[Stitch Talks Ish] Episode 2: Stitch Talks About The Rey/Kylo Fandom and Weaponized White Womanhood

January 13, 2020December 26, 2020 Stitch2 Comments

Episode Notes:

Content Warnings: I talk explicitly about antiblack racism in fandom and white women weaponizing their femininity in service to it. I also briefly mention how part of this involves setting up a fear of John/that John will assault or is otherwise a threat to (largely white) women. I say the word “whore” once in describing a hypothetical username. I also swear a ton.
This is another grouchy episode because I am tired of this shit for real.
Did you listen to my first episode yet? It has a transcript!
I have an on-going thread documenting everything I’ve seen about this situation where Rey/Kylo fans have been up to since Dec 31st
And another thread about Lindsey Romain and the drama she started over fixating on the idea that John called Kelly Marie Tran “weak”
Rey/Kylo Shippers: A New Look At An Old Face of Fannish Entitlement
What Fandom Racism Looks Like: The Star Wars Fandom (Part One, Probably)
Quick Coverage: John Boyega Ends 2019 With a Bang (And a Hearty “Fuck You” To Rey/Kylo Shippers)
For folks I have blocked or that aren’t on twitter, I’ll be putting together a post collecting the tweets as soon as I can figure out how to do it well! Right now, what I have is… not up to my standards.
- The Lindsey Romain Tweets: https://stitchmediamix.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/collection-of-thread-on-lindsey-romain-and-john-supposedly-calling-kelly-marie-tran-weak-12-11-to-12-16.pdf
- The New Years Eve Onward Tweets: https://stitchmediamix.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/collection-of-thread-on-reykylo-fan-nonsense-towards-john-from-dec-31-to-jan-16.pdf

Transcript:

Hi, everyone, welcome to the second episode of Stitch Talks Ish.

It’s been about two and some change months since my first episode where I talked about like five minutes of The Tablo Podcast. And, and right now I’m back to complain again — not about Tablo this time.

If you follow me on Twitter, which you could if you wanted to, (and weren’t blocked,) I’ve been talking about the Star Wars fandom’s antiblackness from pretty much at the beginning of 2020. We’re only 12 days in. So I’m going to cover, as best as I can for podcasts, everything that’s happened, and about some really frustrating, and even worrying things that I’ve noticed about what’s been going on with the Reylo fandom, which is the ship name for Rey and Kylo Ren, and just overarching, transformative fandom.

So to start, I guess we have to begin from the beginning.

2019 General Wrap-Up: Stitch Talked A Lot About Racism In Fandom This Year

December 25, 2019 Stitch1 Comment

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, –

How solid is your anti-racism stance in fandom?

What Fandom Racism Looks Like: Power & Privilege

December 16, 2019December 16, 2019 Stitch1 Comment

This was originally posted on Patreon in November without any real extra-text.

One of the most interesting (and frustrating) things about talking about fandom and media and the racism present in these spaces is how many people view my position as one that has any power in fandom.

What Fandom Racism Looks Like: The Star Wars Fandom (Part One, Probably)

December 14, 2019April 16, 2021 Stitch11 Comments

Few fandoms fill me with the kind of anger that the Star Wars fandom does.

In fact, there are times where I’d go so far as to say that I hate it.

Times like Wednesday night.

When I got home Wednesday night from my first A.C.E concert, I was flying high. It’d been a great night with fantastic music and a stellar performance. Everywhere I looked, I saw fans loving their thing and loving that they got to share that thing with other fans. For a few blissful hours, I’d experienced fandom at its best: people coming together in joy and in celebration over something brilliant.

And then I was rudely reminded that the Star Wars fandom exists and that a whole huge chunk of the Rey/Kylo shippers who dominate much of the fandom discourse is made up of just really terrible people.

Fleeting Frustrations #11 – True Fans, Who Fans?

December 7, 2019January 24, 2021 Stitch2 Comments

There’s nothing about my Twitter account that clearly pings the mind and calls me out as an obvious fan of K-pop – or… pretty much any form of nerdery outside of a single comic.

My profile picture is a picture of my face, not a Korean artist or a superhero. My display name and @ aren’t a fandom in-joke. (Although the little leaf/tree emoji in my display name is a reference to Kim Namjoon of BTS. I did it for his birthday in September and then… just never changed it.)

I do get that the only notably nerdy thing about my twitter account is, at first glance, my header image of Lunella Lafayette from Marvel Comics’ Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur. And if you don’t know anything about her comic, it’s easy to assume it’s not nerdy.

But between my apparently invisible fannishness and my very visible Blackness, no one ever assumes I know anything about K-pop. Or Star Wars. Or fandom.

The first thing is my thing, you know?

I’m into a ton of different fandoms and when faced with having to try and choose one to represent fully across my Twitter profile, I kind of froze and chose one thing. So that inability some fans have to recognize me based on my profile and whatnot? That’s on me.

But then there’s the thing where Black people aren’t necessarily read as fans across many different fandom spaces around the world.Read More »

WFRLL: Black Sound… Somehow Not For Black Fans?

November 29, 2019 Stitch

Back in in the beginning of April, when I first started this project and the idea for this section started to take form, I screenshot and shared a tweet from a K-pop fan (though the group they preferred, escapes me) that said:

“I don’t know why black people are even stupid enough to like K-pop. It isn’t for you. Go listen to rap.”

Go listen to rap.

Imagine having the nerve to tell Black fans to “go listen to rap” because – in this case – you were frustrated by yet another conversation about cultural appropriation in the K-pop industry.

Imagine being that much of a walnut that you zoom on past the fact that even the cutesiest of girl groups will have something that’s attempting to be a rap line and rap breaks in their songs – specifically so that you can tell Black people to get the hell out of “your” fandom space/genre of choice.

This is just a taste of what international fandom spaces are like for Black K-pop fans on social media. When we are even a tiny bit critical of the way our idols try to emulate our cultures, folks tell us that we need to get out of the fandom because there’s no way that we belong.

They tell us to return to rap music, the same rap music that our favorite idols and artists are listening to and performing in South Korea.

Imagine being that awful.

Collected Tweets on Racism in Fandom and Certain Sentiments Related to Freedom of Fic(cing) – From 11/24/19

November 27, 2019 Stitch

The original thread is here but I have blocked tons of people to maintain my boundaries so I have copied the tweets over here for ease of access for people who still want to see the tweets but can’t because I’ve blocked them for whatever reason.

Like I absolutely get the sentiment behind “all fanfiction is okay” but I also have seen many antiblack stories across my lifetime in fandom where black characters are abused/objectified/enslaved/torn down usually by/for white characters-

And those stories AREN’T okay, friends. Like the sentiment “all fanfiction is okay” (like it’s fine, don’t worry about it, women are making it so let them have their fun) is one of those Lil Fandom Things that makes me wonder…

Do people realize that they’re leaving out a lot of people in those sentiments?Read More »

What Fandom Racism Looks Like: Real Racism

November 7, 2019November 13, 2019 Stitch5 Comments

Over the past three years, I’ve documented multiple people who’ve used real world (offline) politics and historic and present atrocities to silence claims of dissent and derail criticism across different fandom spaces.

Police brutality, extrajudicial executions of people of color, and the school to prison pipeline are just a few examples of what people consistently repurpose across fandom in order to stop the critical ball from rolling.

Back in May 2019, I wrote an audiopost script about “Real Racism” in fandom and how people use the idea of “real racism” to derail people talking about racism in fandom spaces – which apparently can’t ever have racism in its borders.

To many people – who aren’t exclusively white members of fandom – the racism that many other people see and discuss in fandom spaces doesn’t count as “real racism”. Identifiable racism, to them, involves immediate physical pain to a real person of color, hate crimes, or traceable harassment from people saying clearly that they’re harassing someone because of their race.

To them, because much of what fans of color have detailed as fandom racism don’t involve those easily identifiable aspects that mark racism as a thing that only outsiders to fandom commit, they can’t acknowledge that fandom racism is real racism.

Stitch on JinJja Cha Podcast’s Anti-Blackness in KPOP Episode

November 5, 2019November 5, 2019 Stitch

https://soundcloud.com/jinjjachapodcast/anti-blackness-in-k-pop-wzina

Jinjja Cha is a weekly podcast hosted by Girl Davis and April about South Korean Pop Culture and everything else in between.
You can find them on:
Soundcloud
Twitter
April’s Twitter
Girl Davis’ Twitter
Their Website

My appearance on Jinjja Cha was kind of destined to happen. I adore Girl Davis immensely and want to be as cool as she is one day. And while I haven’t had the chance to talk with April yet, we’re both longtime Rain and Miyavi fans so like… we’re clearly also soulmates separated at birth.

So, this was in the cards as a Thing That To Take Place.

Talking with Girl was an incredible experience in terms of like… how it felt like just going out with a buddy and getting intense over drinks. (One day, by the way, I’m going to have that experience with them. I promise y’all that.)

Girl and I talked about a lot of different things across our almost three-hour-long conversation. From my whole issue with that one barbershop that was all over social media for a few days to that time I was friends with a white supremacist in college a decade ago, nothing was really off limits?

And I loved it.

The main question across our conversation was about finding our thresholds as Black fans invested in these groups and this industry that has repeatedly shown itself to be incredibly antiblack across the past twenty or so years.

One of the things I’ve been thinking about – especially after reading and sharing Stan’d off by Claudia Williams – is how hard is is to unstan?

Even temporarily because you’re burnt out or frustrated by a member’s hood cosplay or upset at the way the performers/their companies never seem to notice antiblackness in their fandoms – but can leap to quash a dating rumor in a heartbeat.

Stitch On NYAN’s “Chicken Noodle Soup For the K-Pop Lover’s Soul”

October 29, 2019 Stitch

Not Your Average Netizens is:

A podcast dedicated to South Korean entertainment. Our goal is to be informative and to have an open and mature discussion about the things we love, hate, and love to hate. Most of all we want to have fun with Kpop and share that with others!
We are made up of netizens from all over the world and we gather weekly in our spare time. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we don’t, and we hope that you find yourself in each of our voices.

Not Your Average Netizens’ Links:

Facebook
Twitter
Soundcloud
Youtube
Instagram

At the start of October, I had the honor of guesting on Not Your Average Netizens’ episode “Chicken Noodle Soup For the K-Pop Lover’s Soul”. In the fun and fantastic liveshow, we covered cultural appropriation we see from idols and the antiblacknesss we see from fandom.

In both cases, we talked about “Chicken Noodle Soup” (BTS’ J-Hope’s take on the 2006 song featuring Becky G) and the fandom’s overwhelmingly blah and bad reaction to J-Hope’s gel twists or the art on the single’s cover and Black fans who were annoyed at or offended because of any aspect of the collaboration.

We also talked about how CNS is kind of exemplary of how Black culture/creativity isn’t valuable to non-Black people until other non-Black people partake of it and perform it. Like I’ve talked about this to a bunch of people – and we brought it up here too – that if you’re “acting hood” and dropping signals of Blackness in your video but you… probably have never had a significant and intimate relationship with a Black person… how authentic is your performance, really? Aren’t you just putting on a costume?

And why defend someone’s inauthentic portrayal of Blackness when you’re consuming their content?

[VIDEO] A Bitter (Sweet) Summer Package Unboxing

October 16, 2019 Stitch

I promised y’all a bitter unboxing and that’s…

Mostly what you’re getting.

One thing I and other Black K-pop fans – especially those a bit further along on our own journeys to unlearn internalized antiblackness – have come up against as we make our way through these fandom spaces and enjoy content form performers is that we’re constantly put into positions where it feels like we have to choose between our identities as fans of a group or the industry and our identities as Black people.

So when a performer or a group of performers does something that’s antiblack or that makes Black fans feel like they’re not being seen as actual fans or even as people, that sort of feeling rears its icky head.

What Fandom Racism Looks Like: PickMe POC

October 3, 2019October 3, 2019 Stitch5 Comments

When I used to be on Tumblr, I’d get a lot of messages and reblogs from people who made it a point to let other people know that I didn’t speak for all POC.

I was never arguing that I did, of course, but it was imperative to these other people of color to let me and white people in fandom know that they were here, they weren’t white, and that they thought I was full of shit about fandom racism.

Which is their right as people on the internet, let’s be real here.

But it’s interesting:

I, a queer Black person with most of a lifetime in fandom and an entire academic career focusing on media criticism and representation, couldn’t possibly speak for every single person in fandom when I talked about racism I witnessed in fandom… but they could speak over me in order to let other people in fandom know that I was a POC Not To Be Trusted.

“Pick Mes” have a home on the internet. It’s a term borne from African American Vernacular English (AAVE) that calls to mind the mental image of people jumping up and down and begging to be picked for a game. (“Pick me! Pick me!”) Only, in the usual context, it’s someone leaping up and down and trying to get the attention of someone that treats them with disdain.

[Video] Black Women, Hated: Layers of Misogynoir in Fandom Spaces – PCA 2019

VideoSeptember 20, 2019September 21, 2021 Stitch1 Comment

Abstract Black Women, Hated: Layers of Misogynoir in Fandom Spaces As fandom spaces become even more active in asking for and creating positive representation about underrepresented identities (i.e., disabled people and queer people), one notable weak spot in fandom representation politics revolves around the reception towards and portrayal of Black women in fandom. Black female […]

What Fandom Racism Looks Like: The (Un)Magic of Intent

August 19, 2019August 19, 2019 Stitch3 Comments

I’m gonna be real here:

Most of the time, people aren’t creating problematic or harmful content with the intent to hurt other people.

Honestly, even in an age where spite fuels so much of fandom, a majority of people in fandom aren’t creating content based on the negative feelings that other folks inspire in them.

Mostly because well… who has time to spite-create so seriously?

So yeah, when folks write certain kinds of content in fandom, chances are that when they say “I didn’t mean to offend/hurt anyone” that they absolutely mean it.

Fleeting Frustrations #8: Revisionist Fandom History Strikes Again

August 9, 2019January 24, 2021 Stitch1 Comment

This morning, one of the fic writers I follow retweeted a condescending three-tweet thread about how folks in fandom that are critical of the AO3 and other fandom institutions (for things like the racism in fandom, the amount of explicit sexual content centering underage characters and performers, etc) were trying to “Make Fandom Great Again” and oppress queer (white) people who’d fought so hard to gain freedom in fandom.

However, that longing for fannish past comes primarily from white, cis, and het fans longing for the silence and bubbles they made in order to silence other marginalized and vulnerable voices in fandom.

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Tag: fandom racism