normal” and “expected” the ubiquity of language, ideas, prejudices, preferences, values, social mores, and worldviews established by the white perspective.

Like white-centeredness, “white prioritization” is all about focusing on white people alone. It’s a term that refers to the way that people constantly centers whiteness (white men and women primarily) and how that centering comes almost exclusively at the expense of people of color. It’s all about focusing on white experiences and making sure that everything is about white people – even the experiences of people of color.
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Who the heck is Ben Solo?

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who the heck is ben solo

In the past couple of months, there have been several tweets from twitter users with the hashtag “SaveBenSolo” because Ben Solo, should be protected and should survive Episode IX and if you don’t want that, then you’ve got no empathy to speak of.

Many of these posts are also tagged with “Reylo” (because saving this “Ben Solo” character seems contingent on Rey doing the saving despite him shutting her down in the last movie) while others claim that Ben Solo needs to survive because he is, as far as we know, the last surviving Skywalker. They use Leia’s distraught internal monologue over her “lost” son in Jason Fry’s novelization of The Last Jedi to paint a portrait of this Ben Solo as a mythical and magical boy, caught helplessly between destiny and other people’s desire for power.

Ben Solo, fandom argues, needs to be saved because he is the last, the best, the least responsible for his actions, and the most sympathetic…

But who the heck is Ben Solo?Read More »

What Fandom Racism Looks Like: (Not-So) Sexy Slavefic

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Note: before we get into this piece, note that I am coming from this position as a queer Black person who has, in the past, purposefully read and written stories of the kind I am talking about in this piece. I’ve also got experience in researching and writing about Blackness in history, media, and fandom.

Predominantly, the form of slavery I’m going to be talking about in this piece relates to the enslavement of Africans and their descendants because that’s the form of slavery that many of these stories build off of (and I’m Black), but I’m going to mention slavery in ancient cultures. Additionally, any links to my blog stitchmediamix on tumblr won’t work because I have the blog locked while I’m on hiatus.

Content Warning: This piece will talk in depth about slavery in romance work, fanfic, and in history in a way that highlights the violence of slavery. Many of the website links embedded in this piece will link to pages that contain images and/or descriptions of brutality related to slavery including lynching, rape, and whipping.

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Right now, on the Archive of Our Own, there are currently 12,236 stories tagged with “Slavery”.

Almost half of the stories with that tag are rated “Explicit” – most likely for sexual content and/or violence – with “Rape/Non-Con” making up a third of the stories’ warnings. While the stories are too varied to stand out with one or more particular pairing having the lion’s share of stories, in the relationship tab for that tag, the top pairings (with under 400 stories each) are primarily M/M stories focusing on white characters.

This is just a small snapshot of what slavefic[1] in fandom and how slavery is portrayed in fandom looks like.Read More »

Where Are Y’all Getting Your Characterization From? Finn Isn’t A Coward, Or Selfish, And He Doesn’t Need A Damn Redemption Arc.

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I’m not Resistance. I’m not a hero. I’m a Stormtrooper. Like all of them, I was taken
from my family I’ll never know. And raised to do one thing.  In my first battle, I made a choice. I wasn’t going to kill for them. So I ran, right into you. You looked at me like no one ever had. I was ashamed of what I was. But, I’m done with the First Order. I’m never going back.

— Finn to Rey in Maz’s cantina in Star Wars: The Force Awakens

I know that the Star Wars fandom – both the dudebro hubs and the supposedly feminist and progressive parts on Tumblr and Twitter – is racist as shit, but I still can’t believe the audacity of people calling Finn a coward and demanding he be killed off as like… a form of progressive protest on his or Rey’s behalf.

In her article “Star Wars: The Last Jedi Could Have Been Better If This Character Had Died” author Alessia Santoro goes above and beyond in order to “prove” that The Last Jedi would have been a better movie if only for one death – that of John Boyega’s Finn. She does so, of course, by completely crapping all over his character, problematizing his behavior and, wishing for his death because that’s the only possible way for him to matter to her.

Despite the fact that she – and many other members of the Star Wars fandom – claim that they really do like the character, there’s no bigger sign of disliking a character than by wanting them dead.Read More »

Women of Color in Marvel Live Action Properties – Elektra Natchios

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Women of Color in Marvel Live Action Properties is an essay series that will look closely at the portrayals of female characters of color by actresses of color in Marvel’s various franchises. I was inspired by the fact that a lot of these female characters don’t get anywhere as much love as white female characters in similar roles and that we’re not as likely to see fandom analyze why they’re empowering. They don’t get meta-fandom or essays unless it’s about placing them in relation to white characters. I want to celebrate the women of color that inhabit the same worlds as our favorite superheroes while looking at how and why they’re important to fans like me.

WOC in MCU - Elektra (2)

Alexandra Reid: Her name was Elektra Natchios. You are not her. You are much more than she ever was. There was a man. They call him the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. And in this other life, he let Elektra die.

Defenders Season 1, Episode 6 “Ashes, Ashes”

Elektra Natchios deserves better than Daredevil – the show and the character.

Introduced in Daredevil’s second season episode “Kinbaku”, Elektra is an old flame come back to burn Matt Murdoch, appearing in his apartment under the pretense of asking for a favor from the man she once cared about. Elektra is a morally grey character, a complex figure who disrupts Matt’s life just by existing.

She’s also a survivor of childhood abuse that includes neglect, manipulation, and violence from a parental figure, something that she has not been allowed to cope with. Elektra’s mistreatment by Stick, a man who serves as an abusive pseudo father figure for both her and Matt, is a significant element in the latter half of Elektra’s appearances in Daredevil and yet his abuse’s effect on her relationship and mental health are largely glossed over.

Her complexities as a character who has survived horrible mistreatment and who has been shaped into and used as a tool by two different sides in a war largely wind up not getting their fair share of attention in plots dominated first by Matt Murdoch alone and then the entire crew of the Defenders.

For this essay, I’m going to talk about Elektra as a complex anti-hero, one whose status as a survivor shapes her characterization and her approach to relationships.Read More »

What Fandom Racism Looks Like: The Smartest Girl in the World Has To Be A Mary Sue

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Fandom Racism - Mary Sue

On the first day of Black History Month, a random writer on Archive of Our Own gave to me… two separate stories that framed Shuri – T’challa’s brilliant baby sister in Black Panther –  as a character that couldn’t possibly be as smart as the MCU claims and as a victim of child abuse by the Wakandan elite who are “taking advantage” of her brilliance.

These stories were written in response to Black people calling out the author’s racism in deeming Shuri a Mary Sue in Black Panther in a tumblr post (that used the Black Panther tag) and subsequently writing off the film.Read More »