zeegoeshere

Lately, I've tried to distance myself from race meta in fandom, just because taking it so personally and getting enraged every time people were stupid was bad for my blood pressure. I found that the race relations I found looking outside of fandom were so depressing that I needed to be almost willfully blind to anything offensive in fandom to keep my fandom time fun. I made myself take a step back. But right now I'm pretty much shaking with rage, and it's not because I think race issues in fandom are so much more important now or something, it's because of the hypocrisy I'm seeing.

I find it interesting that in fandom, where people feel entitled to be outraged at lack of warnings in fic, lack of spoiler cuts, pairing labels or ratings, entrance into a locked community, etc, etc, the second anyone (especially if 'anyone' is non-white) points out something that's sketchy in terms of race, oh, they're using the wrong tone.

The message I keep getting, over and over, from fandom is that it's entitled to not be spoiled for anything, it's entitled to be warned if a character stubs its toe in fic, it's entitled to have BNFs bend over backwards in order to be nice and not cliquey, but I and like-minded fen like me aren't entitled to try and carve out a non-racist safe space for ourself, because we're not asking politely enough.

You know what? witchqueen's original email was ten times more polite than I would've been under the circumstances. (Seriously: Interracial relationships equated with bestiality.) And the post she made, after such an insulting brush-off from the mods, was again, much more composed and dignified than I would have been inclined to be. But no--apparently since she didn't say what she had to say while groveling, people are whining because of her tone.

It's become pretty clear to me that there *is* no proper tone that can be used while talking about race. No amount of politeness or coyness will actually make people listen, so fuck it. I've been trying to compose a post in my head on why people don't write Travis fic in bandom, for instance, but why am I even bothering? It seems to me that fandom will hear the same thing whether I accuse anyone who hasn't written Travis fic of being a bigot or whether I politely ask why people might feel uncomfortable writing Travis/Bill.

I just feel so tired of watching the same debates over 'tone,' the same hypocrisy and complaining that we're harshing white clueless fans' squee, the way it's okay to scream up and down about being accidentally spoiled but it's *not* okay to point out accidental racism. Fandom just doesn't seem to be learning.